Scriptural Stations Meditations - Fourteenth Station

Jesus is Placed in the Tomb

We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You.
Because by Your holy cross You have
redeemed the world.

When it was evening,
there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph,
who was himself a disciple of Jesus.
He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus;
then Pilate ordered it to be handed over.
Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it [in] clean linen
and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock.
Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb
and departed.

~Matthew 27: 57-60

We pray:

Lord Jesus, Your friends pull the iron from Your
mangled hands and feet and
balance your stiffened body down from the cross.
They must look on Your closed eyes in bitter confusion,
seeing their beloved friend silenced by those who opposed him.
Bitter grief and a kind of hopelessness is their only food now;
they do not understand that they will soon see You alive again.
Your lifeless body is anointed and wrapped in a sheet
and then laid in a borrowed tomb, sealed from sight,
from those who love You, in darkness.
Your friends are grieving and Your enemies are celebrating uneasily.
But the stone tomb is like a womb that will give birth to everlasting life.
Because You accepted even death, death on a cross (Phil 2:8), death is never the end.
Death is always a new beginning.

Lord, through the cross You have conquered death and made it flow into life.
You are placed alone in the tomb to show us that
the grave’s utter aloneness is not the end for which we are created.

You will soon rise, triumphant over death and sin, with the power to draw all of us to You in everlasting joy and unity.
You are living eternally,
and You created each of us to live forever with You.
Help us to remember that only our bodies enter the tomb;
our souls are always alive in You.
Give us this deep knowledge of salvation,
so that we will be moved to offer our lives
as a sacrifice of praise and gratitude.
May we see past the cross and past the tomb to the
light of the Resurrection, knowing that
the silence and darkness of death is only the crossing ground
to an eternal song of praise, and the Day that will never end.

Closing Prayer:

Lord Jesus,
in looking at Your suffering,
we begin to penetrate the mystery that here is Your glory.
We continuously rediscover the value and meaning of the Cross,
the truth of which opens us to hope in the face of so many difficulties.

As we “look on Him whom we have pierced” (Jn 19:37),
our own sorrows can be seen as a privileged way
to the very Heart of Christ, poured out for us.
You are alive and breathing through Your Church and
through each soul, ever revealing Yourself anew,
because love is always new, and continues to find new ways
to give itself and to express itself.
It is this truth that embraces every age and every situation
and makes the Cross the one sign of our salvation.

May we who have faithfully reflected on these mysteries follow in your steps and so come to share your glory in heavenwhere you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spiritone God, for ever and ever.
Amen.