Second bead: "We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your
                          holy cross you have redeemed the world." –St. Francis of Assisi

Third bead: "O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I offended you?
                      Answer me! Micah 6:3

O Holy God,

O Holy Mighty God,

O Holy Immortal God,

Have mercy on us. (Trisagion)

"O Faithful Cross, tree alone in its glory among all other trees;
     no woods ever yielded its like in leaf, flower, or fruit.
  Sweet the nails, sweet the wood, sweet the burden borne upon it."
                                   Hymn of Lauds - Exaltation of the Cross (Sept 14)

This following poem is a jewel of Spanish Passion spirituality and a gem of Spanish literature.

Do not move me, my God, to love you

Because of the Heaven you have promised me,

Do not let the fear of Hell move me

To quit offending you

Let me be moved, my God, moved

By the sight of you nailed and torn

On the cross.

Let me be moved by the sight of your

Wounded body,

The agony of your death.

Let me be moved, lastly, by your love,

In such a way that, even if there were

No heaven, I would love you, and

Even if there were no hell, I would fear.

You do not have to give a reason

Why I should love you.

For, even if I did not hope for that

Which I hope,

I would love you the same as

I have loved you.

On each bead of the septets (7sets of 7 beads each) the prayer is simple. "Have Mercy, grant us Peace." Pope John Paul II, the Great, dedicated the new millennium as the "Millennium of Mercy." Telling the world, "There is nothing that man needs more than Divine Mercy.
 

Have Mercy:
"What is this ‘mercy’ which we find spoken of everywhere in the Scriptures, and especially the Psalms? Scripture rings with ‘mi seri cor dia’ as though with a huge church bell. The Hebrew word which we render as mercy, says more still than mercy.

‘Chesed’ is also fidelity, it is also strength. It is ultimate and unfailing because it is the power that binds one person to another, in a covenant of hearts. It is the power that binds us to God because He has promised mercy and will never fail in His promise.

‘Chesed’ contains many aspects of God’s love. The ‘chesed’ of God is a gratuitous mercy that considers no fitness, no worthiness, and no return.

It is the love by which He seeks and chooses His chosen, and binds them to Himself. For He has become inseparable from man in the ‘chesed’ which we call Incarnation, and Passion, and Resurrection.

He has given us His ‘chesed’ in the Person of His Spirit. So that in the depths of our own being there is an inexhaustible spring of mercy and of love."

                                                                                   The Good Samaritan, Thomas Merton.
 

Grant Us Peace:
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled." Jn 14:27

The Catholic Encyclopedia, speaking of the Hebrew word for peace, ‘Shalom’, states that set in the context of God’s face looking upon us with mercy, the word, ‘shalom’, conveys that one is in God’s presence.

Part of the root for the word means "to dwell with" and part of the word means ‘whole someness’ as in a manifestation of divine grace. Peace harmonizes all contending factors and reconciles the separateness of all.

The rabbis have a tradition that ‘shalom’ is the name of the Messiah.

The Church sings in the Gloria, "Gloria in Excelsis Deo". The presence of God most high is His glory. He is present in transcendence and no man can look upon Him and live.

To his people on earth his presence is peace. His immanance in the world.

Like an echo, the call for mercy and the cry for peace reaches from end to end through the prayer. Out of the Lord’s vast creation of animals, Scripture chooses two very special ones: the lamb and the dove. The lamb is for mercy. The dove is for peace.

I have taken the name Thomas Sitio of Jesus. I can identify with him. When he saw the Risen Christ and his Glorious Wounds, all he could cry is, "My Lord and my God".

When I pray these words, in sorrow and humility, I strike my breast gently.

In prayerful thought I have added quotes as I enumerate the Seven Last Words.
 

The Psalms were the hymnal and the prayer book of the Jewish people. As familiar to them as the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be is to us Catholics.

Many scholars of scripture hold that Our Lord prayed Psalm 22 as He hung crucified.

I have used verses of this psalm as a type of responsorial for the Last Words.

            "It was the sixth hour and they crucified him."

                        "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

                        "Pater, di mitte illis, non enim sciunt, quid faciunt" 

"A pack of evildoers surround me like wild dogs. They ring me round like a herd of wild bulls ~ strong bulls of Basan.

"Like lions roaring for their prey. All who see me scoff at me, they mock me with parted lips, they wag their heads.

"He relied on the Lord, let him deliver him, let him rescue him if he loves him." Psalm 22

"How deep is the mine of God’s wisdom, of His knowledge; how inscrutable are His judgments, how undiscoverable his ways." Romans 11:33

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." The Lord’s Prayer

"This is the greatest love a man can show, that he should lay down his life for his friends."
                                                                                                                        Jn 15:13-14

"I have a new commandment to give you, that you are to love one another; that your love for one another is to be like the love I have borne you." Jn 13:34-35

"Love is patient, is kind, love feels no envy; love is never perverse or proud, never insolent, does not claim its rights, cannot be provoked, does not brood over injuries, takes no pleasure in wrong doing, but rejoices at the victory of truth; sustains, believes, hopes, endures to the last."
                                                                                                                              1Cor. 13:4-7

            "Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom."

                    Amen, I say to you, this day you will be with me in Paradise."

"You who fear the Lord, praise Him; all you descendants of Jacob, give glory to Him; revere Him, all you descendents of Israel.

For He has not spurned nor disdained the wretched man in his misery, nor did he turn his face away from him, but when he cried out, he heard him.

The lowly shall eat their fill, they who seek the Lord shall praise Him: May your hearts rejoice forever." (Ps 22)

"My kingdom is not of this world." Jn 19:36

"The kingdom of God is within you." Luke 17:21

"Whoever wishes to discover the kingdom – where God reigns with all his riches in His very essence and nature – he must look for it where it is: . . . in the very depth of the soul, where God is infinitely closer to the soul, more inherent, as the soul is to itself." Johannes Tauler

When the thief asked to be remembered he realized that to be remembered by God is to live. To be forgotten by God is to not exist.

The cross is the Tree of Life.

"This is that most worthy Tree that stands in the midst of Paradise."
                                  Response from Matins - Exaltation of the Cross (Sept 14)

"On either side of its river grows the tree that gives life . . . and the leaves bring healing to all the nations." Apocalypse 22:2-3

"The chieftains of each tribe brought Moses a rod, twelve rods in all, not counting the rod of Aaron, all of which he laid up in the Lord’s presence, in the tabernacle.

And when he came back the next day he found the rod of Aaron had sprouted; buds formed on it and burst into flower, and as their petals dropped, turned into almonds.

It was taken back into the tabernacle to be kept there in memory of the rebellious Israelites; there must be no more death penalty." Numbers 17:6-11

The cross is the rod, it gives life, there is no more death.

            "Standing at the cross of Jesus was his mother.

                    "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother."

"What hand but yours drew me out from my mother’s womb? Who else was my refuge when I hung at her breast?

From the hour of my birth you were my guardian, since I left my mother’s womb, you are my God."                                                                                                                                       Ps 22

"All you who pass by here,  look and see! Is there any suffering like my suffering?"
                                                                                             Lamentations

            Isaiah foresaw his birth:

            he foresaw his life:

            he foresaw his death as Suffering Servant:

Isaiah closed his prophecy with a promise of comfort and consolation to Israel. Jesus closes his life with the same promise to his flock. Jesus looked down and beheld the suffering, sorrow, the tears, the sore distress of his mother and his beloved disciple. Like Isaiah seeing the travail of Jerusalem, he consoled them:

"Lovers of Jerusalem, rejoice with her, be glad for her sake; make holiday with her, you that mourned for her. So shall you be her foster children, suckled plentifully with her consolations, drinking in to your heart’s content, the glory that is here. Peace shall flow through her like a river....This shall be the milk you drink, like children carried at the breast, fondled on a mother’s lap. I will console you then, like a mother caressing her son." Isaiah 66:10-13

"Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted...." Matthew 9:5

"In her was restored what had been lost in Paradise – that noble image which the Father had fashioned after His likeness, and which was destroyed by sin. She has, together with the Father, given new life to all members of the Mystical Body, by guiding them back to their origin."
                                             Johannes Tauler, Sermon on the Feast of the Nativity of our Lady

"On the coming Solemnity of Christmas, I will not fail to ask the sovereign Divine Infant to renew in your spirit at every moment that mystical divine nativity, so that your spirit may be reborn at every moment to a new life that is divine and holy. This sacred mystical divine nativity is celebrated every day in the deepest interior solitude. In this sacred desert, in profound separation and detachment from every created thing, in total nudity and poverty of spirit, and in a sacred silence of faith and love, the human soul is reborn in the divine humanized Word to a new life that is entirely holy and divine." St. Paul of the Cross to Mother Mary Crucified, Vol II, 310.

            "Darkness covered the whole earth."

                    My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

                    "Eloi, Eloi, lama Sabacthani"

                    "Deus meus, ut guid dere liguiste me?"

"O my God, I cry out by day and you answer not, by night and you heard me not. I am like vermin, not a man, the scorn of men, despised by the people.

"O Lord, be not far from me, Lord, hasten to help me. Rescue me, save my wretched life." Ps. 22

If ‘sitio’ penetrates the mystery of physical pain then "Eloi" penetrates the mystery of the emotional, mental, and psychic agony of Our Lord.

The one mirrors the other in intensity. The whole human nature of Christ suffered to the ultimate.

"When this (Dark Night) oppresses a soul, it feels very vividly the shadow of Death, the sighs of death, and the sorrow of hell, all of which reflect the feeling of God’s absence, of being chastised and rejected by Him, as well as the object of His anger." St. John of the Cross: The Dark Night Bk 2 Ch 6

Lord, from the radiant splendor of your light, kindle my lamp, and let it shine into my darkness. By its illumination, lead us along your paths to the unending light in which you dwell.

"Because the soul is purified in the forge like gold in the crucible." Wisdom 3:6

"Christ endured . . . the entire evil of the turning away from God which his contained in sin. Together with this horrible weight, Christ, through the divine depth of his filial union with the Father, perceives in a humanly inexpressible way the suffering which is the separation, the rejection by the Father, the estrangement from God. But precisely through this suffering he accomplishes the Redemption."   Pope John Paul II the Great: Salvifici Doloris

"Perhaps I would think to bury myself in darkness; night should surround me, more approachable than day; but no, darkness is no hiding place from you, with you the night shines clear as day itself; light and dark are one." Psalm 138:11-12

            "So that the Scriptures might me fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I thirst’."

                "sitio"

"I am like water poured out: all my bones are racked. My heart has become like wax, melting away within me.

"My throat is dried up like baked clay, my tongue cleaves to my jaws, to the dust of death you have brought me down.

"Be not far from me, for I am in distress, be near for I have no one to help me." Psalm 22

I do not feel that Our Lord’s cry for water was only symbolic. It was an expression of physical suffering and need.

The physical suffering by crucifixion was the most horrible pain endured. Nurses ask patients if their pain is tolerable, mild, serious, great, or unbearable to determine level of pain.

Crucifixion added a level of pain to that spectrum that raised it to the most awful level of suffering ~ excruciating ~ or "pain from the cross".

"Who can ever describe the pains suffered by those who endure the death of the body? Suffice it to say, they are so many and so great that they sever the soul from the body." St. Paul of the Cross to Agnes Grazi (Vol I, 180)

"Even more fortunate is the one / who in naked suffering, / without a shade of joy, / is as Christ transformed.

"Oh happy she who suffers / without attachment to her pain / But only wills to die to self / To love the more him who wounds."   Poem of St. Paul of the Cross: "Viva la Santa Croce" Stanzas 5 & 6

"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." Luke 22:42-43

"One can say that with the Passion of Christ all human suffering has found itself in a new situation… In the cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering but human suffering itself has been redeemed… every man has his own share in the redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. He is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed… Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of redemption. Thus, each man, in his suffering, can also be a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ." Pope John Paul II the Great: Salvifici Doloris

"There is nothing more tragic in all the world than wasted pain. Think of how much suffering there is in hospitals, among the poor and bereaved. Think also of how much of that suffering goes to waste. How many of those lonesome, suffering, abandoned, crucified souls are saying with Our Lord, ‘This is my body, take it’… consecrate it, offer it to the Father with Thyself in order that He, looking down on this great sacrifice, may see His Beloved Son." Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen - "Wasted Pain" prayer card.

"He who drinks the water I will give him shall never thirst; the water I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting." John 4:14 There is a mystical significance in the thirst of Jesus. Our Holy Father Pope Benedict wrote in his encyclical, '' Deus Caritas Est" (God is Love), that the mystery of the cross consists of this, "so great is God's love for man that by becoming man he follows him even unto death and so reconciles justice and love."

Pope Benedict writes that love is eros and agape, it ascends and descends, that in giving love, love also must be recieved as a gift.

It is written in the newly published letters of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Come Be My Light, that she had an experience of the Passion in which she heard the voice of Jesus cry out from the cross,"I thirst". It transformed her spirituality. She wrote that her purpose and mission was to alleviate the thirst of Jesus. He thirsts for love and souls. She would live to offer him this drink.

At the cross, love is given and love is received. The Heart of Jesus and the heart of man is knit together in a covenant of love. The marriage feast of the lamb.

            "At the ninth hour Jesus called out in a loud voice: It is finished. His head dropped forward
                     and He died." "It is finished."

            "Consummatum est."

Here, let your head incline forward in the manner of the dying and keep silence a few moments. Then pray,

            "His side was pierced and out flowed water and blood."

"All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations shall bow down before him. For dominion is the Lord’s, He rules the nations.

"Him alone shall they worship, that are laid to rest in the earth, even from their dust they will adore.

I, too, shall live on in his presence, my children shall serve Him, the coming generations shall be told of the Lord, and they shall proclaim His justice to a people yet to be born. These things the Lord has done." Psalm 22

"And last, he took me to the door of the temple itself, and showed me where a stream of water flowed Eastwards from beneath the threshold of it...eastward these waters flowed from the right side of the temple. Wherever it flows, there should be teeming life... and on either bank of the stream fruit trees shall grow of every kind; never leaf lost, never fruit cast, month after month they shall yield a fresh crop, watered by that sanctuary stream; fruit for man's eating, and medicinal leaves." Ezechial 47:1,2,9,12

"If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he who would save his life will lose it; but he who loses his life for my sake will find it." Mt 16:24-25

"With Christ I am nailed to the cross. It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me." St. Paul the Apostle - Gal 2:19-21

"The standards of the King appear, the mystery of the cross shines out in glory, the cross on which life suffered death and by that death gave life to us. Tree of dazzling beauty, adorned with the purple of the King’s blood." Vespers Hymn, Vexilla Regis - Exaltation of the Cross (Sept. 14)

"Surrender yourself more and more to God with great detachment from all creatures and complete annihilation; you will experience great results and I hope shall be inflamed with love. Oh, my child in Jesus Christ, when, oh when, shall we be dead to everything to live only for our God? O precious death, more longed for than life, death which makes us divine because we are all transformed in God by love. Come now, let us look forward to this death to all created things." St. Paul of the Cross to Agnes Grazi (Vol I, 180)

"If I be lifted up, I will draw all things to myself." Jn 12:32

            "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

"O Glory of Israel, you are enthroned in the Holy Place.

In you our fathers trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and they escaped; in you they trusted and they were not put to shame.

I will proclaim your renown to my brethren, in the midst of the people I will praise you.

Among the multitude my praise will come to you, I will fulfill my promises before those that fear Him." Psalm 22