3

THE CROWNING
WITH THORNS

Next the soldiers decided
to become even nastier.

Was it because
they wanted to impress each other
with their “bravery”?

Was it because of their anger
of being stationed in Jerusalem,
far away from home?

Was it because
this was the way they wanted to treat all Jews?

To have fun at the expense of another.

To treat another person as a thing,
an abortion of one’s own feelings,
to cease to be human during moments of cruelty.

By now Jesus was dazed
by those bullets of cruelty shot into him.

To cause even further pain
because he was a Jew,
because he talked of a kingdom,
they said,
“Let’s make him the King of the Jews.”

They grabbed a scarlet cloak
and wrapped it around his scarlet body.

Did they do this
to shield their eyes
from the cuts on Jesus’ back,
the graffiti of hatred?

Then someone thought up the idea
of a crown of thorns.

Like a spoiled child,
this cruel one went up
and placed it gingerly on Jesus’ head.

“We mustn’t hurt the king,
mustn’t we,”
was his crack
as he stepped back laughing at his own joke.

“What about his scepter?”“Every king has a scepter?”

Someone then grabbed a reed
and stuck it in Jesus’ hand.

“Now there’s a king for you.”

One by one each soldier came up
laughing and genuflecting before Jesus,
“All hail king of the Jews.”

Suddenly the ugliness
of what they were doing hit them
and they had to hide.

Quickly, they began to look
for even crueler masks to wear.

They grabbed the mask of spit.

They began to hit his head violently with the reed.

Why? Is there a point in cruelty
when a person realizes
that the other person is a person?

Is there a point of torture
when the torturer realizes
he is actually torturing parts of himself –
the better parts?

Is there a point of no return?

Is there a moment
in the heat of anger or cruelty or war,
when a person realizes
he has let his nerves become barbed wire,
fencing in the God of love within him?

Did the crown of thorns,
the horror of that night pierce
or cut into any of those soldiers?

Can brutality lead to love?

Can the beast become a beauty?

Can a person change?

Is there redemption?

Is there resurrection for the dead?

4

THE CARRYING
OF THE CROSS

Jesus is made to carry his cross.

The Roman soldiers lined up the three men
whose turn it was to die that day.

Death row. Death march. The death of Christ.

He predicted it,
“If anyone wishes to come after me,
he must deny his very self,
take up his cross
and begin to follow in my footsteps.”

The soldiers swung open the gate
and shoved the three criminals out to the narrow street,
the narrow WAY of the cross that leads to Calvary.

Like a sheep
he was being led to the slaughter.

On both sides of the WAY
a fence of people watched, amazed, dazed, dumb,
completely unaware of who it was
who was really going by.

Jesus just hoped that the little children
wouldn’t see what was happening.

Man being dragged by man to death.
(Taller people block out kids view)

The universal crime that has existed
since the time of Cain:
brother killing brother,
hatred feeding hatred,
jealousy eating jealously,
the sin of Cain
letting evil flood one’s head
and drown love and the conscience within.

Hail Mary.

Jesus sees his mother along the way.

Sorrow.
Horror.
A sword pierces Jesus heart
as his eyes meet hers.

He falls.

Women cry.

Lugging this stupid piece of wood.

How ridiculous can people be
in the way they treat each other?

Jesus stumbles on,
through the heat,
through the cold, through hell.

He’s making a path through the world,
through the desert,
leaving a path for us to follow,
the WAY of the cross.

And then Jesus sees Calvary,
that hill, that Hell,
that had been overshadowing his life
for all these years.

Father, we finally made it.
Into your hands, I commend my spirit.

5

THE DEATH
ON THE CROSS

Jesus hangs there high above the world,
pleading for all people
for all time
to love one another.
“Greater love than this no one has
that he lay down his life for his friends”

Jesus hangs there begging us
with arms outstretched,
pinned back,
to forgive one another,
every time someone hurts us,
every time someone crucifies us.

Eat hatred.
Drink mistakes.
Bear with one another.

Yet the world rejects
that message of the cross as stupid.

The world rejects
what the world is waiting for.

And so to keep Jesus out of our lives,
they killed Jesus,
outside the city,
in a place they could avoid.

He hangs there on that cross
high above the crowd,
high above the altar,
high above the churches,
casting a shadow on the world.

“We adore you O Christ
and we bless you
because by your holy cross
you have redeemed the world.”

Crosses.
Road crosses.
Paths cross.
Love crosses.

The possibility of love or despair.

My way going against your way - the cross.

The inability to get along with each other - the cross.

Yet we wear them around our neck,
and pin them on bedroom walls,
and often they become as meaningless
as a book of matches.

I have come to cast fire on the earth.

Jesus forgave us
for we do not know what we are doing.

Mary does.

She kneels there beneath the cross,
beneath the tree.

Present with Jesus till the end.
She feels everything –
the blood,
the crude remarks from the crowd,
and then the last words of love
that flowed from his lips.

She knows that somehow
all this has a reason,
that it’s all part of the Father’s plan.

Somehow this crucifixion
is the answer to evil.

Somehow this cross
is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
hatred and love.

Like Mary,
all of us must leave the city
and climb to the top of this hill
and sit under this tree
and eat of the fruit of this tree
and eat of the it as Mary did.

The new Eve offers us
the fruit of it to eat.
It’s Christ.

Christ through this sacrifice gives of himself to eat.
Blessed is the fruit of you womb, Jesus.

THE
FIVE
GLORIOUS
MYSTERIES

“On their way down the mountain,
he urged them not to tell anyone
what they had seen
until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
They seized upon those words,
and discussed them among themselves
what this ‘rising from the dead’ could mean.”
Mark 9: 9-10

1

THE RESURRECTION

And on the third day
Jesus rose from the dead.

It was a new day.
It was the eight day.
It was a new creation.

The new Adam was calling us
back into the Garden of Earth
to make it a new creation.

The Father lifts up the Son
to dawn on all the world.
There is light.
Darkness and night are never forever.
Easter.
Resurrection
Meaning.

Life has a new beginning,
when all seems ended.

Life has meaning
when all seems ended,
when everything seems like a cemetery,
when things are burnt to the ground;
we can start once again.

We can always start again.

Resurrection means
there is an around the corner.

Resurrection means
there is greener grass in our yard too.

Starting again.
Conversion.
Baptism.
Rebirth.

Graves, flowers, minds opening.
A great awakening.

And on that first day of the new week
Mary and the women went to the grave
and they found it empty, open.

Hope.

And they experienced Resurrection.
They experienced Jesus,
the dove returning from the other side of death
with the olive branch, the sign of peace.

And they rushed to tell the apostles.
There they were still in the darkness of the upper room –
a tomb, and suddenly Jesus stood in their midst
and also gave them a sign of peace.

Easter.
A new day,
a new way of seeing things,
a new way of seeing Christ.
a new way of seeing each other.
a new way of seeing life.

Easter:
the day the apostles rose from the dead!
And Mary again rejoiced in God her savior,
because he who was humbled has been exalted, alleluia.
And the early church began to bud,
began to green, began to grow.
The fig tree we all thought dead has suddenly come to life and gives fruit.

2

ASCENSION

“And I –
once I am lifted up from the earth –
will draw all to myself.”

Jesus’ life can be described
as a life of perpetual motion,
an eternal dance,
in Mary, in Bethlehem, in Nazareth,
in the desert, in the synagogues,
in the streets, in the valleys,
in the mountains,
and finally in making that last trip to Jerusalem,
to the temple, to the upper room,
to the garden, to the cross.

“And I - once I am lifted up from the earth –
will draw all to myself.”

But his being lifted up to die on the cross
was not the end of the motion or “commotion” called “Christ.”

We believe in the resurrection of the body.

Appearances to women,
to the apostles, to Thomas, to 500, Emmaus, Galilee,
and now in this moment of ascension to the heavens.

“And I - once I am lifted up from the earth –
will draw all to myself.”

And the motion continues,
the going to prepare a mansion for us,
the going into the innermost sanctuary of heaven
to pray for us, the eternal journey to the Father.

“And I - once I am lifted up from the earth –
will draw all to myself.”
And yet Jesus is still with us all days
even to the end of the world.

Mystery. Paradox.
Here and not here.

Are we now his motion,
his presence, his witnesses, his servants,
his Body, his Light, giving people hope,
lifting people up,
helping this generation in their journey to the Father,
to the mansion, the innermost sanctuary of heaven,
to pray with Jesus for the next generation?

“And I - once I am lifted up from the earth –
will draw all to myself.”

3

THE DESCENT
OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Mary was there in the Upper Room
when on the day the Spirit –
a howling wind –
shook the house
where they were staying.

The Upper Room
was the Inner Room
of the Early Church.
There, Mary,
and the other women
and the apostles
hid, gathered, helped each other.

They gathered themselves
in prayer, in poverty, in community, in fear and in love.

Then on the feast of Pentecost,
the Wind, the Breath, the Fire,
the Spirit of God came
and burst and filled the Upper Room.

It was a new day,
the next day of creation,
the Wind sweeping over the waters,
and once again the voice, “Let there be light!”

Come Holy Spirit!

There was a New Pillar of Fire
burning its WAY across the desert
into the Promised Land,
into Jerusalem, into the upper room.

“Let there be fire.”

Come Holy Spirit!

It was the Spirit
whom all the prophets,
especially Isaiah and Jesus spoke about,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me;
therefore, he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
to proclaim liberty to captives,
recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners.
To announce a year of favor from the Lord.”

Come Holy Spirit!

And Peter stood up
and began to speak
with spirit, with fire.
The fisherman
began to proclaim glad tidings to the poor,
that their nets can be filled with the Lord.

And cripples walked.
And prisoners were released.
And a new year, a new age, a new people arose.

As Ezekiel predicted,
the dead bones came back to life,
came back filled with Spirit.
Look at the change in Peter.
Look at the change in Paul.
Imagine what could have happened to Judas.

And the crowd thought
these men were drunk with wine.
They were new wine
in new wine skins,
about to ferment,
about to burst
and be poured out upon the earth.

They spoke and all understood them.
The word the seed,
was scattered to the Wind,
to Antioch, to Ephesus, to Greece, to Rome,
yes to the very ends of the earth.
Come Holy Spirit!

Day by day they increased in numbers.

Day by day the poor in spirit
began to inherit the kingdom,
to “inherit the Wind”,
to inherit the gifts of the Spirit.

The fiery hand of God burned their hearts.

The people in darkness have seen a great light.