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Stations of the Cross

Day, Time & location on the Poster

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All churches

Stations of the Cross
Stations of the Cross

Time & Location

Day, Time & location on the Poster

All churches

About the event

(Also called Stations of the Cross, Via Crucis, and Via Dolorosa). These names are used to signify either a series of pictures or tableaux representing certain scenes in the Passion of Christ, each corresponding to a particular incident, or the special form of devotion connected with such representations.

Taken in the former sense, the Stations may be of stone, wood, or metal, sculptured or carved, or they may be merely paintings or engravings. Some Stations are valuable works of art, as those, for instance, in Antwerp cathedral, which have been much copied elsewhere. They are usually ranged at intervals around the walls of a church, though sometimes they are to be found in the open air, especially on roads leading to a church or shrine. In monasteries they are often placed in the cloisters. The erection and use of the Stations did not become at all general before the end of the seventeenth century, but they are now to be found in almost every church. Formerly their number varied considerably in different places but fourteen are now prescribed by authority. They are as follows:

  • Christ condemned to death ;
  • the cross is laid upon him;
  • His first fall;
  • He meets His Blessed Mother;
  • Simon of  Cyrene is made to bear the cross;
  • Christ's face is wiped by Veronica;
  • His second fall;
  • He meets the women of  Jerusalem ;
  • His third fall;
  • He is stripped of His garments;
  • His crucifixion;
  • His death on the cross;
  • His body is taken down from the cross; and
  • laid in the tomb.

The object of the Stations is to help the faithful to make in spirit, as it were, a pilgrimage to the chief scenes of Christ's sufferings and death, and this has become one of the most popular of  Catholic devotions. It is carried out by passing from Station to Station, with certain  prayers at each and devout meditation on the various incidents in turn. It is very usual, when the devotion is performed publicly, to sing a  stanza of the "Stabat Mater" while passing from one Station to the next.

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