Jesus Meets the Sorrowing Women

The Eighth Station

Jesus Meets the Sorrowing Women

"And there followed him a great multitude of the people, and of women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." (St. Luke 23.27-28)

Today I am struggling to relate this station to my day  in an honest way. I find the scripture passage attached to it very powerful. I am very tired still. Trying to get back into “life mode” after the shoot. So, I will post the reflection from the site I am sourcing for the stations. I found it thought provoking:

Let us pray:
"Jesus wept." (John 11:35) This is the shortest verse in all Holy Scripture, and it occurs upon Jesus learning of the death of Lazarus, and at the tomb before which Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, also wept. True God and True Man, Jesus knew the depth of human suffering, of pain in the heart to the point of tears. He, too, wept.

But now, confronted with the irrepressible grief of the holy women of Jerusalem, lamenting His own suffering – even as Jesus lamented the suffering of Martha and Mary – He seeks no compassion ... but brings solace to them instead. "Weep not for me." He cannot lament his own agony, for He would then lament the salvation of the world He was enacting before them. Instead, He embraces it, and tells the holy women to weep for themselves and their children.  Why? Especially, why for their children?

Most of them must have understood it at once. Any parent will understand it immediately.

It was not only for their own sins that they should weep – but for the sins of their children. What parent has not known the agony of a wandering and wayward child whose selfish sins (and all sin is selfish) have left behind them a wake of destruction and shattered lives that in turn have left a wake of sin and sorrow after them! What parent has not feared for the salvation of their own flesh in light of unrepentant sin? And all sin ... all sin ... the sin of all time ... is now laid upon the bleeding shoulders of the Son of God Who stops before them.

Bearing not simply all sins past, or even all sins present .... but all the sins of all the world for all of time ... He bears the sins yet to be, the sins of those not yet present, but in the generations to spring forth from the wombs of these holy women. Their sons, their daughters, even now, before their eyes, torment the Christ – as will their children's children unto the last man, the last woman, standing at the chasm of the end of all time. "Weep for them! So many ... so many, know not what they do! But here you see it before you, O, holy women who would lament Me instead of your own children,  who I know are as dear to you as I am to Mary."

This Station is, as it were, a hall of mirrors reflecting ad infinitum ... in which we see ourselves, and ourselves replicated endlessly beyond us – each image bearing down on the weight of the Cross.
In this mirror of suffering Lord, we see the pain of all mothers, not only your own beloved Mother, but all the mothers of humanity, as they mourn and weep for their children.

Receive, O Lord, my gift of prayer for all mothers who at this moment are suffering because their child is in sin, wayward and lost, or through our indifference dying – under their own cross of terminal illness or drugs, persecution or war.

Give them, these holy women, your blessing and your grace. Pause before them, too ... and speak words of some solace ...