Stations of the Cross

One of my pet peeves is using the imagery or language of a desert for Lent. When I think of a desert, I think of emptiness, dryness, and nothingness. The season of Lent is nothing like that! It is NOT a time of dryness or emptiness; it is a season of renewal and preparation. It is a season of remembrance of what our God and Savior was willing to endure for the love of us!

When we pray the Stations of the Cross, we are strikingly reminded of that journey that Jesus was willing to do. We walk the path that Jesus himself walked. We honor the time in which Pilot condemned Jesus to death, when he picked up His Cross and began His journey to His death. I find this a moving experience, how we solemnly pray as we meditate on these stations. It is quiet, peaceful, painful, prayerful, and moving.

I have had the blessing to be able to have celebrated the Via Dolorosa (way of pain) in Jerusalem, roughly where they happened the first time a number of different times. I remember the first time we prayed it we started at about 4:00 am and it was quiet, peaceful, and prayerful. It was what I expected. I also remember another time that I and a couple of my seminarian friends decided to do the Stations at 3:00 in the afternoon. As we moved along the Via Dolorosa, we went through the old city itself. The shops were open, and the shopkeepers were doing their best to part us from our money, to buy souvenirs. It was crowded and noisy; it was not very prayerful as we were pushing our way through the crowds of people on the streets. I was beginning to get upset because I was trying to pray and I was getting interrupted. Then it hit me… this is exactly what it would have been like the first time it happened. Jesus being pushed through the crowd, people selling things, people yelling and screaming, it would not have been quiet. This is a stark reminder of what Jesus really went through.

I remember a number of years ago at another parish, we had a kindergartner named Jack who went to the Stations a few times, but I will never forget his first experience with them. He was crying and after we were done with them, I was talking to him about it and Jack said that he was crying because the people were so mean to Jesus. Jack understood what the basics of what the Stations of the Cross were about, he understood the pain and suffering that Jesus was willing to go through, he did not yet have the why. The why is love, the love that he had for us and even the people who were mean to him, and when I explained that to Jack, it made him smile.

We often pray the Stations of the Cross in the Lenten season not because they are empty, but because they are full of love. The only emptiness of the Lenten season is the self-emptying of sacrifice that we do, because it is only when we empty ourselves of the sin that we do, that it can be refilled with the goodness and the love that God has that helped him to endure the sacrifice for us. So let us empty ourselves of sin this Lenten season so that we can be filled with God’s goodness in the Easter season.

God bless,
Fr. Ken