Walk into a church. After you find the Blessed Sacrament and genuflect to it, you take a look around. Most likely you will see along the side walls pictures – either woodcarvings or paintings – showing Jesus in several very painful-looking scenes. What do these mean? How and when are they used?
You have come across the Stations of the Cross, a devotion that takes on a particular significance during the season of Lent. A part of Church history for centuries, the Stations were popularized by the Franciscans. Given custody of the holy sites in Jerusalem, they offered as a practice for pious visitors and pilgrims who wished to retrace the final journey of Jesus Christ to Calvary. Later, for those who wanted to pass along the same route but could not make the trip to Jerusalem (either because of expense and distance or because Jerusalem was no longer open due to Muslim occupation), a practice developed that eventually took the form of the fourteen stations currently found in almost every church.
At Visitation Parish, Stations of the Cross are publicly observed twice a week during Lent: the Contemporary Stations are prayed in the Rectory Chapel on Wednesdays at 7PM and the Stations using the St. Alphonsus Liguori method are prayed on Fridays at 4PM in the main Church.