Last Friday I was staying at a high-end casino and spa in Las Vegas, part of a vacation we take with Mark’s family, on his parents’ dime, every couple of years. (Vegas was chosen for its something-for-everybody nature. Even though I don’t think any of us did any gambling.)
You know how when you’re on vacation you lose track of the days? The point when I remembered it was a Friday in Lent was in the middle of a first-thing-in-the-morning facial at the spa. Real penitential of me, I know. (Hey, it was the first facial I ever had in my life. Now I get why people like them so much.)
So I thought to myself, well, it’s quiet here, soothing music is playing — I can meditate, right? I started to prepare my thoughts for a Rosary and then stopped — well, it just seemed obscenely inappropriate to be having steam gently wafted at my pores while meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries. I was struggling with the logical equivalent (so is it obscenely inappropriate to meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries while having steam gently wafted at my pores, or indeed anywhere?) when it occurred to me — at the same moment that the therapist lifted my left hand and began to massage my palm — that I should meditate instead on the Way of the Cross.
Oooooookay. This isn’t a devotion I do much and I don’t even remember all the stations, but I went with it anyway. I started by trying to see if I even could remember all the stations. Mentally placing myself next to the wall in my parish church, holding my four-year-old by the hand, I pointed to each of the fourteen paintings in turn and listened to his piping voice recite the titles. Probably not in the right order. Jesus is condemned to death. Jesus is made to bear His cross. Jesus meets His mother.
And then came the small thought, one that doesn’t require me to remember all the stations in the correct order: The traditional Way of Sorrows is also a Way of Kindnesses. Six of the fourteen stations recount encounters of love and help. Jesus meets his mother. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem. Jesus is taken down from the cross and laid in the arms of His mother. Jesus is laid in the tomb.
Almost half the Sorrows are stories of people physically helping Christ or expressing love for Him.
That was it, nothing more profound than that, and after it came I had the sense that my meditation was done. "You can go now." So, well, I enjoyed the rest of my facial, and then I went back to my family. Huh. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.
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