With Pope Francis at the Colosseum: Via Crucis to learn to pray

The texts of the meditations personally written by the pontiff for this year's Good Friday evening celebration. In the Year of Prayer he has proclaimed in view of the Jubilee, a path full of indications on this fundamental dimension of Christian life. Persecuted Christians and all those who suffer the tragedy of war entrusted to the name of Jesus.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - There are the women "who still today are discarded, suffering outrage and violence". There are heavy crosses such as "an illness, an accident, the death of a loved one, an emotional disappointment, a child who is lost, a job that is missing".

There is the 'madness of war, the faces of children who can no longer smile, mothers who see them malnourished and hungry and have no more tears to shed'. But this time the focus lies elsewhere.

They are meditations that speak directly to the heart of every believer those that Pope Francis has personally written for the Way of the Cross that he will preside over on this Good Friday 2024 at the Colosseum.

The texts speak of our struggle to live a fundamental experience of the Christian life as prayer is. And which - precisely by retracing the itinerary of Jesus - offers many concrete suggestions on how to live it concretely and how not to suffocate it by keeping ourselves at the centre.

The very concomitance with the Year of Prayer - proclaimed by Pope Francis in preparation for next year's imminent Jubilee - had already been indicated in recent days as the reason why (unlike what has happened so far) this year Bergoglio chose to write the texts himself for the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum, one of the most popular appointments around the world during Holy Week.

The intent of this choice appears clear right from the words that introduce the texts of the meditations, released this morning by the Vatican Press Office: "You have asked only one thing of us: to stay with you, to keep vigil - writes Francis introducing the night of Jesus' Passion.

"You do not ask the impossible of us, but closeness. Yet how many times have I distanced myself from you. How many times, like the disciples, instead of keeping vigil I have slept, how many times I have had no time or desire to pray, because I was tired, anaesthetised by comfort, sleepy in my soul. Jesus,' continued the Pope, 'repeat again to me, to us your Church: 'Get up and pray' (Lk 22:46). Wake us up, Lord, awaken us from the torpor of the heart, because today too, especially today, you need our prayer'.

The 14 stations of the Way of the Cross written by Francis reflect almost entirely the traditional scheme, with only one significant change: the falls of Jesus are only two; but in place of the third there is a station (the eleventh) that specifically focuses on "Jesus crying out his abandonment" on the cross, the prayer in which He Himself plunges "to the bottom of the abyss of our pain".

"You did it for me," the Pontiff comments, "so that I, when I see only darkness, when I experience the collapse of certainties and the shipwreck of living, may no longer feel alone, but believe that you are there with me".

After the Stations, then, the Way of the Cross ends with an invocation that repeats the name of Jesus 14 times, the "simplest and most familiar" prayer, the one that in the Gospel is on the lips of the "needy, the frail, the sick". To this name the pope entrusts everyone: from priests to families, from persecuted Christians to those suffering from war. 

From Jesus' silence before Pilate, the Pope invites us to learn "that prayer does not come from moving lips, but from a heart that knows how to listen". Mary, who meets her Son on Calvary, makes us realise how much our prayer is "poor in memory: quick, hurried, a list of needs for today and tomorrow". With Veronica we are called to realise that "you too, neighbour God, ask for my nearness; Jesus, kindle in me the desire to be with you, to adore you and console you. And let me be consolation for others in your name". With the women of Jerusalem, we are invited to ask ourselves whether in the face of the tragedies of the world our hearts "are ice cold or melt" and to ask for "the grace to weep by praying and to pray by weeping".

God stripped bare also lays bare our prayer. "Why is it easy to talk," Pope Francis observes, "but then I truly love you in the poor, your wounded flesh? Do I pray for those stripped of dignity? Or do I pray only to cover my needs and clothe myself with security?"

Up to the contemplation of Christ nailed to the cross that reveals to us "the height of intercessory prayer, which saves the world. Jesus," commented Francis, "may I pray not only for myself and my loved ones, but for those who do not love me and who hurt me; may I pray, according to the desires of your heart, for those who are far from you; to repair and intercede for those who, ignoring you, do not know the joy of loving you and of being forgiven by you."

Arriving at the last prayer, the "tenacious" prayer of Joseph of Arimathea asking Pilate for the body of Jesus. An example of how "insistent prayer bears fruit and even passes through the darkness of death".

But made possible by that new tomb, built for himself and instead given to Jesus.

"And I," Francis comments, "what do I give Jesus again this Easter? A little time to be with Him? A little love for others? My fears and my miseries buried, which Christ is waiting for me to offer Him as you did with the tomb? It will truly be Easter,' he concludes, 'if I give something of mine to the One who gave life for me: for it is by giving that one receives; for life is found when one loses and is possessed when one gives'.

• Jubilee
• 2025