Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum

Over the years, the meditations written for the Stations of the Cross led by the Holy Father have given rise to some excellent spiritual reflections. They have sometimes taken advantage of the freedom that goes with a devotional practice and perhaps not restricted themselves to the traditional stations; and they vary in style from author to author. It is, each year, a remarkable encounter of faith and culture in the heart of Rome.

This year's meditations have been written by a group of young people, and can be found on the website of the Holy See here, along with an explanation of how they came to be written. I have yet to pray them fully, but they do look to be well written and a testimony to the faith of the young people who have written them.

Pope Benedict XVI: Fifth Sunday of Lent

Reflecting on the Gospel story of the resurrection of Lazarus, Pope Benedict XVI writes in his Message for Lent 2011 (the added emphasis is mine, and does not appear in the original):

On the fifth Sunday, when the resurrection of Lazarus is proclaimed, we are faced with the ultimate mystery of our existence: “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?” (Jn 11: 25-26). For the Christian community, it is the moment to place with sincerity – together with Martha – all of our hopes in Jesus of Nazareth: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world” (Jn 11: 27). Communion with Christ in this life prepares us to overcome the barrier of death, so that we may live eternally with him. Faith in the resurrection of the dead and hope in eternal life open our eyes to the ultimate meaning of our existence: God created men and women for resurrection and life, and this truth gives an authentic and definitive meaning to human history, to the personal and social lives of men and women, to culture, politics and the economy. Without the light of faith, the entire universe finishes shut within a tomb devoid of any future, any hope.

An item reported by Independent Catholic News earlier this week, London: Irish Stations of the Cross in Holy Week, has been prompting my thinking (again, my emphasis added):

The Irish Chaplaincy in Britain (ICB) will lead a special Stations of the Cross with a social justice theme during Holy Week at Our Lady of Help for Christians' Catholic church in Kentish Town, north London on Monday 18 April at 7pm.

A fussy comment, in which there is some truth, would be to say that the idea of a "theme" for a celebration of the Stations of the Cross is contradictory - by definition, the "theme" of such a celebration is the crucifixion and death (and, in some places, the resurrection) of Jesus. So a mind set which seeks to insert into a celebration of the Stations of the Cross a theme "from the outside", a theme that does not arise from within the nature of the Stations of the Cross itself, is an inauthentic mind set. The language of the Independent Catholic News report is written as if this is the type of mind set involved - though that may not in fact be the reality of what the Irish Chaplaincy are in fact doing.

Less fussily, the Stations of the Cross has in recent years shown itself to be a devotion capable of a quite lively and powerful renewal in the life of the Church. It is an example of a tradtional (in the best sense) devotion being given a new life through a genuine updating. One can think of the meditations written for the annual Way of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome each Good Friday, the celebrations of the Way of the Cross that from a part of World Youth Day and, here in England, Boyce and Stanley's Born for This. This being the case, there is no reason why a set of meditations for the Stations of the Cross should not relate the Stations to their meaning for, or reference to, the contemporary circumstances of those who pray the devotion. That will mean that aspects of "social justice" may be reflected in the meditations.

What has exercised my mind, though, is the danger that the reference to social justice or to any element of relevance to the particular situation of those who pray them in the meditations can express a reduction of how we see the saving work of Jesus carried out in the events that we mark in the Stations of the Cross. There is a danger that the universal work of salvation, of victory over sin and the devil, of victory over my own individual sin to which I can gain access through the Sacraments and life of grace in the Church, is presented just as an action of, for example, "social justice". It is such an action, but it is also more.

The resolution of this danger, at least at the level of theological understanding, appears to me to lie in the principle of analogy, and this is what has been exercising my mind over the last couple of days. The idea of analogy can be approached from the notion of "analogy of being". But Pope Benedict's reflection for the fifth Sunday of Lent suggests rather that it is an "analogy of faith" that provides the correct answer to the question of how the events marked in the Stations of the Cross should be related to the daily experience of those who pray the devotion. [The definitions below aren't particularly Catholic, but give the idea of what is being said here.]

analogy of being (analogia entis)

The theory, especially associated with Thomas Aquinas, that there exists a correspondence or analogy between the created order and God, as a result of the divine creatorship. The idea gives theoretical justification to the practice of drawing conclusions concerning God from the known objects and relationships of the natural order.


analogy of faith (analogia fidei)

The theory, especially associated with Karl Barth, which holds that any correspondence between the created order and God is only established on the basis of the self-revelation of God.

Stations without the figure of Christ?

If we were Buddhists, when we meditate, we would try to empty our minds. But we're Catholics. When we meditate we try to fill our minds with thoughts of Jesus, His life and work, the people around Him, the times in which He lived and what we can glean from that and gain from that and how we can become like that.

This is a remark that Ask Sr Mary Martha makes as part of a post which discusses colouring books of the Stations of the Cross for young children to use during Lent. It followed a previous post, in which Sister wrote about newer forms of the Stations of the Cross that use only Scriptural sources, and the problem that using these newer forms can cause when the parish Church has a lovely set of "traditional stations". Like Sister, I am quite comfortable with the idea of different forms of the stations and, indeed, with their extension into a "stations of the Resurrection" that can be used during the Liturgical season of Easter. Indeed, I have buried away on my hard drive at least one set of Stations of the Cross intended for use during a period of Eucharistic Adoration and a set of Stations of the Resurrection also intended for the same type of use. The way in which the Stations of the Cross are prayed during World Youth Days shows how this "traditional" devotion can be successfully "updated" without losing anything of its original vigour and life.

However, yesterday evening I encountered a "Stations of the Crown of Thorns" at the Anglo-Catholic parish of St Paul's in Goodmayes. Images of some of the stations can be found here and here, though they have now been placed around the Church as would be typical of Stations of the Cross. The Vicar of the parish has written a set of prayers/meditations for each station - a strength of which is the use for some stations of Old Testament passages that would not often be associated with the Stations of the Cross and a weakness of which is that two stations have meditations that reflect the "inclusive" (ie in some respects liberal) nature of the parish.

However, what prompts my reflection is the absence of the figure of Christ himself from the images in the Stations. One station - Jesus dies on the Cross - is represented by the lovely crucifix with figure that was already in place on the East wall of the Church behind the altar, so this is an exception. The absence of a representation of the figure of Christ in the station representing the Eucharistic presence of Jesus (see the first photogaph here) might also be seen as an exception because of the appropriateness of the absence of a bodily representation. The artists responsible for the commission describe it as follows:

In this semi-abstract scheme, Christ is represented solely by the Crown of Thorns..... The additional Station represents the risen Christ in the form of bread and wine and will be located in the Lady Chapel.

The stated intention of the artist is that the Crown of Thorns "represents Christ"; but there remains a sense in which the figure of Christ's body is not represented in the images for the stations. For a religion whose centre is the teaching that Jesus Christ, in his human body, is God-made-man - and therefore God can be artistically represented in human flesh - this raises a first interesting question. Under what circumstances, if any, is it true to the Christian mystery to leave out a representation of the bodily figure of Christ from a work of art that shows his presence? As Ask Sister Mary Martha suggests in the passage quoted above, should we "empty" ourselves of the presence of Christ or should we "fill" ourselves with that presence in a work of Christian art?
 
There is also a second question, which occurs because of the context of a parish whose website includes the description (my italics added):

We are a friendly, multi-ethnic, inclusive congregation, offering a warm welcome to everyone, regardless of their background.

Does avoiding a bodily representation of Christ allow the artist to avoid representing the person of Christ as being male, if not in intention than at least in effect? Such would be to completely re-write the doctrines of the Incarnation and of the Trinity.

World Youth Day: Stations of the Cross

As I write this post, I am watching video coverage of the Stations of the Cross accessible from the Media Player page of the World Youth Day website. [I do love the strap line of the video clip that comes up as you first arrive at the page - "Word Youth Day - the time of your eternal life".] Video clips showing the complete celebration, and a highlights clip, have been posted there. I do recommend that you watch them!

The way the Stations were devised combines some very traditional elements (eg the versicle "We adore you O Christ and we bless you .." at the start of each station) with some very modern elements (the scourging is presented in a way reflective of some contemporary forms of torture, with Jesus hanging from his arms and then upside down). The music is also a mixture of traditional and modern - the Ave Verum at the representation of the Last Supper, a choral piece which includes a refrain "What have we done to you" echoing the Reproaches at the scene depicting Jesus meeting with the women of Jerusalem, and with his Mother. The setting against the backdrop of the Sydney Opera House and docks is very striking. I have not watched it all, but it does look to have been quite something.

I get the impression of a very prayerful event. It really does make you reflect on the nature of a work of art as a reflection and manifestation of what is most deeply of the human spirit.

Extended Days of Eucharistic Adoration: Day 2 continued

I know I am posting this on "Day 3" rather than "Day 2", but in the course of "Day 3" I have recieved rather a lot of appreciation for something that we did on "Day 2".

As part of the Vigil (=a holy hour that lasts more than an hour) on Friday evening, we prayed the Stations of the Cross. While the overarching theme of the three days has been The Eucharist: Gift of God for the Life of the World, each day has had a sub-theme. Like the main theme, these have been drawn from the International Eucharistic Congress, taking place in Quebec, Canada in 1 months time. The sub-theme for Friday was the Passion and Death of Jesus - hence the praying of the Stations of the Cross.

The meditation for each station was constructed as follows:

a short Scripture text, drawn from the Book of Isaiah

a story of a contemporary situation that reflects the meaning of the station

a prayer relating to the contemporary situation, followed by an invocation

a verse of "Were you there when they crucified my Lord", with the words adapted to suit the particular Station.

This structure was intended to allow each station to reflect the overarching theme of Jesus as the Gift of God who gives life to the world today. The contemporary situations included alcohol addiction, an unplanned teenage pregnancy, a young person being offered drugs at night club, domestic violence, a mother whose son had stopped going to Mass, a pupil with a stammer being bullied at school, the killing of Jimmy Mizen (my meditation implictly linked Jimmy's mother's statements about not feeling any anger towards the family of her son's killer to the Virgin Mary receiving Jesus in her arms at the foot of the Cross).

The image below shows the meditation for one of the stations. As you will see, it shows how each meditation was the result of the electronic version of "cut and paste" rather than any original writing on my part.

"Were you there when they stripped Him of His clothes" was the verse sung at the end of this meditation.

One lady who was present has thanked me, saying how many of the meditations were relevant to situations in her own life and family. A catechist from a neighbouring parish has taken a copy of the meditations to use with her confirmation candidates. Another parishioner telephoned me earlier this evening to thank me for "the feast I had laid before them".

The meditation for the 15th Station, the Resurrection of Jesus, will give you some idea of the power of some of the meditations. This meditation was followed by silence, rather than by any singing.

It was quite extraordinary what such a small child could feel and notice, and how we could tell what she felt. It became clearer and clearer what her little soul was going through, and what she had to communicate to us. As her body grew weaker, it became more and more strongly an expression of her soul. That became powerfully clear to us in the hour of her death.

The last few days our child was given to live among us were hard for the human heart to bear, yet extremely great and powerful, filled with promise because of the nearness of Christ.

It was remarkable that each time we interceded for Emmy Maria and gathered ourselves inwardly, the powers of death withdrew, and she revived. Whereas before she lay there apathetic and unresponsive, with half-open eyes, shallow breath, and very weak pulse, she would suddenly open her eyes, look at us, cry, and drink, moving her hands and turning her head when she was gently touched. Sometimes such a transformation came within seconds.

There was a special atmosphere of love in her room. It went out from her and filled the whole house, and united us in special love to each other.

Just before the end our little one opened her eyes wide, wider than they had ever been in her life. Then, with a clear, shining, otherworldly gaze, she looked at both of us for a long time. There was no sorrow and no suffering left in those eyes, but a message from the other world, a message of joy. She could not tell us anything in words, of course, but her eyes bore witness to the heavenly splendour and unspeakable joy there is with Christ.

With this gaze, our dearly beloved child took leave of us. We shall never forget those radiant eyes.

Stations of the Cross and Eucharistic Adoration

I have been intending to post a report on the Stations of the Cross and Eucharistic Adoration held in the parish last Sunday afternoon. This was an activity with the youth organisations of the parish - Beavers and Rainbows (youngest), Cubs and Brownies (younger), Scouts and Guides (young). I guess at about 80 people being there, but was a little disappointed compared to previous years attendance. I shouldn't complain - it was about 80 more people than if we hadn't run the event, and those who took part gained from doing so.

The "youngest" carried the cross in turn, and processed as a group to each station round the Church. The "younger" and "young" groups provided readers for each of the stations. At each station, I introduced the station and read the Scripture passage while the young people read the meditation and prayer. I have a set of words for "Were you there when they crucified my Lord", adapted to each of the stations, and we sang these between each station. The meditations have been edited from those written by (then) Cardinal Ratzinger in 2005, which have a motif of the Way of the Cross leading us to the Eucharist, a motif of Jesus as the grain of wheat that is buried, dies and then rises to new life as food for us all.

At the end of the Stations, Fr Tom processed with the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance, accompanied by candles, to the altar for Adoration. "This is our God, the Servant King" was very powerful as we sang it during the procession. I gave a short catechesis on Adoration (see Pope Benedict in Cologne on proskynesis and adoratio, but I didn't use the words themselves ...) and then we spent a few minutes in silent Adoration. We then received the Lord's blessing in the Eucharist, and finished with a version of the Magnificat.

The young people's participation was excellent, both in following the Stations of the Cross and during the time of silent Adoration. The group leaders had done a very good job in organsing the readers, who read to a very high standard.

After running an event like this, I am always reminded of the value of "devotions" in the life of a parish, and their value particularly in relation to the Liturgy. They provide a wonderful opportunity for catechesis, too. I am also reminded that it is possible to use contemporary Christian music in a way that is reverent and genuinely prayerful - often, in the context of Eucharistic Adoration, such songs gain a depth of meaning that their (evangelical) writers may never have anticipated [thought for a future post: this must have some significance for understanding ecumenism].