“Pray without ceasing” is that spirit of practicing God’s presence wherever we go, especially during this season of Lent when we seek to conform ourselves to the Passion of Our Savior.  At first glance, “conforming” may seem like an odd idea.  Didn’t Jesus die for us?  Why is it important for us to be identified with the Cross?  Because remember that it was most pivotally at Calvary that Jesus made atonement for us sinners.  Many have chosen to express it this way: AT-ONE-MENT.  Jesus became one with us by suffering and dying as a Man, but even more importantly, He made us one again with God through His Precious Blood.  In other words, Jesus reconciled us with the Father through the Cross.

For this great redemptive wonder, no devotion is more important in the Christian experience than uniting ourselves with Jesus’ Sacrifice—it “makes us one with Him” so we can draw close to God.  This is why St. Paul declares in Galatians 2: “I am crucified with Christ.”  He knew that life had new meaning.  No longer for Christians are we to live to gain stature and success in the world, as most people do.  We cannot be “at one” with God and the world; we have to choose.  St. Paul is saying that we must die with Jesus to sin and the world so that we might be forever joined to God.

This is the remarkable commitment that Stations of the Cross allows to realize and express.  Spiritually-speaking, Stations takes us on a journey—a pilgrimage to the chief scenes of Jesus’ suffering and death through which God forgives us.  By passing from Station to Station, praying and meditating on each incident, we are drawn into the moving pathos and the saving grace of the Passion.  In a sense, we are heeding Jesus’ call to “carry the cross and follow Me.”  We experience His pain, detachment, ridicule.  We feel the sorrow of His Blessed Mother as she witnesses her Son’s shame and torture.  We better appreciate the price of our salvation that Christ paid to bring us into His Father’s Kingdom.  We cannot help but be changed by this encounter with Suffering Love.  Stations should make us thankful—thankful that His painful self-offering pardons us and give us new life.  But Stations also deepens our intimacy with Jesus.  Our relationship with Him is transformed from a sometimes casual acquaintance into a personal solidarity.  We feel a desire, as a life-long goal, to unite with the agony of His Crucifixion so that we can become worthy to enjoy the ecstasy of His Resurrection.   This is what St. Paul meant when he wrote to the Philippians: “That I may know him…and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”  Truly, all suffering in this life is given meaning by becoming one with His—that we might also be one with His glory.

Listed below is each Station and how every one of the fourteen incidents of the Passion help us know and treasure the value of the atonement Christ made for us on his journey down the Via Dolorosa.  Before we begin observing Stations here at Holy Trinity, take some time to mediate on each episode, asking God to help you understand how we as parish can be shaped by suffering with Jesus, and also personally how conforming to Jesus’ suffering this Lent can help you die to the old nature and grow into the new creation that His Passion provides.