Pope Francis himself composed the meditations to be used at the Good Friday service in the Roman Coliseum.
Each year the Roman Pontiff asks someone to compose the text of the meditations on each of the Stations of the Cross. This year the Pope took up the task himself.
The Pope’s meditations—which were made public early on Good Friday—take the form of a series of thoughts addressed to the suffering Jesus. Thus for instance at the First Station (Jesus is Condemned to Death), he says:
Your reaction troubles us, Jesus: at the decisive moment, you choose not to speak; you remain silent. Because the more potent evil is, the more radical is your response. And that response is silence.
At the Third Station (Jesus Falls for the First Time), he writes:
For you know what it means to fall. Your life was a constant descent for our sake: from God to man, from man to slave, from slave to crucifixion and the tomb.
Jesus, you fell again and again beneath the weight of the cross, and so you are at my side whenever I stumble and fall.
In his meditations Pope Francis omits the traditional Ninth Station (Jesus Falls for the Third Time) and instead inserts, at the Eleventh Station, Jesus’ Cry of Abandonment. He writes: “You made even the utmost experience of desolation into a prayer.”