THE BIBLICAL TEXTS FOR THE WAY OF THE CROSS are taken from the Gospel of Luke, and the meditation texts and prayers were composed by Abbot André Louf, a Cistercian monk of strict observance who finished his life in a hermitage after exercising his ministry as Abbot in his community of Notre-Dame of Mont-des-Cats in France for thirty-five years. He was a monk steeped in the Scriptures thanks to the daily practice of lectio divina, an avid reader of the Church Fathers of the first centuries and of the Flemish mystics, a father of monks who was able to accompany his brothers in their spiritual life and in the daily quest for that “one heart and soul” that was characteristic of the apostolic community of Jerusalem. He was, then, a cenobite monk for whom solitude and communion were in constant existential converse: solitude before God and fraternal communion, inner unification and community unity, reducing all to the simplicity of what is essential and to the opening up to the varied expressions of a living faith. This is the daily undertaking of the monk, the dynamic of his stability in the reality of a specific community, the “work of obedience” (Rule of Saint Benedict) by which a return is made to God. The texts of this Way of the Cross are filled with this liberating monastic labor, which is also the labor of every baptized member of the living community of the Church. Jesus is often found alone, sometimes by his free choice, other times because everyone has abandoned him: he is alone in the Mount of Olives, face to face with the Father; he is alone in facing the betrayal of one of his disciples and in the denial of another of their number; he faces the Sanhedrin alone, the judgment of Pilate, the scorn of the soldiers; alone he takes up the weight of the cross; alone he abandons himself totally to the arms of his Father. INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION 8
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