Stations of the Cross for Our Times
- Bishop O'Dowd High School
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
Today, in the midst of our busy lives, we pause to pray as we reflect on the suffering journey of Christ.
As we accompany Jesus on His journey to Calvary, let us take a moment toremember how difficult that journey was. He carried His cross through the narrow crowded streets of Jerusalem. It was Passover time and so the city was full of people, many of whom mocked, jostled, and took pleasure in watching as Jesus struggled with His heavy burden. The way was often steep.
The journey that Jesus made on that day remains a symbol of Christianity in the world, as it struggles with its own crosses and failures, and the challenges of modern life. The streets of our towns are filled with people who carry their personal crosses, who are bruised, battered, and struggling. Through these Stations of the Cross, Jesus is inviting us to journey with Him and to reflect on His suffering as it continues in the lives of His people. In solidarity with all who suffer, let us pray that we will be open to whatever He wants us to see, hear, and understand.
The First Station: Jesus is Condemned to Die.
Jesus was captured at night, taken away by soldiers, stripped of His garments, interrogated, tortured, crowned with sharp thorns and now handed over to be condemned to death by Pontius Pilate – death on a cross.
Jesus is condemned unjustly by those who did not understand Him and by those who were frightened of what He did and said. Perhaps they sensed that this man could make a difference, that He could turn their world upside down.
Today, we continue to condemn people unjustly. People are condemned because of the color of their skin, their gender, their beliefs, because they are born differently-abled, because they don’t conform to our way of thinking, the list is endless. There are also the people who have been justly condemned, who have been found guilty, served their sentence and asked for forgiveness. Does our society really forgive; really believe that people can change, or do we continue to condemn them over and over again?
Second Station: Jesus Takes Up His Cross
Jesus was led away carrying the cross by Himself. A cross is not just a piece of wood, it is everything that makes life difficult. Jesus carried the crosses of His life without complaint, as a poor person and as an itinerant prophet. In a calm and courageous way, He put up with the threats of the Pharisees and the lack of understanding of His own disciples. In the way that He carried all the burdens of His life but, in particular, the way in which He carries this awful, final burden, He transforms the cross from a symbol of condemnation into one of liberation.There are burdens that we all carry, some are very obvious and others we take great care to hide.
There are the burdens of illness, pain, and being differently-abled, of old age, dependence, and caring for someone who no longer knows who we are. There are the burdens of constant fear, of loneliness, and of isolation. The invitation of Jesus on the cross is to hand over these burdens to Him.
Third Station: Jesus Falls for the First Time
Jesus falls. Here Jesus shows us that being heroic does not mean staying on one’s feet at all costs. Being heroic means getting up again after falling and starting off on the road chosen. Human beings will never resign themselves to stay flat on the ground. Like Jesus, they will get up again, pick up their crosses and keep on searching for a promised land of total liberation.
Like the crowd, we often have only condemnation and rejection for those we see as sinners. We judge them without knowing about their trials, scourging and crowning them with thorns. Do we even suspect the part we might have played in knocking them down? What do we do to help them?
Fourth Station: Jesus Meets His Mother
When Jesus and His mother meet, they just look at each other – words cannot express how they feel. What He saw in His mother’s eyes must have hurt Him more than the raw pain of His wounds. This for Jesus is the most painful time of all. This is His bereavement.
Let us name the crosses of today. We see Mary’s pain in the mothers and fathers who watch their children giving up their life to drugs, addictions, and other issues, in the individuals who suffer violence, and the ongoing threat of violence in their home from a spouse or child. We see Mary’s pain in the child coping with the breakdown of a parent’s marriage, in the couple trying desperately to rebuild their relationship and family anew.
Fifth Station: Simon Helps Jesus
Simon the Cyrene, a stranger in the city, did not know Jesus. But that did not matter. What matters is that in this moment of need Simon was capable of lending his shoulders to one whose own had given out, of offering his strength to one who had nothing left, of taking on himself the cross, which Jesus could no longer carry.
Jesus lies hidden in the unknown crosses of today, beneath every person in need. Across our world, we see human suffering in the faces of strangers, in the faces of those struggling for democracy in the Middle East and beyond, in the faces of those dealing with the loss of life and destruction of property. People we know of, but do not know, must live with the aftermath of the ravages and destructive forces of nature – coping with floods and drought, with the devastating effects of climate change...
Sixth Station: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus
Veronica was so moved by the sight of Jesus suffering that she courageously moved out from the crowd to wipe the blood and sweat from His face with a towel. She was rewarded when the image of His face was transferred to the towel. It is a suffering face, disfigured with wounds. Yet, this is the only image of Himself that Jesus chose to leave with us.
Today, the visible face of Christ, the Church, stands before us still wounded and disfigured; disfigured by its own sins of abuse and power, and creased with the wounds of hurt and betrayal. Bearing the scars of reports of abuse, the face of Christ calls us to look upon and heal the sin of our Church.
Seventh Station: Jesus Falls for the Second Time
Stretched to breaking point by His awful scourging, bowed under the weight of the cross, worn out by the abandonment of all His friends, Jesus stumbles again.
All around us people are overburdened by the crosses they carry; they struggle and sometimes fall. There are those who have lost their jobs and feel that they have little hope of finding another, those who live with the prospect of unemployment, and those who struggle to keep others in work. There are those who suffer because of failures in our financial, healthcare, and political systems. Jesus is with each one of us however we fall and there He chooses to love and save us.
Eighth Station: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem.
The women of Jerusalem wept when they saw how Jesus suffered. Jesus recognized their distress, He broke His silence for the first time, spoke to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children’.
Look at Jesus and listen to His message for us today. Weep for the children who are abused.
Weep for the women who are victimized.
Weep for men and women who suffer from the tyranny of today’s body image that controls their lives and prevents them from feeling lovable.
Weep for the young who cannot find a job or a way in life. Weep for the old who are forgotten.
Weep for people who starve in the shadow of abundance. Weep for people who are homeless, in exile or seeking refuge.
Weep for them.
Ninth Station: Jesus Falls for a Third Time
Jesus falls for a third time, broken and exhausted physically and emotionally. Lying on the ground, Jesus must decide – does He get up once more or does He just stop and give up? We see Him rise again, and with all His power He continues on His journey. Jesus shows us that we can go on, even if nobody else thinks that it is possible.
Many in our world today feel that they are at that moment of final falling, that their burden is too much to carry. They cannot bear any more. Crushed by the weight of their cross they feel unable to get up, unable to go on. Some may look for relief in addiction. Some may look to escape through other unhealthy means.
In Jesus we find our hope and our encouragement. The third fall of Jesus reminds us that even in our moment of complete helplessness, or our experiences of depression, in our own Calvary, we can stand up again. Jesus is with us and Jesus is our strength.
Tenth Station: Jesus is Stripped of His Clothing
As the clothes were ripped from Jesus, He was stripped of His dignity in front of an irreverent mob. Jesus sacrifices everything. He holds nothing of Himself back. Here, on the threshold of death, even more intensely than during His lifetime, He is a being-for-others. He surrenders everything in order to ransom all.
Let us name the crosses of today. Look at Jesus and the absolute indignity inflicted upon Him by society. Jesus continues to be stripped of His dignity in those who have their good name taken from them and the intimate details of their lives exposed through the media. Society takes on the role of judge and jury as we curiously devour the details. Jesus is stripped again when men, women, and children are portrayed as objects in magazines, movies, on television, and the internet.
Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to The Cross.
Huge iron nails are hammered through His wrists and through His ankles. Iron through human flesh, the flesh must yield, there is no defense. Jesus, nailed to the cross, cannot move. The hand that has wiped blindness from the eyes; the hand that opened the seal of deafness, the hand that touched a heart and cured a leper, the hand that blessed children and those with different abilities; the carpenter’s hand is joined to the wood again. As the cross is put in place, He hangs there between us and God, a blood stained victim for love.
Let us name the crosses of today. Jesus continues to be crucified in the ten children who die every minute of hunger in our world. He is crucified in all who are maimed, damaged, and displaced because of war. He is crucified in all who are marginalized in our society because of their race, sexuality, or gender. He is crucified in those who are abused physically, sexually, or emotionally. He is crucified in those who are trafficked across the world. He is crucified in the exploitation of the earth and its resources.
Twelfth Station: Jesus Dies on The Cross
As the life of Jesus ebbs away, His words are not of condemnation or of pity for Himself, but of forgiveness; ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’. In the midst of His anguish and suffering, Jesus calls upon His Father to forgive those who are putting Him to death. This is the real challenge of the cross, forgiveness even of those who hurt us most.
Let us name the crosses of today. There is much to seek forgiveness for in our world today – hunger, poverty, violence, abuse, war, neglect, corruption, the list seems endless. Each one of us praying these stations could continue the list on our own behalf and indeed on behalf of those who have hurt us.
As Jesus dies on Calvary, He challenges us to love our enemies,
to let go of hurt, to ask for forgiveness,
and when we cannot find it in our hearts to forgive,
to ask God to do it for us.
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
Thirteenth Station: Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross
Now Mary takes the broken body of her Son in her arms. In her grief, she remembers the words of her Son, over the bread, ‘this is my body, broken, for you,’ and over the wine, ‘this is my blood poured out for you.’ She remembers that little baby in Bethlehem worshiped by shepherds and kings. She remembers the days when the crowds followed Him and she is full of sorrow.
Mary’s grief is our grief too. As Mary cradles the lifeless body of her Son and offers Him back to the Father, she stands with all parents who have held their children close to them in death:
those lost through accidents or acts of violence
and those who died suddenly or after illness.
Mary grieves with all who sorrow for loved ones: parents, siblings, family members, friends.
Fourteenth Station: Jesus is Laid in The Tomb
That night, His body lay in the dark earth of the world, a seed dying, in the winter of all spirits. All those who had loved Him felt emptied and exhausted. There seemed no longer any sense or purpose in anything. But at least no more harm could come to Him. They closed the tomb and left.
There are times when we are overcome by the darkness of the tomb, by the countless deaths that we experience each day, but the answer to all our grieving and despair lies in this place. The world is now the tabernacle of God. The grain of wheat sown in darkness and in death has indeed yielded a rich harvest. Our presence here gives witness to that. Jesus’ death was not in vain.