Walk into any Catholic church in the area, and glance along the walls at the sides and back of where the congregation sits.
Chances are, you’ll see a familiar sight: the Stations of the Cross, a series of 14 images of Jesus moving from the point where Pontius Pilate condemns him to death (the first station) to the point where he is laid in the tomb (the last station).
This year, visitors to St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican will be treated to a new set of stations created by Swiss artist Manuel Andreas Dürr as part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the basilica. The stations will be displayed in the central nave throughout Lent.
The devotion of the Stations of the Cross, usually prayed during Lent and Holy Week, is nearly universal among parishes, with many offering variations with added music, or living tableaux, or, especially among parishes with large Latino populations, outdoor reenactments of Jesus’ journey from Gethsemane to Calvary.
“Of all the pious exercises connected with the veneration of the Cross, none is more popular among the faithful than the Via Crucis,” according to the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy published by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2001. “… The love of the Christian faithful for this devotion is amply attested by the numerous Via Crucis erected in so many churches, shrines, cloisters, in the countryside, and on mountain pathways where the various stations are very evocative.” (131)
That universality can be traced to the mid-18th century, when Pope Benedict XIV encouraged all parish priests to add stations to their churches in 1742, according to Anne McGowan, an associate professor of liturgy at Catholic Theological Union.
But the history of the devotion goes back centuries before that, braiding together several strands of popular piety from around the world, said McGowan, who began researching stations for a chapter she is contributing to a book on the cross.
Indeed, the Directory of Popular Piety acknowledges the antecedents of the Way of the Cross, or Via Crucis:
“The Via Crucis is a synthesis of various devotions that have arisen since the high middle ages: the pilgrimage to the Holy Land during which the faithful devoutly visit the places associated with the Lord’s Passion; devotion to the three falls of Christ under the weight of the Cross; devotion to ‘the dolorous journey of Christ’ which consisted in processing from one church to another in memory of Christ’s Passion; devotion to the stations of Christ, those places where Christ stopped on his journey to Calvary because obliged to do so by his executioners or exhausted by fatigue, or because moved by compassion to dialogue with those who were present at his Passion.” (132)
For example, the stations include some incidents that are never mentioned in Scripture, such as Veronica wiping the face of Jesus (the sixth station), were included in the Seven Sorrows of Mary, a popular devotion in Germany and the Netherlands, McGowan said.
The earliest iterations began in the generations after the Crusades, which ended in 1270, McGowan said.
“People are going to the Holy Land, and they are bringing back parts of their experience, setting up places that look like what they saw,” McGowan said. “There’s a ‘little Jerusalem’ devotion.”
In 1342, the Franciscans were given custody of Christian sites in the holy land, and the religious community promoted devotion to those sites, including with the addition of a representation of Christ’s journey to his crucifixion to Franciscan chapels and monasteries throughout Europe.
The Franciscans also were the first to refer to the incidents depicted as “stations,” she said, but they were not standardized into the 14 stations Catholics know today.
By the mid-1400s, an English pilgrim named William Wey who had gone to the Holy Land twice writes about 14 stations, but only five of them are included on the current list.
A century later, Carmelite Brother Jan Pascha wrote in Flemish and Dutch priest named Andrichomius both presented 12 stations, corresponding to the first 12 modern stations.
Another century after that, in 1686, Pope Innocent XI granted the Franciscans permission to erect Stations of the Cross in all of their churches, and granted indulgences for those who performed the devotion.
The devotion picked up steam after that, with the 14 stations becoming standardized and permission being granted for them to be erected in all churches, although at first they had to be set up by a Franciscan, until 1742, when they were not only allowed but “encouraged” for all churches.
Felipe Legarretta, a clinical assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago’s Institute of Pastoral Studies, draws a connection to the popularization of Nativity scenes, both living and made with models, around the same time.
Both kinds of devotions, from the beginning and end of Jesus’ earthly life, are connected with the Franciscans.
“It was another way of presenting the Gospels,” Legaretta said. “It connects us to a God who is loving us, forgiving us up the point of giving up his own sinless life for us.”
Birth and death “are things that are very appealing emotionally and we relate to them,” McGowan said. “We celebrate and rejoice at birth and accompany those who are dying and confront our own mortality. What does our life and death mean? What does our life and death mean when it is transformed by the life and death of Jesus Christ, which we are incorporated into by our baptism? How do we encounter the mystery of Chirst and allow it to live in us?”
McGowan said she enjoys reflecting on the stations that include women: Jesus meeting his mother (second station), Veronica, Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem (eighth station).
“There are several, and those moments are passed over quickly in the Scripture, and we don’t sit with them,” she said. “How do we place ourselves in the story and accompany Christ on the way?”