Station 1
Lord, it’s too late for You to be quiet, You have spoken too much; You have fought too much;
You were not sensible, You know, You exaggerated; it was bound to happen.
You called the better people a breed of snakes.
You told them that their hearts were black tombs with fine exteriors, but inside they were full of dead men’s bones.
You chose the decaying lepers,
You spoke fearlessly with unacceptable people,
You are with notorious sinners, and You said that streetwalkers would be first in the Kingdom of Heaven.
You got on well with the poor, the bums, the crippled.
You belittled the religious laws.
Your interpretation of the Law reduced it to one little commandment: to love.
Station 2
Now they are avenging themselves.
They have taken steps against You; they have approached the authorities, and action will follow.
Lord, I know that if I try to live like You, I will be condemned.
I am afraid; they are already singling me out.
Some smile at me, others laugh, some are shocked, and several of my friends are about to drop me.
I am afraid to stop,
I am afraid to listen to men’s wisdom,
It whispers: you must go forward little by little, everything can’t be taken literally, it’s better to come to terms with the adversary.
And yet, Lord, I know that you are right.
Help me to fight, to speak, to live Your Gospel to the end, to the folly of the Cross.
Station 3
Lord, here is Your cross.
Your cross! As if it were Your cross!
You had no cross and You came to get ours, and all through Your life, and along the way to Calvary, You took upon Yourself, one by one, the sins of the world.
You have to go forward, And bend, and suffer.
The Cross must be carried.
Lord, You walk on silently; it is true, then, that there is a time for speaking and a time for silence?
Is it true that there is a time for struggling and another for the silent bearing of our sins and the sins of the world?
Lord, I would rather fight the Cross; to bear it is hard. The more I progress, and the more I see the evil in the world, the heavier is the Cross on my shoulder.
At the dawning of each day, help me to set forth.
Station 4
He fell.
For a moment, He staggered, then fell prostrate, God in the dust.
And so, Lord, I follow You, setting out with confidence, and now I have fallen by the wayside.
I thought I had given myself wholly to You, but I caught sight of a flower on a foot-path.
I left You, I left the cumbersome Cross, and here I am possessed by a few fading petals and my solitude.
And the others, Lord, pass along the road, broken, exhausted,
And crosses are in the making and backs are bending.
I am no longer there to fight evil and to help them to drag their loads,
I am off the road.
Lord, help me not only to follow after You but to keep steadily on.
Keep me from sudden weaknesses that leave me stupefied and empty, far from the place where You are shaping the world.
He passed by on the road, Simon from Cyrene;
They pressed him into service,
The first to come along, a stranger.
Lord, You accepted his help.
You did not want the help of a friend, the solace of a gesture of love, the generous impulse of one who cared.
You chose the enforced help of an indifferent and timid fellow.
Lord All-Powerful, You sought the help of a powerless man.
Lord, I need the help of others.
The way is too hard to be walked alone.
But I avoid the hands outstretched to help me,
I want to act alone,
I want to fight alone,
I want to succeed alone.
And yet, besides me walks a friend, a spouse, a brother, a neighbor, a fellow-worker.
You have placed them near me, Lord, and too often I ignore them.
Lord, even if they are requisitioned, grant that I may see, that I may accept, all the Simons on my road.
Station 5
They weep. They sob.
It’s easy to understand if you see what men have done to Him.
And they are helpless, they cannot interfere,
So they weep, they weep in pity.
Lord, You have seen them, You have heard them,
But You said, “Weep first for YOUR sins.”
To pity Your sufferings and the sufferings of the world I can manage very well, Lord,
But to weep for my own sins, that’s another matter.
I’d rather bemoan the sins of others, that’s easier!
I’m well up on that; the whole world passes every day before my court.
I’ve found plenty of guilt: in politics, economics, slums, alcohol, drugs, movies, industry. I see it in many people: in laissez-faire Christians.
Lord, teach me that I am a sinner.
You had nothing left but Your own cloak;
You were fond of it, your Mother had woven it for You.
But this too, had to go.
One thing only is needful, Lord, Your Cross.
Nothing comes now between You and the Cross;
You are finally going to be united forever,
And together You will save the world.
And so, Lord, I must give up all these trappings which hinder me and hide me from Your sight.
This “possessing my own self” which stifles the real me and separates me from others.
Thus, Lord, little by little all in my life must die which is not an expression of Your will.
I don’t like, Lord. It’s always a question of dying!
How demanding You are!
I give, and You want more.
I’d like to keep a few trifles,
A few trifles I cling to and can’t bring myself to give up to You.
But if You want all, Lord, take all.
Strip me, Yourself, of my last garment.
For I well know that we must die to deserve life,
As the seed must die to yield the golden grain.
Station 6
A few hours more, A few minutes more, A few instants more.
You can no longer escape, now. You are there, at the end of Your life, at the end of Your road.
You must take the last step,
The last step of love,
The last step of life that ends in death.
Life slips from each limb, one by one, finding refuge in His still-beating heart,
Immeasurable heart, Overflowing heart,
Heart heavy as the world, the world of sins and miseries that it bears.
See. He has taken His heavy heart,
And slowly, Laboriously, Alone between heaven and earth,
In the awesome night, He has gathered His life,
He has gathered the sins of the world,
And in a cry, He has given ALL.
“Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.”
Christ has died for us.
Station 7
Your work is done,
You can leave Your Cross,
You can come down to rest.
Slowly You slip down, like a man weary of labor and drowsy with sleep.
Your mother takes You in her arms.
You rest in peace.
Each night, I fall asleep.
What a state I am in sometimes, Lord.
But it is not always in serving the Father that I have become soiled and tired.
Station 8
Let’s forget it now, and all go home.
He is buried and the stone is in place.
His family is in tears, His friends are lost;
This time it is really over.
But Lord, it is not over yet.
The resurrection is only completed when we have reached the end of the Way.