Reflection for the month - April

Stations of the Cross

The fourteen stations, to be seen as you move around the church, take us through the final hours of Christ’s passion and death upon the cross. Suffering and dying for our salvation, He carried the burden of our sinfulness for our redemption.

Take a little time to stand before each station and, if you can, place yourself there. Imagine at the first station it is you who is the subject of the story, a sinner, responsible and going to die for your own sinfulness, and in so doing realise the terrifying consequences to follow which will end in your own death.  Consider the crushing weight of the cross as it is dropped across your back, raw from flogging.

Remember how dearly our mothers loved and cared for us, as we see Jesus facing His mother as His walk to Calvary begins.

Jesus fell three times beneath the weight of the cross, how many times do we fall under the temptations to sin? Who is our ‘Simon’ there to help us up and on our way again?

Jesus left the impression of His holy face on Veronica’s towel – what impression will we leave for others to hold in their memories of us?

The women of Jerusalem wept for Jesus. Who might be weeping for us?

The utter indignity and the terrible pain of crucifixion are surely beyond our imagining. How could anyone inflict such treatment on Jesus to the point that He called out asking God if He had been forsaken, yet for all that torment He said, “Father forgive them”. Do we so readily forgive those who offend us?

At the thirteenth station Jesus is taken down from the cross and in the fourteenth laid in the tomb. We are left as would have been his followers, desolated and sorrowing. Thankfully we know, as perhaps they would have hoped, that there is a fifteenth joyful and glorious station – the Resurrection. Dying He destroyed our death, rising He restored our life. Amen.