The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-05-01
THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS.


Among the devotional exercises
recommended for the season of Lent,
especially on Fridays and for Holy
Week, is the Way of the Calvary, COM
monty called the Stations of the Cross.
1t has for it's object meditation on the
passion, death and burial of our
Blessed Saviour, as a sovereign means
of grace for the conversion of sinners,
for the stirring up of the tepid and
lukewarm, and for the greater sanctifi-
cation Of the just. Such a form of de-
votion has continued substantially
from the time when our Saviour
assembled into heaven.
We learn, from st. Jerome, writing
in the fourth century, that great num-
bers of pilgrims were wont, from the
very beginning of the Christian
Church, to visit the holy places of
Palestine, out of devotion to the mys-
teres of the life and death of the
Saviour He says that people came
for this purpose even from the ex-
tremities of the earth. Under Julian
the Apostate, st. Cyriacus, patriarch
of Jerusalem, suffered martyrdom
while visiting the holy places" The
flow of pilgrims was steady and ever
increasing with the spread of the faith
There is no doubt that these pill
grims followed additionally the Via
Dolorosa at Jerusalem; for the early
Christians had carefully marked by
secret signs, and had religiously pre-
served and handed down orally to
succeeding generations, the memory
of the very spots most intimately
connected with the last events in the
passion and death of Our Lord, OF
which they had been eye-witnesses.
In the city of Jerusalem, it is on these
very places that the Stations of the
Cross are still performed. Devotion
to the Way of the Cross was intro
duced into Europe by returning pill
grims; and thus many devout souls
were enabled after the descriptions
given to them to visit in spirit those
places sanctified by Our Lords last
DAYS of humiliation on earth, who
could not visit the country in person.
During the Crusades particularly,
when for a century Jerusalem was
held by the soldiers of the Cross, who
had recaptured it from the infidels,
this devotion was daily practised in
the Holy City; and the spiritual Way
of the Cross was extended to every
land.
Mention is made in the Dominican
annals of sanity priest, the Blessed
Alvarez, who, after his return from the
East to his convent at Cordova, in
Spain, built number of little ora
tories, in which he represented, sta
ton by station, the principal events
on Our Lords sad progress up to
Mount Calvary. The spread and i'm
@lnense popularity of this efficacious
and richly indulgenced devotion is
principally due, however, to ST. Fran.
els of Assist and the Franciscan Fa
theirs, who, soon after the foundation
of their Seraphic Order, were intro
duced into the Holy Land, and allowed
to remain there after the Crusaders
had been driven out, and the Saracen!
had reconquered Jerusalem. AS few
people could ever hope to visit these
sacred places, the Franciscans, in or
der to satisfy in some measure thu
piety of Christians, began to erect, il
the year 1912, in all the churches at
tached to the converts of their Order
a series of fourteen images, painted o
sculptured, representing the fourteen
most touching events (some bein'
mentioned in the New Testament, an
others being known only through
tradition) in the Passion of Christ.
These images had each a cross a
the top, and were called Stations,
because in performing the devotion
the faithful used to remain a fey
moments in prayer and meditation be
fore each one of them before passin
on to another. They were arrange
around the inside walls of a church
or on the side of a winding road leaC
ing up to the top of hill or mound
surmounted by a great black eros
called Calvary" In visiting thes
Stations, the faithful accompany i
spirit. their dear Lord in His mos
sacred Passion, and may gain the sam
indulgences as are granted to the pi
grims who perform them in Jerusaler
itself.