From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for the Third Sunday in Lent (Mar 23, 2025)

Parish School of Prayer, Pt 16: The Stations of the Cross

Who doesn’t admire Veronica from the 6th Station of the Cross? These Lenten Fridays, when we pass by her memorial, I have to believe many of us are thinking: “Bravo, sister! Well done!” From there, it’s only a half step to desire to imitate her splendid deed, were it possible. And then another half step towards realizing, “Well, I suppose I could console Christ by showing some compassion towards His disfigured face in that neighbor of mine who is going through X, Y, or Z…” This, in a nutshell, is what it looks like to make the Way of the Cross well.

The Way of the Cross is not about wringing sorry sentiments from our hardened hearts. Were we to make them with that attitude, we need only arrive at the 8th Station to be reminded, via Jesus’ words to the wailing women, that tears without wisdom are of no avail. And as soon as we realize that, we are suddenly praying the Stations well again.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that one makes it past even the 8th Station in a distracted stupor, absentmindedly mouthing the words while minding more the annoying thing our neighbor is doing that holy things depicted in the prayers and pictures before us. But it would take a hard heart indeed, however, for that attitude to survive the 12th Station, which confronts us with the doleful fact of Our Lord’s sorrowful death for our sake… and perhaps our own unfeeling ingratitude for it, too. But to at least acknowledge this would already be the beginning of a prayer, if not a conversion of life.

And if we grumble about “having to do this all again” Friday after Lenten Friday, we have only to approach the 2nd Station (at which Our Lord shoulders His Cross) with an ounce of awareness in order to remember that we haven’t yet done too much to commemorate all that Jesus suffered for us, and that we can indeed embrace the “burden” of a half-hour’s devotion, along with all of the other vexations and afflictions du jour, in order to not follow empty-shouldered on the way of self-giving, trustful love. And by the next station’s first fall, if our afflictions seem too much to bear, we are reminded that the “Lord was pleased to crush Him in infirmity” (Is 53:10), and that it is good for us, who “have not resisted to the point of shedding blood,” (Heb 12:4) to likewise “bear the yoke” and to “put our mouth to the dust,” that we might learn to “wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord,” (Lam 3:25-29) who also knows what it is to be overwhelmed. Everywhere you turn, and even when we try to turn away, the Stations are a springboard to prayer.

When Pope St. Paul VI streamlined the old Raccolta or Enchiridion of Indulgences, he included among the four “everyday” ways of earning a Plenary Indulgence the making of the Way of the Cross in a church or chapel. That means that, in the mind of the Church, the Stations are right up there with Scripture reading, the Rosary, and Eucharistic Adoration as specially incentivized practices of piety. Evidently, this method of prayer is supremely apt for our sanctification. No wonder, since spiritual progress is nothing less than learning to follow in the footsteps of the One “who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal 2:20).

It is especially profitable to ponder the mysteries of Our Lord’s passion and death. There, says St. Thomas of Aquinas, we learn best how much God loves us as we see how God in Christ as “loved us to the extreme” (Jn 13:1); there we behold every virtue exercised by Christ as He “leaves us an example, that we might follow in His footsteps” (cf. 1 Pet 2:21); there, too, we come into vital contact with the Precious Blood by which we are freed from sin and redeemed from death.

The fourteen tableaus of the Stations of the Cross are, therefore, so many portals through which we observe the unfolding of Our Lord’s Passion. And if we pray with them well, they become fourteen windows by which His work of salvation sheds light on our way.

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The Second Sunday in Lent