Note: As a personal, spiritual discipline, reviving my practice in the Lenten season of 2017, I revise the prayers I wrote then for each of the forty days of this Lent; each petition focusing on a theme, a concern weighing on my mind and heart or a care of my soul and spirit.
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On Good Friday (being a meditation on Psalm 22.1 and Matthew 27.46, and Luke 2.35)…
O Jesus, through Your life and ministry, You, especially, extended Your loving hands to the disenfranchised and dispossessed, the least and last; all whom You claimed as first in the sight of Your Abba, Father.
In this, You confronted and convicted the status quo of power and privilege hoarded by the few to be lorded over the many.
For this, You, Love and Justice incarnate, by fear and hatred were condemned and crucified.
For this, You, Who welcomed all, were deceived by one of Your own with a betraying kiss from bitter lips, despised by those into whose courts of false judgment You were led, denied and deserted by Your followers and, as You, from the cross of Your suffering and dying, dared to cry out, by God.
As the prophesied sword of anguish pierced the soul of the watching, weeping Blessed Mary, Your mother, erect and establish Your cross at the heart of my living, that I, dying to my selfish-self, never abandon You in the disenfranchised and dispossessed, the least and last; the still constantly crucified of this world.
Amen.
Illustrations:
Crucifixion, Alonzo Cano (1601-1667)
Pieta (c.1560), Luis de Morales (1512-1586)
occasional observations of mind and heart, soul and spirit 