Stations: The Way of the Cross

Several very moving and effective, awakening and profoundly spiritual Ways of the Cross (VIA CRUCIS) have been prepared for our meditation and solace, for our every-Friday reading as lectio divina, for our Peace in Jesus Christ. In particular and for many decades now it seems I have found especially edifying Friar Boff's Way of the Cross--Way of Justice. Nevertheless as a hermeneutic for our own time and place, this present STATIONS written by the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan SJ with terracotta STATIONS by Margaret Parker may do most to enliven our stoney hearts into human flesh, and our dry ritual into the prayer of tears, may best carry us along like Simon of Cyrene along this way, may best show us how and where we flow in picking up our own cross and walking each day. Margaret Parker creates here images reminiscent of Mother Placid Dempsey's Stations in the Little Chapel at regina Laudis Abbey in their stark closely cropped bas-relief yet unlike those carved wood plagues, we here distinguish details which place these STATIONS along the subway stations of Manhattan, the Bowery, Harlem, where Father Daniel Berrigan has served for years in all sorts of ministry to the poor, including in an AIDS hospice. Here we see one image of rows upon rows of hospital beds which could actually be receiving the wasted bodies of AIDS victims. You will want to find a way to enlarge these images to life size, to wall size, in order to enter fully the mystery of each one, the healing through each one's contemplation. You will want to record the blessed and equaly healing words of Father Berrigan, written with broken lines and spaces to indicate when to breathe, where to sob, where we finally have permission and place to weep those tears towards redemption and resurrection. The best we now may do with this small volume is peer closely into it from our choir stall, from our back pew, from our cardboard bench, and to hear the strange sound of our own lips reading these sacred words through passion, suffering, pain, death, consummation and towards redemption. This book is a true sacrament; this little book truly brings the mystery of the Passion into our most familiar urban time and place; this book makes our world sacramental, a sign of the redeeming presence of God's infinite, eternal, merciful and compassionate Love. Compassion. Com-passion. To suffer with. Suffer with Our Lord awhile, and know that He too in His Love suffers with us. See ourselves in His PAssion, Cross, Death and thus come to experience the mystery of the Resurrection. Read this small and humble book; read it every Friday, every Good Friday, that together we may each make it to Resurrection Sunday, that, as Our Holy Father Saint Benedict wrote in the The Holy Rule of Our Most Holy Father Saint Benedict, we may all come together unto Eternal Life! Read this book. And then Read it Again.