Welcome to the Catholic podcast. I'm your co-host for this week's episode, Chloe Langer, and I'm joined by my regular co-host, Joe Heshmire of Holy Family School of Faith Institute and the blog Shameless Popery. Both Joe and I work for Holy Family School of Faith and our main thing is inviting adults to become missionary disciples.

We are three weeks sent to Lent and that's just about the halfway mark between Ash Wednesday

and Holy Week. This Lent on the Catholic

podcast we've been meditating on the stations of the cross. Thanks to the wisdom of

Cardinal Rat singer's 2005 stations of the cross meditations, we are digging in deep to what it means to pick up our own

cross and to follow Christ.

So far we've talked about the condemnation of Christ, taking up the cross, and

redemptive Suffering.

This week we're going to be talking about the falls of Christ on his way to Calvary,

as well as our own falls along our way back to the Father's heart.

Before we talk about incorporating these stations into our own lives, let's begin with the

stations of the cross meditations from Cardinal Rat singer.

For this week's episode, we're going to do it a little differently.

For the last two weeks, we've looked at one particular station in greater depth and

we're going to do that this week with the ninth station Jesus falls for the third time.

But to kind of see the full beauty of that, we really have to at least get a little bit of the first and second falls, which are the third station and the seventh station.

This will all make sense when you hear the meditation for the ninth station.

For the first fall, which is the third station, part of the meditation says,

Man has fallen and he continues to fall. Often he becomes a caricature of himself,

no longer the image of God but a mockery of the Creator.

He is not the man who on the way from Jerusalem DeRico

fell among robbers, who stripped him and left him half dead and bleeding beside the road.

...