For I resolved to know nothing
while I was with you except
Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
(1 Corinthians 2:2)

"One cannot recognize Christ on the cross without immediately understanding and sensing that cross must touch us."
Father Luigi Giussani

The Way of the Cross through downtown Chicago is a striking gesture.
Who does it strike and what does this gesture signify?

It strikes first at our own hearts which recognize their own need - their own need for the cross and their need to bear witness to the cross and its meaning for our lives. It signifies for us our need to embrace Christ, even Christ crucified. It signifies a love stronger than suffering. The love we share with Christ - his love for us and our love for him.

As a public gesture, it strikes, second, any who are open, any whose hearts recognize suffering and its need for redemption. It signifies for them a mystery and perhaps even a sign of hope - that the cross is not primarily of historical or cultural importance - that the cross means something today, something for us.

The Way of the Cross is an ancient tradition which has been encouraged throughout the ages from St. Francis to Msgr. Giussani to our present pope, Benedict XVI. The following excerpts are from the meditations on the Way of the Cross he delivered on Good Friday, 2005, months before being elected pope.

"The prayer of the Way of the Cross is a path leading to a deep spiritual communion with Jesus; lacking this, our sacramental communion would remain empty. The God who shares our sufferings, the God who became man in order to bear our cross, wants to transform our hearts of stone; he invites us to share in the sufferings of others. He wants to give us a "heart of flesh" which will not remain stony before the suffering of others, but can be touched and led to the love which heals and restores.

The cross -- our self-offering -- weighs heavily upon us. Along your own Way of the Cross you also carried my cross. Nor did you carry it just at one distant moment in the past, for your love continues to accompany every moment of my life. Today you carry that cross with me and for me, and, amazingly, you want me, like Simon of Cyrene, to join you in carrying your Cross; you want me to walk at your side and place myself with you at the service of the world's redemption. Grant that my Way of the Cross may not be just a moment of passing piety.

Help all of us to accompany you not only with noble thoughts, but with all our hearts and in every step we take each day of our lives. Help us resolutely to set out on the Way of the Cross and to persevere on your path. Free us from the fear of the Cross, from the fear of mockery, from the fear that our life may escape our grasp unless we cling possessively to everything it has to offer. Help us to unmask all those temptations that promise life, but whose enticements in the end leave us only empty and deluded. Help us not to take life, but to give it".

As we process through downtown Chicago on Good Friday, we join with the entire Church, the Church throughout the world and the Church throughout the ages, in remembering what Christ's suffering and death mean - not remembering what it meant - but remembering what it means for us here and now and means for all people in every place and time. We invite you to join us in this gesture, in this simple sign of Christ's love for us and our love for him.

Image: Ecce Homo, 1881 Oil on Canvas, Adam Chmielowski (Brother Albert), Cracow