Station One
– Jesus is condemned to death –
Jesus, you stand all alone before Pilate. Nobody speaks up for you. Nobody helps defend you. You devoted your entire life to helping others, listening to the smallest ones, caring for those who were ignored by others. They don’t seem to remember that as they prepare to put you to death.
Sometimes we feel abandoned and afraid as well. Sometimes we too, feel like we are treated unfairly or blamed for things we haven’t done. We have a hard time when people criticize us at home or at work.
Help us be grateful for what you did for us. Help us to accept criticism and unfairness as you did, and not complain. Help us pray for those who have hurt us.
† † †
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the Way of the Cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ you Son our Lord.
Amen.
About Paul Sibley
Andrew Gosden (now 18) has been missing from his Doncaster home since 14 September 2007. The search continues.
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Hello Mr. S.
Sorry this isn’t quite related to your post, but I’m a little confused about this, and don’t really have anyone else to ask (that is I’ve asked other people, but they don’t know).
For the first time in my life I’ve given something up for lent (for the record, its chocolate bars (every day at about 11:00 I was eating a Mars bar – originally for the energy, but its became almost an addiction that my body was expecting a sugar rush at 11 and I was getting very run down, so I gave them up.). Anyways, I had my last chocolate bar on Tuesday 24th February.
Counting forty days on, that leads me to Sunday 5th – when I was expecting to be able to munch down on my beloved chocolate on Monday the 6th. But Easter isn’t for another week after that.
What mistake have I made in my counting, or does lent end a week earlier?
Best Regards
James
Hi James, and a warm welcome to the blog.
No worries about asking a question in a slightly unrelated post, it isn’t something I’m going to get precious about — we have enough rules in life. Now, let me see if I can answer your question.
Lent is calculated either by omitting the Sunday’s, when the Lenten discipline is relaxed, or by finishing on Palm Sunday. We see both methods being used, and I’m not at all sure which is right, if either of them are. My own preference is the latter, so that we have Lent, Holy Week, and Easter, as three distinct periods of time — to me, that way raises the importance of Holy Week.
Following my preference, I would want to keep my Lenten discipline going through Holy Week as well as the forty days of Lent, making Lent slightly longer, and would encourage you to do the same. Using the other method of calculating Lent, where Sundays are more relaxed, you could have had your chocolate bar on each Sunday. As I say, I would encourage you to keep going through Holy Week as well; you’ve come this far, it would be good to add those extra few especially holy days on.
I hope you feel you’ve benefited from going without your chocolate bars. It can’t have been easy, especially with your body expecting it’s sugar rush at the same time each day. Might be good, if you can, to vary your eating time when you begin to enjoy them again.
Hope that has helped.
Thanks for the explanation, I would say that now I really don’t feel the urge to have them that I did before, and I’m going to continue trying not to fall back into the big pit of having them daily again. – my work is now of a better quality throughout the entire morning, instead of dropping and peaking again. I was amazed at how fast an addiction to them grew (literally since Christmas break)
I had forgotten about Holy Week – its an event that we as a family don’t really celebrate (in fact, to be honest we don’t really celebrate many religious festivals, apart from Shrove Tuesday and Christmas – I should point out that we’re Quakers, and we should be mindful of it year round, but we do pancakes and Christmas) . Actually, before we moved house, we used to celebrate harvest festival. That was my favourite by a long way.
The problem is, by not celebrating them at predefined times, its very easy to forget about them all the time – I’ve learnt a lot more in the past two/three years by looking into the festivals when they come around, then I did in many years of not celebrating any of them.
But thanks. your Blog is certainly always an interesting and thought inspiring read.
Thank you for the kind comments James.
Good to hear that things have been going so well without the chocolate. It’s incredible, and a little frightening, just how quickly the addiction to them grew.
I find the festivals a great help in my Christian journey; they help me to focus on certain events without losing sight of the rest. But I can see how easy it would be to focus too much on the festival, and lose focus on what they are celebrating. So, in that sense, I can understand the Quaker way; and we should be mindful of these events all year.