MEDITATION AND PRAYERS OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE JOHN PAUL II

NINTH STATION

Jesus falls the third time

V/. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
R/. Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

Once more Christ has fallen to the ground under the weight of the Cross. The crowd watches, wondering whether he will have the strength to rise again.

Saint Paul writes: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a Cross” (Phil 2:6-8).

The third fall seems to express just this:
the self-emptying, the kenosis of the Son of God,
his humiliation beneath the Cross.
Jesus had said to the disciples that he had come not to be served but to serve (cf. Mt 20:28).
In the Upper Room, bending low to the ground and washing their feet, he sought, as it were, to prepare them for this humiliation of his.
Falling to the ground for the third time on the way of the Cross, he cries out loudly to us once more the mystery of himself.
Let us listen to his voice!
This Condemned Man, crushed to the ground beneath the weight of the Cross, now very near the place of punishment, tells us: “I am the way, and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6). “He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12).
Let us not be dismayed by the sight of a condemned man, who falls to the ground exhausted under the cross.
Within this outward sign of the death which is approaching the light of life lies hidden.

PRAYER Lord Jesus Christ, through your humiliation beneath the Cross you revealed to the world the price of its redemption. Grant to the men and women of the third millennium the light of faith, so that, as they recognize in you the Suffering Servant of God and man, they may have the courage to follow the same path which, by way of the Cross and self-emptying, leads to life without end. To you, O Jesus, our support when we are weak, be honour and glory for ever. R. Amen. All: Our Father ... Stabat Mater: O you Mother, fount of love! Touch my spirit from above, make my heart with yours accord.

We have reached the summit of the hill, we have reached Calvary. Today this is the roof of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and is set in the heart of the Christian Quarter of the Walled City of Jerusalem. Today the pathway is a dead end leading to houses or directly into churches and the chapels of the Coptic Patriarch's office. In the days of Jesus we would now be far outside the city wall, high on the hill of execution overlooking the temple and the city. A public execution and a different kind of dead end, the apparent dead end of crucifixion. As Jesus fell for a third time, fell under the weight of the wood, fell through tiredness and hunger, fell through weakness from torture and mockery, fell through fear of the agony he had yet to endure, he knew that he must rise and be about his Father's business. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

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