Gearing up for Holy week, which is right around the corner, I want to share with you this understanding I received during a contemplation of the sorrowful mysteries:

Agony in the Garden

I see when I close my eyes and pray the sorrowful mysteries, my Lord in the garden. His hands are covered in the blood of the slain aborted children of our nation, dripping thick and wet. He shudders and cries, as he takes the blood from our hands onto His own, knowing that the price he will pay for it will be beyond any pain we could imagine. He lifts his blood coated hands toward his face and in agony, cries out for the lives that are slain, so sorrowful, mourning their purpose and their deaths.

The Scourging

Then, as I meditate on the scourging, I see my Lord, splayed out over a pillar, chains on his wrists, the blood from the whips mingling with the blood of the aborted children as he is struck again, and again. As if each strike were payment for the souls lost to this genocide, the blood flowing from his back, down his arms, and into his palms where it pools and mixes with the blood of our children.

The crowning of thorns

At the crowning, I see his eyes heavy with swelling and sorrow as the thorns are driven into his head. Like needles piercing the hearts of children aborted late in pregnancy, one after another the thorns pierce him, the blood trickling down his face, mixing with the sweat and the salty tears like the blood in the womb mixing with the amniotic fluid. He cannot move away from the thorns, and is resigned to the near death that will soon come.

Carrying the cross

He takes up his cross, and in agony, carries it toward the top of the hill, where he will be put to death. He accepts that this is the only way he can rescue those of us who have partaken in this genocide, so he drags the heavy cross as it crushes the thorns deeper into his head, and rips across his mangled back, his blood-soaked hands leaving fingerprints on the grain of the wooden cross. I see his mother, on her knees, in agony, crying for her son, knowing he will die, feeling the weight of the entire world of mothers who have lost children to abortion, knowing her son now carries upon himself the guilt of us all.

The crucifixion

And then they nail his broken body to the cross and he hangs there, mocked. As the blood drips off his fingers, a disciple catches it in a chalice and turns to look at me, saying “He has done this for you.” And as Jesus breaths, spittle, mixed with blood, sprays from his face and showers over me, wet and hot. The blood of Christ is now my shield, my hands clean where his are coated. He became the aborted, and the abortionist so that I might have freedom. And Mary is there now, on her knees, reaching up to touch the feet of her son as He dies, wailing, her heart shattered. Not only for her son, but for mine, and all the sons and daughters destroyed through this genocide.