14 stations to meditate on the passion of Christ at the heart of the war
1. Jesus is condemned to death
Kill. War in its nudity. Kill from afar. From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, kill. Kill to defend yourself. Kill before being killed. It is war in its nudity, steel, cold, metal, the teeth of the terror. Kill to crush, kill to enslave. We are face to face, killing to kill is war in its brutality. From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, kill. Here, what else to do? From a distance, in the upper herbs, closely, under the stormy vault, quickly, act, together, alone, what else? To wait, to hope, not the end of the day, not the end of the war, but the end of the other, of the one who opposite seeks, as you do for him, with determination, with address, with intelligence too, to kill you, you, you, me, immediately, now, simply and fully. It’s war.
2. Jesus is loaded with his cross
The noose tightens, steel, cold, metal, terror teeth bite you for the first time. Here is the first step in the world without return. It is the first breath, the cross of men, women, children, old people at the first light age, the Iron Age. The body, the mind understands that now, the path is a descent, slow, deep, intense and dead end. It is the beginning, the first time, the first step, to feel the weight of the world, of this world, the time of desolation. Living, surviving, not dying, a step, the first step. What happens to us? Brother, what happens to me?
3. Jesus falls for the first time
Touch. There, in you. Touch. Silence. It’s so sudden. So powerful. Touch. Am I alive? I am not dead, touched, just touched. And already, destroyed, just destroyed. I no longer feel the vice tightening, neither steel, cold, metal, nor the teeth of the terror. I feel the hole, a hole, in me. Touched, holes, everything is overturned. Get up. The weight crushes me, the breath damages me, I am no longer the standing temple. One knee on the ground, the weight of the world crushes me. Touched, silence, suddenly, holes. Get up, I am not dead, just destroyed, already destroyed. So I get up, it’s war, I climb the here below where pain and weight rushed to me, I am the devastated temple that gets up, a step and still a step.
4. Jesus meets his mother
He claims his mother, like almost all almost dead on the front line, on the battlefield. The mother never comes to visit the son in her trench: except in a dream, except in prayer. It’s war. If you see your mother, then you are dead, or almost dead. Living, don’t you want to think about it, what good is it? And yet. What do mothers think? The mother, your mother, brother? What good is it to think about it? What does it change? Which mother would support her son on the front line? Happy are you, if you don’t have a mother. Happy are you, if you have a mother. Unhappy are you, if you have a son, if you have a daughter, if your child, if your children are on the front line. Defend, kill, be killed, and mothers die too. You turn your eyes, and the mother saves you, or consoles you, or warms you and also hurts you: you are the sword that pierces her heart, and you know, here, oh how much.
5. Simon helps Jesus carry his cross
Brother. You are here. In this place where life is withdrawn, where the cold, the steel, the teeth of the terror gain on you, you are there too. You understand, I understand, brother, here you are. You have never been so close to me. I have never been grateful so much. In chaos and desolation, the unleashing of hours and days, here you are by my side, I am no longer a desert, nor an extent of ice, you are there, brother. Thank you, the world for a moment is suspended, there is only you and me, we, our world to us, a garden, by your only presence, the cold, the steel, the teeth of the terror go away, a little, the fire wins me a little, you come, you walk, you wear, you are there, I am no longer alone, the garden distances the desert and the fire removes the ice.
6. Véronique wipes the face of Jesus
I’m planning you. I go to you. I take you, I want to relieve you, protect you, treat you, save you. Faced with the innocent and the helplessness crushed by iron, ice and destruction, the friend, the mother, the just, reduced to almost nothing, is very present in the little, the so little, the gesture, the only gesture that it can still deploy for the other, for him, for you, for them. The tenderness, the emotion, the impulse of the friend, the mother, the just for the innocent and the helpless pursued by the time of war, is a suspension in the chaos of the loss, a loving parenthesis in this time of self -destruction by the others, an infinite sparkle in this night without return.
7. Jesus falls for the second time
Touched, a second time. Steel, cold, metal, the teeth of the terror, like the wave of the black ocean, strike suddenly, and the man collapses, and the temple is on the ground, again. Lower than the first time. He suffers, I suffer, a burst of shells and here I am scattered, and here I am motionless, my body is almost naked, I feel crushed, you are crushed by the brutal breath, by the violent wave. Am I dead? Am I paralyzed? I still see. What do we see? The hole in the overturned temple has grown. Fix, hang on to what is not off. What if I didn’t get up? And if I could stay there, extended, elongated, the body almost naked, escaping the steel, the cold, the metal and the teeth of the terror?
8. Jesus consoles the girls of Jerusalem
Cry the loved one, the brother, the father, the son, the friend. Crying the loved one who is damaged, who disappears. Cry the absent, silently, alone, together, alone in this set. Crying the life before, crying the life of the day. War is tearing. At the front, we kill and die. At the back, we are killed and we cry. There is no pain without pain. Nobody escapes it. I miss you so much. What happened to us? What happens to you? Answer. Silence. Tomorrow does not exist. Where are you, loved? Do not get lost? What to do? What can I? Lose yourself. What can I? We are the lightning. We too have died the loved ones, the sisters, mothers, girls, friends, by steel, cold, metal and the teeth of the terror. We are the people of the amputees.
9. Jesus falls for the third time
Touched, fallen. The trench, the shells, isolated, alone. Even lower. The hole is no longer in me, I am in the hole. Will I get up? Are we getting up? Trench, shells, isolated, alone. I am no longer a temple, or even its appearance, or even its shadow, I am the last stones of the temple precipitated on the ground. Shell. Silence. Trenched, death, escaped, touched, isolated, again and again, in front of the hole, in the hole. Almost nothing more to get up, and yet, get up. A momentum, again. Transformed, exhausted damaged, who gets up? What did they do to me? What are you doing? What am I doing there? Still the strength to get up, I get up.
10. Jesus is stripped of his clothes
Came the moment when I am not even the master of my clothes anymore. Being stripped of everything, even from the last fabric that envelops you, which protects you. Here I am to have nothing more, to the greatest of vulnerabilities, I am only skin, flesh, blood, abrasions, vomit, spitting, insults, stains. In war, we all live naked under the gaze of heaven. Who takes what? Who takes who? War is the experience of rendering. I am therefore nothing, nothing, nothing helps, steel, cold, metal and the teeth of the terror snatch the last traces of the common world.
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross
Nailed. The latest strikes. Nailed. In turn, the skin is holes. Nailed, iron between break -in, piercing the body. Then expose it. Breathe, again. Everything is a prisoner, twisted, attached, torn. Everything is pain, alone, alone, alone, alone. Steel, cold, metal and terror of the terror spread in all. Nailed, be nailed. The time of war and the time of men, and women, and children, and old men that we nail and expose, reduced to anything other than this shredes in tatters raised in the eyes of all. And abandoned. Alone, alone, alone. And the earth and the soil are emptying. Nailed, being nailed, reduced to nothing is war, killing in wartime.
12. Jesus dies on the cross
Nothing, nothing, the reign of nothing. The stones of the temple will no longer rise. Steel, cold, metal and terror of the terror triumph. War gives birth to the abyss and nothingness. How many children? How many women? How many men? How many end by being killed? Everything is a hole, everything is empty. Even the pain is no longer. Silence occupies all the space. There are only traces, envelopes, cold bodies left. And their reflection, the evocation of what was alive and which is no longer there. This moment when absence is the last index of presence. In this sense, in war, everything is consumed. On the battlefield, even souls die. Only traces live, or survive. In this sense, it is the end of the living and the beginning of the memory.
13. The body of Jesus is given to Mary
Receive the body of the son, the child, touch it, take it, kiss him, cry. For the son, war time is the time of death. And for mothers, it is the time of death and the time of mourning. Receive the body and become an inconsolated. Sometimes even the body is not rendered by war. The tears of the inconsolated bathe and wash the body rendered. Who can know the pain of mothers? The depth of pain? The news of death, the reception of the body or what remains of it: the ball that kills the son on the front line reaches the mother, a little later, and her soul, and her joy, and her future. The battlefield is the tomb of the sons and their mothers. Cry, cry. It is the last gesture before the withdrawal, silence, the burial of mothers.
14. The body of Jesus is put in the tomb
Wash, prepare, flavor and place the body in the tomb, and close it. And say goodbye. But how to say goodbye? Do not think of the state of the body, of its transformation under the slab, behind the slab, under the earth, in the earth, but to see it in its living state is difficult, the memory against the decomposition of the loved one. In the squares of the cemeteries of the East Front, the faces of the dead overhang the tombs. The photo of the soldier killed fixes for eternity his smiling face for the comfort of the rests. Be killed, be buried, nothing could be simpler, more commonplace, more normal in wartime. Cry, mow, the grave is full, full of us, full of you.
