Lenten Fridays

In our parish, we pray the Stations of the Cross on Friday afternoon.  We had a wonderful turn out this week.  There is something about this devotion that I have always loved.  This year we relocated our Stations.  They had been grouped together in the transcepts and now we have hung them down the length of the nave.  It made for a nice pilgrimage path last night.

As a student at St. John's University I was a student of Fr. Henry Bryan Hayes.  He wrote the first part of an oratorio on the Stations of the Cross, incorporating poetry by Dorothy Schmenk which appeared in the National Catholic Reporter in 1978.  I have never been able to get my hands on the entire text but here is the meditation she writes on the Fourth Station:  Mary Sees Her Son.

My Son, my God,

I die your death

with you.

I offer you:

I give-to-God

Your life-in-me,

My life-in-you.

I do this gladly,

Yes -
Yet, gladly, too,
I would have you
Safe again:
My babe anew.
But, Son,
I'm proud of you!
My Perfect-one,
Holocausted now;
I've given you:
Placed you on
Life's altar,
Man of men,
God of God,
Mine, and his, and ours!
This is your day,
And I'm glad for you:
I'm glad for us;
I'm glad for God -
Though my heart church
In pain,
(Your pain is mine,
My Son, my God).
I die this death
with you. . .