Lenten Devotions

LENTEN DEVOTIONS

STATIONS and MEDITATIONS from the ROSARY SHRINE

Lawrence Lew, O.P.

All booklets are published thanks to the generosity of the supporters of the Catholic Truth Society

About This Book

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Stations of the Cross

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The Canticle of the Passion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

The Seven Last Words of Our Lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

About This Book

This book presents three distinct Lenten devotions that are part of the life of St Dominic’s Priory Church, the Rosary Shrine, in London: the Stations of the Cross, prayed on Fridays in Lent; the Canticle of the Passion, also prayed on Fridays in Lent; and the meditations on the Seven Last Words of Our Lord, which are preached in Holy Week .

The paintings of the Stations of the Cross presented here are in the Rosary Shrine Church, and they were painted by Nathaniel Westlake in 1887; his signature appears at the bottom of the fourteenth station . Westlake is renowned as a stained-glass designer, but he also painted some very notable works for churches, including the ceiling for St Joseph’s in Highgate, and the monumental Stations of the Cross in the College Chapel of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland, which are based on these in St Dominic’s, London . The London stations were canonically erected on 9th March 1887 .

In this book, the titles that accompany each station are translated from the Latin inscriptions on the walls of St Mary’s Seminary Chapel in Houston, Texas .

The Canticle of the Passion is a compilation of the words of Christ, drawn largely from Scripture, but arranged thus in a private revelation to the Dominican nun St Catherine de Ricci who lived in Florence in the sixteenth

century . For a twelve-year period, once a week, she would mystically share in Christ’s passion and receive the sacred stigmata from noon on Thursday to four o’clock on Friday afternoon . It was shortly after this experience of the Lord’s passion began that St Catherine composed her Canticle, which many Dominican nuns pray every Friday in Lent . Finally, the Seven Last Words of Our Lord have, from the sixteenth century, been the subject of meditations on Good Friday . The set of reflections presented here was first preached in Holy Week of 2022, during the Rosary Shrine’s annual “Holy Week Retreat”.

STATIONS of the CROSS

Introduction

The most extraordinary path ever travelled, which was foreseen from all eternity by the God of love, was the route that Jesus walked from Gabbatha to Golgotha, from the pavement of Pilate’s judgement hall to the place of the skull or Calvary where the God-Man mounted his judgement seat of the cross . Each step Christ took was motivated by his infinite love for humanity, and each drop of blood he shed along the way would have been, in itself, sufficient to heal man of the wounds of sin and bridge the chasm that, because of sin, exists between God and man . Yet, Christ shed his blood copiously along this way, so that it was encrimsoned like some royal route, and so that it became, in fact, the via amoris, the way of God’s undying love . And as with all of God’s dealings with us, he works extraordinary feats, things beyond the ken or limits of our human nature, but hidden beneath aspects that, were it not revealed to us, we would once have deemed most ordinary and even profane, prosaic, and certainly unworthy of the divine . We see this in the matter of the sacraments, in the often-inadequate forms that we try to give to the sacred Liturgy, and indeed, in each human person who is transformed by grace to become a dwelling for the Holy Trinity . All this is because, in God’s great love, his journey took the eternal Logos from heaven’s heights to become flesh and dwell among us .

First Station: Jesus is Condemned to Death

V: We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee . R: Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world .

Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

(Ps 51:7)

Seated on the judgement seat, Pilate, though guilty of sin as all men are, judges the only truly Innocent One to be guilty, condemning him, who is the Life and the just Judge, to death . But who can condemn another to death? No man can have such sway over another man’s life, though many powers in this world will claim this divine prerogative for themselves . Yet Pilate, dressed in blood red, executes God’s power of life and death over another, claiming for the state the blood of the man who is God .

Ad Te omnis caro véniet, as the opening verses of the Requiem Mass goes – to you all flesh will come with its burden of sin (see Ps 65:2-3) . So, in his flesh and sacred humanity, Christ our God has willed to carry the burden of our sins . For, coming forth from the Father and becoming man “for us men and for our salvation”, Christ’s exodus has

CANTICLE of the PASSION

The Origin of the Canticle

The verses on the following pages, compiled from scripture, were given to St Catherine de Ricci, a cloistered Dominican tertiary – our modern-day equivalent of apostolic Sisters – who lived in a convent in Florence in the sixteenth century . For a period of twelve years, St Catherine de Ricci experienced all the pains of Christ’s passion, suffering with him every week, from noon on Thursday until late afternoon on Friday . After the first of these mystical experiences, when she had received the sacred stigmata, Our Lady appeared to St Catherine and told her that she now understood and shared in Mary’s own sufferings as she stood by the cross of her son . Hence, she gave this compilation, called the ‘Canticle of the Passion’, to St Catherine and asked her to meditate on it, and so continue to grow in love for the crucified Lord Jesus . It became a tradition in the Dominican Order, and especially in the convents of enclosed Dominican nuns, to pray these verses every Friday in Lent .

My friends and my kinsmen have approached and stood against me.

I was betrayed and I went not out.

My eyes have languished for weariness. And my sweat has become like drops of blood trickling down upon the earth. Many dogs have surrounded me. The council of the wicked has besieged me. I gave my body to the scourgers and my cheeks to be smitten.

I turned not away my face from those who upbraided me and spat upon me –because I am prepared for scourging and my sorrow is ever before me.

The soldiers plaiting a crown of thorns have placed it upon my head.

They have pierced my hands and my feet; they have numbered all my bones. And they gave me gall for food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. All who saw me derided me; they spoke with their lips, and wagged the head. They have looked upon me and watched me; they divided my vestments among them and upon my vesture they cast lots. Into thy hands I commend my spirit.

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS of OUR LORD

Holy Monday

The first word (see Lk 23:34):

To God, his Father: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. “Only God could love us human beings, because I certainly find it difficult!” It is so easy to think this! Look at the kinds of terrible things we are capable of . We see it every day in the news, on the streets, and in countless other atrocities taking place across the world, unseen, untold, unheard . Then there are also the sins, the hypocrisies, the injustices of which we ourselves are capable . Each of us can look within and marvel, saying “Only God could love me . ” And he does . The astounding truth about God is that he loves us . He loves you . He loves those who are killed although innocent – insofar as any human being can be called innocent – in diverse places around the world . But then, he also loves those who do the killing, who order unspeakable atrocities, who mastermind war and who perpetrate all the other ongoing evils around the world . Yes, only God could love us human beings, even the horrible ones we would happily do without . But, thankfully, God does not think or act like us . As C .S . Lewis observes: God does not love us because we are lovable . God loves us because he is love .