The Cross Speaks' - eighth century.

    'Christ on the Cross' -woodcarving.- Michelangelo. . Venice, St Giorgio Maggiore. 

THE CROSS SPEAKS

(ANONYMOUS)

 

It was long ago,         I yet remember,

that I was hewn down,        at the wood’s end

torn from my place.      They took me there, strong foes,

they set me up as a gazing stock,        bade me lift on high their

felons.

Men bore me on their shoulders,        till on a hill they set me,

many foes fastened me there.        Then I saw mankind’s Lord

swiftly come with courage,        for He willed to mount on me.

Then dared I not,        against the Lord’s word,

bend or break,        when I saw

the earth trembling.        I might there

have felled all my foes, but I stood fast.

Then he stripped Himself, the young Hero,        that was God

Almighty,

strong and firm hearted        He mounted the mean gibbet;

noble hearted in the sight of many        He would set free mankind.

I shook when the Prince clasped me,        but I durst not bow to

earth,

fall to the ground,        but needs stand fast.

A rood I was raised aloft,        I lifted the mighty King,

Lord of Heaven,        I durst not bend.

They drove me through with dark nails,        on me the marks are

plain,

wide wounds of hate.        I durst not harm any of them.

They mocked us both together.        I was all wet with blood

poured from the Man’s side        when He had sent forth His soul.

There on the hill        I underwent

many bitter things,        I saw the God of Hosts

sorely stretched out.        Darkness there

had wrapped in clouds        the Ruler’s Body,

in fair radiance.        A shadow went forth

wan under clouds.        All creation wept,

bewailed the |King/s death,        Christ on the rood.

But there came from afar        eager nobles

to Him all alone;        I beheld that.

Sore was I troubled with sorrows, but I bent down to the hands

of the men

humbly, with hearty will.        There they took Almighty God,

lifted Him down from the heavy pain.        They left me standing

wet with blood;       I was all wounded with shafts.

They laid Him down, limb-weary;       they stood at His body’s head;

they gazed on Him, Heaven’s Lord,        and he rested there awhile,

tired from the great strife.        They began to make His grave

in the sight of His foes.        They carved it from the bright stone.

They laid in it the Lord of Hosts.        They began to sing a sorrow-

Song

alone in the evening tide.          Then they went away,

weary away from the great crowd.        With a few He rested there.

(From the Dream of the Rood, early eighth century.)

 Ack.'The Book of the Saviour' -edited by F.J.Sheed..

Published by Sheed and Ward 1952.

Good Friday Meditations' from Archbishop Vigano (Courtesy of Michael Matt- Remnant) $ short Holy Week video.

 

Good Friday, 15 April 2022

Astiterunt reges terræ, et principes convenerunt in unum, adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus (Ps 2 :2). The kings of the earth and the princes have allied themselves against the Lord and against Christ. The Psalm which begins the First Nocturn of Matins on this day declaims succinctly. Let us break their bonds ; let us cast away their yoke from us ! Is this not what we have been seeing happening right before our eyes for a long, too long, a time ? Do not the powerful and the elite want to cancel every tie with God and rebel against His holy Law ? Do they not seek to disfigure the image of the Creator in the creature and the likeness of the Holy Trinity in man ? And how many times are we ourselves tempted to withdraw from the sweet yoke of Christ, ending by making ourselves slaves of the world, the flesh, and the devil?

All of today’s liturgy resounds with the indignation of the Divine Majesty; of the dismay of the provident Father at the revolt of His children; of the sorrow of the Son over the ingratitude of man; of the bitter disappointment of the Paraclete at the insane obstinacy in evil of those who make themselves blind to the Truth and deaf to the Word of God.

 

The silence of the Bride of the Lamb, who yesterday stripped herself in her altars, recalling the division of her Lord’s garments, brings us back to the severe liturgy of Calvary, to the solemn sacred action of the Passion, whose divine celebrant intoned the antiphon Deus, Deus meus, quare me dereliquisti? – My God, My God, why have you abandoned me? (Ps 21:1), which was misunderstood by those who witnessed that rite. Eliam vocat iste – He is calling Elijah – said those who were present, unaware of having before them the God Incarnate who was bringing to fulfillment, right before their eyes, exactly what David had prophesied in the twenty-first Psalm. Speravit in Domino, eripiat eum: salvum faciat eum, quoniam vult eum – He hoped in the Lord, let him deliver him: let him save him, since he desires him. And they repeated, as we read in the Passion: Si Filius Dei es, descende de cruce! – If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross! And again: Diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea, et super vestem meam miserunt sortem – They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. At the foot of the Cross, the soldiers rolled dice for the Lord’s seamless garment, without knowing that by this gesture they were taking part in the sacred representation prophesied by Scripture.

We should ask ourselves if the ignorance of the Jewish people due to the corruption of the Sanhedrin does not sound like a terrible warning for today’s High Priests, who are equally responsible for the ignorance of the Christian people.

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross! What foolishness. They did not understand that precisely because that man disfigured by the torments of the Praetorium, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the ascent to Golgotha and the crucifixion was the Son of God, He did not want to descend from the cross. The sacrifice of a man, even the most heroic and atrocious, could never have been able to repair the infinite gravity of original sin and the sins of all times: in order to be able to redeem us from being children of wrath and restore us to the order of Grace, it was necessary that God die on that cross, or rather the Man-God, He who from all Eternity had answered Ecce, venio – Behold, I come – to the voice of the Father; He who in view of whose Incarnation the divine Wisdom had prepared the Immaculate Virgin, the most worthy tabernacle of the Most High – Domus Aurea – the House of Gold, the Ark of the new and eternal Covenant, the Seat of Wisdom. Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos: dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea – They have pierced my hands and my feet: they have numbered all my bones. And those most sacred hands, those blessed feet that were pierced by nails, even though the Roman custom was that the condemned should only be tied to the cross, should have opened the eyes of a people who heard those words repeated in the synagogues, words that the High Priests knew by heart, words that the doctors of the Law taught to Jewish children. Potaverunt me aceto, the Psalm warned – they gave me vinegar to drink – while a soldier tried to give the dying Lord a drink with a reed.

We should ask ourselves if the ignorance of the Jewish people due to the corruption of the Sanhedrin does not sound like a terrible warning for today’s High Priests, who are equally responsible for the ignorance of the Christian people; and if the threat that the High Priests then saw in the meek Nazarene who performed miracles and preached the Gospel, to the point of plotting to send him to death by the hand of the civil authority, should not make the present High Priests tremble, who even today resort to the kings of the earth and to princes in order to impede His Kingdom, with the sole intention of maintaining their power and social prestige.

Vinea mea electa, ego te plantavi: quomodo conversa es in amaritudinem, ut me crucifigeres, et Barabbam dimitteres? Sepivi te, et lapides elegi ex te, et ædificavi turrim.

Therse are the words of the Responsory of the First Nocturn: O my beloved vineyard, it was I who planted you: how could you have given me bitter fruit, to the point of crucifying me and setting Barabbas free? I fenced you off; I removed the stones from your soil; I built a watchtower for you.

Let us contemplate Our Lady of Sorrows, whose Immaculate Heart was pierced by a sword, and remain standing at the foot of the Cross along with Saint John.

To this vineyard, cultivated with so much care, Divine Wisdom cries her loving and tormented warning: Convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum – Be converted to the Lord your God – and repeats it during the pangs of the Passion, in contemplating the betrayal of Jerusalem, the apostasy of Israel. We tremble, dear children, in thinking of how great is the torment of Our Savior in contemplating the betrayal of those who, redeemed by His Most Precious Blood and purchased at the price of so much suffering, today once again condemn the Lord to death and choose to free Barabbas. 

Tamquam ad latronem existis cum gladiis et fustibus comprehendere me: quotidie apud vos eram in templo docens, et non me tenuistis: et ecce flagellatum ducitis ad crucifigendum – You have come out to seize me, as a thief, with swords and clubs : daily I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not apprehend me : and behold, you lead me to be scourged and crucified.

Every day we have heard the Lord teaching in our churches, through the mouth of His Ministers, and today there are those who move against Him with swords and clubs, as if he were a malefactor. Adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus – Against the Lord, and against his Christ.

And if the torment of the Lord betrayed by his folllowers, abandoned by His Apostles, and denied and left alone at the mercy of His enemies is not sufficient to move us to detest our infidelities, let us think of the dreadful sorrow of His Most Holy Mother, who conceived, nursed, and raised the Man-God, saw him become an adult, and accompanied him for thirty years only to see him betrayed by those whom he had benefited most, sent to die by those who only a few days before had acclaimed Him as the Son of David and the King of Israel.

Let us contemplate Our Lady of Sorrows, whose Immaculate Heart was pierced by a sword, and remain standing at the foot of the Cross along with Saint John. In those terrible hours the Divine Maternity of the Most Blessed Virgin had to know in a unique and intimate way the Passion of Her most beloved Son, so as to merit for Her the title of Co-Redemptrix. To Her torment at the sufferings of Our Lord was added Her suffering over our sins, the cause of so much grief for the Savior. Each one of them pierced the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, mystically uniting the Divine Son and the Most Pure Mother in the Passion. This should be enough, dear children, to make us detest our sins and spur us not only to convert but to make every breath, every beat of our heart, and every thought a cause of relief and comfort for Them, in a spirit of reparation and expiation.

This should be enough, dear children, to make us detest our sins and spur us not only to convert but to make every breath, every beat of our heart, and every thought a cause of relief and comfort for Them, in a spirit of reparation and expiation.

In the silence of the Parasceve, when nature itself silently attends the immolation of God – of God! – almost incredulous at the hardness of so many hearts, let us prostrate ourselves before the Cross, repeating with Saint Venantius Fortunatus the solemn words of the hymn with which we will accompany the Blessed Sacrament from the Tomb to the altar:

O Crux, ave, spes unica!
Hail O Cross, our only hope!

Let us bend the knee before the wood of salvation consecrated by the New Adam.

Salve ara, salve, victima.
Hail, altar; Hail, victim.

Beata, cujus brachiis pretium pependit sæculi:
statera facta corporis, tulitque prædam tartari.

Blest Tree, whose happy branches bore
the wealth that did the world restore;
The beam that did that Body weigh
which raised up hell’s expected prey.

Let us make our own the consoling verses of Crux Fidelis:

Flecte ramos, arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera,
et rigor lentescat ille quem dedit nativitas,
ut superni membra regis mite tendas stipite.

Bend your branches, ancient tree,
relax your inward pith and rigor,
Make soft that native hardihood,
and stretch gently on your wood
the limbs of the celestial King.

Pange, lingua, gloriosi lauream certaminis
et super crucis trophæo dic triumphum nobilem,
qualiter Redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.

Sing, my tongue, the glory
of the victorious fight,
and the trophy won on the Cross.
Tell of the noble triumph:
the Redeemer of the world conquered
by immolating Himself.
And so may it be.

+ Carlo Maria, Archbishop

A new RTV Short — HOLY WEEK: The Love Story that Built Western HOLY WEEK: The Love Story that Built Western Civilization - Remnant TV (remnant-tv.com)Civilization

'Walterton Road'

 

Caryll Houselander 

  The following poem 'Walterton Road' by Caryll Houselander, is taken from a book of her poems, entitled 'The Flowering Tree'. Printed on the title page, is a short introductory verse which encapsulates perfectly the spiritual dimension of her work.

Faithful Cross, O tree all beauteous,

Tree all peerless and divine!

Not a grove on earth can show us,

Such a flower and leaf as thine.

In the 'Foreword' to her book, the author writes:-

'These rhythms are not intended to be poems in

a new form, but simply thoughts, falling naturally

into the beat of the rhythm, which is all round us

and which becomes both audible and visible

in the seasons of the year, the procession of day

and night, and the liturgical cycle; they are arranged

so that the rhythm and stress shall be easily seen,

as well as thought, by people who are unused to

reading verse; the theme which recurs in them is

the flowering of Christ in man.'

'Walterton Road'

Twilight is full of laughter

here in Walterton Road,

where the children swarm on the steps,

and the washing hangs in rows.

How sharp the life is

That burns in the thin women,

Calling from door to door.

It has defeated the world,

but with a sting,

not with sweetness,

they are like wild nettles,

growing green in the ashes.

Yet how sweet the life is

here, in the boy and girl

in their time of maying.

But shrineless the bread

for the Sacrament,

shame on the jaundiced eyes

denying, homeless love

its oblivious kiss in the street!

Brave in the young mother,

very brave in her, life is,

she sits in the window

and twists with a laughing finger,

the baby's feather of hair,

he pulls the geranium flower,

and drops the petals down

on the boy and girl

in a crimson shower.

Does anyone ever guess

when the watch ticking over his heart,

marks his loveliest hour?

Twilight is full of laughter

and there, in a dark frame,

of a tenement window pane,

a yellow canary sings

in a yellow cage.

The rooms are crowded here,

and the walls weep,

there is no solitude,

birth meets death,

and pushes past on the stairs.

It is always washing, and cooking,

and trying to make ends meet,

and carping cares,

but life springs up like a weed,

life is a green shoot,

springing up everywhere.

What hands are here!

What hard, labouring hands,

warding off blows,

and defending,

what eyes for a vision!

What hearts for a Resurrection!

What lives there are,

sharp like spears fore-fending

foes, that threaten a spark,

which will still be burning

after the last star.

Look!

The blue purity

over the chimney pots,

listen:-

the children's laughter

scattering shadows.

Oh, brooding Spirit of God

Breath of the wind,

that blows wherever it will,

ruffling the rags of life a little,

and then

zephyr,

here in a sheltered valley

and still.

Caryll Houselander

Taken from 'The Flowering Tree' published by Sheed & Ward, London. (this edition 1973) -nihil obstat imprimatur Westminster July 1945.

************  

I truly enjoy Caryll Houselander's poetry which radiates her love of God and her understanding  and compassion for humanity. She had a particular empathy with children, to the extent that during the Second World War in the 1940s, she became renowned for her care of children suffering mentally from the effects of the war. In England, the most respected and eminent doctors and child psychiatrists referred children to her, on the basis that she would cure them with love! She herself died of cancer in her fifties, but in her writings, especially her poetry, she left an inspiring legacy of her faith and trust in God.

                                                      ***********

In a somewhat radical but important change of direction, I would like to draw readers attention to the 'Grand Jury Court of Public Opinion' which has recently heard the 'Common Law' evidence against certain named protagonists of the 'Great Reset War' - currently  directed against the peoples and societies of the world. The 'Trial' with Judge, expert qualified  witnesses from around the world and from all walks of life, and Jury- comprising the people of the world, has been broadcast live-stream, on 5^th February, 12^th and 13^th February, 19^th and 20^th February, and 26^th February, each Session dealing with particular aspects of this 'War'. The Sessions are long, necessarily so  to accommodate the witnesses and evidence, but what  evil has been revealed! It is vitally important that the truth and  reality of this diabolically inspired 'One World Government' is exposed to the whole world, and the purpose of this 'Trial' is to do just that. The link to the 'Trial' is below, please find time to peruse at least some of it, you will not regret it. Also please pass it to your friends. N.B.  You may find that the link is interrupted by a 'redirect' warning from face-book, but do not be put off, ignore this warning and click to continue.  GRAND-JURY.NET ,   

                           *********************************

  Holy Week starts tomorrow. Let us pray for peace in the world, and the destruction  of all to do with the Great Reset. We must turn to God.  We must repent of our sins, and acknowledge the authority of God's commandments, and abide by them. 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice,  and all things shall be added to you.'(Matt.6/33)

'Stations of the Cross'  by Caryll Houselander

The Peoples ‘Court of Public Opinion works independent of any government and any