Listen to a podcast of this blog post here. Stations of the Cross Blog 2021
When you think of Lent, often the first thought is ‘What have you given up!’ From our Lent 2021 post, you now know that fasting is part of a bigger plan of becoming holy.
Hopefully when you think of Lent, you also think of the Stations of the Cross. Prayed especially on Fridays during Lent (but not only then), the stations of the cross go all the way back to Our Lady, the Apostles and the early Christians who visited the various sites of Jesus’ suffering and death in order to pray and meditate on them. (St Alphonsus) 
Over time, people began to travel to the Holy Land to visit them too. As this became more difficult, pictures of each stage of the account of Jesus’ suffering (passion) were set up closer to home so that people could visit the places in their soul without the physical traveling.
Eventually a set of 14 stations of the cross became a standard feature of Catholic church buildings and various sets of prayers have been written to help us to contemplate each one. This enables us to accompany Jesus as he suffers to bring about our salvation.
The stations of the cross are such a powerful prayer that the Church has given a special blessing attached to them called an indulgence. Where confession takes away the eternal consequences of sin, indulgences take away the temporal consequences of sin- making up to God what we have taken through our sins. We can even offer indulgences for others, especially the Holy Souls in purgatory!*
To help you to pray the stations of the cross at home, I have put together a couple of options. (These are always on our Prayer and Discipleship page)
Praying the Stations of the Cross (2) – A guided YouTube version with beautiful music.
If you find these a bit daunting, why not use the images in the PowerPoint to think about that station and just say a Haily Mary or Our Father.
*To gain indulgences we must fulfil the following conditions.
- Pray for the intentions of the Pope (Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be)
- Have a hatred for all our sins and desire to not sin again
- Receive Holy Communion within 8 days
- Go to confession within 8 days
It is not possible to receive Holy Communion when the churches are closed so we just place our trust in God who knows our situation and wants to bless us.
