For Christians, the Stations of the Cross represent the path that brought Jesus to Easter morning.
The traditional devotions give the faithful a chance to reflect on 14 Good Friday events that led to the Resurrection being celebrated today.
“For many centuries, only the clergy were educated,” said the Rev. Tom Belleque, pastor at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. “They began to use religious art, whether statues or images, to teach the faith.”
The Stations of the Cross were a result of Christians wanting to go to the Holy Land and walk the way of Jesus, he said. When it became too dangerous or too expensive, “Christians began to create replicas in churches so pilgrims and the faithful could walk the Way of the Cross,” said Belleque (pronounced Bel-ek). “Lent is the time we especially utilize that devotion, typically on Fridays.”
Stations of the Cross
1. Jesus is condemned to death.
2. Jesus carries his cross.
3. Jesus falls the first time.
4. Jesus meets his mother.
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry his cross.
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
7. Jesus falls the second time.
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem.
9. Jesus falls a third time.
10. Jesus’ clothes are taken away.
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross.
12. Jesus dies on the cross.
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross.
14. Jesus is laid in the sepulcher.
While the Stations of the Cross have been standardized, artists have been able to share their personal visions. Two Vancouver churches — St. Luke’s-San Lucas Episcopal Church and the Proto-Cathedral of St. James the Greater — provide quick comparisons for different interpretations of the same scenes.
Meanwhile, St. Joseph Catholic Church takes a much different approach with a live version of the Stations of the Cross. St. Joseph’s youth and choir ministries did a presentation March 18, with Avery Standridge in the role of Jesus.
While the Stations of the Cross tell the same story, the sets of 14 images can have stories of their own. The images at the Proto-Cathedral of St. James the Greater are more than 130 years old. Jacob Dykgraaf, a parish volunteer, figures that they were shipped from Belgium — around the tip of South America — along with the church’s carved wooden altar in the 1880s. That makes the images in St. James a century older than the Stations of the Cross at St. Luke’s-San Lucas Episcopal Church. They were donated in 1986 by the Kellett families. The Rev. Orme Kellett was an associate priest at St. Luke’s from 1985 through 1992, said Pat Lawless, parish archivist.
There is no record of the name of the artist, Lawless said.
The parishioners at St. James don’t know who created their Stations of the Cross, either. But strangely enough, they might know what he looked like.
The first station shows Pontius Pilate condemning Jesus to death. A disembodied face can be seen on a part of Pilate’s chair, next to the left elbow of Jesus. And that, Dykgraaf said, probably is where the artist painted himself into the scene.
