The Stations of the Cross: How to Pray Them

The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia defines the Way of the Cross as a series of pictures or tableaux of scenes from the Passion, each tied to a particular incident, and also as the form of prayer made before them. ¹ Both senses are still in use. "The stations" can mean the fourteen plaques on the church wall, and "doing the stations" means walking past them and praying.

The devotion is a pilgrimage in miniature. Christians who could not travel to Jerusalem to walk the road Jesus walked to Calvary could walk a version of it in their own church, stopping where the pilgrims stopped. The Church counts it among the pious exercises of popular devotion rather than the liturgy, which means it has no fixed official text and no one is obliged to pray it. ³

The Congregation for Divine Worship calls it the most popular of all the devotions connected with the veneration of the Cross, and a particularly apt one for Lent. ³ Its subject is the same as the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, and people who pray one often find the other easier for it.

The most common time is a Friday evening in Lent. Friday is the day of the week the Church keeps in memory of the Crucifixion, and Lent is the season spent preparing for Easter, so the two fit together. Many parishes schedule the Stations every Friday from Ash Wednesday to Holy Week, often with a soup supper beforehand or after. The dates of Lent for the current year are on the liturgical calendar.

On Good Friday many parishes hold the Stations at midday or in the early afternoon, apart from the afternoon liturgy of the Lord's Passion. In Rome the Pope leads the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on the evening of Good Friday, as John Paul II did in 1991. ⁶ The Colosseum was already a place for the devotion a century ago: the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia describes a public Way of the Cross there every Friday, led by a Franciscan. ¹

Outside Lent the stations stay on the church walls all year, and anyone may pray them at any time the church is open. Some people make them weekly, on Fridays, as a regular practice.

Christians went on pilgrimage to the places of the Passion in Jerusalem from early on. Jerome describes crowds of pilgrims from every country visiting the holy places in his day, but the Catholic Encyclopedia is careful to add that there is no direct evidence of any set form of the devotion that early. ¹ The route through the old city that pilgrims came to follow is known as the Via Dolorosa, the sorrowful way.

In 1342 the guardianship of the holy places was entrusted to the Franciscans. ¹ The word "stations" for the stopping places first appears in the account of an English pilgrim, William Wey, who visited Jerusalem in 1458 and 1462. Until about that time, pilgrims seem to have walked the route backward, starting at Calvary and working back to Pilate's house. ¹

Returning pilgrims built copies at home. The Dominican Blessed Alvarez of Córdoba (died 1420) built a series of small chapels at his friary with scenes of the Passion painted in them, and Blessed Eustochia did the same in her convent at Messina. A well-known set was put up in 1515 by Romanet Bofin at Romans in the Dauphiné. ¹ The number and choice of stations varied a great deal. Wey listed fourteen, but only five match ours; early sets at Nuremberg had seven, known as the Seven Falls; and some accounts from Jerusalem gave nineteen, twenty-five or thirty-seven. A devotional book of 1584 by Christian Adrichomius set out twelve stations that correspond exactly to the first twelve now in use. ¹

The modern form was settled in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1686 Innocent XI allowed the Franciscans to erect stations in all their churches with the indulgences attached to them, and in 1726 Benedict XIII extended the privilege to all the faithful. In 1731 Clement XII permitted indulgenced stations in every church, provided a Franciscan erected them, and fixed the number at fourteen. In 1742 Benedict XIV urged all priests to provide their churches with them. ¹

The great promoter of the devotion in that century was the Franciscan preacher Saint Leonard of Port Maurice (1676–1751). Besides the well-known stations in the Colosseum at Rome, he erected 571 sets across Italy during his parish missions. ² The Congregation for Divine Worship names him as the one who spread the devotion in its present form. ³

The Church's current guidance is in the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2001, at numbers 131 to 135. ³

The Directory describes the Via Crucis as a synthesis of several older devotions that grew up from the high Middle Ages: the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, devotion to the three falls of Christ under the weight of the Cross, devotion to the sorrowful way of Christ, and devotion to the places where he stopped along it. ³ That history explains why the stations mix Gospel scenes with scenes handed down by tradition.

On the form of the devotion, the Directory says that the traditional fourteen stations are to be kept as the typical form, while allowing that one or another station may occasionally be replaced with a reflection on some other part of the Gospel account of the way to Calvary. It notes that alternative forms have been approved by the Apostolic See, and suggests the exercise could close with a commemoration of the Resurrection, since the Passion is not the end of the story. ³

It also gives practical advice about the prayers used. Texts should be close to the biblical narrative and written in a clear, simple style, and hymns, silence, procession and pauses for reflection all help, provided they are kept in balance. ³

These are the traditional fourteen stations in order, with the Gospel passages behind each one. Where a station has no reference, it comes from tradition rather than the Gospels. The titles are worded slightly differently from one prayer book to the next; these follow the form found in older prayer books. ⁴

1. Jesus is condemned to death (Matthew 27:24–26; Mark 15:15; John 19:16)
2. Jesus takes up his cross (John 19:17)
3. Jesus falls the first time (tradition)
4. Jesus meets his mother (tradition)
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross (Matthew 27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26)
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus (tradition)
7. Jesus falls the second time (tradition)
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27–31)
9. Jesus falls the third time (tradition)
10. Jesus is stripped of his garments (Matthew 27:35; John 19:23–24)
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross (Luke 23:33; John 19:18)
12. Jesus dies on the cross (Luke 23:44–46; John 19:28–30)
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross (Luke 23:50–53; John 19:38)
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb (Matthew 27:59–61; John 19:39–42)

Five of the fourteen are not in the Gospels. The three falls are what remains of the older devotion to the Seven Falls of Christ. ¹ The Gospels do place Mary at the foot of the cross (John 19:25), but not meeting her son on the road. The story of Veronica, the woman who wiped Jesus' face with a cloth, is a later tradition, and the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that it does not appear in many of the earlier lists of stations. ¹ The Church has prayed them for centuries all the same.

Some parishes add a fifteenth station for the Resurrection, which the Directory allows for. ³

On Good Friday, March 29, 1991, Pope John Paul II led the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum using a set of fourteen stations taken entirely from the Gospels. ⁵⁶ It begins the night before, in the garden, and leaves out the scenes that come from tradition. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops publishes a version of these stations for parish use, based on the ones celebrated that night. ⁷

These are the stations as given in the 1991 Vatican booklet, with the Gospel passages its readings were drawn from. ⁵

1. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–36)
2. Jesus, betrayed by Judas, is arrested (Mark 14:43–46)
3. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin (Mark 14:55–64)
4. Jesus is denied by Peter (Mark 14:66–72)
5. Jesus is judged by Pilate (Mark 15:1–15)
6. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns (Mark 15:16–19)
7. Jesus takes up his cross (Mark 15:20)
8. Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross (Mark 15:21)
9. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27–31)
10. Jesus is crucified (Mark 15:22–24)
11. Jesus promises his kingdom to the good thief (Luke 23:39–43)
12. Jesus on the cross, his mother and the disciple (John 19:25–27)
13. Jesus dies on the cross (Mark 15:33–37)
14. Jesus is placed in the tomb (Mark 15:42–46)

The 1991 booklet drew most of its readings from Mark, and the same scenes appear in the parallel passages of Matthew, Luke and John. ⁵ Either set of stations can be prayed before the fourteen crosses in a church; the crosses mark the places, and the readings say what happened there.

There is no single required text. The pattern found in old prayer books, and still used in most parishes, goes like this. ⁴

1. Begin with the Sign of the Cross and a short preparatory prayer.
2. Go to the first station. The leader says the versicle and everyone answers with the response.
3. Read or recall what happened at that station: the Gospel passage, a short meditation, or simply the title and a moment of silence.
4. Pray an Our Father and a Hail Mary. Many people add a Glory Be.
5. Move to the next station, often while a verse of the Stabat Mater is sung, and repeat.
6. After the fourteenth station, close with a concluding prayer.

The versicle and response at each station are older than any of the booklets that use them. A Benziger prayer book of 1909 gives them as: "We adore Thee, O Christ, and praise Thee: Because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world." ⁴ Many parishes say "bless" in place of "praise," and some use a modern English version; all are the same prayer. The same 1909 book closes each station with an Our Father and a Hail Mary. ⁴

The verses sung between stations usually come from the Stabat Mater, a medieval Latin hymn on the sorrow of Mary at the cross. A widely used English version is Edward Caswall's of 1849, which begins "At the cross her station keeping, / Stood the mournful Mother weeping, / Close to Jesus to the last." ⁸ One verse is sung as the group walks from each station to the next.

Meditations at each station are where printed versions differ most. You can use the Gospel passage on its own, read slowly, and that is in keeping with the Directory's preference for texts close to the biblical narrative. ³ A useful question at each stop is a plain one: who is near Jesus here, and what are they doing? When praying alone there is no need to rush to the next station. Staying with one scene for ten minutes is a perfectly good way to make the stations.

Since the devotion turns on the cost of sin and the mercy that answers it, many people pair it with confession during Lent, and many end it in front of a crucifix with the Prayer before a Crucifix.

The Stations can be prayed anywhere. At home you might use a crucifix and a printed list of the fourteen stations, a set of small pictures, or simply a Bible open to the Passion narrative in one of the Gospels. Families sometimes give each child a station to read. Some people walk a route through the house or the garden so that the moving from place to place, which is part of the devotion, is still there.

The Church has thought about people who cannot get to a church. The norms for the indulgence, below, say that someone legitimately impeded can gain it by reading and meditating on the Passion and Death of Christ for a while, for example a quarter of an hour. ⁹ That covers the sick, the housebound, those caring for them, and anyone else genuinely unable to go.

The same grant includes those who devoutly join the Way of the Cross when the Pope leads it and it is broadcast on television or radio. ⁹ The Good Friday Stations at the Colosseum are broadcast and streamed each year.

The Church grants a plenary indulgence to the faithful who make the Way of the Cross. The grant is number 13 in the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, the official list of indulgences issued by the Apostolic Penitentiary, in its fourth edition of 1999. ⁹ An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven; it is not forgiveness of sin itself, which comes through contrition and confession.

The grant attaches some norms to making the Stations in a church. ⁹

• The exercise is made before stations of the Way of the Cross that have been legitimately erected.
• Fourteen crosses are required; pictures or images of the scenes are customarily added to them.
• A devout meditation on the Passion and Death of the Lord is enough. One need not meditate on the particular mystery of each station.
• One moves from station to station. When the stations are prayed publicly and it is not practical for everyone to move, it is enough for the person leading to move from one to the next.

As with every plenary indulgence, the usual conditions apply: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, prayer for the intentions of the Pope, and freedom from all attachment to sin, even venial sin. A plenary indulgence can be gained only once a day. ⁹ None of this is required to pray the Stations, and plenty of people pray them for their own sake, without thinking of the indulgence at all.