During Lent in particular, it is the custom that the devotion of the Stations of the Cross is prayed. At Epiphany, we pray them every Friday at 7pm. These prayers have a long history and developed organically over the course of centuries. When we join in, we not only accompany Our Lord to the Cross and support him with our love, we also accompany all of the Christians of the Church who have trod the same path before us. In the Church there is no such thing as separation by death. The soul is immortal and the saints continue to live; their footsteps quicken the way before us as we follow Jesus wherever he might lead. Most of all, we join with the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was said to visit the scene of her son’s death every day while she was still in Jerusalem.

As early as the 4 ^th century, Christians were making pilgrimages to Jerusalem where they would walk the same path that Jesus did during the events of his Passion. They would see each site, such as the Upper Room, Golgotha, the empty tomb, and stop and pray at each one. At this time, there were no specific prayers, but the pilgrimage was important. When Muslim armies overran Jerusalem, it was no longer safe to visit because Islam was hostile to the Christian faith. A quick aside about this, the abuse of Christian pilgrims and the closing off of holy sites was the impetus for the Crusades. The Crusades were defensive wars to protect Christendom from encroaching Muslim armies who were conquering Christian lands and persecuting the native population. But at the time of the loss of Jerusalem, the crusades were still a long ways off. If Christian pilgrims were not able to actually walk the same path as Our Lord physically, they intended to do so spiritually.

A Way of the Cross devotion developed back in Europe in which the devotees would stop at certain Stations to meditate on a specific event in the Passion narrative. Often these stations would be different churches or shrines around town, so it was a big commitment and required a good bit of walking. To do this today would be impractical because of distance between Churches and cars on the roads, so now each Church has all 14 stations inside. You see ours here at Epiphany along the walls of the nave along the aisles.

The reason for the physical artwork instead of, say closing your eyes and thinking about it, is so that through meditating on the scene, we may be able to better place ourselves in it in our imagination. If not present physically in Jerusalem, at least we can physically recreate it as a help to be there in spirit. In Christian prayer, the imagination plays a vital role. We are told of certain Christian saints who were mystics, such as St. John of the Cross or St Teresa of Avila. By mystic, we mean that they had contemplative experiences of the presence of God. In such a state, they had no need of anything but the pure, divine love. Their prayer had no words or content at all, think of it like gazing into the eyes of your husband or wife. Now, you and I, we will have that contemplative experience when we get to heaven and see God face to face. But my guess is that we don’t have any contemplative mystics here. No, you and I, we need the imagination to play at least some role in our prayers, and this is fairly normal for human beings because we are embodied and we learn through our senses. This is why our Churches are meant to be beautiful, so that through the beauty of the liturgy, the artwork, the building itself, and the music that we are given an insight into the beauty of God himself.

The Stations of the Cross have become so popular because they are able to place us very close, through the imagination, to the scene of Our Lord’s death. We have very specific scenes to mediate upon, we have set prayers to give the mind relief from self consciousness, we walk the path, so we are physically present in the scene. The way in which God works through this is interesting. Through these very human, physical inputs our prayers are strengthened and gathered up into the intellect. After a while, they become comfortable and second nature, almost like saying “I love you” to your spouse as you walk out the door in the morning for work. The prayer becomes more meaningful as it becomes a part of who you are, the very way you think is shaped by it. We see how God draws us up towards our most noble faculties. In the Stations of the Cross, we come to understand this as we imitate Our Lord, who out of Love for us considered his own life to be of lesser worth. What makes us human beings? It is our intellect and our love. Through the Stations, we come to know God better, the sort of sacrifice he is willing to make on our behalf, and we come to love him more, as we count the cost he paid to ransom us from death.

In closing, I should mention that a plenary indulgence is attached to praying the stations. The usual conditions apply to go to mass and make a confession. It is good to be aware of the indulgence so that you may receive it and offer it for a loved one who has died. Again, for a Christian, there is no such thing as separation by death. We continue to care for each other.