150 Years of St Aloysius’ Church: (10) The Stations of the Cross
It does not take a lot of imagination to realise that everything in our church — all the images and statues, the candles, the altar, etc. — everything points to what is central in our Faith, and that is the Incarnation. Every word preached in our pulpit, the confessions uttered and absolutions granted, the baptisms and marriages, and our funerals too, even the conversations with friends in the forecourt and Café Neri, all are they, all point to, all happen because of that fundamental Truth that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us — and dwells amongst us still in the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle of our church. That is why Christianity is fundamentally different to all other religions — our proclamation is not primarily what God taught, but what God did; that the redemptive work of Christ has fundamentally changed what it is to be human.
And that is what we realise when we mediate upon the Stations of the Cross. Our set of Stations, carved in alabaster by Basil Champneys, came to us from the former convent of the Holy Child Sisters. They are marvellously lit from behind and on cold dark nights they remind us of how Christ is the Light which shines in the darkness, and who cannot be overcome — not even by death. We pray those Stations each Friday in Lent at 17:30, and on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week, we will pray them too at 10:30 each morning.
The Stations provide us with the opportunity to follow Christ from the Judgement Hall of Pilate, through every step of his Passion, until his Body, broken and pierced for us, is laid in the Garden Tomb and all come sorrowfully away. The Stations are based on the path of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem — the path trod by Christ himself to his Cross. Saint Helena, an Essex girl and daughter of old king Cole, is credited with identifying locations in Jerusalem, including the site of the crucifixion and burial, leading to the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She spoke to the Christian community there, learning their traditions and all that they had received concerning the location of the Holy Places.
The precise route of the Via Dolorosa as we know it today was not firmly established until the medieval period when the Franciscans were granted custody of the Christian holy places in Jerusalem and then formalised the devotion associated with the Stations of the Cross. They organized processions and established specific stations along a route that pilgrims could follow, meditating on the sufferings of Christ. But of course, as now, not everybody could go up to Jerusalem, and so the Stations began to be erected in parish churches and other locations, far from Jerusalem, but enabling anyone to follow behind Christ and to meditate on his Passion, wherever in the world they may be.
There is a prayer to Our Lady of Sorrows which captures what we seek in making the Stations of the Cross:
Obtain for us the grace to hate sin,
even as he hated it in the agony in the garden;
to endure wrong and insult with all patience
as he endured them in the judgement hall;
to be meek and humble in all our trials
as he was before his judges;
to love our enemies
even as he loved his murderers, and prayed for them upon the Cross;
and to glorify God and to do good to our neighbour,
even as he did in every mystery of his suffering.