Ave Maria Meditations
A double burden is laid on Jesus. First the heavy weight of His Cross, the instrument of His punishment with which His executioners brutally load His shoulders, and secondly, the ignominious burden of our iniquities, which He takes upon Himself in order to expedite them. The latter cross is the more painful; He feels the grief and the shame of it; His face is sorrow, roughly bow down, like that of a man in disgrace, laiden with maledictions and condemned to bear a weight of ignominy.
He blushes at the stigma inflicted on Him by the crimes with which He is covered. But as a great act of reparation is in question and one in which the glory of His Father and our salvation are concerned, He lovingly accepts it all.
It is just, O Jesus, that I should bear the weight and the shame of my sins. Give me a contrite and humble heart, and that interior disposition which the prophet asked of Thee and which Thou has promised not to reject; that appropriating to myself the merits of the adorable Face, I may make amends for the contempt I have shown for Thy law, and the shame my sins have caused Thee.
From the Manual of the Holy Face, Stations of the Cross
