Stations of the Cross

In honor of Good Friday, students came to Vintage today for a special time of music and meditation on the death of Christ. We read and reflected on the “way of the cross” through the fourteen Stations of the Cross. This set of stations are shrines that originated from the earliest of days, when followers of Jesus told the story of his passion, death, and resurrection. Pilgrims came to Jerusalem to see the sites where Jesus once was and to follow in the footsteps of the Lord along the way of the cross. Because it became more difficult or even impossible to visit the holy states, the Stations of the Cross, as we know them today, were created as “replicas” of the sites in villages all over Europe. Shrines were placed along the routes, which became the set of 14 stations we now know and were placed in almost every Catholic Church and many other churches in the world. Praying through the Stations of the Cross is a powerful way to contemplate, and enter into, the mystery of Jesus’ gift of himself to us. It isn’t an intellectual exercise, but an imaginative one. It allows Jesus to touch our hearts deeply by showing the depth of his love. This prayer leads us to both gratitude and a sense of solidarity with all our brothers and sisters.

To go through the fourteen stations yourself, click on the link

-Caroline Parsley, UVa '14