Suffering With Joy

Ninth Station: Jesus Falls a Third Time

March 18, 2010

Christ Carrying the Cross, 1737-38, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (b. 1696, Venezia, d. 1770, Madrid), Oil on canvas, Sant'Alvise, Venice

Jesus Falls a Third Time

V.  We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee.

R.  Because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

My people, what have I done to thee, or in what have I grieved thee?  Answer Me.  I brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and thou hast led Me to the gibbet of the cross.  Forty years I fed thee with manna in the desert, and thou hast beaten Me with blows and scourges.  What more ought I do for thee that I have not done?¹

V.  He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.

R.  And he was mute as a lamb before the shearer.²

Let Us Pray

Guard us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, / in Thy ever-present mercy; / and since without Thee weak man must fail, / keep us ever by Thy help from all things harmful, / and lead us to all things profitable unto our salvation. / Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.³

Hymn: By the cross with thee to stay: there with thee to weep and pray: this I ask of thee to give.

¹ Reproaches of Good Friday. ² Is. 53:7. ³ Collect, Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

*****

The Good Friday Reproaches, also known as the Improperia, are part of the Good Friday liturgy.  They are sung by the choir during the time of the adoration of the Cross.  The biblical texts become the requital of Jesus against His people for whom God did so many favors beginning with their delivery from the bondage of Egypt and safe conduct into the Promised Land.  These reproaches, a deeply touching personal rebuke to all of us sinners, serve to stir up in the soul great compunction of spirit for the ignominious passion and cruel death Jesus suffered on behalf of each of us.  Through them we hear the voice of God in a very personal way calling us to salvation.

Tags: Stations of the Cross