The Love of the Cross

St. Paul, passionately in love with The Lord Jesus, exclaimed to the Christians of Galatia: "May I never boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!"  Devotion to The Lord's suffering and Death have always been an intrinsic part of the Christian's spiritual life.  A short work attributed to the holy monk St. Bede, but     probably written after his time, presented brief meditations on the seven hours of monastic prayer in accordance with the events of the Passion of The Lord.  The following is from the meditation for Sext (noon):

"Consider that the people came shouting up to The Place of the Skull and there he was stripped of his clothing before all who saw him.  This caused him terrible pain because his inner clothing greatly adhered to him because of the blood from his flagellation.  Then his Body appeared: once so finely formed, now completely torn.    And then, when his Cross had been set up, they said to him, 'Go up, Jesus, go up!'  Oh, how gladly he ascended it!  With how much love did he bear all this on our account!  What patience, what humility!  Oh Lord, holy Father, how greatly you loved his obedience!  Thus he was raised up completely naked and stretched out on the Cross.  But his most loving Mother, full of solicitude, positioned around him the veil which she had on her head and wrapped it around the place of shame.  Oh, what sad sounds and wailing was heard from his friends, and especially from his most sorrowful Mother, when he was raised up and stretched out, with his entire Body distended and pulled apart!  And when the terrible, huge nails were pounded in, his Blood began to flow at once and to run down the Cross onto the ground.  Consider how he was lifted up, as he himself had foretold: 'It is necessary for the Son of man to be raised up' (John 12, 34).  And how the Hebrews who were bitten by the spying serpent were then healed: 'And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so it is necessary for the Son of man to be lifted up' (John 3, 14).  Just so, there is no medicine so good against the bite and temptation of the devil as to look upon the One who suffered for us on the Cross.  You shall also see The Lord your God standing upon the sun and prepared for judgment.  For this reason, he set two men on either side of him: one who is saved, and one who is damned.  You shall also see how Christ, the High Priest of the good things to come, extends his hands to confer a pure Sacrifice -- his most precious Flesh, offered on the altar."