Praying the Stations of the Cross with St. Joseph
The Tenth Station - Jesus is Stripped of His Garments
Crucifixion . . . the ultimate assault . . . the gradual stripping off, layer by layer, of what makes one who he is, leading to the stripping away of the very breath of life.
Jesus has been stripped of so much in a mere twelve hours – His friends . . . His popularity . . . His reputation . . . His health and well-being . . . and now His very clothes, the last physical possession He has. But this last indignation is even more than it seems, for the stripping off of His clothing is nothing less than an assault on His purity, His moral dignity, and His manhood, as the veil of modesty and privacy are forcibly ripped from Him. Jesus is stripped of His clothes - but robed in glory.
"The glory of God is Man fully alive,” wrote the Second Century Father of the Church, St. Irenaeus. But he was wrong. The glory of God is in a man barely alive, a man who stands naked on the hill called Golgotha . . . a man who stands naked before the world so that His glory might be revealed . . . stripped so that we might be clothed with the righteousness of God. He was laid bare before the world so that we might be covered, inside and out, with the glory of God.
Let us pray . . . St Joseph, oh the tunnel vision some people seem to have, and at times, even me! We think that stripping another only involves the forcible removal of another’s clothing. But on Golgotha, so much more was stripped from Jesus than tunic and loin cloth. He was stripped of everything that the world seems to value. But the one thing they could not strip from him was that He is the Son of God - beloved, one with the Father. I, too, am a Child of God, loved beyond measure, and have infinite worth in His eyes. Help me always to remember that, and to respect my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit . . . a place where the holy, infinite, almighty, all-knowing, ever-present God of love and mercy dwells.
St. Joseph, Most Chaste, pray for us.
