Stations of the Cross
Good Friday
The Stations of the Cross is a Good Friday afternoon devotion in which the faithful are led through a series of prayers while "joining" Jesus's journey to his crucifixion by moving prayerfully through a set of images that represents events along the way according to Scripture and tradition.
For at least the past decade, a group of local churches have joined together to do the "Stations" in a public procession in downtown Kirkland. Here is what parish members shared about the Kirkland Stations of the Cross and the more traditional practice.
"I like to participate in the Good Friday Stations of the Cross through the streets of downtown Kirkland. It has been an opportunity to express my faith in a manner that is a little beyond my comfort zone. As we process through downtown Kirkland, people are going about their activities, sometimes oblivious to the person carrying the cross or the ones saying the prayer. I think this must be what it was like for Jesus as he carried his cross." Jeanne Ederer
"The Stations of the Cross put me in touch with the commitment to trust that Jesus had in the Father. It always brings home to me the weight of that gift on us as Christians to do our very, very best to be worthy of that sacrifice and that suffering and that unimaginable humiliation and pain. I can almost not think of that gift without crying.
For me, it’s very much tied up with fine arts, specifically Michelangelo’s Pieta - the sculpture of the Madonna cradling Jesus after he's been taken off the cross, which, when you see it, you go, oh, that's sweet, she's holding her son.
But when you think about it, what it represents is a mother who watched her son be tortured to death hour after hour after hour, being unable to do anything for him as his mother, except to stand there and be a loving face for him to look at when he needed her. And other than that, she was utterly powerless to do anything to help him. And so the moment that he is placed in her arms again is the moment she gets to be his mother again. Grace Vogelzang
Do you have special memories from Holy Week liturgies you want to share? Please email Fr. Michael at rector@stjohnskirkland.org for inclusion in reflections for future Holy Weeks.