In one of the contemporary Easter songs, we pray with the words: “You come to us despite a closed door, Jesus risen from the dead, with the wounds from the Passion…”
Our church today is like a Cenacle – the upper room where the Eucharist was celebrated for the first time. And we, like the apostles – afraid, seized with fear, are not sure what to do next… We confess: Lord, we have less faith than the apostle Thomas. Let us touch your wounds, so that we fall to our knees and confess: “You are my Lord! You are my God!”.
The wounds of Your hands
I touch the wounds of Your hands, inflicted by the nails with which you were nailed to the cross. Show mercy to our hands and heal them. So often they are clenched and cold. Heal the hands of priests, so that they willingly and patiently absolve, so that they touch with trembling and respect the most sacred forms of Your Body and Blood. Heal the hands of the spouses and parents – let them be tender, ready to embrace and hug their wife, husband, child. Heal the hands of the wealthy to open their hearts with sharing with those who are poor.
The wounds of Your feet
I touch the wounds of Your feet, painfully pierced with nails. Show mercy to our legs and heal them – from laziness, thinking only about ourselves, lack of readiness to serve. Says the Psalmist: “I turn my feet to your admonitions. I hastened without hesitation to keep your command- ments” (Psalm 119:59-60). Our feet so often reluctantly follow the way of Your commandments. Lift us up, heal us from our spiritual paralysis.
The wounds of Your face
I touch the wounds of Your most holy face. “Then they began to spit in Jesus’ face and beat him with their fists. … My back to those who struck Me, and My cheeks to those who tore out My beard” (Matthew 26:67). Jesus was inhumanly disfigured. Show mercy to our faces and heal them. The Word of God speaks with pain about people who have ‘insolent faces’ – they are arrogant, disdainful, haughty, lordly, overbearing, proud and supercilious, rebellious, stubborn people, with a hardened heart rejecting the love of a parent with contempt. A vessel that mocks the potter. No longer on Veronica’s veil, but on our faces, Merciful Lord, leave your face: compassionate, filial love, full of devotion, beautiful face of the Son of Man.
The wounds of Your eyes
I touch the wounds of Your eyes – black, that cried tears of blood. Show mercy to our eyes and heal them. Teach them to see Your presence in the beauty of the created world. The word of God says: “My eyes are weary from looking up” (cf. Is 38:13) and from seeking Your help. And our eyes are tired, but not from “looking up”. Tear them, Lord, from the glass screens of smartphones, computers and televisions. Restore the innocence of seeing – without prejudice, condemnation or judgement. Teach us to see what is the most beautiful in another. Rip from our eyes the lustful cataract of impurity. So many addicted to pornography now have porn-eaten eyes, blinded by impure thoughts and passion. Merciful Lord, who restored sight to the blind, heal, above all, our soul, because the eyes are its mirror.
The wounds of Your head
I touch the wounds of Your head – made by the hard thorns of the crown. Through their excruciating pain, please, show mercy to our mind. We have taken off the “helmet of salvation”, therefore the poison of impiety has infected our thoughts. And yet here is the source of words spoken, decisions made, and actions taken. Conversion, metanoia is a change of heart. Merciful Lord, strengthen in us a persistent desire to seek the truth, so that we do not die like complete fools in the land of falsehood, deceived by the cynical servants of the father of lies, which is Satan.
The wound on Your shoulder
I touch the painful wound on Your shoulder caused by carrying the cross to Golgotha. To one of Your beloved disciples, You said: “I had a wound on my shoulder from carrying the cross. Three fingers deep, with three exposed bones. It caused me more suffering and pain than all the others” [words of the Lord Jesus to St Bernard of Clairvaux]. The least known but at the same time the most painful. O, Lord, through the pain of this wound, show us mercy and free us from selfishness, self-absorption, thinking only about ourselves. Let us hear Your words again, “Bear one another’s burdens”. Be like the good Samaritan. Spread the mantle of Your mercy over our indifference and selfishness. Heal us, Lord.
The wound on Your tongue
I touch the bloody wound on Your tongue, inflicted by a thorn in the mockery of the night of Your capture, and I beg: Heal our tongue, heal our words. How much our curses must hurt You, our dirty jokes, our judgements, gossip, slander. The apostle St James wrote in his letter: “The tongue, however, cannot be bridled by any human being, it is an unstable evil, full of deadly poison. With it we glorify God and with it we curse people, created in the image of God. Blessing and cursing come from the same mouth. It cannot be like that…” Mercy, Lord! Have mercy on us.
The wound of Your side
And finally, Lord, I touch the wound in Your side, the wound of Your heart. As Your beloved disciple wrote in the Gospel: “One of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John, 19:34). You said to Sr Faustina: “From all my wounds, mercy for souls flows like streams, but the wound of my heart is a source of unfathomable mercy, from this source all graces for souls’ flow. I am burning with the flames of pity; I want to pour them over the souls of men. Tell the whole world about my mercy” (Diary 1190).
Heal our disbelief, the coldness of our hearts, the distance with which we treat You. How much it hurts Your heart. You complained: “There are souls who do not trust my goodness and never want to know the sweet familiarity in their own hearts (…) This disbelief in my goodness hurts me the most. If my death has not convinced you of my love, what will convince you? A soul often wounds me mor- tally, no one will comfort me here” (Diary 580).
Lord, in a short time we will receive You in Holy Communion. Say to us the same words as to the Secretary of Mercy, St Faustina: “Now, lay your head on my breast, on my heart, and draw from its strength and power for all your sufferings, because you will not find relief, help or consolation anywhere else. Know that you will suffer much, but not be afraid, I am with you”.
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We come to You, Merciful Lord, for to whom shall we go? You are our hope. We trust in You.
Your wounds are for us the Gate of Mercy. We want to go through it, because if not, one day we will go through the Gate of Your Justice.
We give You our fears, our wounds, our sick guilt, our infirmities. We give You our disbelief, our disappointment and resentment, our aggression and our jealousy. We give all our misery to You, Lord.
We throw the anchor of trust in the sea of Your Mercy and ask: Stand among us, in our heart, in our homes, families, religious communities. Heal our wounds, breathe the Spirit in our hearts, let us experience that we are loved. Show us, Lord, Your Mercy.
Jesus, I trust in You. Amen.
Fr Christopher Poświata CSMA
