[Fr. Josemaría Guzmán-Domínguez] Looking at Matisse's depiction of, especially the Twelfth Station, The Crucifixion, it shows that he understood that moment to be the culminating and most meaningful one of all the stories in the Stations of the Cross. [Yve-Alain Bois] He [Matisse] always had to start with a model, and so he had a cross, a real cross, and the guy, the model, had to move the cross and have certain gestures. And even for the crucifixion, Matisse had the same model being hung on that cross because he wanted to understand exactly what it was, what was the posture, the muscle, all that. The model, Matisse asked him, why did you suspend yourself like that? And he said, well, that's when he said, well, you know, “it's my religious self.” It's a very, very strange idea, especially when you see all these extraordinary drawings for the crucifixion in charcoal and you see the final result on the mural. It looks like it is a stick figure. It is like why did Matisse have to have this guy pose in a loincloth and be suspended from the cross just to make something that looks like a stick figure? [Fr. Josemaría] From my perspective, Matisse's style in his rendering of the Stations of the Cross is very bare, stark, shocking, and it brings us to the true violence that Jesus suffered in his Passion. It also universalizes the experience of Jesus and makes it possible for us to enter into it with our own experiences of suffering and death.

[Fr. Josemaría Guzmán-Domínguez] The Twelfth Station. This is the culminating moment in Jesus' Passion. As he dies on the cross for love of us, he can redeem all the suffering of the world. Let us pray. Father, into thy hands, I commend my spirit. And into your hands, Jesus Christ, my most merciful redeemer, infinite love. I commend myself in the hour of death, my body and soul, my heart and my mind and my will, all that I have and all that I am. Amen.