THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS : INTRODUCTION

Assume briefly, that you have heard nothing -or very little- about the Christian message and have entered a Church. What do you see?  

All that  imposes on you will be visible signs of sufferings and death. For instance, right ahead inside the Church you see the sculpture of a dead man on a cross. On her walls are lined portraits and paintings of vivid suffering, and in some you have actual graves of men literally buried. Without looking hard and far, the Church is simply a personification of sorrow and death.

Look hard and far enough, and by grace you can discover at the other end of the Church, across to the periphery, something upon which the Church, the world and the entire Civilisation is sustained: It is a Living Bread! This Bread is not made cheap, it comes from the Mass, which itself is an experiential death. It takes the death of God to be sustained in the Tabernacle.

True life can be discovered through the mystery of death, as personified by the Church. The story of suffering and death lining the Church’s interiors is an unwritten message about the mystery of love and life, and the paradox of death and life, where death is a transition to the eternal life of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the true life of the Church! That is why it is described as the source and summit of the Christian life by the Church (CCC 1324).

To reverse the Fall at Eden, we need to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, which is the Eucharist. But effort is required if we are to pass through the gate of Eden where this fruit is grown, because fiery angels with blazing swords have been stationed (Gen 3:24).  Without faith in Jesus the Christ, one can be consumed by the death personified within the Church, a necessary path to the tree of life. This path is the Way of the Cross!

The one lesson to be learnt about life is that without the cross, there can be no crown. One cannot separate love from suffering, freedom from toil, life from death. This is the great life’s Paradox.

How then can a modern person, filled with doubt, pleasure and sloth, come to term with this difficult rationale of the cross? This shall be my task during this Lenten Season: to journey in writing through the 14 Stations of the Passion of Our Lord from a modern-man perspective, and (hopefully) show the fact that, even in our modern age, the greatest means to freedom is the loving acceptance of Our Lord’s cross.

He invites us not to shoulder any cross but His’ (Mt 11:28-30), because His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. He will help us, He is Love and when we love, there is no suffering because, pain disappears.