Look now child to the Cross laid out on the ground before you. You see the pain inflicted upon you to this point, and know the torture of dying on the Cross cruelly, will now surpass any pain and torture you have endured to this point—because each pain inflicted upon you to this point, each torment, each torture, will now be multiplied in its feeling, in its pain, in its torment. Tortured now to the point of death, your Lord is laid upon the Cross. He moves not a muscle. He will not escape. The soldiers need not worry—for this is the will of God brought to fruition in His life, His death, His Resurrection.
As He is laid on the Cross forcibly, His wounds again are ripped open. Bleeding from all wounds now, He is bleeding from His heart in grief—the grief of knowing His beloved can continue the tortures inflicted upon Him. He will forgive. They are His beloved!
He looks now to the nail, pressed first to His face to increase His torment. Ridicule and jeering from the crowd abound. They see the nail. They yell and shout all the louder, “Crucify Him!” “See the nails to pierce your feet!” “Get away now if you can!” “Where is your God?”
My Son now is cruelly nailed to the Cross. My Human Son is now redeemed only in the end, for God's graces and mercies are no longer felt. He is abandoned in spirit, as you will be. Abandoned, hurt, cruelly tortured now—He waits. The nail pierces His flesh! “Oh God, my God, where are you?” The hammer strikes again and again—deeper and deeper. The nail is so large. Impaled now, His hand bleeds as His Heart bleeds forth its grief. They pull now His other hand to the place they have made on the Cross for it. Held now with chains, so that He will not move, the hammer again strikes the nail and it pierces the flesh—pierces the Heart of the Lord in grief. “My God, my God, where are you?”
“Oh, Jesus my Son, I am here!” He hears me not. The crowd prevents any approach. The guards keep back the crowd. The nail is now driven deeper and deeper in the flesh. He is fixed now on the Cross in great agony—for He cannot move and His pains are great. All His wounds now make Him suffer over and over again. Each wound is as fire burning the flesh. Searing pain now engulfs His body. He awaits the other nail now—to pierce His feet, pierce his Heart, in grief. In grief, child, for none know His love for them but a few—His mother, those He has carried in grace. An abundance of love has been poured out—but now all is hidden; in grief, in uncertainty of the flesh, in love of the heart only—not the mind.
Now child, imagine yourself transfixed on the Cross after you have been cruelly nailed and tortured, beaten again and again, stopped only through the pity of one soldier knowing the cruelty He was yet to endure.
The Cross is raised. You are destroyed in heart and spirit to the point of death as your Cross drops in its place in the ground made for God's Love. You, now, will know the cruelty of the Cross, the humiliation, the abomination, the extreme torture. You will feel His wounds. Live His pain. You are there.
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