Pope offers hard-hitting Way of the Cross meditations

Apr. 14 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) presided at the Way of the Cross in the Roman Coliseum this evening: April 14, Good Friday.

Like his predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II, Pope Benedict carried the cross as he led the ceremonies, reading meditations prepared at his request by Archbishop Angelo Comastri, the vicar general for Vatican City.

On Good Friday one year ago it was then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who led the Way of the Cross, reading meditations that he himself had written at the behest of the ailing Pope John Paul II (bio - news). The future Pope offered a very somber view of the condition of Catholicism in those meditations, comparing the Church to "a boat about to sink, taking on water on every side." Cardinal Ratzinger lamented "how much filth there is in the Church," and said that "a Christianity which has grown weary of faith has abandoned the Lord."

This year's meditations, by Archbishop Comastri, again took an unsparing look at the evils of contemporary life. The text that Pope Benedict read condemns the "frivolous freedom" of modern society, and the attack on family life, the gap between rich and poor in the world. (The full text of the meditations is available on the Vatican web site.)

In the prayer prepared by Archbishop Comastri for the Third Station, the Pope said:

Lord, we have lost our sense of sin! Today a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil,a senseless cult of Satan, a mindless desire for transgression, a dishonest and frivolous freedom, exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication. Lord Jesus, open our eyes: let us see the filth around us and recognize it for what it is, so that a single tear of sorrow can restore us to purity of heart and the breadth of true freedom. Open our eyes, Lord, Jesus!
At the Ninth Station the Pope decried "the division of our world into belts of prosperity and belts of poverty." The meditation continues: "Our world is made of two rooms: in one room, things go to waste, in the other, people are wasting away."

The meditation for the Seventh Station referred to the attacks on traditional family life as "a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride," which seeks to "modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God." The theme of human love runs throughout the meditations, and at the Tenth Station the meditation includes the observation: "Only the pure are capable of love;? only the pure can love without cheapening love." The source.