Lenten Meditations by Newman (part 1)

Meditations on the Stations of the Cross

The First Station:
 Jesus Is Condemned to Death

V. Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi.
 R. Quia per sanctam Crucem tuam redemisti mundum.

Leaving the House of Caiphas, and dragged before Pilate and Herod, mocked, beaten, and spit upon, His back torn with scourges, His head crowned with thorns, Jesus, who on the last day will judge the world, is Himself condemned by unjust judges to a death of ignominy and torture.

Jesus is condemned to death. His death-warrant is signed, and who signed it but I, when I committed my first mortal sins? My first mortal sins, when I fell away from the state of grace into which Thou didst place me by baptism; these it was that were Thy death-war- rant, O Lord. The Innocent suffered for the guilty. Those sins of mine were the voices which cried out, "Let Him be crucified." That willingness and delight of heart with which I committed them was the con- sent which Pilate gave to this clamorous multitude. And the hardness of heart which followed upon them, my disgust, my despair, my proud impatience, my ob- stinate resolve to sin on, the love of sin which took possession of me—what were these contrary and impetuous feelings but the blows and the blasphemies with which the fierce soldiers and the populace re- ceived Thee, thus carrying out the sentence which Pilate had pronounced?

From: The Dream of Gerontius
 &
 Meditations on the Stations of the Cross By St. John Henry Newman

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