Scourged with whips, and thorn-crowned.

Bear your cross on the way of sorrows.

On these narrow streets your people leer and spit.

"Rome condemns you, Her gods condemn you!"

Stripped naked and bound with rope and iron.

Christendom dies with you on this hill in Judea.

And is reborn - crawling through the Calvary filth like flies on carrion.

Tetha malkuthak - your kingdom come.

Son of Mary, we share the cup of struggle and betrayal.

For your beloved of Earth revile me.

They tear the flesh of my palms in deposition.

And excoriate me without succor at the pillar of your church.

Their baleful assurances have become the Via Crucis.

Where my body is bloodied and my frail form broken.

They have paved my path to Golgotha with usury and deceit.

In Heaven as on Earth.

Salvation is famine, and faith - a hateful diadem.

I await revealing beneath a mantle of heavenly silence.

And to silence I shall return.

They raise their nails to my wrists and cast lots for my worth.

In their eyes I am the apostate.

They bring the judgment of Caiaphas and the mockery of Pilate.

They cast their derision - their damnation - as a spear into my side.

And in a lifetime's anguish it is accomplished.