These Stations of the Cross - a series of 14 images of Jesus trial, crucifixion and death - are mounted in the Church of St Anne and All Saints South Lambeth. The artist is unknown and the Stations were hung in the church after the restoration caused by wartime damage. We give below a text of scripture relevant to each image and meditiation suggestions. The idea of this devotion is to let the passion of Our Lord impact on our own lives by pondering its implications for what we are, what we think and how we act. So the suggestions below may or may not feel relevant to you. As you pray about the Biblical text, let it speak to you about what is important to you. It is not necessary to do all 14 stations at once. Indeed it is better to do a few, taking time, than to rush through superficially.
It is usual to start each station with:
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeeemed the world.
Also end each station with a prayer, either an articulation of what you have been praying about, or soemthing like the Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me a sinner) or the Trisagion (Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy upon me)
Start the whole with a prayer:
Lamb of God, enter into our hearts and so direct our ways as we prepare to walk the way of the cross and share in your passion, that we may be filled with a true humility and find our delight in you alone, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen
1. Pilate condemns Jesus to death.
Pilate said: 'Shall I crucify your king?' The Chief Priests answered 'We have no king except Caesar.' So at that Pilate handed Jesus over to them to be crucified. (John 19:15-16)
The crowd, who a few short days before had been welcoming Jesus ecsatically, turns against him. They want blood and Pilate is weak. How do I react to the urge to go along with the majority? Do I get caught up in the pressure to condemn others, simply because others are condemning them?
2. Jesus takes up the Cross
They then took charge of Jesus and, carrying his own cross, he went out to the Place of the Skull or, as it is called in Hebrew, Golgotha. (John 19:17)
Without complaint Jesus takes up his cross. Teh burdens and trials of my life pale into insignificance in comparison, yet they can weigh me down. when life seems burdensome, may I have the grace to come to Christ who will make my burden light and give me rest.
3. Jesus falls for the first time
Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God a thing to be exploited but emptied himself taking the form of a servant and becoming as human beings are. Being in every way like a human being, he was humber yet even to accepting death, death on a cross. (Phil 2: 7-8)
He who created the heavens became human for my sake and now lies in the dust. For my sake, he experienced all the pain of this world. How can I ever say an adequate 'thank you' for that?
4 Jesus meets his mother
Love is as strong as death, and passion as fierce as the grave (Song of Songs 8:6)
The pain of a mother seeing her child suffering. Human love reflects divine love. 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son..' (John3:16) Can I let the length breadth height and depth of that love enter into my heart and, like Mary, reveal that love to others?
5. Simon helps Jesus carry the cross
On the way out they came across a man from Cyrene, called Simon, and enlisted him to carry his cross. (Matthew 27:32)
Simon is an outsider, a foreigner, a stranger. So he is easily exploited for this awful task: he is not 'one of us'. It is easy to exploit the foreigner, the stranger in our midst. To treat them as different, treat them badly. Do I, in my life, collude with this exploitation of my fellow human beings?
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
He had no form or charm to attract us, no beauty to win our hearts, he was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sufferin...from who we averted our gaze. (Isaiah 53:2-3)
This took courage for a mere woman in the presence of Roman soldiers, to step forward with this simple act of mercy. May i learn to show such courage and compassion to those in need around me.
7. Jesus falls for the second time
I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up .. and my tongue sticks to my jaws (Psalm 22:14-15)
The flogging, the sleep deprivation and hunger, the weight of the cross, have all made Jesus weak. He stumbles and falls yet he is not angry or complaining. He suffers it in love. How can I reflect the suffering love of Christ in my world?
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
Large numbers of of people followed him, and women too, who mourned and lamented for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, 'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, weep rather for yourselves and for your children.' (Luke 23:27-28)
Grief and mourning is part of life. The women are compassionate. Jesus said 'Blessed are the sorrowful.'. Can i accept that sorrow is part of my life? Can i enter into the sorrow of my grieving brothers and sisters with compassion?
9 Jesus falls for the third time
Ours were the sufferings he was bearing, ours the sorrows he was carrying, while we thougth of him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God (Isaiah 53:4).
Nothing that was happening to Jesus was deserved by him. His is truly innocent suffering, yet he endures all that happens to him. He does he give up. He knows he must continue and struggles to his feet again. My sufferings are nothing but do I always psersevere in doing what is right even when it is hard to endure? Have I the strength of will to keep going?
10. Jesus is stripped of his garments
The soldiers took his clothing and divided it into 4 shares, one for each soldier (John 19:23)
The humiliation as all dignity stripped away with all his clothing. Jesus' clothes were simple and intended just to maintain human decency and even that is denied him now. Yet we use clothing, and personal possessions for much more than that: we can use them to hide who we really are, to put up a pretence of being something we are not. Do I seek to hide behind my possessions, to create a facade that is false? If all my possessions were stripped from me, how would I appear to others?
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross
It was the third hour when they crucified him. The inscription giving the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews'. (Mark 15:25)
12. Jesus dies on the cross
It was now about the 6th hour and the sun's light failed, so that darkness came over the whole land until the 9th hour. The veil of the sanctuary was torn right down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice saying, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.' With these words he breathed his last (Luke 23:44-46)
Jesus, the Way the Truth and the Life, dies like a common criminal. Teh light of the world becomes dark out of love for the world, out of love for us all. Can I believe that Jesus did this out of love for me? That he loves not just all men and women, but me and would die just for me?
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross
Joseph of Arimathaea ... asked Pilate to let him remove the body of Jesus. Pilate gave permission, so they came and took it away. (John19:38)
It must have seemed that all had ended in failure as Mary craddled the tortured corpse of her beloved son in her arms. Yet what appears as failure in human terms will be transformed by God into triumph over death. In our own lives it is often easy to focus on failure, to see the worst in the world around us and not to see the signs of God's coming Kingdom. How can I look on the world positively to see and to encourage the signs of God's kingdom?
14. Jesus is placed in the tomb
They took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, following the Jewish burial custom. At the place where he had been crucifed there was a garden and in this garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been buried. Since it was the Jewish Day of Preparation and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. (John 19:40-42)
The silence of the tomb. The waiting begins. Those mysterious 3 days between the rest of Good Friday, holy Saturday and Sunday morning when our salvation is accomplished. Waiting is not easy, nor is trust. Death seems so final, yet can I trust that death is not the end and that beyond death, new life awaits?