A ROMAN Catholic priest described his experience of leading the Stations of the Cross. The local Baptist minister was present, and, moved by the service, asked whether the priest could come and lead them for his congregation on the Baptist church. “But you’ll be able to’t call them ‘Stations of the Cross’,” he warned.
“Not an issue,” Fr John replied. “We’ll call them ‘Pictures of the Passion.’” So the Baptists had the Pictures of the Passion, were greatly taken by them, and asked the priest whether he could do them again the next yr.
Call them what you’ll, it’s all the time an intense spiritual experience walking and praying the Stations of the Cross, the Pictures of the Passion, or the Way of the Cross.
Perhaps you may have been to Jerusalem and walked the Via Dolorosa — the Way of Sorrows — and, in a practice going back a whole lot of years, have trodden within the winding footsteps of Jesus, from the place of his trial to the positioning of his crucifixion. More probably, due to expense of travel, or fear of the political volatility of the Holy Land, you may have walked the Stations of the Cross closer to home — in a church, or within the quietness of your heart.
Or, you may have done none of these items, but thoroughly, in your individual lives, and in what you may have to deal with, what it’s to walk the Way of the Cross. Many moms have found the pain of the Stabat Mater reflected in their very own experience: “At the cross her station keeping Stood the mournful mother weeping.”
TRADITIONALLY, there are 14 Stations of the Cross, and there are 4 to which I find myself particularly drawn. The Fifth Station is Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus to hold his cross: a foreigner pressed into service. The Good News Bible accommodates line drawings by the Swiss artist Annie Vallotton, considered one of which — illustrating Galatians 6.2, “Bear each other’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ” — depicts all of the family, young and old, having a share in carrying the load.
When I used to be at theological college, we had a parish mission to a town within the Midlands. I stayed in a terraced house that had seen higher days, with an elderly and struggling lady, Edie. As far as Edie was concerned, she was now not of any use to the church or anybody else: her time was over. Around the corner lived a young single mother with several children. Shunned by the neighbours, each time the burdens of life were too heavy to hold, she would go to see her old Sunday-school teacher, who had known her since she was just a little girl: Edie.
Looking on the Fifth Station reminds us of all those that are called to assist to hold the cross as Christ incognito.
THE Sixth Station is St Veronica wiping the face of Jesus. Canon Frank Wright was a well known priest within the diocese of Manchester. After he retired, I used to fulfill him when he was doing a little work at Granada TV. During the war, Canon Wright had been within the RAF, and his plane had been shot down off the coast of Greece. Rescued from the ocean by German soldiers, he was marched through the streets of a town near by. A young woman, standing on the pavement, ran out and handed him either a cigarette or sweets (recollections varied). This all the time meant an ideal deal to him, and an indication that he was not on his own.
In the Eighties, on the Sunday-morning TV programme Air Time, Canon Wright recalled that story, and a couple of days later received a letter from the girl who had offered that act of kindness. She was visiting her daughter in London, and had watched the programme by which he told their story. What a reunion that they had! And what a daring act of kindness on the a part of that young woman in that occupied town! She might have been shot.
Legend has it that a girl ran out of the group to wipe Jesus’s face as he carried his cross. What must it have been wish to be a bystander on that day? That act of compassion, dangerous and vulnerable, could have cost Veronica her life.
In the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool, there are gleaming bronze Stations of the Cross by Sean Rice, commissioned by Archbishop Derek Worlock shortly before he died. The Station depicting Jesus and Veronica shows Jesus, eyes sunken, exhausted, but Veronica with profound compassion as she tries to assist him as best she will. Her loving presence made all of the difference on the day that Jesus was being marched to his crucifixion.
Sister Barbara June of the Sisters of the Love of God, in Oxford, used to say: “Love is presence.” Looking at that Station is a reminder to succeed in out and stand alongside those that are suffering or alone.
AT SOUTHWELL MINSTER, there are remarkable Stations of the Cross sculpted out of steel by Jonathan Clarke. The Ninth Station is that of Jesus falling for the third time. It looks as if Jesus is being crushed under the load of the cross: driven into the bottom.
Author photoNinth Station: Jesus falls for the third time (Jonathan Clarke; Southwell Minster)
One of the giants of the Church of England within the twentieth century was Owen Chadwick, late Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge. During the war, he was a curate at Huddersfield Parish Church. At the tip of October 1941, there was a devastating factory fire in Huddersfield, by which greater than 50 people lost their lives. Describing it as an extended day, Chadwick wrote: “I spent all of it seeing burned skin and the relatives of corpses, essentially the most miserable and most exhausting day of my life. When ultimately I got home after 11 p.m., dog-tired and empty and wretched, I opened a Bible and located, reluctantly, the lesson for the day.
“And the words [from the Book of Wisdom] leapt out from the page as if they were illuminated, and swept over my being like a metamorphosis, with relief and refreshment: ‘The souls of the righteous are within the hand of God and no torment shall touch them. . . Like gold in the fireplace he put them to the test — and located them acceptable, like burnt-offering upon the altar.’”
Looking on the Ninth Station reminds us to hope, whether for a person, a gaggle of individuals, or a situation; for all those being driven into the bottom, drained, with seemingly the load of the world on their shoulders, feeling that God could be very distant.
INTERESTINGLY, the ultimate Station of the Cross at Southwell — not within the cathedral, but outside (soon to be sited within the gardens of the Archbishop’s Palace there) — isn’t Jesus being laid within the tomb, but, somewhat, the disciples who first encountered the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus. I like that story.
Context in poetry is all the pieces. Rowan Williams’s poem “Emmaus: Christ between” begins with the words:
First the sun, then the shadow,
in order that I screw my eyes to see
my friend’s face, and its lines seem
different, and the voice shakes in the new air.
This poem was first published in a set of essays in honour of Frank Griswold, who had been the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church within the United States. Rowan Williams wrote that walking in the corporate of Christ was what the Church was all about. He asks how, today, we relate to one another within the Church in such a way that we see Christ between us. How can we take heed to the risen Lord Jesus?
Final Station at Southwell Minster: The disciples encounter Christ on the road to Emmaus (Jonathan Clarke; Southwell)
IN THE words of George Mackay Brown, the good Orcadian poet, in his poem Roads: “The road to the kirk Is a road of silences. . .”
It is the pregnant silence of listening and hearing. As in all things, we view the Stations of the Cross through resurrection-tinted spectacles. We keep in mind that the risen Lord Jesus Christ is all the time beside us, and can come to us in essentially the most surprising ways. We will see things in a recent and unexpected light — not least as we recognise something of the risen Christ in others.
In oft-quoted words, Michel Quoist wrote: “The Way of the Cross winds through our towns and cities, our hospitals and factories, and thru our battlefields; it takes the road of poverty and suffering in every form. It is in front of those recent Stations of the Cross that we must stop and meditate and pray to the suffering Christ for strength to like him enough to act.”
We are usually not bystanders, but, somewhat, participants, as we go deeper into the mystery of our salvation and what it’s to be human. The Stations of the Cross are a potentially life-transforming experience and encounter.
We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.
Because by your holy cross you may have redeemed the world.
The Ven. Peter Townley is a house-for-duty Assistant Curate within the Sherburn-in-Elmet Group in York diocese.
