ROME (SE): Complaints, uncertainties, needs, wounds, but also courage, forgiveness, prayers, and hope were the themes pervading meditations at the annual Good Friday Way of the Cross [Via Crucis], at the Colosseum in Rome, Vatican News reported.
Pope Francis was to preside over the service on April 15. He asked fifteen families to write the meditations, as this year is Amoris Laetitia Family Year and marks the fifth anniversary of his 2016 apostolic exhortation on the family.
The order of meditations partially reflects the progression of family life, moving from the financial difficulties of young couples to the trials of parenthood, to the pain of loss, to extraordinarily difficult situations like war, Vatican News reported.
A young couple, slated to begin the Way of the Cross, reflect on their difficulties, which includes seeing their friends’ marriages fail, their love as yet untested by trials, and their struggles to make ends meet.
A man whose wife was diagnosed with a terrible illness offers a reflection on the 7th Station. Unexpected illness, put the couple on the cross but also made them the bedrock of their family.
A missionary family shares their difficulty in trusting in Divine Providence, as they witness the horrors of war and are tempted to turn to violence in response.
A childless elderly couple, in the reflection for the 3rd Station, notes how others have judged them for their sterility. Love, they say, fills their family as they walk hand-in-hand.
A family with many children shares the opposite perspective, noting that personal projects and career goals often give way to family duties. “Despite our worries and our very full days,” they say, “we would never think of going back.”
Another couple, who have a son with a disability, remark on how they were judged even before he came into the world; doctors told them he would be “a burden to you and society.”
One family whose house became a home for many others, points out that pain has the power to change us and remind us of the simplicity of human dignity.
A man whose wife was diagnosed with a terrible illness offers a reflection on the 7th Station. Unexpected illness, put the couple on the cross but also made them the bedrock of their family.
One couple, who adopted two children, notes that adoption is always the result of a child being abandoned, and leaves a wound that will forever bleed. ‘But this cross, even if it is painful,’ they add, ‘hides a secret happiness’
Two grandparents compare their situation—with a live-in daughter and five grandchildren due to a failed marriage—to that of Simon of Cyrene who helped Jesus carry his cross.
One couple, who adopted two children, notes that adoption is always the result of a child being abandoned, and leaves a wound that will forever bleed. “But this cross, even if it is painful,” they add, “hides a secret happiness.”
A widowed mother with two children shares her pain for the 10th Station, and wonders why “if he is the Son of God” Jesus did not save her husband. Yet, she notes, “Love becomes real, because even in our abyss and discomfort we are not abandoned.”
Two parents whose son is a consecrated religious share their difficulty in accepting his vocation, admitting that they abandoned him to his choice. Though their attitudes changed, they still ask Jesus to remember them when he comes into his Kingdom.
One mother shares the pain of seeing her family transformed, as her young daughter—and then her husband—died at a tender age. She recalls the words that gave her some strength: “God does not call those who are strong, but he strengthens those whom he calls.”
A pair of families from Ukraine and Russia penned the 13th Station meditation. Together they write on the pain of death and destruction—how life seems to lose meaning and hate gives way to hopelessness and silence—and together they carry the Cross of Christ for the station that marks his own death.
The reflection for the 14th and final station of the Way of the Cross comes from a family who have become migrants due to war. At home they were important, now they are just numbers and categories. Even being Catholic seems to take second place to being migrants, so they die each day so that their children have the chance of a life without bombs, blood, and persecution.
