By Sr. Doreen, SSJD
“If anyone wishes to come after me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
(Luke 9:2)
INTRODUCTION:
Every journey through life is a deeply personal and forever unpredictable one. No two of us every do it in quite the same way. However, all of us no matter what our circumstances and beginnings, are at the mercy of change and also indebted to the fragility of time.
What do we do when life seems to unravel, when life doesn’t seem right, when we have a sense of failure, or fear of the unknown? Where do we turn for understanding, for hope? Where is the model of strength we need to stay the course, to find hope? Where are the signs of promise that beckon us beyond the pain to its promising fulfillment?
One of the oldest devotions in Christianity, the Stations of the Cross, is a sign of the universal awareness of the presence of pain in life. It is part of life, necessary to contributing to growth of wisdom and to helping us stretch to the very breadth of our souls and our love. They are statements of faith, compassion, and conviction that lead us to a resurrection time on our journey to fullness of life. In the Stations of the Cross, the Way of the Cross, Jesus’ gift to us is to show us what it means to lose everything in life and still go on to more of it. They are a model of how to live life when our own struggles are unavoidable, and life seems most oppressive, most unfair, most impossible to bear. Knowing that Jesus, too, has gone the way of injustice, fatigue, failure, public rejection and loss before us gives our own present struggles new hope and new light.
Praying with Jesus along the Way of the Cross helps us to look again, to deal with life with fresh and untried capacities, to discover dauntless ways of dealing with pain and coming to wholeness again. They are about finding in the life of Jesus a deeper model of how to deal with the dark places in our lives, how to come to hope and not despair, to courage and not to fear, to an awareness of blessings instead of bitterness.
I invite you during Lent to follow the Way of the Cross, in hopes that it may help us move through Lent on a pilgrimage with Jesus to that fullness of life and hope that we celebrate at Easter. There are fourteen ‘stations’ or stops along the Way of the Cross. At each ‘station’ you stop, pray, read the story, pray the prayer, and contemplate the situation before moving on. As you move from one ‘station’ to the next, this becomes a devotional act, because you are walking with Jesus as He walks to Calvary.
There is a booklet that can be accessed by clicking on the following button, a prayer resource for use during Holy Week – a Prayer Pilgrimage with Jesus. You can print it off in booklet form by printing double sided short edge or read it online. May God bless your Holy Week as we walk the way with Jesus in hope and greet Easter with triumph and joy.
