Stations of the Cross
What might eye-witnesses have been thinking as Jesus walked the road to Calvary? Read excerpts from Walking the Way of Sorrows by Katerina Katsarka Whitley.
Who wants to dwell in Good Friday? The day that we see Jesus killed, the day when we painfully recognize that we are so often heedless of God in our midst. In the brutality of the cross, we are faced with what we are capable of doing to Goodness. Jesus is crucified. His life on earth is over. Who would want to remain long in the harrowing bleakness that is left in his absence?
Yet in Walking the Way of Sorrows: Stations of the Cross, Katerina Katsarka Whitley and Noyes Capehart show us that when we walk with Jesus on Good Friday, we can learn much about ourselves and each other. “Every now and then we need the shock of entering into the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane and of the Cross,” Whitley writes. “For we all abandon Jesus as Peter and James and John did in order to rest, in order not to feel. We all become indifferent to him as were the passersby on the Via Dolorosa. We all understand something of the cruelty of those who just follow orders in inflicting pain. And we all have practiced injustice.
“But also,” she continues, “we too feel the longing of the woman who wiped his brow, the grief of the lamenting, inconsolable women of Jerusalem, the wonder and awe of the centurion; and we too suddenly recognize the presence of the Holy as Simon of Cyrene did.”
In these excerpts from Walking the Way of Sorrows, we are invited to join with persons from the first century who saw Jesus in his last hours, to enter their world, feel their despair, imagine their thoughts, and pray with them. Some of the Stations of the Cross presented here in monologues, prayers and woodcuts offer a way for us to travel back to Jesus, to witness his love even in suffering. Unlike those who were there on that day, we know the next chapter of the story. We can anticipate the empty tomb— the glory of Christ who defeats death and makes us whole. But first let us dwell in Good Friday and experience for a moment the immensity of God’s love—the steadfast commitment to all God’s children on the day that marks the death of God’s son.
The following is excerpted from Walking the Way of Sorrows: Stations of the Cross by Katerina Katsarka Whitley with Original Art by Noyes Capehart. Used with permission from Church Publishing Inc.
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