This Sacred Heart brings out two aspects of our relationship with Our Saviour and his with us. The first is that the heart of Jesus is pierced by our sins, and the second is his response – mercy, grace and unceasing love. The Stations of the Cross can also lead us to contemplate this mysterious paradox: the more we sin, the greater the love of God.

Each of the fourteen Stations of the Cross confronts us with Our Lord’s passion and our part in this tragic event. In our baptism we were made one with Christ, his life and our lives one and what we do now is enfolded in what was done two thousand years ago. Each time we follow the way of the Cross we are not just spectators but participants in the passion and death of Our Saviour. Each station can point to the many times we contribute to this suffering. 

Station One accuses us of being judgmental, often choosing expedience over justice. Station Two, as Our Lord carries his cross and the cross for the world, we grudge carrying our own burdens let alone another’s. Station Three sees Our Lord fall for the first time and get up and carry on to his inevitable death. It sees us give up in despair and self-pity compounded by our hopeless inability to pick ourselves up after the second and third fall. Each station accuses us of so many failings. Our selfish choices lead us away from Our Saviour to the lonely place of Peter and Judas. 

Jesus, abandoned by his cowardly Apostles, save John, and disciples, save his mother, Mary Magdalene. How this affects the heart of Jesus is the strange and wonderful mystery of our redemption. It is a crushing blow to our pride. We imagine that we are basically good and, on the whole, virtuous. We often compare ourselves to those less fortunate who, by foolishness and selfish indulgence, have got themselves into a mess. “I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” 

In the world we create for ourselves we identify with a story even earlier than that of the Passion. “But the serpent said to the woman: ‘You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…’” In making ourselves “like God, we, like Peter and Judas, abandon “the truth, the way and the life” and find ourselves overwhelmed by a reality so terrible it shakes the very ground of our existence. 

As Our Lord stands naked, stripped of his garments, we see at last how terribly he has suffered for us and the world. Unlike us his passion is not centred on himself but on the “other”, you and me. Stripped naked of our own creations we are seen as selfish, judgemental, weak – the list goes on – and, like Eve, we rush “to sew fig-leaves together” to cover our shame. But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”. The Stations of the Cross lead us to this awful moment. Our Lord reaches his final hour and, laid on the cross, the hammer and nails inflict the final blows. Like the penitent tax-collector and the Pharisee, we have to decide who we are and who this man on the cross is. It was the same decision the two thieves had to make. One derided and scorned Our Lord, the other asked for a place with him in paradise. “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we are killed justly: for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 

Here we see the true nature of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We see the true nature of God himself. Here is a heart so full of love it created a universe only to find it was too small. He created last of all a humanity whose heart has the capacity to take all the love that God has to offer: a human heart in our Saviour like ours and like God’s; a heart that both craves love and gives love. And at this moment the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, broken by the most outrageous excesses of human depravity, responds with mercy for a thief and forgiveness to a world that does not know what it is doing. 

Shortly after Our Lord’s death, the soldier’s spear opens the heart of Jesus and the life-giving water of baptism and the life-giving sacramental blood of the Mass are poured out for all humanity. In return for bodily torture, extreme human suffering, both physical and mental, a life abandoned of friends and a life’s ambitions dashed, Our Lord gives us resurrection life. 

What a gift to such an undeserving world! How could a love be so strong, so determined, so victorious? From his heart was poured a grace that filled humanity and the world began to beat anew – a grace that transfigures our hearts with a bright beam of light so bright no fuller on earth could reproduce its gleam. In baptism and the Mass, the human heart is remade in the death and resurrection of Our Lord. The love that conquered death is also the love that conquered the human heart. 

Like the penitent thief and the tax-collector, let us daily throughout Lent kneel before our crucified Lord and pray, beating our breast: “Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner.”