Stations of the Cross

These Internet Stations have been designed to help you walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Some of us have a hard time getting out, so they can provide a wonderful opportunity for us to pray the stations at home. We might gather the family and pray them together, and perhaps even print some copies. Our hope is that they encourage you to go to Church and pray the Stations there too, when you can.

Where did the Stations of the Cross come from? After Jesus died and rose from the dead, many people reflected upon his passion and death. They began to make visits to Jerusalem and walk in Jesus' footsteps. The street Jesus walked is still called Via Dolorosa, the way of pain. People would stop along the way and remember what had happened to Jesus. It is likely that they marked the places for those who came after them to follow as well. These people became known as "pilgrims."

As Christianity spread throughout the know world, distance made it nearly impossible for people to make the trip to Jerusalem. That didn't stop their need to know and remember. By the twelfth century the fervor of the Crusades and a heightened devotion to the Passion of Jesus crated a demand in Europe for representations of the last events in Jesus' life.

When the Franciscans took over the custody of the shrines in the Holy Land in 1342, they saw it as their mission to encourage devotion to these places. In western Europe a series of shrines erected to help the faithful remember Christ's passion became commonplace. They were erected outside Churches and monasteries and in other places as well. For many years there was a considerable variety in the number and title of these "stations."  The current number of fourteen first appeared in the Low Countries in the sixteenth century and became standard in the eighteenth century with a series of papal pronouncements.

The chief promoter of this devotion was the Franciscan Leonard of Port Maurice [died 1751], who set up more than five hundred sets of stations, the best know being the one in the Coliseum of Rome.  Modern liturgists have emphasized that devotion to the Passion is incomplete without reference to the Resurrection and have thus fostered the addition of a "fifteenth station," the Resurrection of Jesus.

The Season of Lent is a natural time for this devotion. As the years passed, many Catholic Churches had the Stations of the Cross along the walls of their worship space. At St. John's, the Stations are represented in the colorful glass windows at the back of our church. "Pilgrims" can come to Church any time, pray and move from station to station. Perhaps tell your children that the Stations of the Cross are like railroad stations because we stop at every one.

The purpose of the Stations of the Cross is to remind us of the effects of sin and the salvation won for us through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. As we meditate on the Stations, we are moved to renounce sin and to accept Jesus as our Savior.

So let's begin our "walk" with an opening prayer...