April 12, 2017
Lenten Devotions – Stations of the Cross

The Stations of the Cross is a Lenten devotion that offers witness to Jesus’ Passion and Death. At each station we use our senses and our imagination to reflect prayerfully upon Jesus’ suffering, Death, and Resurrection, and to simply experience the visual images to reflect on Christ’s love for us.

“The Stations of the Cross (Also called Way of the Cross, Via Crucis, and Via Dolorosa) is a practice that signifies either a series of pictures or tableaux representing certain scenes in the Passion of Christ, each corresponding to a particular incident, or the special form of devotion connected with such representations.  Taken in the former sense, the Stations may be of stone, wood, or metal, sculptured or carved, or they may be merely paintings or engravings. Some Stations are valuable works of art, as those, for instance, in Antwerp cathedral, which have been much copied elsewhere. They are usually arranged at intervals around the walls of a church, though sometimes they are to be found in the open air, especially on roads leading to a church or shrine. Formerly their number varied considerably in different places but fourteen are now the norm of practice.

The First Station: Jesus on the Mount of Olives
The Second Station: Jesus, Betrayed by Judas, Is Arrested
The Third Station: Jesus is Condemned by the Sanhedrin
The Fourth Station: Peter Denies Jesus
The Fifth Station: Jesus is Judged by Pilate
The Sixth Station: Jesus is Scourged and Crowned with Thorns
The Seventh Station: Jesus Takes Up the Cross
The Eighth Station: Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross
The Ninth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
The Tenth Station: Jesus is Crucified
The Eleventh Station: Jesus Promises His Kingdom to the Good Thief
The Twelfth Station: Jesus on the Cross, His Mother, and His Disciple
The Thirteenth Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross
The Fourteenth Station: Jesus is Placed in the Tomb
An Easter Postscript — Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!

The object of the Stations is to help the faithful to make in spirit, as it were, a pilgrimage to the chief scenes of Christ’s sufferings and death, and this has become one of the most popular of Catholic devotions. It is carried out by passing from Station to Station, with certain prayers at each and devout meditation on the various incidents in turn. It is very usual, when the devotion is performed publicly, to sing a stanza of the “Stabat Mater” while passing from one Station to the next. Inasmuch as the Way of the Cross, made in this way, constitutes a miniature pilgrimage to the holy places at Jerusalem, the origin of the devotion may be traced to the Holy Land. The Via Dolorosa at Jerusalem (though not called by that name before the sixteenth century) was reverently marked out from the earliest times and has been the goal of pious pilgrims ever since the days of Constantine.”  (ourcatholicfaith.org, April 5, 2017)

We cannot travel to the Holy Lands this Holy Week, but we can trace and walk the way of the cross. Join us this Wednesday for our service where we walk “The Stations of the Cross.”

Please collect a tube of toothpaste for Trinity’s Table to bring on Easter Sunday morning.

Pastor Dave