In almost every Catholic church,
you will find fourteen images of Our Lord on His way to Calvary lining the
walls. These images are the Stations of the Cross, commemorating the fourteen
times Our Lord stopped (from the Latin word stare)
during His passion.[1] By
walking from one station to the next, the faithful are asked to meditate on Our
Lord’s suffering and walk with Him on the Way of the Cross. There are many
different versions of the stations, but uniting them there are three common
themes: the stations are made in atonement for sins, in the footsteps of Our
Lord, and in the footsteps of Our Lady.
A Brief History
It
is unclear when exactly the Stations of the Cross began. Tradition holds that
Our Lady was the first to make the Stations of the Cross, visiting every day
the places where her Son suffered and died.[2]
We have for evidence the witness of tradition and the visions of St. Bridget,
but no further historical evidence. What is clear even from historical evidence
is that those holy places were revered and visited from very early on in
Christian history. This is brought out by the fact that Romans had to build a
temple of Venus over Calvary hill to prevent Christians from going there.[3]
The Way of the Cross as we know it began to take shape slowly. It began with
pilgrims in the Middle Ages spending the night in the Church of the Holy
Selpuchre and then tracing back Our Lord’s journey from Calvary to the Pilate’s
praetorium.[4] At some point, the order was reversed so that
pilgrims actually retraced Christ’s footsteps on His way to Calvary. When it
became too dangerous to go to the Holy Land, a sort of virtual Way of the Cross
began to develop in Europe. “Develop” here is a key word, since early Stations
of the Cross vary greatly in regard to what stations they include and how many
they are.[5]
Even when the fourteen stations were settled
on, the text was never set in stone. Many different meditations were written
for the Way of the Cross.
In
this paper I will focus on two paradigmatic versions of the Stations of the
Cross: that of St. Leonard of Port-Maurice and of St. Alphonsus Liguori. St.
Leonard is often called the “apostle of the Stations of the Cross” and it was
due to St. Leonard’s influence that Stations of the Cross became common in
every Catholic Church. [6] Thus
it is his meditations on the Stations and his preaching that most shaped the
theology behind the Stations of the Cross as we know them today.
While
St. Leonard’s Stations are very beautiful, the meditations are long and
intense, more suited to private devotion than for public use in a parish.[7]
Thus the version that is most in use in parishes and the version familiar to
most Catholics is that of St. Alphonsus of Liguori. St. Alphonsus was born in
1696 and died in 1787, just a generation removed from St. Leonard. St.
Alphonsus’ meditations share the same basic theology, but are shorter, meant
for group recitation, has clear phrases that repeat throughout and includes the
Stabat Mater between stations. With that
groundwork laid, I will now go on to discuss the theology of the Stations in
light of these meditations.
In Atonement for Our Sins
Who
killed Jesus? A historically minded person might tell you that the chief
priests and the scribes killed Jesus since they were the ones who accused Him
of blasphemy and handed Him over to Pilate. Others might say that the Romans
killed Jesus since they were the ones to carry out the execution. And yet when
Pilate tells Jesus he has the power to release Him, Jesus responds, “You would
have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.”[8]
The Jews and the Romans had no power over Jesus; they were only allowed to act
as they did because God allowed it for a greater reason. So who really killed
Jesus?
We
killed Jesus by our sins. “Yet it was our pain that he bore, our suffering he
endured…he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the
punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.”[9]
The penalty for sins had to be paid and so Jesus offered Himself as the
sacrificial lamb, paying for each and every one of our sins in His own blood.
His sufferings are ransom for our punishment.
Our sins are the reason He goes to
His death. It is our sins and the
sufferings that we deserve that we
see reflected back at us in Jesus’ sufferings.
This
leads us to the linchpin of the whole theology of the Stations of the Cross: in
following Jesus in His passion, we are the judge who condemns Him and we are
the soldiers who nail Him to the Cross.
My adorable Jesus, /it was not
Pilate; /no, it was my sins that condemned You to die…My most amiable Jesus,
you wish to die for me. And I, with my sins, am that witness who accuses you,
that judge who condemns you. How ungrateful I have been! You have given me
life, and I deliver you to death.[10]
This fact, that in reality it is
not Pilate but I who condemned Jesus
to death, frames the whole meditation on Jesus’ passion. Now when I look on
Jesus’ sufferings, I no longer see a random act of political violence: in those
sufferings, I see my sins in all their ugliness and horror. I no longer see
Roman soldiers crucifying a rebellious Jew; I see myself, crucifying my Lord. “My
beloved Jesus, / it was not the weight of the cross / but the weight of my sins
which made You suffer so much.”[11]
Realizing
this, two things become abundantly clear. Firstly, we see the great depths of
Jesus’ love for us. As Christ Himself says in John’s Gospel, “No one has
greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”[12]
In going to His death, Jesus not only suffers for His friends but for us
sinners, the very people who are nailing Him to that Cross. As St. Paul writes,
“Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps
for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his
love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”[13]
It is impossible to imagine a more unconditional love. Christ loved us so much
that He would go to His death for us, even while we were the ones crucifying Him.
This brings out
the second element: our own ingratitude. Our sins have killed Jesus, who loved
us more than anyone ever can or will, whose death bought us a life that we in
no way deserved nor can ever pay back. That’s
who we killed. Yet knowing this, we continue to sin. We know the price Christ
paid for our sins out of love for us, but we return that love by continuing to
“recrucify”[14]
our beloved savior. How ungrateful we must be if we know this and yet continue
to nail Our Lord to the cross.
My most amiable Jesus, you wish to
die for me. And I, with my sins, am that witness who accuses you, that judge
who condemns you. How ungrateful I have been! You have given me life, and I
deliver you to death.[15]
The person making the Stations
recognizes that they have betrayed the God who has loved them so much as to die
for them. In realizing this, they cannot help but love Him who loved them and
repent of their sins.
Having
recognized the greatness of Christ’s love and our own ingratitude, the Stations
then move us to two ends: first, sorrow for our sins, and then repentance. St.
Leonard begins his Stations with this prayer: “Accompany me with your grace, O
most loving Jesus. Enlighten my mind and soften my heart, so that by meditating
on your most painful voyage to Calvary, I may be filled with sorrow for my
sins.”[16]
St. Leonard is asking for the grace
to be filled with sorrow over Jesus’ passion. Why? Because if we are not filled
with deep grief at seeing what our sins have done to our beloved savior, then
the reality of his love and the horror of our sins has not yet penetrated to
our heart.
Weep then, my heart! Weep not
for your God who goes to his death, but for your sins that bring him there. You
are even cruel to yourself unless you wipe out your sins with such sorrow. Most
precious blood of my sweet Jesus, soften the heart that does not weep;
enlighten the mind that does not know; bend the will that does not obey. Yes,
my Jesus, I’m sorry for my sins, and I’ll be sorry for them as long as I live.
I would rather die a thousand times before committing them again. Strengthen me
by your grace.[17]
Seeing what our sins have done,
we cannot help but weep. We weep over the suffering of Jesus who loved us so
much, but more than that, we weep because we are the cause of His suffering.
And in weeping, we realize the horror of sin and the deep love God has for us
and we choose to repent.
Repentance
is the ultimate goal of the Stations of the Cross. Sorrow for sins is only a
means to that end. Who after realizing everything Jesus suffered for them could
continue on with their life as it is? So long as sin is kept in the dark where
its full effects cannot be seen, the sinner is content to go on with life as
usual, but when sin is brought into the light and all its horribleness is
exposed, this revelation cannot help but move the sinner to a new way of life.
Thus every one of St. Alphonsus’ Stations ends with some form of the following
prayer for repentance: “I love You, Jesus, my Love with all my heart; / I am
sorry that I have offended You. / Never let me offend You again. / Grant that I
may love You always; and then do with me as You will.”[18]
In the Footsteps of Our Lord
How
then do we respond to such love? It is imperative that we repent of sin but
that is not enough. When the rich young man in Mark’s Gospel asks what he must
do to inherit eternal life, he tells Jesus that he keeps all the commandments.
The young man has turned away from mortal sin, but one thing still remains for
him to do. “Jesus, looking at him with, loved him and said to him, ‘You are
lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor…then come,
follow me.’”[19] Turning
away from sin on its own is not an adequate response to Christ’s love. Rather
we must turn our whole life around in in order to follow Christ. But following
Christ means following Him on the way to Calvary. “Whoever wishes to come after
me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”[20]
Thus not only do we meditate on the Christ’s sufferings in the Stations of the
Cross, but we do so in order to imitate
them, to follow in His footsteps as we pick up our own crosses and follow
Him.
In
Theological College, the Fifth Station where Simon of Cyrene is forced to help
Jesus carry His cross shows this call to pick up our crosses beautifully. (See
plate five.) In this depiction, Simon is dressed as an ordinary 19th
century man. His dress does not reflect those of Jesus’ era, showing that we are to play the role of Simon in our
lives as we pick up our cross to follow Him. One can see in the Station that
the roles are not what you would expect. It is not Simon who comforts Jesus as
He helps Him carry His cross, it is Jesus who has His hand on Simon’s
shoulders, consoling him as Simon
bears the Cross. St. Alphonsus prays, “My beloved Jesus / I will not refuse the
cross as Simon did: / I accept it and embrace it. / I accept in particular the
death that is destined for me / with all the pains that may accompany it. / I
unite it to Your death / and I offer it to You.”[21]
The
call to pick up our cross and follow Jesus appears not only in the Fifth
Station but frames the entire Way of the Cross. The faithful, in making the
Stations, literally follow in the footsteps of Jesus walking to Calvary as they
walk from Station to Station. The parallel between Jesus’ Way of the Cross and
our call to follow Him to the cross in our own lives is emphasized further by
the fact that a processional cross is carried from Station to Station. It is
Jesus’ passion we follow in our mediation and it is literally the cross we
follow in making the Stations.
Consequently,
several of the meditations focus on imitating Christ in bearing our own
crosses. In St. Leonard’s meditations, He points out the stark contrast between
the way Jesus carried His cross and the way in which we live our lives as His
disciples. In the Second Station, St. Leonard meditates on how Jesus embraced
His cross as He took it up:
My most loving Jesus, you're
already on the way to Calvary. It's not enough for you to have a crown of
thorns, chains around your waist, scourges, wounds, blood covering your divine
body: you also desire the cross./You embrace it with such meekness, and I, with
such diligence, seek to avoid it. You humbly accept so great a weight upon your
innocent shoulders, and I, full of pride, reject my own lesser cross.
The crosses Jesus offers to us
are much smaller than His own, but we nevertheless reject them, much less
embrace them. Out of love for us, Jesus desired
the Cross. If we are to follow Him, we must also live like Him. Should we
not desire our own crosses out of love for Him? As St. Alphonsus writes, “You
go to die for love of me; /I want, my beloved Redeemer, to die for love
of You.”[22]
St.
Leonard also points out how in carrying His cross, Jesus was patient in
suffering. When Jesus fell the first time, there was no one to help Him.
Instead He was beaten brutally even as He tried to get up. Nevertheless, He was
patient, said nothing and endured His cross. St. Leonard reflects on his own life:
“I am puzzled at myself that, whenever some small evil strikes, I am shaken; at
every offense I am resentful, become angry and complain./My most patient Jesus,
lessen my pride and grant me patience so that, imitating you, I may for my own
good be with you until death.”[23]
Part of picking up our cross and following Him is embracing it, part of
embracing it is refusing to complain as you endure it. In His lifetime Jesus
told us that if we were slapped on one cheek, to turn and offer the other.[24]
This is exactly how Jesus bore His own cross and it is how we are to bear ours.
In the Footsteps of Our Lady
Perhaps
most interesting of all the things I came across in writing this paper, is that
the Stations of the Cross follow not only in the footsteps of Jesus, but also
His mother, Mary. The sufferings of the Son are the suffering of the Mother. Mary,
who loved Jesus with her whole heart, cannot help but be deeply affected by His
Passion. When Simeon prophesied in the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, he
turned to Mary and said, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise
of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself
a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”[25]
Simeon foretells that her son will be a sign of a contradiction, His life will
not peaceful and easy and the sufferings that He will endure will pierce His
mother’s heart as with a sword. Mary knows this from the very beginning of
Jesus’ life and it plays out on Calvary Hill.
Thus
when we come to the Fourth Station, where Jesus meets His Mother, the focus is
not so much on the sufferings of Jesus but on the sufferings of Our Lady.
To my great confusion, it wasn't
enough that I should see Jesus covered with pain and clothed as a sinner; now
his mother also joins him to suffer for my sins! Accursed sins; most painful
encounter; most sorrowful mother! In your agony, I see my wickedness./I know
that, in such a painful encounter, the suffering of the Son is the suffering of
the mother. I know that, if my sins have pierced Jesus' body, they have pierced
your heart, O great virgin. But I also know that Jesus is the source of mercy,
you, the refuge of sinners./Therefore, most merciful mother, I humbly turn to
you with sorrow for my sins. In your kindness, obtain for me from your
suffering Son, Jesus, the pardon of my sins.[26]
What causes Mary’s pain but
seeing her beloved Son bloodied, bruised, rejected and nailed to a cross. And
what caused that to happen but your sins? Your sins have caused not only the
suffering of Jesus, but the suffering of His Mother as well.
How cruel my sinfulness has
been, executioner of the Son, tyrant of the mother’s heart!/Most holy mother,
place a kiss for me upon those wounds, upon that bloody cross. I don’t dare to approach
because sin reminds me of my ingratitude. Sorrowful virgin, intercede for me
that I may be truly sorry for my sins, and may the power of your protection
obtain my repentance, my salvation.[27]
Your sins are the executioner of
Jesus and the tyrant of His Mother’s heart. That is terrible enough. What makes
it worse is that that is your mother
by adoption whose heart you have so cruelly pierced. When Jesus hung on the
Cross, He turned to St. John the Beloved Disciple and Mary His Mother.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he
loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the
disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into
his home.[28]
Tradition holds that St. John here stands in the place of
every Christian. Jesus has given us one of the greatest gifts that He could,
that the love His mother had shown Him would now be given to the whole world.
We became her adopted children. And look what we have done: just as we repaid
Jesus’ love with cruel beatings and insults, so we repay our mother’s love by
killing the one whom she loves most.
How then
do we respond in the face of such cruelty? We walk with Our Lady on the Way to
Calvary and stand with her as St. John did before the Cross. As we walk from
Station to Station, St. Alphonsus has us sing the Stabat Mater. We ask to stand
by Our Lady at the foot the cross, to console her, weep with her, and with her
witness to Christ’s love. “By the cross with thee to stay/There with thee to
weep and pray,/ Is all I ask of thee to give.”[29] We walk
with her and we ask her to pray for us as we meditate on Christ’s Passion.
“Make me feel as thou hast felt;/Make my soul to glow and melt/with the love of
Christ our Lord.”[30] In
light of this, it is not surprising that tradition should hold that Our Lady
was the first to make the Stations of the Cross. She who witnessed the love and
the sufferings of Jesus and participated in those sufferings would know as we
can only hope to learn how sacred were those wounds and those places where He
suffered. By her prayers, we can hope to come to a full realization of the
horror of sin and repent so that we may love Him fully and live with Him
forever.
Conclusion
I wish I
could reflect further on the Stations. The meditations of St. Leonard and St.
Alphonsus are beautiful, as are those by Bl. John Henry Newman, St. Jose Maria
Escriva, Pope Benedict XVI, among others. However the scope of the paper does
not permit it. It has been my goal in this paper to draw out from the Stations
the implicit theology behind that Stations that makes the Stations so moving
and worth making. We make the Stations in atonement for what our sins have done
to Christ. We meditate upon them in order to follow Christ’s example and carry
our Crosses faithfully. And we call on Our Lady, our mother, who prays for us
on Calvary Hill, who calls us to walk with her to her Crucified Son where we
can encounter a more beautiful love than humanity has ever known.
[1] “And
if you would know why we meet therein with so many stations and crosses, each
of which offers us a fresh subject of sorrow, understand that each station
represents one of those hallowed spots where Our Suffering Saviour was obliged
to stay awhile and rest.” Dominic Devas, O.F.M., Life of St. Leonard of
Port-Maurice O.F.M. (1676-1751) (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne LTD.,
1952), 106.
[2] “It
was an idea of the wonderful Heart of Mary, ever Virgin. Yes, it was the most
holy Virgin who first thought of this pious devotion of the Way of the Cross.
She herself practiced it and handed it down to her faithful servants. It is
what she said herself to St. Bridget, ‘Know, my daughter,’ she told her, ‘that
during all the time I lived after the Ascension of my Divine Son, I visited
every day those holy places where He suffered, where He died, and where He
showed forth His mercies.’” Ibid. 106
[3] Herbert
Thurston, S.J., The Stations of the Cross: An Account of their History and
Devotional Purpose (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne LTD., 1914).
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Anthony
Wallenstein, "St. Leonard of Port Maurice and Propagation of Devotion to
the Way of the Cross," Franciscan Studies 12, no. 1 (March 1952): 65,
accessed February 21, 2017, doi:10.1353/frc.1952.0001.
[7]
St. Leonard seems to have envisioned people making the Stations on their own,
since he often assigned his penitents to make the Stations. “He preferred to
assign the Stations to his penitents for their penance, and urged his
companions and all confessors to do so.” Ibid. 57
[8]
John 19:11
[9]
Isaiah 53:4-5
[10] Alphonsus
Liguori, "St. Alphonsus Liguori's Stations of the Cross,"
The-latinmass.com, , accessed April 18, 2017, http://www.the-latinmass.com/id78.html.,
Station 1
[11]
St. Alphonsus, Station 3
[12]
John 15:13
[13]
Romans 5:7-8
[14]
Hebrews 6:6
[15] St.
Leonard of Port-Maurice, O.F.M., "St. Leonard's Way of the Cross,"
OSV Newsweekly, January 1, 2009, , accessed April 18, 2017, https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/Story/TabId/2672/ArtMID/13567/ArticleID/13655/St-Leonards-Way-of-the-Cross.aspx.,
Station 1
[16]
St. Leonard Stations, Opening Prayer
[17]
St. Leonard, Station 8
[18]
St. Alphonsus, Station 7
[19]
Mark 10:21
[20]
Matthew 16:24
[21]
St. Alphonsus, Station 5
[22]
St. Alphonsus Stations, Preparatory Prayers
[23]
St. Leonard, Station 3
[24]
Matthew 5:39
[25]
Luke2:34-35
[26]
St. Leonard, Station 4
[27]
St. Leonard, Station 13
[28]
John 19:26-27
[29] Stabat Mater, found in St. Alphonsus
Liguori’s Stations
[30] Stabat Mater
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