THE TRADITION OF STATIONS OF THE CROSS
. STATIONS OF THE CROSS - RETHINKING THE TRADITION Iain McKillop
Through 2016 I worked on 25 Stations of Christ’s Passion, a series designed for first exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral during Lent 2017. Although I have portrayed Christ’s Passion more than any other theme in my painting career, This ‘Through Passion’ series took me on a journey in which I more thoroughly reconsidered the Way of the Cross tradition - a path I continue to travel. In form the pictures may not suggest radical rethinking but I studied and contemplated my relationship with Christ through his death and resurrection, how the tradition speaks into and encourages faith and how images communicate to us. I reconsidered the Stations themes, the theology of the Passion, the theology behind painting religious images, styles appropriate to encouraging contemplation, my personal painting techniques and most particularly what each stage of the Passion story means to me. This study records only a fraction of the process of thought involved, but I hope that it will be useful in considering & helping to follow the Stations in meaningful ways.
From my study of theology, ecclesiastical history, art history and my own church background and experience, I was initially suspicious of the ‘Stations of the Cross’ tradition. The themes seemed to combine biblical belief with superstition, invented religious legend and, for a Protestant, uncomfortable old Roman Catholic theology of penance and indulgences. Yet, from the moment I started to paint my first series of Passion paintings nearly 30 years ago I recognised that taking an imaginative, visual, mental, spiritual journey alongside Christ can deepen our faith, especially through increasing our sensitivity to what was brought about through the Passion. I have come to realise that the Way of the Cross provides far more than a liturgical practice of prayer, meditation & worship. It takes us on a journey with Christ where we can recognise aspects of God’s nature, opening our relationship with him. This does not need to be just a Lenten exercise; the Passion is relevant at all times through our personal life-journey and exploration of faith, especially in times of regret, questioning, or when we need to know particularly the reality and love of God for us.
THE TRADITION OF STATIONS OF THE CROSS (in brief)
Appendix 1 follows the historic development of the ‘Way of the Cross’ tradition more fully and systematically. We don’t know for sure when the practice of walking stages of Christ’s Passion began. One dubious legend ascribed its origins to believers following Jesus’ mother Mary’s personal daily practice after his death of following his path to Calvary in tears and prayer. This was first recorded by Felix Fabri in his 1480 account of the Via Dolorosa. It probably stems from the rise of devotion to Mary in the Church. Several early pilgrims to the Holy Land like Egeria (late C4th) mention following a route in Jerusalem as part of the weekly devotions and Holy Week tradition. This was almost certainly not the Via Dolorosa route followed today, though some of the shrine locations date from the C4th. Various pilgrimage routes developed; the present route was marked out in the streets by 1231.
By the 5th Century, for believers unable to journey to Jerusalem but wanting to share the spiritual benefits of recollecting tangibly Christ’s journey of Passion, European religious centres began to set up ‘replicas’ of the pilgrim’s stopping-points on the Way of the Cross. They encouraged the faithful to follow Christ’s journey to his death through prayerful meditation and imagination. Liturgical words and images for these developed. By the 17th Century Stations of the Cross were a feature of most Catholic churches. The 14 subjects for Stations that have now become traditional were regulated in the 18th Century. Prior to that between 7 and 37 stations (occasionally more) were used. My latest series uses 25 Stations but the traditional themes regulated by Pope Clement XII in 1731 are:
1. Jesus is Condemned to Death.
2. The Cross is Laid upon Jesus.
3. Jesus Falls for the First Time.
4. Jesus Meets his Mother.
5. Simon of Cyrene is Forced to Bear the Cross.
6. Jesus’ Face is Wiped by Veronica.
7. Jesus Falls for the Second Time.
8. Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem.
9. Jesus Falls for the Third Time.
10. Jesus is Stripped of His Clothes.
11. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross.
12. Jesus Dies on the Cross.
13. Jesus’ Body is Taken Down from the Cross.
14. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb.
These themes were formulated by Jan van Paesschen, Prior of the Carmelites at Malines. His book The Spiritual Pilgrimage was first published in Louvain in 1563. It follows a year-long pilgrimage of daily contemplations imagining and describing for each day a return journey to the Holy Land, though he had never visited there on pilgrimage. The distances followed on his Way of the Cross are derived from the series of Stations erected in Louvain in 1505, imitating those in Nuremberg.
Devotion to Christ’s Cross, recollecting the benefits achieved through Jesus’ death has always been a feature of Christian prayer and theological understanding. St Francis, like most reformers throughout Church history saw the Cross as central to his understanding of God. As part of his mission he encouraged the re-enactment of the Passion story, just as he popularised tradition of the Christmas Crib. Both were intended to make God’s message vivid in the minds of ordinary believers. There is a missional or evangelistic element in following the Stations. They challenge the viewer to take the Cross and its message seriously as well as encouraging believers to deepen their devotional contemplation and pilgrimage journey of exploring faith. The Franciscans became particularly associated with Stations of the Cross through being granted official guardianship of the sacred sites of the Holy Land and acting as guides to the sites. They developed a working relationship with the Turks who governed the city. The Pope also granted them the exclusive rights to control and dedicate Stations in all churches, a monopoly which held until fairly recently. Passion plays developed in Mediaeval Europe promoting a popular approach to following the stages of the Passion. As well as entertaining on religious festivals, like St. Frances’ tableaux they had an evangelistic purpose, reminding people of central aspects of Christ’s experience, to encourage faith. Stations offered a similar but more personal practice.
Stations may be used at any time of the Church’s year. They are often walked on Fridays in memory of the day on which Christ died. But Lent is the period of the liturgical calendar when they are regarded as particularly appropriate and significant. Lent is not just a ‘penitential season’ in which we give up negative things; we are intended to adopt positive practices that expand us spiritually. With its roots in the northern hemisphere, the title ‘Lent’ seems to refer to the lengthening day [‘Lencten’ = Old English for ‘springtime’/‘lengan’ = ‘become longer’]. It came to relate not just to longer days and plants rising to the warming of earth; we want it to be a time when our souls and spirits are warmed, nourished and grow. Traditional Lenten spiritual disciplines, like following Stations of the Cross, are designed to develop and ‘lengthen’ us, under the light and nourishment of God’s grace and promises.
A tradition of Stations that has persisted longer than their penitential use has been their broader use for contemplative devotion, either as corporate liturgy or individual meditation. Many liturgical or devotional texts have been published to accompany Stations [see Appendix 3]. Most liturgies combine scripture verses, a meditative commentary, a prayer, perhaps a hymn or poetic verse and a response – most commonly the seemingly ancient ‘Adoramus Te’: “We adore you O Christ and we bless you for by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”.
Although commentaries & sermons on the Passion are not mentioned in ancient pilgrim’s accounts of following the Way of the Cross, it is probable that the bishops or priests who led supplemented scripture readings with further thoughts. In late mediaeval times the tradition of exploring the Passion through written meditation expanded exponentially. Feeling close to God through considering Christ’s wounds and what he suffered on our behalf has been a feature of much contemplative writing. The Anglo-Saxon Dream of the Rood imagines Christ’s redemption through the mind of the Cross itself. Christian mystics like Brigitta of Sweden. Margery Kempe and Richard Rolle’s vivid Meditations on the Passion have particularly added to our appreciation of God’s love within Christ as he experienced agony. The reflective exercises of Thomas à Kempis or Ignatius of Loyola’s later Spiritual Exercises encourage similar contemplation.
THE SPIRITUAL PROCESS OF DESIGNING
Creating a series of Stations can be a long, meaningful and challenging imaginative and contemplative exercise. I try to visualise the scene as vividly as possible and imagine I am presence at each stage. The artist imagines, invents and arranges characters to interact with meaningful gestures. I move angle around the scene like a film director to create perspectives that suggest or focus on emotion and faith. I consider the meaning evoked by light, shadow and colour. It is always important to think of those who will view the pictures; this is not just a personal expression of the artist’s feelings and faith, you are trying to encourage true, meaningful faith-responses in others. Although compositions, figures and anatomy are mostly worked out in my sketchbooks before I begin painting, I always make many major changes as I paint: Mistakes, fortuitous accidents. unplanned or instinctive marks may suggest new ideas and permutations of meaning. A detail, gesture or background effect might take on extra-significance or appear symbolic as you think about it or work into it, changing the emphasis of the image. Characters you are attempting to portray change as you feel your way into and form their personalities or try to express their emotions with the brush.
Picasso said rightly that “All art is a lie”. Stations are always ‘untrue’ images in several senses: They are products of imagination and intuition, not portraiture; we cannot reconstruct the historical scene. We’ve no idea what the real biblical characters or places looked like. The best art we can make is a metaphor seeking to represent or unveil important truths. This is an advantage, not a limitation; Faith is not based on what we see. God has communicated and nurtured though believers’ imagination and intuition for centuries: Even our exposition of scripture and doctrines are probably ‘untrue’ in the sense that they go beyond what has been revealed. Theology involves informed guesswork, imagination, experience and intuition which we trust God’s Spirit to inspire and guide, as much as we seek to apply biblical research, reason and historical perspective.
Creating a religious work should never be an ego-trip for an artist; we are artisans not geniuses. One is sincerely trying to introduce viewers to spiritual truth, so, in the words of John the Baptist “Christ must increase; I must decrease” [Jn.3:30]. The quality of what we produce must be the highest we can attain, as befits such important subjects and the significance of the work in expressing faith. In church contexts, the subject of the picture and what it conveys are more important than the picture itself. The artwork is intended as a source and catalyst for spiritual contemplation; preferably it should not demand attention. So art for a church should not be about the fame or skill of the artist, the history or importance of the church, the cultural value church-members feel in using art for spirituality or any similar considerations should be relatively unimportant. The encounter with God is what we should concentrate upon – worship ‘in spirit and in truth’ [Jn.4:23]. I have deliberately attempted to make this new series of images feel understated, even slightly ‘unfinished’ to help viewers regard them as tentative representations, studies to begin to transport our minds into the spiritual realities they represent. These are far from spontaneous images; like Rouault I worked into them repeatedly to try to make them feel spontaneous and express emotion.
EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT WITH THE PASSION CYCLES
Painting is for me a way of contemplating faith. Exploring the Way of the Cross visually made me consider what the Passion may have entailed in terms of suffering and emotion and Christ’s trust in his Father. Faith seeks to appreciate what was achieved through such suffering. A young schoolboy, considering my Crucifixion Station in St. John’s Bury St. Edmunds, asked me searchingly: “Why did Jesus have to die in such a painful way?” The full answer still flaws us. Our most honest reply is surely: “We can’t be certain but we can be sure that if there was any other way that God could have improved the world, God would have used it and saved Jesus the suffering, because he loved him so much.” Yet ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…’ [Jn.3:16]
Stirring emotion, particularly ‘sentiment; is dangerous in religion; it may encourage us to indulge our emotions beyond spiritual truth. Some ecstatic spiritual responses to God seem to approach this danger. Margery Kempe attributed her regular weeping over sin and unworthiness to her experience at the pilgrimage site of Calvary. Her sentiment irritated contemporaries and was repeatedly questioned, yet exonerated, by church-leaders examining her for possible heresy. However many treat their sin too lightly; it does, after all, separate us from God and true ways of life. Many might benefit from allowing themselves to a feel deeper sense of remorse for sin and failure. Journeying alongside Christ in his suffering could encourage self-reflection. We need to balance this with an acceptance that Christ has dealt with our sin and, rather than remaining maudlin, transform regret and penitence into gratitude and worship.
For centuries religious art and some mysticism has sought to evoke emotion. Giotto’s angels weeping in the heavens as they surround Christ on the Cross, Mantegna’s poignant ‘Man of Sorrows’; Bellini’s ‘Christ in Gethsemane’, Guido Reni’s weeping ‘Head of Christ on the Cross’, Michelangelo’s Pietas, Titian’s late ‘Crowning with Thorns’ all manage to capture a sense of truth and just avoid too much sentimentality. A fraction more sentiment and each might have become kitsch. This is a great danger in creating Christian art. True Faith and its expression often involve emotion, but feeling ‘sentiment’ is not ‘faith’, just as feeling ‘guilt’ is not ‘repentance’. If we are designing art, writing poetry, devising liturgical dance, composing religious music, planning a meaningful liturgical service or forming an emotive sermon, we have a responsibility to try to be ‘true’ in spirit, not stir false emotions. It is relatively easy to awaken emotionalism, even tears in Passion images. The Passion story’s intense content encourages us to consider why Christ was suffering, recognise our guilt, need and gratitude and act repentantly in response. Penitence involves making true changes of heart, mind and actions, not just empathetic feeling, grief or sorrow. Artists and clerics have to be careful not to manipulate viewers’ emotions. Though art is able to make people cry as much as to entertain we have a responsibility to make sure that we use art to stir real not false emotions. Any penitential resource needs to have an encounter with God’s truth as its aim. Spiritual growth and holiness, like the Kingdom of God and the true Church cannot be based on falsehood. Though there will always be weaknesses and failings in our practices, we are working towards building faith that is real & true.
If we portray Christ’s suffering or wounds in over-violent or visceral manners (as in Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ or my ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ 2003) we may be ‘truthful’ in representing some of the torture he underwent. But suffering is not the main point of the Crucifixion that a Christian seeks to appreciate. We want to feel the truth of what was happening through Christ’s Passion and death. Our response to the Crucifixion as a Christian image should be able to recognise the presence of love, care, endurance, long-suffering, divine and human sorrow for human sin, forgiveness, regret and penitence, hope, God’s promise of Redemption and resurrection to eternal life. Most especially we want to feel the truth that through this horrific event humanity, particularly the individual or corporate viewers contemplating the image, are promised release from the stain of sin and the freedom of eternal life in the love of God. Following the Way of the Passion can help to sensitise us to this recognition because it progresses through so many aspects of Christ’s journey and his work.
THE THEOLOGY BEHIND THE PASSION CYCLE
Self-sacrifice was the greatest way for Jesus to express God’s love, so representing the Passion may be the greatest subject for any artist to attempt. The strongest challenge for anyone trying to depict or help people consider Christ’s death is to convey the hope and love behind the suffering. This is a story of loving self-sacrifice: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” [Jn.3:16]. Christ’s death was a tragedy and unjust, but its effect on all Creation is sublime and positive.
Christians, especially preachers, sometimes give the exaggerated impression that Christ’s primary reason for coming to earth was to die. In eternal terms the world’s redemption through Christ’s self-sacrifice was probably his greatest achievement. But to over-focus on Jesus death alone may mask Jesus’ message that he came to bring abundant life by uniting people as closely as possible to God [Jn.10:10]. The Stations tradition may have declined today because some contemporary believers prefer their spirituality to consider happier aspects of Jesus’ story and message. But we must not avoid the Cross as an important aspect of our gospel: Jesus told Peter ‘Get behind me Satan’ [Mk.8:33] when he tried to deflect his focus from dying. Jesus’ ‘High-Priestly Prayer’ [Jn.17] and the Gospel accounts of his prayers in Gethsemane show that he realised that self-sacrifice was the only sure way to achieve life for others: “Father take this cup away from me; nevertheless, not my will but yours” [Lk.22:42].
Jesus’ teachings encouraged humanity to change its priorities and live to our full spiritual as well as physical potential. Christ’s Resurrection and the giving of his Spirit at Pentecost opened the way for us to begin to access that new life. But the Cross in the unavoidable seed from which a positive faith can grow. Roger Hilton called the Cross “the door to contemplation”. Helping people interpret the Cross truthfully and holistically is a responsibility of every witnessing Christian and of the artist designing Stations of the Passion. We need to handle and present the substance and message of Salvation responsibly. We aim to help people recognise the love within the self-sacrifice, the glory beyond the degradation, the eternal life offered beyond death. We portray and proclaim not just the tragic death of a young, innocent victim. The Anglo Saxon Dream of the Rood presents Christ as an heroic warrior and his Cross as the glorious hub on which history, the future of the world & humanity’s salvation depends. Luther’s imagery presented Christ as our champion, ‘the proper man’ chosen by God as our mediator. This reflected positive early Christian imagery, which promoted belief in the grace, freedom and peace brought by Christ. Sadly some Churches built their power by keeping people submissive, concentrating on our guilt & penitence, encouraging dependence on the Church’s power to mediate forgiveness. That diminishes the freeing message of the Cross: it is God through Christ who frees us, not church practices.
Various theologians and spiritualities focus on different aspects of the Passion. The Book of Common Prayer, like Calvin’s Institutes, concentrates on atoning sacrifice. Traditionally the Cross was primarily associated with ‘substitutionary atonement’ for human sin. John Stott’s magisterial study ‘The Cross of Christ’ is written largely with this perspective in mind, while showing wider perspectives on Christ’s death. Several contemporary believers and theologians, of varying theological background, react against this emphasis. They argue that the God who Jesus’ described and opened to human understanding, would not cruelly sacrifice an innocent victim, even part of himself. They regard the meaning and process of redemption as broader and more mysterious. When we contemplate a single idea of Christ on the Cross the major focus tends to be on atonement or our empathy with his suffering on our behalf. Perhaps following Stations of the Cross might help us recognise more broadly that sacrifice is not the only (or even the primary) message within the Passion. The Way of the Cross shows Jesus as loving, empathetic, humane, humble, forgiving, prophetic, willing to undergo suffering for others, both strong and fragile, human and godly, longsuffering, holy, servant-like and kingly. He set examples for us to learn from and follow. Historically and culturally Christ’s Cross brought an end to the repeated cruelty of animal sacrifice. Politically the story warns against corruption in political and religious institutions intent on maintaining position or status even if truth is compromised and sacrificed. The Passion demonstrates how humility can be more powerful ultimately than abuse of power, and how the meek, despised or rejected can inherit and redeem the earth. Change can be led by self-sacrificial example. More emotionally, Christ’s suffering demonstrates that God is willing to go as far as Eternal Life and Love can possibly go to bring good to humanity; God’s love for us led to him enduring his own death. The Passion also shows God most fully experiencing the pain & isolation of our human experience.
The narrative provides us with models of faith. Characters who remain faithful contrast with others whose cowardice or weaknesses overpower their professed support & belief. This story understands our humanity and vulnerabilities. Christ is our example for selflessly carrying others’ needs. He is also our model through suggesting alternative responses to our own personal suffering, helping us endure undeserved abuse in response to his Gospel. Stations may be transformational.
Like Eternity, the effects and benefits of the Crucifixion reach beyond the time of Jesus death. The Cross happened once in history but its effects work through time and its relevance spans cultures. One problem of representing Jesus’ Passion in contemporary dress or settings is that, though these suggest the Cross’s relevance to today, particular modern references may distract from the breadth of relevance of the story across time. It can also lead images to become quickly ‘out of fashion’; contemporary references age. Perhaps we do not need to represent the Cross as ‘of today’ since its eternal relevance makes it contemporary enough as a subject.
A major original objective of following the Stations of the Cross has been to help the Christian believer make a spiritual pilgrimage through contemplating Christ’s Passion. We are not directly responsible for the sufferings and insults that Jesus endured, but in retrospect, he was acting on our behalf, recognising and atoning for the past and future sin of humanity, including ours. The pilgrimage journey is a penitential one, recalling the failings in ourselves and our world that led Christ to give himself for us in love. True penitence is expressed in our active response and reparation, not just in sorrow or guilt. Our best response to following Stations would be to transform our lives with the support of Christ’s Spirit. We also need to add a praise element, responding to the Passion through thanksgiving for all Christ achieved and particularly for how he frees and transforms us.
Following the Stations of the Cross is a ‘memorial’ activity. Stations are not ‘sacraments’ in the traditional sense. Following them does not convey particular blessings as sacraments are believed to do (unless one accepts Catholic practices of ‘indulgences’ discussed later). Yet the Way of the Cross can be followed ‘sacramentally’ in the sense that we link our minds, activities and liturgy with the actions of Christ through the Passion. Stations of the Cross can feel close to the Eucharist in aligning our thoughts to the process & meaning of Salvation.
The Roman Catholic Church took this sacramental understanding of Passion theology several steps further in granting plenary indulgences to those who took this memorial journey. When Jerusalem was largely under Muslim control, few European pilgrims felt able to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Those who did were prevented by the authorities from stopping to venerate at outside sites of the Way of the Cross and worship at sacred sites was restricted. The Church therefore transferred the benefits previously conferred on pilgrims to Jerusalem to any who piously followed the Stations of the Cross within their own communities and churches Coming from a Protestant tradition I find the idea of indulgences uncomfortable, being more used to thinking in terms of ‘relying on God’s grace’. I discuss the indulgences tradition more fully at the end of Appendix 2.
Stations raise the question of the place of ‘imagination’ in theology and faith. The traditional 14 Stations subjects are not just based on events recounted or implied in Gospel accounts. They rely on spiritual imagination and inventions in ancient, Mediaeval, Counter-Reformation, 18th & 19th Century and modern times. Despite some fundamentalist teaching that faith should be founded on scripture alone, Christian spirituality has never been solely based on scripture. It involves many other faculties: reason, tradition, experience, imagination, intuition, trust in God’s Spirit’s intervention and guidance, perhaps many more. These can all be involved in forming ‘true’ responses to the message and content of Salvation.
Christ’s Passion contains many theological meanings and interpretations; no single reading can be definitive. So our representation of the story should allow for breadth of exploration and interpretation, not suggest one definitive response. We must remember that any series of images can only be a selective slice out of Christ’s life, which reflected and represented God to human beings.
Further discussion of the theology behind Stations is contained in Appendix 2.
WHAT WE ARE SEEKING TO EVOKE IN CREATING STATIONS?
My partner recently attended an old country-village Methodist Chapel where an elderly, slightly dour small-holder we know was reading the lesson about “the Spirit of God in the world.” After the final verse he solemnly closed the book looked at the congregation and in his broad Suffolk accent glumly pronounced: “I’m afraid I don’t see much of the Spirit of God in this world, or this village!” My challenge to myself as a Christian and as an artist, is to try to find and express the Spirit of God within the sorrows of the Passion story, the promise of Life within Jesus’ death and suffering. In my youth Good Friday was a solemn day: people were quiet, shops closed early; you didn’t do or indulge in certain things: Lenten penitence was ‘writ large!’ Approaches to Good Friday have changed. Some churches have children’s Easter Egg hunts on the day of Jesus’ death, lightening the presentation the story of the Cross to children. Children’s Stations of the Cross are often over-simplistic, with cute, bright naïve figures. The challenge in devising Stations of the Cross is to find a way to present the positive message within the Cross yet treat the Passion with realism, dignity, sorrow that leads to true repentance, assurance of forgiveness and peace. Through the tragedy, injustice and suffering a promise came of renewal and redeemed life, which began to be fulfilled and proclaimed with Christ’s Resurrection.
Walking Stations has been traditionally described as a ‘devotional’ & ‘penitential’ act. Its ultimate goal is meaningful worship of God, rising from appreciation and love for all that was achieved through Christ’s self-sacrifice and the promise in his Resurrection. Inevitably contemplating the Passion will make us realise that we do not deserve such grace and love. Unlike Christ our model, we fail to ‘be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48]. We need regularly to face reality and be open before God about failings. Movement and growth towards holiness recognises what we have been forgiven and the freedom we have in potential. Walking the Stations might help us look forward as well as back to past experiences and feelings.
The Way of the Cross may be contemplated rather like a visual ‘Lectio Divina’. Stations add visual stimuli to the contemplative process, rather than just basing our imagination in the words of scripture (though readings may be part of the liturgy we use). Lectio involves:
· Praying,
· Reading carefully,
· Meditatively analysing what we’ve read and thought,
· Contemplatively internalising this and applying it to inner life and daily life,
· Actively applying what we’ve considered and learned – living it out.
Stations involve:
· Praying – lifting to God our activity of walking, looking and thinking,
· Looking carefully – reading the image and any text we are using,
· Meditatively analysing the content of the images and the thoughts that arise,
· Contemplatively internalising this and applying it to inner life and daily life,
· Actively applying what we’ve considered and leaned – living it out.
Walking the Stations is not primarily an intellectual or art-appreciation exercise, it encourages us to spiritually, emotionally and actively respond to Christ’s activity. We look beyond each image, using it as a door to spiritual perception. In the background of our thoughts will inevitably be our doctrinal understanding of Salvation and what the Cross achieved. Our aesthetic appreciation of the image also needs to remain in the background: The quality and expressiveness of the images will inevitably colour how much we are able to derive from them. The style and approach to the subject may influence what message we take out of them. But we don’t want the art to distract us from our spiritual appreciation of the subject. We are exploring the relevance of Salvation, not touring a gallery.
Images that will stimulate spiritual response vary between viewers. Some respond to simplicity, others to detail; some to naturalism, some to expressionist feeling; some to abstraction, some to figurative representation. Response is not just dependent on individual taste; it also depends on the visual biblical and emotional literacy and spiritual understanding of the viewer. Many today, particularly in the Protestant, Evangelical and Charismatic traditions, need to be taught or more precisely ‘trained’ to read pictures contemplatively because it is not a natural part of their spiritual culture. They more often use images as surface illustration in books or as over-head projections to illustrate talks, not for prayerful contemplation. Protestants have more often trained their faculties to read and analyse scripture rather than visual imagery. Many still treat images with suspicion, as did the early Reformers, who purged them from their worship places. Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic Churches retained visual contemplation as part of their spirituality, but even those who share these traditions may benefit from training in contemplatively reading images, as we train people in Lectio Divina. Such training is not difficult; it could simply involve being led through the Stations, pointing out details and ideas, or (a better educational practice) a leader drawing out the viewers’ responses to the images by encouraging them to analyse and discuss the content, to feel with and identify with the characters and to reflect on the ideas that each picture suggests.
Every artist has an individual style, personal skills and varied approach to their subject matter. But creating art for a church is not just about the artist’s personal expression. Christian artists need to keep in mind what they are communicating to their viewers, because the intention is to awaken responses in others, not just to express the artist’s own.
Congregations are diverse, so often their responses will be broad and varied, sometimes contradictory. Generally you want people to:
· Recognise and read the content,
· Recognise its relevance to them,
· Respond mentally and spiritually,
· Make changes in their lives in response, traditionally associated with ‘repentance’ and turning to follow Christ’s way.
· Awaken appreciation, thanks, love & devotion to God for what he has done,
· Understand a little more of what Salvation entailed,
· Apply salvation to their personal situation,
· Recognise that this content is not just for them, but is relevant and applicable to all around. Too much contemporary spirituality is used primarily for self-satisfaction, or to nurture personal spiritual growth. We mustn’t neglect our evangelistic responsibilities. (The Station tradition for Franciscans seems to have begun with evangelistic as much as devotional aims.)
THE FORM WE CHOOSE FOR STATIONS
Artists have chosen many styles to try to convey meaning and awaken responses. As an art-historian, as well as an artist with broad interests, I see qualities and potential in many styles and approaches. I also use a few different painting styles in my own work. When I devised my new Stations, like Wordsworth starting his Prelude journey, the initial difficulty was to decide which direction to follow and which tradition would most suit my aims.. Form should be ‘appropriate’ to content. This was one of Calvin’s criteria for religious music. Perhaps some visual styles are more ‘appropriate’ to Stations than others. (Surrealist, Fantasy-Art, Photo-Realist/Hyper-Realist styles, I would suggest, may be less appropriate because of their other connotations.)
In the best art ‘form’, ‘function’ and ‘content’ complement each other. Calvin Seerveldt suggested that the most useful Christian art has ‘suggestion-rich allusivity’, a clumsy term but a useful idea: The image should not be too overt or didactic: we grow by our inner involvement, not by being ‘told’; we learn spiritually by a process of ‘formation’. We learn through art when it awakens thoughts by spiritual and mental processes inside us, not when the artist or commentator preaches at us. So the content in a Station image may influence our formation best when it ‘suggests’ rather than dominates or demands a response. We want the images which ‘spark’ interest, engagement of thought and ideas, so God’s Spirit can ignite the process of contemplation.
In the North Choir-aisle of Southwell Minster a series of semi-abstract modernist, aluminium sculptures by Jonathan Clark [1999] aim to enable you to experience physical sensations by touching and feeling the figures, rather like braille. I appreciate the idea, though I personally don’t find them easy to engage with; I do not sense much humanity in these modernist figures though I recognise that others do. The process of ‘involving’ us in Christ’s journey to achieve Salvation is important. When our senses are active our spiritual sensitivity can become alive in response. This needs to be subtle not overt; when our senses are over-activated we are rarely able to concentrate on inner meaning. Rubens’ dynamic masterpieces, for example, are often so full of sense-awakening activity and rich colour that it is hard to concentrate on ‘contemplating’ their meaning. This can also be a danger in liturgy: If you make activities in ‘Fresh Expressions of Church’, ‘Messy Church’ or High Liturgy over-exciting, over-absorbing, or over-aesthetically stimulating, participants can be distracted from learning the inner lessons on which one hopes to focus.
Art communicates in many ways: through subject, form, content, colour, quality of mark, texture, composition, tonality, expression, gesture, narrative, symbolic or metaphoric content, physical and emotive presence or appeal to the viewer’s intellect and reason. It may convey something to the viewer intuitively, perhaps content that the artist never intended. The most meaningful abstract Stations I have experienced were sculptures by Oliver Barratt - a series of interfolding, interweaving metal forms of different textures and surfaces. Some were etched with Passion music others were oxidised and rusty. To me they suggested the movement, internal pain and emotion of Christ. They moved me more than almost any Stations I have yet seen because they sensitised me and spoke of inner spiritual meaning. Jean Lamb also created a vibrant series of large, abstract, linocut Stations, of which I own a set. In these colour, expressive gouges, interacting forms help convey movement and action as well as uniting our sensations and thoughts with those of Christ within the Passion.
The challenge in Abstract Stations is to use communicative qualities of form, texture, light and shade, colour or mark-making to evoke feeling and the sense of progressive narrative or redemptive meaning. Barnet Newman’s cool, hard-edged Stations are mysterious. In one sense they convey almost no narrative content; you walk them and struggle to reason a correlation between title and the image. Occasionally a bar of grey suggests separation, movement or the isolation of Christ in journeying through the process of Salvation. Their content is not meant to be easily apparent; they are mostly about the presence of form tone and shade. But the series has a power that draws me in to feel or intuit a sense of the mysterious presence of God. As I move from one painting to another I experience the sensation that the most important subject in the world, ‘Salvation’, is somewhere contained, intuitively felt and appreciated within the act of contemplating caused by the arrangement of forms and moving from one canvas to the next. Their esoteric mystery leaves the viewer in part frustrated, but reminds me that no theology satisfactorily explains the full mystery of God, the content of the Passion Story or the mystery of how Redemption works individually or cosmically. Abstract Expressionism had strong roots in esoteric religious practices, which may account for some of Newman’s content.
In some ways the simplest form of Stations - a series of identical simple crosses, (numerals on a church’s walls are insufficient according to Catholic regulations,) can be spiritually intense if we engage our minds with them. Without visual content we are forced directly into our imagination and belief, encouraging us to direct our minds to the Jerusalem scene 2000 years ago. This may even be more spiritually truthful than the most historically realistic artwork or trying to contemplate the Way of the Cross in the bustling streets of modern, commercial Jerusalem, set up for tourists to follow a journey through alleys which are possibly very different from the path Christ trod. A simple Cross rather than a scenic representation may force us to rely more on our internal world and to imagine ourselves at the scene, as Ignatius of Loyola encouraged in his Spiritual Exercises. Such contemplation might help us find the Passion’s meaning to us more truly and directly than if we lean upon someone else’s visual imagination.
I am a painter and art-historian who loves looking at and learning from a wide spectrum of the arts; I am saturated in images that speak to me of faith. It may therefore appear strange that I often find it difficult to use images by others for my personal spiritual contemplation. I spend countless hours in galleries or studying and appreciating visual images. I especially study Christian art. Yet words, unspoken thoughts or music are often more conducive to my imaginative contemplation when I am considering my faith. Perhaps, as some psychologists suggest, our spirituality often works within ‘shadow’ sides of our personality. Faith is not entirely based on rationalism; it engages with and awakens sensitivities that are sometimes different from those gifts or skills we use most dominantly in our working lives. Some may find that a simple cross or mark on the wall awakens our minds to imagine a scene more evocatively than someone else’s creation, which we may find ourselves comparing and contrasting to our own imaginative construct of the event. A suggestion, rather than a fully resolved image might also be more spiritually true. None of us will ever know what Jesus or the scenes of his death looked like. That is why I have left my new Stations images rather sketchy, though resolved in form and composition. I wish I could achieve the freedom and looseness of Daumier’s ‘Christ Condemned’, which inspired the composition of Station 9.
Thomas Merton wrote: “We should live as if we are seeing God face to face, but we should not conceive an image of God. ….On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realising him in all.” [Hidden Ground of Love p.63-64] This echoes John Chrysostom’s earlier words: “Let us evoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible and unknowable. Let us affirm that he surpasses all power of human speech, that he eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence, that angels cannot penetrate him, that cherubim cannot fully understand him. For he is invisible to the principalities and powers, the virtues and all creatures. Only the Son and the Holy Spirit can know him”
Only God knows exactly what Jesus’ Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection were like, what he went through and what it meant and means to him in Eternity. Calvin would have been very uncomfortable with any Stations of the Cross images, recognising that no image can truly present spiritual reality. Reformers who followed him maintained Calvin’s dictum against religious art that “the physical cannot contain the spiritual”. (I’m not sure that he is right. The Orthodox theology behind the justification of icons, about which I have written elsewhere, would also disagree.) Any religious image on those grounds is false. But by similar reasoning most of our preaching and teaching could be spiritually suspect: Even our ‘soundest’ theology and doctrines, like our imagination, are just reaching for an imperfect understanding. Yet Christians believe that God revealed himself most clearly in Christ’s physical form and in all he did and said. Christ revealed the extent of God’s love, justice, longsuffering and forgiveness in his Passion. By presenting this as a subject we are creating metaphors for the original event that reach towards contemplating the most meaningful subject on which our minds might focus,
The Stations tradition, if followed in spirit and in truth, can be a way of engaging our spiritual selves with what such suffering might have entailed and meant. We aim to awaken our gratitude, our confidence in our faith, our understanding and love of our invisible God and to enhance the depth and focus of our worship. Some visual Stations of the Cross have helped people do this for generations.
THE CHOICE OF SUBJECTS TO REPRESENT
The subjects we select for contemplation from the Passion story influence the spiritual content we draw from it. The biblical narrative could be divided into several hundred scenes, from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem or even his earlier predictions of his death until his Resurrection and beyond. The rear panels of Duccio’s Maiestas and many altarpiece predellas divide the Passion into a series of scenes. Appendix 1 shows how varied the subjects chosen for Stations over the centuries have been.
For years it seemed strange to me that the 14 traditional Stations include such a large percentage of scenes not described in the Gospels when so many meaningful scriptural scenes were available. Traditional Stations 3, 4, 6, 7 & 9 are not recorded in the Gospels. There is no record of Station 6 (Veronica) being known before medieval times. Biblical subjects more significant to the meaning of Atonement and our close relationship with God could be found in the Betrayal and Arrest, Peter’s Denial, The Flagellation, The Seven Last Words, the drink of wine vinegar, the Centurion’s realisation “Truly this was the Son of God”, Nicodemus Requesting Christ’s Body, Embalming Christ with Spices or the Guard at the Tomb. I have painted some of these themes in my new ‘Through Passion’ series and previous projects.
Having previously painted three series of traditional stations as well as two series that contain biblical Passion scenes, I recognise that the traditional 14 can pull rather more at the soul and the emotions than just following scenes form the Bible narrative. They make the viewer empathise with Christ through watching his relationships with others, especially those he loves, his sorrow and his growing weakness as he falls three times. The number of these three falls may have a significance; perhaps a reminder that the Trinity is together in this work of Redemption. It may have origins in cultural memory of significant falls on Jesus’ journey to Calvary (I guess that there must have been many more stumbles as he weakened.) In historical context there was a long period when Seven Falls were regularly used as a Stations Liturgy. A tradition circulated that Christ fell seven times on the way to Calvary. The ‘perfect number’ seven may just have been spiritually symbolic or it has been suggested that it may have been associated with his atoning death conquering the ‘seven deadly sins’. Some commentators think that most of the non-biblical traditional station themes are continuations of these Seven Falls tradition: The encounters with Mary, Veronica, and the Gate of Jerusalem, (as well as his fall when Simon of Cyrene took the Cross) were all times when he was thought to have fallen or stopped.
In human terms the Veronica legend suggests Jesus’ human need for refreshment, comfort, relief and rest, but theologically I find it more suspicious than the other traditions. The legend of a miraculously formed image of Christ on a cloth held out to him in compassion became promoted particularly in the 15th and 16th Centuries. It is not inconceivable that a woman may have reached out with compassion and succour to Jesus (that is the emphasis I give to this scene in my representation). ‘Veronica’ is not found in early accounts of the Way of the Cross before Mediaeval times. The earliest lists that include the encounter place her just before Jesus reached Calvary, not early in his journey as in the traditional arrangement. Elements of the story of St. Veronica are found in the apocryphal ‘Gospel of Nicodemus’ but are probably a much later insertion into that Gospel. Veronica (the Latinised version of Bernice) allegedly used a cloth to wipe Jesus’ face and brow on the journey to Calvary and upon it Christ’s image became miraculously imprinted. According to the addition to the Gospel of Nicodemus Bernice may have been the woman healed of an issue of blood by Jesus (Matt.9:20-22). Tradition relates that Bernice (martyred in Nero’s persecution of Christians) gave the cloth to Pope Clement. It is said that this cloth has been venerated in Rome as a relic since the 8th Century. I suspect that the scene was included in the Stations to add credence to the relic and promote cultic devotion.
The inclusion in the Stations of so many figures who empathise with Christ’s condition, (including his Mother, Simon of Cyrene, the Women of Jerusalem and those who take down Christ’s body,) may be intentional, encouraging us too to empathise with what he is doing on our behalf. Veronica’s legendary story also encourages us to reach to help others as Christ has done to us & as she did to him.
‘Jesus Meets his Mother’ is an understandable inclusion, encouraging us to also empathise with the most significant female figures in the narrative, though the Gospels only mention Mary’s presence at Calvary. As the emphasis on Mary in churches and Catholic theology grew, her part in the Passion story was advanced. Devotions to her were devised to be prayed at places where she may have met Christ on the way and at Calvary. It is inevitable that Mary must have watched at some stage, suffering alongside her son from the moment she heard about his arrest. The scene of their meeting brings loving humanity, poignancy and intimacy to the Passion series. It echoes the biblical story of Jesus from the Cross giving his mother and St John into each other’s care [Jn.19:27]. The traditional way of representing Station 13 as a Pieta, with Jesus's body laid in the arms of his mother Mary alters the emphasis of the Gospel record, which focused on Joseph of Arimathea’s involvement in the retrieval and burial of Christ’s body.
Fourteen Stations is of course significant in numerology. Seven is symbolically a perfect number; doubling seven implies that the Stations help us follow a perfect journey of recollection. But fourteen often seems rather too many Stations to complete meaningfully in one liturgical progress. In my series for St Mary’s Ewell I suggested that the Stations be demountable so that a smaller, more practical number could be selected to be reflected upon liturgically. My latest series, like my first Meditations on the Cross [2000], includes a larger number than usual, which may seem counter-intuitive, but the intention is that they should be viewed as a progressive narrative, not a liturgy. Within that group individual images or a small number may be selected for contemplation.
I have chosen to start my present series with an image of Jesus in contemplative prayer. Logically it would seem right to begin a narrative of the Passion around the Last Supper which links the Cross with the sign of Redemption that Christians remember and share in the Eucharist. But this would help to emphasise that the Stations are rooted in the pain of sacrificial death. I wanted to suggest the more positive emphasis that Christ made the deliberate choice to offer his life, so I begin at a point where Jesus could have chosen a different way. Showing Christ in prayer also encourages the viewer subliminally to approach the series prayerfully. I then show Mary anointing him at Bethany, a fragrant, positive, loving scene interwoven with the realisation that Jesus recognised that she was (probably unintentionally) anointing him for his death. Mary of Bethany’s loving service is then reflected in Jesus teaching the disciples that they should be servants through the personal example of washing their feet before the Last Supper.
WHY TAKE PEOPLE ON A JOURNEY RATHER THAN CONTEMPLATING A SINGLE PASSION SUBJECT?
Time travel is not yet possible; probably it never will be. But we take a journey of the imagination every time we look at a memorial or a biblical image. In viewing an image of a Gospel story we may reach towards Jesus’ historic and spiritual life and are transported into his culture, experiences and intentions. Following Stations of the Cross asks us to bring back into our world all that we find spiritually truthful, valuable and learn from such a journey of contemplative experience so that we can apply it in our faith and lives now.
At least three facets of ourselves are engaged in the journey with Christ:
1. Our unregenerate selves - the parts of us that retain our sin and failure, where the ‘flesh’ feels more dominant or successful in controlling us than the ‘Spirit’. This includes our past, our memories of the life that Christ has redeemed. We thank God for his work in us and pray for growth and improvement.
2. Ourselves as we are - struggling to be spiritual and holy yet recognising our failures, weaknesses and tendencies to sin. We pray for endurance and Christ’s Spirit’s strength to succeed in the struggle.
3. Our spiritual hope for the future, longing for the grace poured out through Christ’s Spirit to fully redeem, renew, free and help us control our lives. We pray that we might be Christ-like citizens of God’s fulfilled Kingdom.
Our past, present and future are dependent on what Christ achieved on the Cross.
It is not surprising that Stations grew and developed within the practices of a mendicant order of preachers, the Franciscans who, like their founder, revered the Cross encouraged contemplation, gospel teaching and a life of poverty and renunciation of self. All these can be elements of Walking the Way of the Cross. Contemplative processes like Lectio Divina are journeys in themselves – journeys into scripture, into the biblical culture and world, into the spiritual world, into our own inner world, into how we apply scripture to ourselves, and an impossible journey into trying to comprehend aspects of the mind and aims of God.
Walking the Stations can engage our body, mind and spirit in worship and communion with Christ. Often our spirituality is cerebral or emotional. Monastic traditions often recognised that humans have a need for physical activity, which help us integrate our spiritual life with our physical lives. Roy DeLeon wrote: “While Christians may have one of - if not the - highest theology of the body among the religions of the world, they also have one of the lowest levels of embodied spiritual practice.” [‘Praying with the Body’ ix. 23 in Bringing the Psalms to Life, 2009, Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA,].
We cannot be sure what St/ Paul meant by “completing in his own body the sufferings of Christ.” [Col.1:24] I have read various interpretations of this passage. One aspect may be explored in walking the Stations: If we are authentically living for Christ and sincerely, energetically taking his truth into our world, we will inevitably encounter a degree of suffering, opposition, distrust or misinterpretation. To journey alongside Jesus in thought along the Way of the Cross could help us to learn to respond like him when we face our own struggles.
It is impossible to convey in one image a comprehensive view of all that Christ or his Cross means. How can a single work suggest divinity and humanity, dignity and humility, the victory of Redemption and the truth of suffering, love, sorrow, pain and joyful hope? Even the greatest artists are selective and show limited aspects in each image. In a linked series of paintings it is easier to build a more holistic view of what is happening through the Passion than a single, more limited image can hold. The cumulative sum of what is being conveyed in a series may be greater than its parts.
The concept of a journey in thought and imagination is different from using one artwork as a single point of meditation. At times we just need to hold onto selective facets of God at moments of ‘static’ faith. But our faith rarely stays still. The ways God relates to us alter with our lives and circumstances. Various metaphors and biblical stories by which we understand aspects of God are relevant at different times. While Christ’s redemptive action encompasses all, different aspects of Jesus’ Passion may apply at different times to different aspects of our lives. So a journey of faith might help us reflect on God’s relevance to us in many areas of our faith and prepare us for many different experiences Jesus’ trial may help us deepen our trust in God despite memories of incidents when we have been misunderstood or misrepresented: It recalls Christ’s beatitude: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.” [Matt.5:10-11]. ‘Jesus Meets his Mother’ may awaken memories of times of separation, or feelings of impotence to help those we love. His ‘Nailing to the Cross’ may remind us of past pain and help us recollect that Christ’s love found ways to forgive those who were intent on his destruction: “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” [Lk.23:34]
Various churches begin the Stations on different sides of the church. It became most common to begin on the Gospel side, following the narrative anti-clockwise. Some traditions regard clockwise procession as celebratory and anti-clockwise as penitential. The Roman Catholic Sacred Congregation of Indulgences was asked to explore this and ruled in 1837 that, though there was no official requirement, beginning on the Gospel side seemed the most appropriate. It recognised however that the form, arrangement and ordering of churches may make it more convenient to move in the other direction and that the composition or arrangement of figures in the images may suggest which direction the viewer should move.
There are values and potential dangers in all forms of art. A value of a cycle of Passion paintings, by contrast to a single subject, is that they allow the viewer to recognise the endurance, dedication and strength in Christ as he gave himself for the world. His was a prolonged painful journey and torture, not a quick, easy death. It was a long process, far more gruesome than I have ever painted, even in my most painful works like ‘The Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’. A series helps people recognise a little of the breadth of meanings and experiences within what Jesus underwent to secure Salvation for the world. Christ’s was not an easy achievement; God didn’t snap his fingers and create Salvation. Redemption and eternal freedom were gained through long, hard struggle, not dissimilar to the journey of life through which so many of us labour. A faith found through journeying alongside Jesus in the confusion and torment of the Stations experiences may become more practical and true to real everyday life than a faith based primarily on learned doctrines or comfortable contemplation. It is not surprising if we struggle to see the hope within Christ’s suffering or the love within the pain. Hope and love are hard to find or be assured of in many difficult lives and experiences too. In our complex, struggling world God’s love, care and healing often seem hidden. That was a theological problem with which Bonhoeffer struggled, like so many who have faith as well as those who find faith difficult to accept. Life was a struggle for Jesus too: he sweated blood in Gethsemane. Following the Way of the Cross could help us be realistic and develop trust, endurance and hope, while we are in the process of dealing with difficult questions, complex lives or painful experiences.
THE STYLE OF REPRESENTATION
An enormous challenge for the artist or liturgist is to find ways of representing the scenes that help to awaken people’s inner spiritual senses and responses in the contemporary world and which feel valid as contemporary art. It is relatively easy to create expressive pictures of such evocative events as those of Christ’s Passion; thousands of artist and craftspeople have done so effectively. Sad art often feels more ‘real’ today than happy art. (Positive art may seem escapist or over-idealistic, though artists like Chagall and Der Blaue Reiter achieved it without sentiment. The apparent ‘realism’ found in negative images sand subjects may be why there has been a revival in paintings of Passion subjects by contemporary artists. It is harder to go the step further, to find qualities of form, mark-making, composition, texture, light, shade and colour that will, for our contemporary generations and future viewers, evoke positive empathetic feelings and faith, igniting true spiritual meanings and real understanding of the reasons behind Christ’s death. That’s what I want to be able to do in my painted meditations, though I am all too aware of failings and technical frustrations.
A number of artists have reached to create positive images. Eric Gill and his followers devised classic, simple, sensual forms which, even in reproduction, spoke to multiple-thousands of worshippers across Catholic, Anglican and non-conformist traditions. He combined Catholic tradition with forms that to his contemporaries) felt modern, helping faith seem relevant. They also made religious subjects seem valid themes for modern art, which had been largely secular (despite the spiritual influences of the Nabis, Symbolists and Rouault). While still beautiful, immaculately designed and crafted, the work of Gill and his followers can sometimes feel over-idealised and unreal today. But that may be helpful too: We recognise that the images we use for contemplation are not reality but rather metaphorical representations, in Gill’s case sanitised and honed to simple ideal forms and compositions. We have enough common imagination and experience of horrors in the world to look beyond the beautiful carving or prints to imagine the grislier reality of what Jesus truly went through to bring the promise of Salvation to us. Distancing us slightly from the reality, good idealised Stations, like those by Gill’s early assistant Jonathan Cribb in the Chapel of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, Yorkshire [1954-5] can act as catalysts to help us walk through the story in our imagination focusing on realities of Christ’s Passion beyond the image. They present the narrative with cool confidence, rather like the tradition that taught readers to not use expression when proclaiming the Gospel liturgically, in order to encourage listeners to be moved by the words themselves. This reading tradition has largely been replaced in modern liturgy by more natural expression or inflection. Too much feeling can seem theatrical. Simplicity does often prove to be effective in our response to good visual images. They may help us view the subject with clarity, yet we might remain cold to them, unless we suspend disbelief and focus on the meaning behind each part of the narrative..
A tradition of life-size station sculptures developed in various Catholic countries, especially in the 18th late 19th and late 20th Centuries; most recently they have been popular in the Americas. They can act partly like static Passion Plays, pageants or tableaux-vivants, helping devotees feel the realism and presence of the scene. Unfortunately their large scale may also sometimes suggest a degree of ‘showiness’ by the artist or the commissioning body, if the figures over-dominate their setting. The most effective large scale Stations are part of long pilgrimage routes, where the scene is encountered on a meditative journey, as in San Louis, Colerado by Huberto Maestas, Coquimbo, Chile by Pasquale Nava and Guiseppe Allampresa, St John’, Indiana along Route 41, Jeju, Korea, or the steps to the much earlier Käppele Pilgrim Church (Wallfahrtskirche Mariä Heimsuchung 1748-50), Würzburg, designed by Balthasar Neumann. Until 2014 the Capuchin order was responsible for the chapel. There the statue groups, consisting of 77 life-sized figures, were created by Simon & Peter Wagner to ideas by Neumann but not completed until 1799. Such large tableaux may have their origin in early Franciscan reconstructions of the scene and Passion Plays.
Most of my own representations of the Passion have been relatively small in scale. This prevents images from being too dominant within the worship space, where art should enhance not distract and feel comfortable in size within the context of their setting but not dominate it. In planning Stations of the Cross with St. John’s Bury St Edmunds, I spent several hours with a small committee testing different proportions and tones of paper templates around the walls. We wanted to select the form, shape, size and colour for the panels that would complement the architectural setting best, yet contain a size of image of that would be readable from a distance, if a large group were following the series as a liturgical practice. In many cases ‘less is more’: simple, less dominant work can speak profoundly. Art usually works most subtly and effectively when viewers engage closely with it. We often view small, expressive paintings with more attention than large pictures. Large images may not be so closely analysed and read by a viewer but they have an overall impact. The quality of spiritual truth in the response that an image evokes is more important than size, style or dominance.
REPRESENTING THE PASSION AS A CONTEMPORARY SCENE
At different stages in Church History biblical subjects have been represented in dress and setting contemporary with the artist and viewer. Mark Cazalet [2000] produced a vibrant series of Stations, set in a journey around familiar landmarks of his own North London. The Passion has been represented in settings including those of Fascism, military dictatorship, pop, drug-culture, commerce, slum areas, West Indian and various ethnic cultures. Such contemporisation is not just a modern trend. Many cultures and nationalities have represented Christ and biblical scenes in their own dress and culture for centuries. It is perhaps easier to identify with a Jesus who in many ways is like us, being ‘fully human’. Much that we regard as a traditional ‘biblical costume’ in religious art of the Middle Ages or Renaissance was in fact Mediaeval or Renaissance contemporary dress. Perhaps, as today, they believed that the images made the scenes spiritually relevant to their contemporary viewers.
One problem generally recurs is that pictures which show Christ in distinctively contemporary settings can have a tendency to fall out of fashion relatively quickly. Stanley Spencer’s settings and figures are often now often admired for their vintage nostalgia qualities rather than present relevance - Cookham village captured at a particular point of time. This may distract later viewers from the artist’s intention of relating Christ’s life and activity as closely as possible to our present ordinary daily lives and activities. It can also make the references too specific. I sometimes add anachronistic contemporary elements and references, like the rolls of barbed wire in my ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ to clarify meanings, emphasis and relevance. However the representation of biblical scenes in a simple, vaguely historic costume might remind us of the biblical truth that “Christ died for sins at the appropriate time, once for all.” We do not need to deliberately modernise an image to make it and its subject of contemporary relevance. Christ died on the Cross at the one right time in history and its power extends to today. A painting of the Cross in historic context can therefore be as contemporary as one in modern dress. We do not need to go to the archaeological and historical detail that Holman Hunt, James Tissot or Carl Bloch researched painstakingly to create. But it is useful if the viewer is helped to believe that Jesus is a real, historical person, giving his life at a significant point in time, in order to effect the world for all time in ways that are relevant to our lives today.
Contemporary references or allusions may also be found in the subject matter we choose. My ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ was specifically intended to suggest parallels between the Roman occupation of Jerusalem and contemporary persecution of Palestinians in modern Israel, as well as injustices in the Iraq war, Rwanda and Burundi. My Seven Last Words were closely related to the injustice of the 2nd World War destruction of Wurzburg. My latest series ‘Through Passion’, which supplements the Last Words, has suggested parallels to the injustices of ISIS, the western abandonment of Aleppo in the Syrian War, Saudi-Arabian activity in Yemen and current problems with President Trump’s America. Contemporary parallels can always be found in the biblical narrative, since scripture is always relevant and history has a tendency to repeat itself. Finding contemporary parallels of relevance to us is also an essential element of the contemplative process we use in journeying through Stations, applying Christ’s activity to our lives.
CHARACTER
In much Modernist figurative art the style was more important than the characterisation. Style may even dominate. I have come to believe that the way we present character in our Stations figures is vitally important: The story is too significant to be misrepresented, misunderstood or misinterpreted. The people involved in the scenes and any lessons we learn from them influence the message conveyed within the images. No image can contain the complexity and realism of the complete character of Christ we find in scripture, nor can we realistically flesh out the other participants in the biblical drama, who are described in less detail. Only small elements of character and meaning can be conveyed, yet good art can challenge us through its portrayal of a character, as in Rembrandt’s ‘Peter Denying Christ’. Some art exaggerates character, like Orozco’s fierce Christ who gives the impression of a strong, raw revolutionary. Fra Angelico or a mild Pre-Raphaelite Christ exhibit gentleness. We choose the style and characterisation that best represents the concept of Christ that we aim to present in each image. In a large series of paintings one is able to develop character in a more ‘fleshed-out’ context and perspective than in individual paintings. This is one reason that I have often worked in series. The Bible’s message is complex, never simplistic.
I personally find representations of Stations which use simple children’s-book-like figures uncomfortable, particularly when the figures are themselves reduced to infant-like proportions or look like children or cute characters. The journey to the Cross is serious; we aim to encourage mature spiritual responses, not cute sympathy. The Passion applies to all of every age and culture so illustrations that speak to children are important. But Passion series for use in Church are intended to encourage maturity of faith through thoughtful engagement, relevant to the age and spiritual understanding of the viewer. Stations pictures are not about entertaining the viewer with pretty Lenten images. Nor are they primarily about adding to the aesthetic of the church building, though the best ecclesiastical art should enhance its environment. The most effective Christian art challenges ideas, creates thoughts and focuses the believer on faith in truthful imagery of Christ. Too much that is presented as ‘Christian art’ seems to consider ‘naïve’ simplistic styles and figures ‘spiritual.’ This does not easily give the impression of depth of meaning and maturity of faith which such an important and theologically fecund subject as Christ’s Passion deserves.
Serious simple images can be valuable. As discussed earlier, they may be ‘truer’ than over-naturalistic ones. The theological justifications behind the stylisation of icons in Orthodox and Coptic Art recognise this. Matisse’s liner Stations at his Vence Chapel are simplified or honed-down realist imagery. These are not perhaps the easiest Stations to follow sequentially, since their arrangement on the chapel wall is rather confusing despite their Latin numerals. His drawing studies for these Stations are more full of feeling, as are some of Eric Gill’s linear designs. Sensitive, good line drawings can be effective precisely because they do not give too much detail. This could encourage the viewer to explore the subject deeply in our spiritual imagination rather than just reflecting on the images. These are not merely ‘illustration’; they act as signs, seeking to awaken spiritual responses by the quality of line, composition and mark as well as subject. By contrast the more expressionist line drawing Stations in the Jesuit College Chapel of the University of Central America, San Salvador are agonising. The images are realist, expressive and dramatic.
Sometimes more expressionist or visceral images may encourage us to concentrate on the surface and the pain, sorrow and suffering that the artist is depicting stylistically. Too much expression may prevent us from looking beyond a surface reading of the image: We may not recognise the beautiful meaning of Salvation being achieved beyond the immediate suffering. I greatly admire the work of Peter Howson, in fact a Church Times article once compared my work favourably and undeservedly to his, but sometimes his imagery has moved this way. The raw energy, lack of sentimental beauty, and violent realism suggested in his figures manage to remove any sense of sentimentality in the representation of religious scenes. But realist or expressionist representation isn’t the main aim of painting the Passion. Faith, gratitude and trust in God are main goals. Although they were important to my expression of faith at the time, I am now uncomfortable with my Stations series ‘The Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ [2003]. I was responding politically to the Iraq War and Israel’s barriers to Palestinian territories. I used those Stations to draw parallels between world injustice, lack of peace and Christ’s situation and peaceful aims. After my 32 Meditations on the Passion and Resurrection [2000], which were based on the biblical narrative, I had wanted to explore the 14 traditional stations themes, to see what true spiritual meaning I could express within a tradition of which I had previous suspicions. I deliberately moved away from sentimentalism towards depiction of suffering, not to subvert the tradition but to add realism. Gislaine Howard’s large Stations of the Cross create an effective balance. They use thick black and white paint gesturally to convey expression without wallowing in the physical pain of the Passion.
WHAT ARE WE AIMING TO CONTEMPLATE IN THE STATIONS?
Contemplating the meaning behind the story can be a cathartic process. This is at the root of walking the Stations as a penitential pilgrimage act. If we’re spiritually honest we realise that none of us deserve the self-sacrifice of the most perfect being. God our source of life did not need to tear himself apart over our failures. Yet Christ’s self-giving demonstrates our importance to God. He aimed to cleanse, heal and renew our world, which so often fails to live up to our good potential and God’s aims. As I assured the schoolchild in Bury St. Edmunds, if there was any other way of resolving world problems other than by the pain of crucifixion I’m sure that God would have taken it. Yet at one point in history God entered the world to teach us a better way of life, to give himself, to make salvation possible and to live as an example for us. Using the Stations may encourage internal searching. We should often be asking: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” [Ps.139:23-24]
One aim of walking the Passion is to open our awareness, to help us apprehend more closely and broadly our relationship with God and appreciate more personally the extent of God’s activity on our behalf. ‘Station’ from its Latin root means ‘to stand’; it is a place to stop, be still, think, revolve, meditate and apply our thoughts. We do not live constantly at a Station; it is a temporary place to be, to think and respond, while we are on the journey of life, waiting a while before progressing on to somewhere else – hopefully improved by our experience. Spiritually a ‘Station of the Cross’ is not just somewhere to stand, think and pray: it is somewhere where we ‘wait on God’, asking for inspiration, enlightenment or guidance of our thoughts on Christ’s Passion and asking his Spirit to move us forward in response. We seek to be moved forward by God’s Spirit’s inspiration and power, to a better place of understanding, appreciation and discipleship. If we contemplate a Station with this aim of transformation, we will not just get caught up in the emotion of the scene or be lost in visceral thoughts about what Christ endured; we make ourselves open to allow God to speak into our minds and improve us. Moving from station to station is intended to be transformative, applying the stages of Christ’s journey and his achievements to our lives.
Many personal challenges come from the Passion story:
Are we willing to follow Jesus’ example to bring others a better life?
Are we willing to undergo similar committed work, which may entail pain, lies about us or degradation for the sake of improving the life of our world?
‘Through Passion’ Christ achieved far more than we understand yet, above all, he promises abundant eternal life for us to trust in and follow.
Visitors to art-galleries and exhibitions view images at very different paces. The average time spent looking at an artwork in some galleries is a couple of seconds – not enough time to take in what you are seeing. The idea of walking Stations of the Cross is to take an unhurried, prayerful pace, laying ourselves open to God’s inspiration of our thoughts and intuitive responses. Stations have similarities to the Christian discipline of lectio divina where a Bible verse or short passage is read repeatedly with careful attention, meditation and contemplation on the implication of each word, then it is applied to our lives. Walking the Way of the Cross is often accompanied by reading sections of scripture that apply to each scene. One commentator has suggested that Stations of the Cross are a form of ‘ambulatio divina’ (“divine walking”), a practice of prayer similar to that encouraged by St. Dominic in his Nine Modes of Prayer.
Though words are often an integral accompaniment to Stations, making room for silence is also important. Learning to listen to God’s prompting in silent meditation and contemplation is part of walking the Stations. We live in an age where silence is often rare; even Christians fill their personal time and corporate worship with activity and sound. Yet, as John of the Cross wrote in the 16th Century, “Silence is God’s first language”. We frequently learn more spiritually by listening than by telling God what we think or want. Even when reading scripture, studying spiritual writings and commentaries or exploring images, we receive more when we stop and let the work speak to us in silence.
Walking the Stations of the Cross, as believers who recognise that we are not yet living fully sanctified lives, includes an aspect of ‘waiting for God’ for his intervention in our life. We have been redeemed but we wait for the fulfilment of all that Christ achieved, just as we wait for God’s Kingdom to be fully formed, though Christ assured us that he had already established it. The different Hebrew terms for ‘wait’ suggest its various connotations that may be appropriate to devotional use of Stations:
· ‘yachal’ – ‘to wait in hope’ - implies that there is still a sense of incompleteness, though God is reliable.
· ‘damam’ –‘to become silent and still’ - includes learning to trust God with calm confidence based on his promises and past fulfilment of his covenant with us.
· ‘chakah’ – ‘to long for’ - implies a desperate longing for something not yet fully achieved.
· ‘qavah' – ‘to wait patiently and look eagerly’ - involves our active participation as we reflect on God’s promises. (cf. Prov. 8:34, Ps.27:14
All these aspects of spiritual waiting could be applied to how we use the Stations as part of our prayer, longing to realise in our lives and in the world, spiritual understanding, wholeness of salvation, holiness and the building of God’s Kingdom.
THE TEXTS USED WITH THE STATIONS
Many books of meditations have been written for use with Stations, either as sources for personal contemplation or group liturgy. I discuss the development of some of these in Appendix 2. It is traditional to accompany each Station with a relevant scripture passage, written meditation, prayer response & perhaps a hymn.
In many ways images should be able to stand for themselves, without the need for words or commentary. When many walk Stations as a form of personal devotion, they use no devotional or liturgical literature, preferring to just watch the images as the focus for contemplation. Those familiar with the biblical story, perhaps rely less on the Bible’s words as their starting-point. But every re-reading can bring out new facets or thoughts, so scripture should never be left too far away, even with the most stirring images. Images, however, may often inspire very different ideas and approaches to the theme than biblical words, so we should be open to let God communicate through our response to the image.
Protestants, particularly the Reformed, Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions have been suspicious of the non-biblical aspects of the Stations tradition as well as its reliance on images to inform or encourage faith. Many retain the theological distrust of images that led to Reformers destroying or removing them from churches. Some Protestant churches have rediscovered the value of the visual as part of spirituality and teaching, but they remain less familiar than Catholics, Copts or Orthodox Christians with the practices and mind-set that help us read images spiritually. This sensitivity needs to be nurtured and educated. We can train or help people find ways to use images effectively but words remain important to give keys to sensitise us to the potential meaning within images. Not all people learn visually. But we must not ‘explain away’ images by describing or commenting on every detail; if we do people won’t look sufficiently to benefit from the visual stimulus. Any text should give just enough information to awaken ideas, which enable the image to convey its message.
Although there is a ‘mission’ or evangelistic element to the Stations, as the Franciscans taught, art is rarely good art when it is propagandist. The message and the medium are a unity. It is not the artist or commentator’s role to preach at or direct the viewer: Art works best when it awakens sensitivity. The image may be full of content, suggestions, feelings and allusions, but it should not be overtly didactic. That is not the role of art, or the way it most effectively communicates.
Poetry may be a useful key, as it uses literary metaphors rather than prosaic, literal descriptions. For some of my early Stations series I wrote sonnet meditations, linking the traditional 14 lines of poetry with the 14 images. Often the first octet of the Sonnet contemplated the meaning of the theme, the final 6 lines being a prayer response. I wonder now if even the sonnet form may be too long. Rouault accompanied his Miserere et Guerre series with a simple, sometimes enigmatic line, which enabled the image to retain an element of mystery. My most recent series is accompanied by poems of just 6 lines. Even these are too literal and descriptive; they need to become more allusive or metaphoric, but I am not sure that I have the literary ability to achieve this.
MY OWN PERSONAL CHOICE OF STYLE - EXPRESSIVE REALISM
We live in an age where many are sceptical about faith. At the same time our world had developed a plethora of different approaches to spirituality, new and old. We shouldn’t be afraid of representing Christian subjects like the Way of the Cross. Churches have become increasingly interested in the potential of using visual art, though they are not always aware of how best to use it and tastes and qualities vary greatly. The contemporary professional art world is still somewhat cynical or at least suspicious about art based on faith, perhaps because it is not commercial. Though more contemporary art references religious symbolism than 30 years ago, committedly ‘Christian’ art is rarely treated as seriously as are broader, vaguer or more esoteric spiritual approaches.
There is sometimes confusion even in churches about what is ‘Christian’. Even some Cathedral gift-shops sell esoteric New Age ‘angel charms’, more relevant to child-like hope in fairies than the faith that Christ sought to teach. I don’t want my art to feel too distant or esoteric. There is enough in the Christian faith that is mysterious and inexplicable. Christ made God tangible [1Jn.1:1]; there should be an element of this in church art too. The subjects of Christian art contain many layers of meaning, and underlying symbolism. But I want people to recognise primarily that each image has meaning for their faith, and to feel able to respond.
In a sceptical society I find that many thinking people are most convinced by faith that seems real, relevant and reasonable. They are less convinced by religion or philosophy that appears over-idealistic, symbolic or esoteric. After years of practicing to express my faith communicatively through painting, I have come to believe that ‘expressive realism’ is an appropriate style to convey my understanding of faith. It communicates in ways that seem to help contemporary people respond, but should not present the Passion in too gory detail.
Some art can be too expressive of pain: I personally feel Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ went too far in representing violence. It was hard to glimpse the love of God expressed through the suffering. The film’s brutality was influenced by a form of theology present in some Catholicism and Puritanism that comes close to suggesting that ‘if we hadn’t sinned quite so much Christ might not have had to suffer so much.’ Nowhere does orthodox biblical Christian doctrine suggest this, even in most substitutionary atonement theories. The painful realism in some late Middle Ages Northern European representations of the Passion or Crucifixion has been attributed to a cultural and religious response to suffering in society after years of plague and European wars. Representation of the ‘Pieta’, the ‘Man of Sorrows’/‘Suffering Servant’ and Plague Crosses expanded greatly at that time. Some 20th Century artists responded similarly to the violence of war, as in Otto Dix, Rouault’s Miserere et Guerre, Sutherland’s Crucifixion, especially the studies for St Matthew’s Northampton, or Orozco’s Christ and his Cross responding’ to South American revolutionary violence.
My sensitivity is drawn to each work mentioned above; they have gritty realism not present in much 19th Century Christian art or Stanley Spencer’s realism, which I like for different reasons. In devising my own style I have adopted qualities from Expressionism and Realism. I hope that in these recent ‘Through Passion’ images I have learned from the mistakes made in the ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ series, to reduce the strength of the impact of suffering. I want, with the viewer, to empathise with the suffering rather than have thought dominated by it, to more sensitively consider why this Passion is happening and realise its relevance to us. Following the ‘Way of the Cross’ in our prayer and imagination isn’t meant to macabrely concentrate on Jesus’ torture, degradation and suffering. He was willing to undergo this pain to win a better life for us. The Church aims to encourage faith, worship, thanksgiving & trust as well as empathy with Christ’s suffering. Faith helps us recognise in the Passion the extent of God’s love for us, and art designed to promote faith should have a similar aim.
For ecclesiastical art the degrees of realism and expression have to be tamed, or more precisely ‘transformed’, so that they may truly represent the subject in ways that encourage faith. Artists are not compromising their vision or being untruthful if they moderate their art out of consideration of how the work communicates best to others. Part of the role of designing art for use in church is to consider the spirituality of the viewer and to form images that encourage response and challenge spiritually. Church art should not be anodyne, nor should it alienate the viewer.
My personal style, which attempts ‘expressive realism’ is not ‘naturalistic’. No-one would mistake it for a photograph - neither is it particularly exaggerated in emotion or caricature. I want to suggest that the figures are historically real and each scene really happened, though not necessarily as I have imagined it. The Passion is not fantasy; faith is grounded in realism not wishful thinking.
In the most recent paintings I have worked to leave the images free, almost as though they remain unfinished. Although the paintings are as complete and resolved as I can at present make them, some may continue to change. I am still on a journey of discovery with them. I want the viewer to see the image as just a start of their own thought-journey. The aim is to help viewers find enough in each image to remind them of the story and its meaning and help to immerse their imaginations in it. An artist shouldn’t ‘dot the ‘i’s or cross the ‘t’s’ for the viewer; I can’t determine what ideas or aspects of faith they might open to others. I want the images to awaken thoughts in viewers’ minds, as they have in mine, so that each viewer can take the image forward and resolve its meaning in their imagination, devotion and prayer.
I have painted my latest Stations in grisaille, partly to reduce the horror of the scenes, but also to suggest that the images are more like thoughts or memories than observed naturalistic reality. This is a real man, experiencing the full gamut of emotions and suffering. The almost monochromatic effect, mixing tones and hues from just four colours, Paynes Grey, White, Yellow Ochre and a little Scarlet, help to distance us slightly from imagining that this was the reality of the historic scene. The sketchy texture and mode of representation is raw but I have tried to keep it relatively tentative, to suggest that each image is not definitive; rather these are considered, imagined explorations of the real event.
An observant, critical viewer will discover several inconsistencies in the journey. Characters and clothing occasionally change slightly between scenes. The features and physique of Christ are inconsistent, to prevent us from imagining or pinning down his image too precisely. Yet I repeatedly show him as strong, to suggest his vigour as a young former-carpenter, despite three years of a more mendicant, ascetic ministry. I want to emphasise primarily that Christ is strong enough to support and carry us physically, mentally and spiritually through the struggle to Salvation and to support us now through any trouble or questioning of faith we might meet. In several images the sun casts strong raking shadows for symbolic, dramatic and compositional effect but the light is not always consistent with the time of day in the biblical narrative. The degree of Christ’s nakedness is inconsistent for modesty reasons. This is not a film demanding continuity; it is a series of related but individual painted meditations. We can never relive Christ’s Passion with historic accuracy. Even if we could, that is not our aim. Through suspending disbelief and contemplating the themes seriously we may appreciate more deeply the Passion’s meaning to God, to ourselves and to our world.
THE PERSONAL CONTEXT
This is my most personal series of Passion paintings to date, partly because they were painted in the suspicion that this might be my last long series. They provide a context for my much larger panels of Seven Last Words and Seven Resurrection Songs, completed a couple of years ago, but which occupied my thoughts for several years during the process of ordination training and through my early work as a priest. I would like to eventually show both series together.as they have unifying features.
This new series was partly conceived at the suggestion of the Dean of Lichfield, Very Revd. Adrian Dorber. The Cathedral has hosted many of my previous exhibitions and is of personal significance to me. As well as being beautiful and rich in the history of faith, it is one of the friendliest, most encouraging cathedral communities with which I have worked. I knew Lichfield Cathedral well as a child. I was raised in Gloucester and have lived and worked in Surrey as an art lecturer, painter and church minister for over 30 years. But my grandparents, uncle and aunt lived in Rugeley and my cousins still live nearby. Lichfield’s spires and sculptures fascinated me long before I came to faith - even before I became an art-historian. One summer, hitchhiking here from university I was dropped off near the motorway at Stoke on Trent and walked through the night across Cannock Chase to be here in the early morning. It was not long after the tragic events on the Chase, so I wasn’t surprised that drivers didn’t offer me further lifts! First seeing the spires through the morning mist is as uplifting as first glimpsing the sea on a journey to the coast. More recently a school-friend and two former teaching colleagues and friends have moved to the area. So there is more than coincidence behind these paintings, through the links I feel with Lichfied. The mother of a good friend in my former church in Surrey was an active member of Lichfield Cathedral congregation for many years. It was she who first introduced my work to the then Chancellor, Tony Barnard and his wife, and I felt drawn into the friendship of the community of the Cathedral. I’m grateful that I have continued to be invited to exhibit here since.
When Dean Adrian invited me to provide a Lent exhibition for 2017 I had no new works of a Lenten nature to exhibit. I initially planned to create a rather different exhibition of fewer, larger paintings on the meaning of the Cross. The Dean’s request for the inclusion of some traditional Station subjects re-moulded this series. As I began working on a new set of Stations of the Cross the relevance of Christ’s Passion to recent personal circumstances became increasingly apparent. The painting process led to long periods of contemplation of my own faith and ministry and a complete rethinking of what the art of the Passion means to me.
It has been a painful few of years since my last Lichfield exhibition, but I sense that experiences have strengthened my faith. A fellow priest and colleague, who I had considered a close friend of 25 years standing, damaged me through duplicity and lies told about me. This conspired with a diocesan cover-up of abusive bullying and the duplicity of a dominating senior manager in my diocese, to cause a heart attack and consequent heart operation, with recurring health repercussions. Sadly I have been forced, through the bad experiences, lack of diocesan pastoral support and the Church’s hesitancy, then failure, to deal with the bullying, the bully or the lies, to realise how far some institutional churches and leaders are from yet truly representing the Kingdom of God. Falsehood in the Church reflects the duplicity that Christ encountered from the High Priests and Sanhedrin. How much greater is the need for all Christian priests, as for all Christians, to follow Christ’s example and be images of God’s truth in the world! Supporting my partner through recent cancer treatment and involvement with sensitive pastoral issues in my present priestly ministry further added to my empathy with the Passion theme.
The sad experiences led me closer to the Psalms, which I had recently studied and painted as Artist in Residence with the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield in Yorkshire. I reflected on the psalmist’s love, his longing for God’s healing, for lies told about him to be cleansed, for the peace of vindication in finding refuge in God’s love, and to be righteous himself. This linked with my re-thinking the Gospel accounts of the Passion to feed into the new paintings. So many aspects of Jesus’ suffering seem relevant to human contemporary troubles in the world. I have drawn from all this emotionally and thematically in devising these new images.
Importantly the painting process became a response of gratitude for my restored life and a recognition that Christ endured far worse for us, to make the world and the Church a better place than it is. We have huge responsibilities; the Church must not relive or return to the situation of the Sadducees, Pharisees and politicians of Jesus’ day, where legalism, compromise and the desire for power brought injustice, innocent suffering and the neglect of faith’s true priorities. We are meant to follow Christ more closely than we do, to seek truth and open that truth to the world. I now minister alongside a holy and supportive vicar who, like my partner, has taught me, by his example, even more about the sacrificial love and selflessness behind Christ’s Passion story. We partly relive and represent Christ’s Passion in many areas of pastoral ministry, as we work in the world Christ suffered to redeem. All Christians are meant to model Christ to this world. Unfortunately suffering is sometimes the result, but following the Way of the Cross can help strengthen us and give us determination.
So these paintings have become very personal and significant to me. While painting them I have relived each theme almost as an Ignatian Spiritual Exercise, considering what each scene means to me and to the world, as well as their potential theological and pastoral meanings. The spiritual exercise of contemplation continued throughout the long process of creating the Stations - conceiving, sketching, more detailed drawing, developing and creating compositions, exploring each individual figure, preparing panels, then sketching in, painting, changing and developing the pictures over many months of revision and contemplation of their meaning. It has been a challenging and thought-provoking journey.
All aspects of Christ’s life and teaching present challenges if we explore them with open, receptive minds. An educated faith challenges us to always try to work out what is true, to ask in what ways we can relate such truth to our lives now and how to apply this to our world in ways that are relevant, can bring transformation, and may help to build God’s Kingdom. The major challenge is to live up to all that we discover and learn through following Christ and to become living examples of his Way. I hope and pray that others find that the Stations awaken a journey towards Truth in themselves.
APPENDIX 1 HISTORY OF THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS TRADITION
Stations of the Cross started as a form of pilgrimage. A legend first recorded by Felix Fabri in 1480, attributed the origin of the tradition of following the Way of the Cross to Jesus’ mother daily returning to sites of her son’s Passion to pour out her emotion and faith. Others were said to have then followed her example. This legend is almost certainly a later invention, based on the growing importance of Mary in Church teaching and practice in the Middle Ages. Surely, after Christ’s Resurrection there would be no need for Mary to revisit the sites of Jesus’ suffering. Presumably the joy, hope and new understandings that grew among the disciples and in the emerging Church following Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension changed their attitude to the sorrow of his Passion.
Archaeological remains show that early devotion developed in sites associated with Christ’s life & death as early as the C2nd, probably before. In Origen’s time [c185-254] Christians were already visiting to walk in Christ’s footsteps. Emperor Constantine permitted Christians in the Roman Empire to legally worship in 313, following 250 years of persecution. He supported the erection of the Holy Sepulchre Church in 335, at the site where Jesus’ tomb was believed to have been. Pilgrim processions became popular soon after its completion, especially during Holy Week. These processions and liturgies are mentioned in the records of early pilgrims like those of the Pilgrim of Bordeaux, the earliest surviving written account. Helena, Constantine’s mother, founded basilicas on the Mount of Olives and at Bethlehem, as well as purportedly finding the True Cross..
Pilgrimage developed as visitors from all parts of the Roman world came to walk where Jesus walked. Jerome (342-420), living in Bethlehem towards the end of his life, mentioned crowds of pilgrims. As Jerusalem had been almost completely destroyed by Roman armies in 70CE and rebuilt several times, some sites and Jesus’ original route to his death may have been largely conjecture. St. Sylvia, in ‘Peregrination ad loca sancta’ (380), described in detail many pilgrim practices yet did not mention following the Way of the Cross. Early pilgrimage routes appear to have varied considerably starting at different places and following different routes. c382 Egeria/Aetheria a Gallic woman on pilgrimage, described in her journal memorial processions on Golgotha from the Anastasis to the largest church, the Martyrium via a smaller church ad Crucem. She recounts that on Holy Thursday night the bishop of Jerusalem and many Christians pilgrims gathered at the site of Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. They said a prayer, sang a hymn, listened to a Gospel passage, then entered the garden of Gethsemane where another prayer was said, then a hymn and Gospel reading before moving towards Jerusalem, eventually finishing at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where they commemorated the Crucifixion and Resurrection:
“At the first cockcrow they come down from the Imbomon with hymns and arrive at the place where the Lord prayed, as it is written in the Gospel: “and he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and prayed…” There is in that place a graceful church. The bishop and all the people enter, a prayer suitable to the place and to the day is said, with one suitable hymn, and the passage from the Gospel is read where he said to his disciples: “Watch, that you enter not into temptation.” The whole passage is read and prayer is made. And then all, even to the smallest child, go down with the Bishop, on foot, with hymns to Gethsemane. There, on account of the great number of people in the crowd who are wearied owing to the vigils and weak through the daily fasts, and because they have so great a hill to descend, they come very slowly with hymns to Gethsemane. And over two hundred church candles are prepared to give light to all the people. On their arrival at Gethsemane, first a suitable prayer is made then a hymn is said, then the passage of the Gospel is read where the Lord was taken. And when this passage has been read there is so great a moaning and groaning of all the people, together with weeping, that their lamentation may be heard perhaps as far as the city. From that hour they go with hymns to the city on foot, reaching the gate about the time when one man begins to be able to recognize another, and thence right on through the midst of the city. All, to a man, both great and small, rich and poor, all are ready there, for on that special day not a soul withdraws from the vigils until morning. The bishop is escorted from Gethsemane to the gate, & then through the whole of the city to the Cross.”[Peregrinatio Etheriae 30]
This enlightens us over several details: Egeria’s knowledge of scripture at so early a stage in the church’s foundation, the mixture of social classes in the service, the use of hymns and readings in the liturgy, the bishop’s leadership and the early involvement of ‘lamentation’, which was to become such a feature of Mediaeval devotion to the Cross. Egeria’s account was not the traditional Way of the Cross known today but it could contain sources and elements of some later Stations liturgies. It did not follow today’s Via Dolorosa nor the Via Sacra, touring shrines & sites of Jerusalem that various 5th & 6th Century pilgrims also described, as devotional tours round Jerusalem grew in popularity. Pilgrims brought back oil from the lamps that burned around Jesus’ tomb and relics from the holy places to sanctify their own places of prayer and worship.
By the 5th Century some churches tried to recreate in Europe what they had seen in the Holy Land and ‘reproduced’ Jerusalem’s holy places in other to enable believers who could not travel on pilgrimage to Palestine to journey devotionally and spiritually alongside Christ on his way of Passion. In the 400s, Petronius, Bishop of Bologna, constructed a group of chapels representing important Holy Land shrines around San Stefano monastery. Several of these were of the ‘Stations’ themes we recognise today. The Moslem conquest of Palestine in the 7th Century made such European shrines more significant, since travel to the Holy Land became even more dangerous. Some priests and pilgrims, intent on verisimilitude, tried to reproduce the exact intervals of distance between the Jerusalem sites of the Stations. They measured out the paces, so that devout devotees might cover precisely the same distances as Christ, or pilgrims to the Holy Land would have experienced. Christian van Adrichem in C16th Holland was to produce a devotional book based on similar geographical literalism.
The Way of the Cross, as we understand the term today, is a largely mediaeval tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153), Francis of Assisi (died 1226) and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (died 1274), developed profound practices of contemplative devotion based on the Passion. Stations of the Cross became particularly associated with the Franciscans due to Saint Francis’ special devotion to the Passion of Christ. Jerusalem fell to Muslim invaders after a siege in 1187. In the shadow of this, in 1217 Francis founded, ‘The Custody of the Holy Land’ in an attempt to guard Israel’s Holy places and promote devotion. When Franciscans were allowed back into the Holy Land in 1233 they sought to protect pilgrimage sites and Franciscans were officially appointed as custodians of holy places by Pope Clement VI in 1342. Devotions to the Way of the Cross increased greatly after this date, when the Franciscan friars in custody of the holy sites promoted the idea of pilgrimage, They advanced the idea that the faithful could receive ‘indulgences’ for praying at certain stations, notably: Pilate's house, the Antonine Fortress, the sites where Christ met Mary, where he addressed the women of Jerusalem, where Simon of Cyrene helped shoulder the Cross, the site where soldiers stripped him, cast lots for his clothing and nailed him and the Holy Sepulchre, Christ’s empty tomb. We don’t know for sure when such indulgences began to be granted officially, but it was at some time early in the Franciscan guardianship of the holy sites.
The Crusades (1095-1270) promoted and helped to advance interest in pilgrimage. 12th to 14th C travellers like James of Verona and Burchard of Mount Sion mention a ‘Via Sacra’ in Jerusalem but again this is not today’s traditional Way of the Cross. The Dominican friar Rinaldo de Monte Crucis, c1294, mentioned in his Liber peregrinationis going up to the Holy Sepulchre ‘by the way Christ went to the Cross’ and described various stations. William Wey, an English pilgrim, in his description of his visit in 1462 was the first to use the term "stations" to describe pilgrims’ devotional stopping-places on Jerusalem’s ‘Via Sacra’. Wey visited the Holy Land in 1458 and again in 1462. He used the “stations” term only of the places visited in the process of following in Christ’s footsteps on his journey to death, not for other sites visited in Jerusalem or beyond. Up to Wey’s time it seems to have been a common practice to commence the route at Calvary and proceed in the opposite direction to Christ’s journey, working back to Pilate’s home. By the early part of the sixteenth century, the more logical, chronological way of traversing the route was most regularly followed, beginning at Pilate’s Judgment Hall in the Antonine Fortress (now incorporated into the Ecce Homo Convent). It ended at the reputed site of Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This had developed into a recognised devotional exercise. Wey mentions 14 Stations, but only five of them correspond to today’s traditional themes. Seven seem only remotely related to the traditional Way of the Cross:
· The house of Dives (in the Parable of Lazarus the beggar)
· The city gate through which Christ passed on his way to Golgotha
· A pool by which he was tested and where he taught
· The arch where Pilate declared “Ecce Homo”
· Mary’s School
· Herod’s houses
· The home of Simon the Pharisee.
The 15th and 16th Centuries saw a further rise in the popularity of Stations. A number of confraternities were devoted to the practice and supporting its devotional use. Turks blocked access to the Holy Land and suppressed Christian devotion. In 1587 Zuallardo reported that the Moslems forbade anyone "to make any halt, nor to pay veneration to [the stations] with uncovered head, nor to make any other demonstration." He published a full account of prayers and liturgical practices used at shrines within the Holy Sepulchre but mentioned none for the Stations or the Via Crucis, as such open devotion was forbidden. Henry Maundrell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD1697 mentions the Turks’ financial monopoly over admission to the sacred sites and seems to describe some different sites for the Way of the Cross than today’s Via Dolorosa. As an Anglican he does not describe the detail of all the ceremonies and Latin liturgies which he experienced, as his contemporary, Sandys, had published them in detail.
With external ceremonies on the Via Dolorosa suppressed under Muslim domination of the Holy Land and pilgrimage to Jerusalem dangerous, European devotion to the Stations grew in popularity. They provided alternative focuses for pilgrims.
The mystic Henry Suso (c1295-1366) developed the practice of following Christ’s Passion step by step in his imagination, but others felt the need for visual reminders. Franciscans built several outdoor shrines in small buildings or under canopies along the approach to churches; sometimes housing near-life-size sculptures in elaborate groups. Craftspeople and artists of repute began to receive commissions for these sculptures or paintings. Reproductions of the Jerusalem stations were erected at popular spiritual centres. The earliest example was the C5th church of Santo Stefano in Bologna, which replicated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives and Valley of Josaphat. Initially its stations seem to have been an isolated example and the monastery became popularly known as ‘Hierusalem’. As pilgrimage increased the Stations practice increased. Often chapels were erected with altars dedicated to the incidents of the Passion Story, reflecting the chapels on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa. Famous early replicas were at the Dominican Friary at Cordova (commissioned by Alvarez d.1420 on his return from the Holy Land), the Poor Clare Convent at Messina (in the early 1400s by Eustochia); Görlitz (erected by G. Emmerich c1465); Nuremberg (by Ketzel, in 1468); Varallo (1491 by Bernardino Caimi, once the Franciscan custodian of the holy places); Louvain (by Peter Sterckx in 1505); St. Getreu in Bamberg (1507); Fribourg and Rhodes (by the Knights of Rhodes c1507); Romans in Dauphine (by Romanet Bofin 1515 imitating those at Fribourg); and Antwerp 1520).
Such devotion was not entirely selfless: in 1520 Leo X granted an indulgence of a hundred days to people following each of a set of sculpted Stations representing ‘The Seven Dolours of Our Lady’ in the cemetery of the Franciscan Friary at Antwerp. Soon indulgences were available to all who meditated on the Stations or Passion of Christ, a practice and approach to the Cross that many Protestants came to abhor.
The representation of scenes varied. Unlike the pattern-books of the Middle Ages, which unified the iconography of the saints, Stations imagery developed at a time when variety was more valued as an artistic quality. St. Alphonsus promoted the use of already common ‘Pieta’ iconography as the 13th station, with Jesus’ body laid in the arms of his mother. In the preceding two centuries devotion to Mary in her sorrow had become particularly popular and often the figure of Christ’s mother was emphasised in the scenes. Margery Kempe’s journal meditations on the Passion were viewed from the perspective of Mary with Margery imagining herself in the role of Mary’s servant-companion.
By the 17th Century Stations were in general use by nearly all Catholic churches, as they continue to be today. Before 1731 (when Pope Clement XII regulated the Stations and formulated the traditional 14 subjects) the number of stations of the Passion varied greatly, between seven and thirty-seven. On visiting Jerusalem in 1515 to glean as correct details as possible for designing a set of Stations, Romanet Boffin was assured by two Franciscan Friars there ought to be thirty-one Stations in total, but contemporary printed devotional manuals for using these Stations mention nineteen, twenty-five, and thirty-seven. Evidently different devotional practices were in use at the same places of pilgrimage. Few mediaeval accounts mention Station 2 (Christ Receiving the Cross) or Station 10 (Christ Stripped of His Garments). A common former Station was Pilate’s declaration “Ecce Homo”, presumably because the ruins of the arch from which it was supposed to have been pronounced was still visible to pilgrims. Before mediaeval times Veronica was never mentioned, leading one to believe that this was a mediaeval invention to promote the cult of her ‘miraculous veil’.
Seven Stations was a common number. It was not just a ‘perfect number’ symbolically, but it is also a comfortable number to undertake as an intense devotional exercise without the practice becoming monotonous or distracting. The Seven themes most commonly used included:
1. Christ Carries his Cross (Traditional Station no. 2)
2. Jesus Falls the First Time (Traditional Station no. 3)
3. Jesus Meets his Mother (Traditional Station no. 4)
4. Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus (Traditional Station no.6)
5. Jesus Falls the Second Time (Traditional Station no. 7)
6. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, (Traditional Station no. 11)
7. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb (Traditional Station no.14)
The Three Falls of Christ, (the tradition of Stations 3, 7 and 9,) seem to survive from this older tradition of Seven Falls. These were famously sculpted by Adam Krafft at Nuremburg. They were commissioned and inspired by Martin Ketzel who went to the Holy Land on pilgrimage in 1468 then revisited to remind himself of details and the distances between the Jerusalem Stations. Ketzel himself paced them out in Nuremberg. His Seven Falls were:
1. Jesus Meets his Mother (Traditional Station no. 4)
2. Simon of Cyrene helps to Carry the Cross (Traditional Station no.5)
3. Jesus meets the Women of Jerusalem (Traditional Station no. 8)
4. Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus (Traditional Station no.6)
5. Jesus Falls (Traditional Station no. 3 or 7)
6. Christ on the ground beneath the Cross (Traditional Station no. 9)
7. Christ taken down from the Cross & laid in his mothers’ arms. (Station 13)
Many imitators followed his example, though several illustrated versions began even before Jesus’ condemnation by Pilate.. The representation of Christ as falling or fallen, may have been a way of promoting empathy with his suffering, and faith that Christ identified with our own fallen state and can raise us. The four lost falls may survive in the themes of the four non-biblical Stations where Jesus appears to stop on his journey to death: Jesus Meeting His Mother, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica, and the Women of Jerusalem. All of these scenes show Jesus as vulnerable, in need of support and identifying with others. A few mediaeval commentators conflate the scenes of Simon of Cyrene with the Women of Jerusalem.
C16th Franciscans produced printed guide-books to the Holy Land sites. In the Low Countries particularly many C16th devotional books were published, which included 14 stations with devotional prayers. These supplemented early printed records of liturgies & practices used in Jerusalem with devotional practices to be used at home. ‘Geystlich Strass’/‘Spiritual Road’[1521] printed in Germany included wood engravings of the Jerusalem stations. An influential volume ‘Jerusalem sicut Christi Tempore floruit’/’Jerusalem at the Time of Christ’ (1584), written by Adrichomius listed 12 stations which have common themes to those in present Catholic tradition. This book circulated widely in Europe, being translation into several languages and may be a source that influenced the eventual choice of the traditional themes. Like Jan van Paesschen, author of ‘The Spiritual Pilgrimage’ [1563] (another probable source for the 14 traditional themes), Adrichomius had never visited the Holy Land but formed his meditations from imaginative contemplative journey, following Falls or Stations of the Cross and the described experiences of others.
Pope Innocent XI recognised that few could travel to Jerusalem due to religious oppression, financial constraints and fear about the safety on journeys. In 1686 he granted Franciscans, in answer to their petition, the right to erect stations in their own churches. German monastic cloisters are named ‘Kreuzweg’/’The Way of the Cross’, as Stations are often positioned in cloisters, but this positioning was not general practice before the late C17th. In 1731 Clement XII extended the right to erect Stations to all churches on the condition that a Franciscan friar erected and consecrated them, with the consent of the local bishop. His directive actively encouraged all churches to erect stations. At the same time Clement fixed the number of Stations formally to fourteen and regulated the themes traditional today. The Franciscans held a form of monopoly over the Stations tradition until the late 19th Century. Franciscans were granted the same indulgences for following reproductions of the Stations as pilgrims who practiced the devotion on an actual pilgrimage. In 1726 Pope Benedict XIII extended these indulgences to all the faithful who followed the Way of the Cross, and Clement XII confirmed this benefit of indulgences when he formulated the 14 traditional Stations in 1731. In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV further exhorted all priests to decorate their churches with the Way of the Cross. All stations were required to include 14 crosses and they usually included images of each scene. It was regulated that the Cross must be made of wood, or the Station was invalid.
Many 18th Century preachers popularised the devotional exercise. Perhaps the most renowned was Leonard Casanova of Porto Maurizio, Italy (Leonard of Port Maurice) (1676-1751) who was reputedly responsible for erecting 572 series of Stations in Europe, Most famously these included the Stations in the Colosseum in Rome commissioned by Benedict XIV in 1750 to commemorate the Holy Year. Walking these became the Pope’s regular Good Friday practice.
Devotion to Stations was supported by successive popes, who, like St. Francis, saw the devotional exercise as a means of strengthening faith. Religious communities, particularly the Jesuits and the Passionists encouraged Stations as part of their missions and retreats. Outdoor Stations were sometimes erected in rural settings or on wooded hills like Sacro Monte di Domodossola (1657) and Sacro Monte di Belmonte (1712). The 18th Century Italian bishop Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787) wrote an influential commentary and liturgy for the Stations. This was widely used throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries in Europe and America and still popular today. It became popular to sing a stana of the Stabat Mater between Stations. Gradually the Franciscan monopoly of Stations declined. The Stations practice did not develop in England until the middle of the C19th and in America about the same time. In 1857, Catholic bishops in England were allowed to erect and dedicate stations themselves, without involving a Franciscan priest. This right was extended in 1862 to bishops throughout the Catholic Church. Someone with spiritual authority in the Catholic Church is still required to erect and bless them.
Great composers, like Franz Liszt in 1879, composed music for the liturgy of the Stations, supplementing the traditional Adoramus Te and Stabat Mater (traditionally ascribed to the 13th C. Franciscan Jacapone da Todi). In the 20th Century the musical tradition expanded as spiritual and artistic creativity supplemented the traditions. Marcel Dupré composed organ meditations in 1931 based on Stations poems by Paul Claudel; Peter Maxwell Davies's Vesalii Icones (1969), interpreted the Stations for male dancer, solo cello, instrumental ensemble and anatomical illustrations by Vesalius (1543). David Bowie’s 1976 song, "Station to Station" refers to the Stations of the Cross. The 14 traditional Stations have inspired several oratorios: Stefano Vagnini's 2002 Via Crucis for organ, computer, choir, string orchestra and brass quartet and Broadway composer Michael Valenti and librettist Diane Seymour’s 1991 oratorio ‘The Way’. The storyline of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ [2004] followed the narrative of the Stations, including the three Falls. Dietrich Brüggemann’s film ‘Stations of the Cross’ has the structure of 14 Stations running through it. It is not primarily about Christ’s Passion but explores the relevance and struggle of faith in the contemporary world. The film Jesus of Montreal successfully parallels the Passion of Christ with the life-journeys of a group of actors presenting a Passion Play relevant to the contemporary city. Scott Erickson, when artist-in-residence at Ecclesia Church, Houston, designed a set of 10 tattoos of various Stations of the Cross to help people carry the Passion with them through Lent. More than 75 members of the congregation including the pastor, adopted the tattoos as part of their Lenten observance, so when congregational groups met they became living ‘Stations.'
Visually so many artists and craftspeople have worked with the Stations tradition that here is not the place to discuss them in detail. Application of our creative imagination can help us keep relevant the memory of Christ’s Passion and what it achieved. Stations are usually an outward expression of an inner journey.
Today, liturgically a 15th Resurrection Station is increasingly added providing a positive focus at the end of the progress. Anglican, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist and Western Orthodox parishes have begun to use stations more, though Protestants (and increasingly some Catholics) are sometimes uncomfortable with the non-biblical scenes and revise the themes to include solely biblical scenes. An early attempt to create a series of biblical Stations was seen in 11 stations specially ordered for the Diocese of Vienna in 1799. These portrayed:
1. Jesus’ Agony in the Garden
2. Judas Betrays Jesus
3. The Scourging
4. The Crowning with Thorns
5. Jesus is Condemned to Death
6. Jesus meets Simon of Cyrene
7. Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
8. Jesus Tastes the Gall
9. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
10. Jesus Dies on the Cross
11. Jesus’ Body is Taken Down from the Cross
Pope Paul VI, approved a Gospel-based version of the stations in 1975. Franciscans had a long tradition of celebrating the Stations in the Colosseum in Rome on Fridays. Pope John Paul II made this observance an annual element his Holy Week practice. He wrote his own version and a new form of devotion - ‘The Scriptural Way of the Cross’, which he first led on Good Friday 1991 around the Colosseum. This tradition continues. He originally carried the Cross himself between stations but later with growing infirmity he presided over the Stations from a platform on the Palatine Hill or his private chapel in the Vatican, via a televised link. Each year, a different person is invited to write the meditation text for the Pope’s Stations, including non-Catholics. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI formally approved the scriptural set of stations for meditation and public celebration using the following sequence:
1. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
2. Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested
3. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
4. Jesus is denied by Peter
5. Jesus is judged by Pilate
6. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
7. Jesus takes up his Cross
8. Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry his Cross
9. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
10. Jesus is crucified
11. Jesus promises his Kingdom to the repentant thief
12. Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other
13. Jesus dies on the Cross
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb
The Catholic Church in the Philippines uses a third scriptural version of the Stations, approved by their Bishops’ Conference. Starting at the Last Supper, it omits Peter’s Denial, conflates Condemnation by Pilate with Christ Accepting the Cross and concludes with the Resurrection as the 14th Station:
1. The Last Supper
2. The Agony in the Garden
3. Jesus before the Sanhedrin
4. The Scourging and Crowning with Thorns
5. Jesus Receives the Cross
6. Jesus Falls under the Weight of the Cross
7. Jesus is Helped by Simon of Cyrene
8. Jesus Meets the Pious Women of Jerusalem
9. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
10. Jesus and the Repentant Thief
11. Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross
12. Jesus Dies on the Cross
13. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb
14. Jesus Rises from Death
The Resurrection of Jesus, though not traditionally part of the Stations, is now often included at Number 15. A series of Resurrection Stations is also growing in popularity. The ‘Way of Light’ (‘Via Lucis’) was developed in the 1990s to take contemplation forward during the Easter Season (fifty days from Easter to Pentecost). A Salesian priest in Rome, Fr. Sabino Palumbieri, promoted the idea. This devotional exercise was first blessed on Easter Sunday 1994, at Becchi, Turin, the birthplace of Saint John Bocso, founder of the Salesian Order. Palumbieri explained his reasons for developing ‘The Way of Light’ in ‘Give Me a Firm Footing’ [1999]. He combined references on an ancient inscription on a wall of the San Callisto Catacombs on the Appian Way in Rome with the Gospel texts of other Resurrection appearances. Saint Callistus was a former slave who served as the 16th Pope between 217-222. The inscription in his catacomb is a fragment of 1Cor.15:3-8: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I had been taught myself, namely that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all, he appeared to me, too, as though I was born when no one expected it.”
The 14 ‘Way of Light’ Stations emphasise aspects of the Christian hope that build from the promise of Redemption contained within the Way of the Cross.
1. Jesus rises from the dead [Matt.28:5-6]
2. Women find the empty tomb [Matt.28:1-6]
3. The risen Lord appears to Mary Magdalene [Jn.20:16]
4. Mary Magdalene proclaims the Resurrection to the apostles [Jn. 20:18]
5. The risen Lord appears on the road to Emmaus [Lk.24:13-27]
6. The risen Lord is recognized in the breaking of the bread [Lk.24:28-32]
7. The risen Lord appears to the disciples in Jerusalem [Lk.24:36-39]
8. The risen Lord gives the disciples the power to forgive [John 20:22-23]
9. The risen Lord strengthens the faith of Thomas [John 20:24-29]
10. The risen Lord says to Peter, "Feed my sheep" [John 21:15-17]
11. The risen Lord sends the disciples into the whole world [Matt.28:16-20]
12. The risen Lord ascends into heaven [Acts 1:9-11]
13. The Disciples wait with Mary in the Upper Room [Acts 1:12-14]
14. The risen Lord sends the Holy Spirit [Acts 2:2-4]
Sculptor Giovanni Dragoni was the first to carve this series in wood for Becchi and created a second outdoor series in metal at the San Callisto Catacombs, along the route from the Domino Quo Vadis Church to the Basilica of San Sebastiano.
Protestantism, Evangelicals particularly, traditionally preferred the sign of an empty Cross, if they used one at all. A crucifix was used more by those churches which worship with a more pronounced theological emphasis on the sacraments. However towards the end of the C20th. increasing numbers of Protestant churches, even some Evangelical congregations returned to using art as part of their communal, liturgical or personal devotional practices, including forms of Stations of the Cross and representations of the Crucifix. Where they are considered, most prefer Stations based on Gospel events rather than the Catholic traditional 14. They often include a Resurrection Station. Non-biblical Station themes are frequently replaced with others scriptural scenes or just 8 Stations may be used:
1. Pilate Condemns Jesus to Die
2. Jesus Accepts His Cross
3. Simon Helps to Carry the Cross
4. Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem
5. Jesus Is Stripped of His Clothes
6. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
7. Jesus Shows Cares for His Mother and John
8. Jesus Dies on the Cross
This is a comfortable number to follow in a liturgical service, allowing time for thought and personal focus in prayer. Often Protestant biblical Stations begin with Jesus dedicating himself in prayer Gethsemane, or with the Last Supper:
1. Jesus Prays Alone in Gethsemane
2. Jesus is Arrested
3. The Sanhedrin Tries Jesus
4. Pilate Tries Jesus
5. Pilate Condemns Jesus to Die
6. Jesus is Crowned with Thorns
7. Jesus Carries His Cross
8. Simon of Cyrene Helps to Carry the Cross
9. Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem
10. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
11. The Two Criminals Speak with Jesus
12. Jesus Shows Care for his Mother and John
13. Jesus Dies on the Cross
14. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb
APPENDIX 2
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS OF THE THEOLOGY OF STATIONS
The Passion was not just a tragic past event; it has lasting relevance. We live in a popular and political culture which increasingly values the present over the past or future. Despite interest in history, many disregard the past as ‘being over’, relevant primarily to the particular time and place where events occurred. We commemorate and memorialise some events and people but rarely consider fully their implications to us now. Faith, like politics, history, sociology and psychology, encourages us to consider ‘why’ something happened and its current implications. The Passion and Death of Christ are of lasting relevance and importance. What God was doing in and through Jesus relates inseparably to our own life-journey because Jesus underwent the Passion for us. It is significant to our community and the whole world. Christ’s Great Commission [Matt.28:19-20] makes us responsible for communicating this relevance effectively to others.
Scripture regularly calls people of faith to ‘remember’. The Pentateuch’s festival regulations, biblical memorials or Psalm 105 are good examples. Memorialising is not just to ‘keep things in mind and not forget’. Significant events are an essential part of culture, story, life and identity, they have helped to shape people’s understanding of themselves, their value, characters and activities. They also sometimes point to what a people will become. We try to learn from history to make better future choices. In the history of Redemption Jews understood that God led their people through history. This covenant commitment was essential to their understanding of their value. Once they had been considered to be a people of no significance, they groped for truth and political existence [Isa 9:2]; God’s care helped them to recognise their significance and status [Ex.6:7]. Christ’s coming helped Christians realise that this was also true for them. As gentiles they had once been ‘far off’; now they were God’s people [1 Pet.2:10]. From darkness had been brought to the light of God's presence and grace [Jn.8:12]. Christ’s endurance on his journey to redeem humanity enabled him to accomplish this. The Way of the Cross can be a journey to help us remember our own position and value, as part of our personal, humble, act of commitment to God.
We may follow Stations as internal personal devotion, but this is also an important communal element to the memorial activity: remembering who we are together, recalling what we corporately owe to Christ and committing ourselves as a body. Communal aspects are important; too often spirituality is taught in ways that encourage individual or self-centred growth. We frequently nurture individualistic personal development more than communal growth. The Cross and Resurrection were intended to unify and reunite people, not encourage us to remain separate. The exercise of the Stations may also help us develop empathy towards others who are suffering or spiritually journeying alongside us. Pilgrimage has always been a corporate journey as well as an individual search for spiritual growth. Journeying with others helps us include them in this spiritual progress; we are meant to encourage and learn from each other.
Reflecting on the Cross reminds us that Jesus crucifixion happened at a particular, auspicious time and place: ‘once for all’… “just at the right time” [Rom.5:6]. But its achievement acts throughout time. It redeems us now. It also shows us many aspects of the character of God, expressed through Christ, and how Jesus worked and acts as an example for us. These are important facets to contemplate when we follow the Stations. We are not just following a narrative; we are encouraged to take time to consider what the Passion says about the powers that rule our life and how the events of the Passion might encourage us to be ‘more perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’ [Matt.5:48]. How might what Jesus achieved through his Passion act as an example for us in our attempt to improve the world? I attempt to list some ways at the end of this Appendix.
Though the Cross is a central theme of Christianity, the sad events of Holy Week are sometimes not as emphasised in some contemporary Christian spirituality as Easter and the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment of our lives. Many believers prefer imagery of the Church triumphant, worshipping with positive praise. This contrasts with much Mediaeval Christianity, which wallowed in penitence and grief as in, with its fear of death and judgement. Both emphases need to be kept in balance. The Cross is still of primary significance in the process that heals us and brings us future promise.
The Passion is also important for psychological balance and health; we live in a world where pain is a real and common experience. True faith must engage with and be able to cope with human realities. We are not meant to lose ourselves in idealism; we are part of a suffering world. Dealing with the issues and questions brought up by the Way of the Cross should help us develop a realistic faith and an apologetic that is able to cope with and speak into the needs and challenges of life and thinking. The Passion shows that winning new life is not an easy journey. If Christ suffered, we too are likely to face similar difficulties, in our commitment to improving the world by promoting Christ’s message and way. Most things of value are not gained easily. By showing the reality of Jesus’ pain and suffering in tangible, even semi-visceral ways we emphasise that redemption is not just a spiritual ideal, as some gnostic or heretical teachings of the past implied. Jesus’ suffering, and death were real and effective; he did not just ‘appear to die’
William Temple called Christians ‘an Easter People’ with ‘Alleluia’ as our triumphant song. But if we’re honest most of us fail to live up to this triumphal aspect of our nature most of the time. Life’s experiences are hard. Remaining true to our faith is a struggle between what St. Paul called ‘the Flesh and the Spirit’ [Rom.8]; sometimes we even endure persecution, as Christ prophesied that his followers would. Life is painful and often we don’t see light and hope through the darkness of experience. Following Jesus’ journey may help us reflect on how our experiences may be similar to his. Jesus’ Passion may reassure us that there can be true hope, not just wishful thinking, in the difficult journey of life. We may experience similar emotions, similar helplessness or hopelessness as Christ may have felt at times on his journey to his death. Yet he persevered and in remaining faithful, held onto God’s promises in trust. This may shine a little positive light of hope into our difficult situations. It may also help us recognise that our situation is not as bad as that experienced by some others in our world. It may aid us in developing perseverance, even courage or faith and trust in God through the unknown, or insecure situations. With God difficulties, passions, even ruined lives may become foundations for new beginnings or building a new type of life, with different attitudes and priorities. God often helps people grow through dark experiences like those of John of the Cross, who found hope and trust through his ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.
Some theologians today are rightly wary of potential excesses in some doctrines of substitutionary Atonement. Yet Jesus taught his followers that his death was inevitable. Peter was rebuked severely when he tried to deflect Jesus from the path to death: “Get behind me Satan!” [Mk.8:33]. We need to interweave into our positive theology an understanding that Christ’s death was necessary, not just a tragedy and travesty of human justice. Somewhere in God’s economy suffering can be transformed into triumph. It is not easy to explain; often attempts flounder and seem simplistic or naïve. Like much around Jesus’ death and Resurrection, how redemption works is shrouded in mysteries that probably only God understands. Representing it visually through the Stations could help us sense an understanding of the mysterious truths by intuition or osmosis rather than logical or theological explanation.
The Cross is far more profound than just a symbol or sign of Jesus’ suffering and death. It shows Christ’s faithfulness, his willingness to act as a servant and deny himself. It demonstrates how one who is committed to healing and supporting others will not abandon those he loves, even if they reject, betray or deny him. The Cross shows love in action: how powerful love and commitment can be. It declares how much God cares for humanity and creation and how faithful God is in pouring out grace and love, even to the extent of self-sacrifice. It shows how self-sacrifice can be a spark to renew and reform life. Contemplation may relate all these elements to our own ministries, mission, ways of life & priorities, helping us follow Christ’s example and be examples for others.
Some churches lay emphasis on doctrine at the expense of love and compassion. Their pronouncements may make God seem less loving and more legalistic than human beings. The practice of walking the Way of the Cross may help to humanise people’s understanding and counter many religious institutions’ doctrinal arrogance. The Church will never be able to bring Christ’s true salvation to the world unless it presents God truthfully and teaches holistically, following the example of selfless love and self-sacrifice displayed in Christ’s Passion. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of suffering considers how Christ’s experience and our understanding of a God who could work through such difficulties, can help us through the experiences of life. He wrote of God’s power of love being: “whelmed under the weight of the wicked, the weak and the dead.” His application of the Passion to our social and political situations could broaden and speak into our faith. .
We need to remember, and include somewhere in our message, that the Passion was not the whole story. Jesus’ tragic death was certainly not the end of the story; it was followed by the Resurrection and Pentecost, which hold out tremendous promises and implications for new life for us and for our world. If we are to remember and represent the Passion and Cross correctly, we should set the suffering in the context of Christ’s entire journey and achievement.
Our journey alongside Christ to his Cross also encourages us to realise our dependency on God. Recalling Jesus’ suffering and death on our behalf can help us recall our failings, confess them and recognise God’s forgiveness of us. He endured this for love and care for us. Surely he would not over-quickly condemn people over whom he has expended so much past trouble and pain.
Stations are not primarily about contemplating or identifying with suffering and pain. They encourage us to consider why this suffering was endured, what it achieved and how it applies to us. Stations of the Cross are primarily a context for prayer and reflection, not just beautiful liturgy, following a story or being inspired by paintings. Stations provide a liturgical or personal contemplative way to consider the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. It is hoped that they lead to truer worship and devotion to God, through recognising more fully the extent of his devotion to us. We need to let them help us encounter God by opening our hearts, minds and spirits to Christ’s story. This involves listening for God’s prompting as we follow the real, metaphorical and symbolic journey of the Passion. One aim is to draw closer to the way God worked and expressed himself through Jesus’ actions. We’ll never fully recognise what Christ endured or what were his thoughts through the journey of the Passion. We aim to touch a little of his care, to recognise that Jesus identified with us and to realise his love for us. This might help us identify with the needs of others, learn from and through his example and apply his message to bring some of his healing and love to the world around us and inside us.
Many Protestants rejected using Stations of the Cross for centuries, mostly because they disagreed theologically with the issue of indulgences or the use of images in churches. Catholic teaching on indulgences and the spirituality associated with Stations has changed in the modern world. So has modern Protestant understanding. Protestant teachers today are less concerned with fighting Catholic practices than thinking through those truths that may be retained within traditions. It is useful to consider how Catholic traditions like this might be assimilated or transformed to add to our spiritual growth, enrich our spiritual practices and draw us into greater unity with other traditions. One Catholic bishop wrote recently that “Christian unity is not an option.” Although we are not aiming for ‘uniformity’, many Christian churches are seeking ways to reconnect with or reclaim others’ traditions for our own use, if they offer valuable ways to worship ‘in spirit and in truth’ [Jn.4:23].
Stations of the Cross carry many positive implications. But following them encourages us to, for a while, hold Easter in the back of our mind and focus on what Jesus endured out of care for us and the world. Easter and the promise of Resurrection will gain greater meaning if we have come to understand in greater depth the enormity of what went into achieving redemption and renewal of life.
The question of whether Stations should include the Resurrection is important. Traditionally, when used in Holy Week, part of Tenebrae or Good Friday services, it is understandable that the Stations end with the Cross and Jesus’ entombment. A journey alongside Christ in his Passion entails a certain degree of darkness, self-searching, reflection, repentance and penitence as well our need to recognise God’s forgiveness of us. In the context of following a meaningful Holy Week, Easter Sunday morning is the appropriate time for celebrating the victory that the Cross achieved. But when Stations are permanently part of the church’s liturgical setting there also needs to be some way of emphasising that Jesus death was far from being the end of the journey. Stations should not bring gloom to a church building. Christ on the Cross is a starting point-for our spiritual lives; we grow from Jesus death to live in the presence of the risen and ascended Christ. So if no Resurrection Station is included in a permanent set of stations, there needs to be some emphatic sign of Resurrection in the liturgical space to balance the Stations. In my Stations for St. John’s, Bury St. Edmunds this is emphasised by a large Resurrection altarpiece as the last Station.
Traditionally Eucharist is not offered on Good Friday because ‘Eucharist’, as its name implies is primarily about ‘Thanksgiving’. Eucharist celebrates holistically God’s salvation and restoration by bringing together the events of Good Friday and Easter. Following the journey of the Passion might be a liturgical substitute for this, thanking God for the grace achieved through Jesus’ self-sacrifice. The Eucharist is our ‘sacrifice of worship’. Following the Way of the Cross could also be for us a meaningful way of “offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship' [Rom.12:1]. Richard Hooker wrote of our discernment of Christ in the Eucharist: “These mysteries do as nails fasten us to this very Cross, that by them we draw out such touching efficacy, force and virtue, even the blood of his gentle side… why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this: ‘O my God thou art true, O my soul thou art happy.’” This could be true of any worship that enables us to rightly discern the truth of God and his message for us within Christ’s activity.
THOUGHTS CONCERNING CATHOLIC PLENARY INDULGENCES'
Traditionally the Roman Catholic Church granted ‘plenary indulgences’ for certain spiritual devotions & activities, including following the Stations. Indulgences supposedly remove temporal punishment by forgiving sin. They are not part of my Protestant tradition and I personally find them hard to balance with the understandings of God’s forgiveness which have developed in my faith. My understandings are regularly developing and Catholic ideas are also in the process of change, development and transformation. Popular ideas, understandings and beliefs that punishment for sins could be relieved by human payment or actions are very different from the way Roman Catholic theologians regard the mediation of God’s forgiveness. Some explain people’s acts of penance as a practical outworking or expression of the journey we take in repentance, trusting in God’s transformation. As an Anglican priest I may proclaim God’s forgiveness to a penitent, but I do so trusting God’s grace, not my act of blessing. Catholic teaching takes the thinking rather further in regarding Confession as a Sacrament; so in a way walking the Stations as a penitential act is seeking a near-equivalent to sacramental forgiveness. Only God knows for certain when or whether forgiveness is truly gained or how Christ’s self-sacrifice applies forgiveness to people. Only God knows our inner selves, our thoughts and intentions, or whether repentance is true, deserved, given and received. Even sincere penitence is often inadequate: we all hold things back and we recognise that few, if any of us, deserve God’s freely-offered grace. Our psychologies and our motives are complex; we are not always aware of the root of our sins and continue to sin though we might long to be pure.
In the Catholic Church the Way of the Cross may be prayed as a form of penance, to make reparation for past sins and, from Mediaeval times, to receive a plenary indulgence. Roman Catholic theology applies significant conditions to those seeking plenary indulgences. It requires that “all attachment to sin, even venial, must be absent”. But knowing our weaknesses, self-deceptiveness and tendency to return to practised weak, sinful habits, we can never be sure that we are letting go of, or free from, our sin. The idea of walking Stations as a ‘journey’ alongside Christ, links to our spiritual journey to his achievement, through states of recognition of our sin, sorrow, seeking, asking for forgiveness & transformation, receiving and accepting forgiveness and moving towards transformation. Searching for forgiveness and holiness, like becoming a Christian, is not a one- off event: it is a process and a life-long journey. Those who believe in penitential acts see rites and plenary indulgences as elements of this process.
The Roman Catholic Church granted plenary indulgences for those who followed the Way of the Cross ‘piously, mediating on Christ’s passion and death’ in walking the Stations. The same indulgence could be achieved in practicing this devotion on a single day as was granted to someone who had made the long pilgrimage journey to Jerusalem and walked the Via Dolorosa. This indulgence was later further extended to any who, ‘for legitimate reasons, could not attend church’. They may be granted the same indulgence through sincerely meditating on Christ’s Passion at home for half an hour each day. Concerning such regulation of indulgences, the official Enchiridion 63 states:
Exercise of the Way of the Cross (Viae Crucis exercitium)
A plenary indulgence is granted to the faithful, who make the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross.
In the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross we recall anew the sufferings, which the divine Redeemer endured, while going from the praetorium of Pilate, where he was condemned to death, to the mount of Calvary, where he died on the cross for our salvation.
The gaining of the plenary indulgence is regulated by the following norms:
1. The pious exercise must be made before stations of the Way of the Cross legitimately erected.
2. For the erection of the Way of the Cross fourteen crosses are required, to which it is customary to add fourteen pictures or images, which represent the stations of Jerusalem.
3. According to the more common practice, the pious exercise consists of fourteen pious readings, to which some vocal prayers are added. However, nothing more is required than a pious meditation on the Passion and Death of the Lord, which need not be a particular consideration of the individual mysteries of the stations.
4. A movement from one station to the next is required.
But if the pious exercise is made publicly and if it is not possible for all taking part to go in an orderly way from station to station, it suffices if at least the one conducting the exercise goes from station to station, the others remaining in their place. Those who are “impeded” can gain the same indulgence, if they spend at least one half an hour in pious reading and meditation on the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Some Catholic Oriental rites do not use Stations of the Cross, but their Patriarchs determine other exercises to gain similar indulgences and help believers meditate on Christ’s Passion and Death. I have discussed this with priestly friends trained in Catholic theology and studied the ideas with sympathy. I have wanted to understand and not disparage a tradition of which I am not a part, and in which I have not been trained. Many of my most holy friends come from the Catholic tradition. I still do not fully comprehend how the regulations about indulgences developed, and find them difficult to justify biblically, theologically or logically. They are more easy to understand pastorally: people long to know that they are right with God, that they are safe. The Church wants to assure penitents of forgiveness, and to set them free through Christ. It is less pastorally sensitive to suggest that our declaration of forgiveness is ‘provisional’. Theologically, forgiveness depends totally on God, even though priestly ordination in the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions grants priests the right to ‘declare forgiveness of sins’. This is assurance of God’s forgiveness, not ours. But granting indulgences, even if it is emphasised these are just part of a process in the penitential life-journey, seems theologically uncomfortable. Our penitential actions cannot obtain God’s favour. God’s forgiveness is a result of his grace, made possible and opened to us freely through Jesus’ self-sacrifice. Any explanation of why we walk the Stations needs to emphasise that our faith and trust are in this mystery of God’s love; we are free from legalism of having to do things to win that love.
Indulgences seem closer to the idea of reciprocal covenant actions in the Hebrew Scriptures and Law. We can do nothing to win forgiveness; all the activity that brings forgiveness happened on God’s side of the Covenant relationship. This is depicted in the narrative of the Stations. Biblical Christian theology emphasises that the Cross, with the Salvation it brought, is God’s ultimate act of grace: “While we were still sinners Christ died for us; the just for the unjust”[Rom.5:8]. No human activities, even our most loving, devoted, holy works, deserve such a great reward as Christ’s Salvation. In this light the idea of believing that walking alongside Christ’s Passion in our imagination and prayer could win us a measure of God’s grace seems ironic. The message to us from devotionally walking the Stations is that Christ allowed himself to go through such suffering because only he could bring eternal forgiveness and redemption, and he was offering it freely.
Even obeying the Laws in the Pentateuch was, for the Jews, ultimately not intended primarily as teaching ‘do this to be accepted by God.’ The development of such legalism by Lawyers, Pharisees and Sadducees led to the problems challenged by Christ and explored by Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. Rather the emphasis of biblical laws seems to have been upon the fact that the Jews were God’s particular chosen people already. They were meant to obey God’s ways as part of ‘being God’s children’. Holiness was their covenant and ontological responsibility, an expression of their nature. The sacrificial system was given to them for restoring their covenant vows and cleansing them, not a way to curry God’s favour. Christians recognise that we too are God’s family; we are already redeemed by Christ’s love, expressed in his self-sacrifice. We follow devotional ways as a form of remembering, responding, learning, reaffirming our vows and worshipping. Christ’s death won freedom for all who he has redeemed. We do not need to follow any particular devotional practices to be assured of his cleansing and forgiveness. We follow Stations and other devotional practices out of acceptance of God’s gift, thanks, memorial, penitence, prayer, contemplation, worship and a dedication to follow more closely Christ’s example and teaching.
WAYS IN WHICH THE STATIONS SHOW CHRIST AS OUR EXAMPLE
Unlike Christ we cannot atone for others’ lives but in many ways Christ’s example, shown through his Passion, sets models for our own lives and attiudes. Some are:
· Thinking of and acting for the good of others before his own.
· Seeing a bigger picture than his own personal circumstances.
· Looking through God’s viewpoint at what will being good to the whole world, not living by a limited, individualistic perspective.
· Considering future, eternal good before personal, temporary gain and comfort.
· Being willing to give his life to rescue others.
· Setting an example of true servanthood and giving memorable models of service that others can follow.
· Reliance on God’s will. Maintaining a prayerful, contemplative, dependent life, even through times of suffering, to keep aligned with God’s will & truth.
· Remaining cool, reflective, true and forgiving while under extreme pressure, false accusation, hostility, violence and agony.
· Remaining true, even if others are false, mocking or violent,.
· Remaining aware, even expectant of the duplicity in human hearts and wills, yet still loving others, wanting the best for them and working towards righteous equity and restoration of what is good in people.
· Forgiving through recognising people’s underlying motives and weaknesses.
· Considering the support of those we love, not leaving them abandoned.
· Working to restore people who have failed or who feel a sense of failure.
· Strength, endurance and determination; not giving up in the struggle of life.
· Showing God’s understanding of our human weaknesses and predicaments through having personally endured much that humanity has to cope with.
· Letting others help him; not facing ordeal alone, knowing that people can grow and learn through their support of others.
· A sense of assurance that death and suffering are not the end to life; there is a greater good beyond.
· The need for self-restraint if we are to bring about righteous justice, while damaging as few as possible and strengthening & raising as many as possible.
· If we have any personal power, using it for the good of others. Seeing power as responsibility towards others, not expecting privileges. Being prepared to withhold or constrain personal power if others will be helped personally.
· Acting in considered, rather than impulsive ways.
· Being motivated by the love of others.
· Carrying others’ weights as well as our own.
· Being prepared to warn others of the dangers they are in, not keeping silent. Also showing them ways of escape and release and helping them forward.
· Confidence that death is not the end of life; that God’s power can bring healing & restoration and that he wants us, through our activities & example, to be part of bringing this hope to others. Christ brought about Salvation that is broader and more encompassing than we yet understand. We are recipients of this grace but it is not just for our benefit. As followers, friends & family of this man who suffered for us, we are his ambassadors, trusted to share Christ’s gifts & benefits with our contemporary world & generations to come.
APPENDIX 3
SOME DEVOTIONAL WRITINGS ON THE CROSS THAT MIGHT ENRICH OUR CONTEMPLATION OF THE CONTENT OF STATIONS
There has been a long tradition of writing meditations on the Passion. Because of the disparity of surviving early evidence and my limited experience of varying traditions, it is hard for me to record systematically how devotional meditation on the Cross developed, but here I mention a few sources that I have found most meaningful, spiritually inspiring or challenging.
Because the Cross has always been so central to Christian faith and to believers’ understanding of God & Salvation, many have written meditations on the Passion in various ways, designed to encourage growth, faith and devotion, and to try to explain the Cross doctrinally. Meanings derived from the Cross have sometimes varied, according to culture, the age in which writers lived, their theological preoccupations or the spiritual experience of writers and readers. Latin hymns like Fortunatus’ Vexilla Regis Prodeunt [c600] and Pange Lingua celebrated Jesus’ achievement and Cross in imagery that was relevant to the Roman imperial and military culture. The Anglo Saxon Dream of the Rood [c.C8th] contrasts the suffering and the triumph of Christian imagery that would have spoken to an age of warrior sagas. In the poem Christ climbs the Cross as a young warrior and suffers agonies voluntarily as a hero. The verses describe the Passion in a personal and imaginative way, perhaps the most creative approach to the Passion ever devised: In the context of a visionary dream the author makes the Cross’s wood animate and sentient; he imagines the experience of the wood of the Cross as it recalls witnessing Christ’s suffering. Its theology is rooted in the early tradition or ancient superstition that the ‘True Cross’ on which Christ died, grew from a seed of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge eaten by Adam. The poem describes the Cross as a bejewelled relic. It was believed that venerating relics of the wood of the True Cross put the believer within the heart of the Passion. Journeying alongside Christ, following Stations scene by scene, became regarded as placing yourself as closely as possible to the heart of the one who was pouring his life out for you. The poem ends in describing the poet in this devotional state.
From the C12th an intense emotional interaction with Christ developed in Western Spirituality, particularly concentrating on his agony, wounds and dying love. This was reflected in the development of visual art as well as writing. Franciscan and Dominican spirituality encouraged depth of emotional engagement with the Cross. Francis [1181-1226] and Dominic [1173-1221] encouraged prayerful, emotional embrace of the Cross. Dominic particularly developed various physical stances for prayer in the presence of the crucifix to help devotees focus internally on the meaning and relevance of Christ’s Cross. These were written up by his followers as the Nine Modes of Prayer. Dominican theologians wrote texts to deepen contemplation of the Cross, like Alvaro of Cordoba’s encouragement of devotion to the Way of the Cross [died c.1430].
Richard Rolle [c.1300-49] was not a scholarly theologian but rooted his mysticism in the imagination and human senses and experience. In his affective spirituality he imagined the wounds of Christ vividly, viscerally and poetically, as described in his Meditations on the Passion. He found messages in Christ’s wounds, which he applied to himself personally and to the spiritual and physical needs and troubles of his contemporary world.
The C14th noblewoman Birgitta of Sweden only managed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her 70s but had contemplated Christ’s Passion for much of her earlier life. She wrote of ‘Walking the Walk’ (i.e. following meditatively the Stations of the Cross). Her daily meditation on the Bible was the main source for her Revelations. Like Rolle Brigitta’s meditations have tangible, visceral realism:
“At the executioner’s command, [Christ] undressed himself and freely embraced the pillar. He was bound with rope then scourged with barbed whips. The barbs caught in his skin and were then pulled away, not just tearing but ploughing into him, ripping his whole body. At the first blow, it was as though my heart was pierced and I had lost the use of my senses.” Birgitta’s prayers encourage us to reflect on Christ’s suffering: “Infinite glory to you, my Lord Jesus Christ! For us, you humbly endured the Cross. Your holy hands and feet were stretched out with rope. Your hands and feet were secured cruelly with iron nails to the wood of the Cross. You were abused as “Traitor!” You were ridiculed in many ways. . . .Eternal praise to you, Lord, for every hour you endured such terrible bitterness and agony on the Cross for us sinners!” [‘A Vision of the Crucifixion’ Ch.7].
Thomas à Kempis [1379/80-1471] encouraged imitation of Jesus by meditation on Christ’s life, particularly his Passion and Death: “The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom… the royal road of the Holy Cross.” This he believed should bring hope to our own lives and experience and, through us, help to influence the world. We should immerse ourselves in Christ’s experience as though we too are present, experiencing the reality. This trust in the Spirit-inspired imagination is also part of the experience of walking the Stations.
In the 15th Century, open-air processions of the Cross became popular through Europe and devotional following of the Way of the Cross seems to have increased in its emotional expression. Christ’s Passion was a central focus for many English Mystics. Julian of Norwich [1342-1420] asked that she might share Christ’s sufferings (though not his death). In her ‘Showings’ she contemplated Christ’s wounded body. Her emotive approach to Jesus’ Passion has been attributed partly to the influence of Europe-wide experiences - the Black Death, social unrest and spiritual troubles of her time. These also probably influenced the development of painful imagery in Northern European religious art. Devotees contemplated the iconography of Pietas, The Man of Sorrows or carved Northern European crucifixes which emphasised the torturous nature of the Cross (like the ‘Plague Cross’ iconography). The emphasis on identification with sorrow and the pains of human experience culminated in works like Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, designed to suggest God’s compassion and identification with those who suffer and those who seek to bring God’s healing.
Margery Kempe in the 15th Century was inspired by Brigitta of Sweden’s writings. She also knew Julian of Norwich and had been guided by her. Margery made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land during which she recounts following the Way of the Cross, and being moved to paroxysms of grief and lamentation, particularly at the site of Calvary (ch.28). Her subsequent meditations on Christ’s wounds became so vivid that she recognised them in life’s experiences:
“Sometimes if she saw a crucifix or saw a man, or it might be an animal, wounded or if a man beat a child in front of her or struck a horse or other animal with a whip, if she saw or heard this it seemed to her that she saw our Lord beaten or wounded as were the men or animals whom she could see.”
This may seem to take contemplation of Christ’s Passion a little too far, (Margery’s own contemporaries were irritated by and suspicious of her weeping habits,) but lament is a useful contrast to later dry commentary on doctrines of Atonement by some Reformers, scholars and iconoclasts. Many today might benefit from a deeper sense of remorse for sin and failure as long as this is enabled to turn to gratitude and worship rather than remaining maudlin. In chapters 79-81 of her journal Margery describes a contemplative vision of the Passion in which she appears to have regarded herself as a companion or maidservant to Mary, witnessing the Passion events reaching into her soul.
Roger Hilton considered devotion to the Passion ‘the door to contemplation’. To attempt to go in by any other way, he regarded as ‘robbery’. Christ was most perfectly to be understood through his sufferings, which could teach Christians compassion and humility. The Cloud of Unknowing rightly points out that at some stage of mystical prayer and devotion we need to reach beyond the scenes of the Passion. Stations or visually contemplating the Cross can become a distraction, which needs to be put into the background, given up as one empties the soul for contemplation. Following the Way of the Cross may be a primary source for meditation but it is only part of our journey to be passed through in responding more fully in relationship with God. Miguel de Molinos [1640-97] encouraged the nuns for whom he was responsible to divest their spirituality of religious images in order to concentrate contemplatively on the inner meaning behind the Passion and faith, an almost ‘protestant’ teaching in Catholic mysticism, at a time when Counter Reformation teaching was promoting the increased use of images as sources for prayer and devotion.
The printed books Bible of the Poor (Biblia Pauperum) c1460 and Mirror of Salvation (Speculum Humanae Salvationis) published c1470 use woodcuts and printed commentaries as a source of contemplation of Christ’s life. They compare and pair Old Testament and legendary events with Gospel and apocryphal scenes, to show how Christ’s life and activities were part of God’s eternal plan. It is interesting that 14 chapters, (the number of Stations of the Cross) of the 29 chapters in the Mirror of Salvation depict subjects related to the Passion. This number may, or may not be coincidental. Of 116 woodcut images 56 relate to the Passion cycle between chapters 15 to 28.
Spiritual guides from early times, but particularly during the period when Christian mysticism rose, in the late mediaeval age and Counter-Reformation, taught ‘The Unitive Way’ as s a third stage in our spiritual journey. They emphasise that we need to grow in love through reading, studying and internalising the Gospel story, particularly those parts and symbols that most deeply expressed the extent of God’s love. Internally recognising and feeling personally the significance of Christ’s Passion and Death was essential to this. It is represented visually in Murillo and Ribera’s paintings of monks contemplating and being embraced by Christ on the Cross or Fra Angelico’s earlier San Marco frescoes illustrating several of Dominic’s Nine Modes of Prayer.
The C16th Dutch priest-geographer Christian van Adrichem researched painstakingly to write meditations on the Passion, which circulated widely in translation throughout Europe. They influenced the growth of devotion to the Way of the Cross by presenting the possible physical realities of Christ’s Passion and Death to an increasingly educated merchant-class. His was a religious response to the quest for learning and fascination with the world, exemplified in a growing fashion for printed atlases or encyclopaedic histories like Abraham Ortelius’ ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ [1570]. Adrichem never managed a personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land but he studied accounts of pilgrims, collected as sources for his contemplation and writings. He imagined and reconstructed Christ’s journey to Calvary in meticulous detail:
“The Way of the Cross which Christ followed to Mount Calvary with the most wretched suffering and bloody footsteps, after he had been condemned to be crucified: Beginning at Pilate’s palace, he walked 26 paces, or 65 feet, to the place where the Cross was placed upon his shoulders. Thence, while the whole city looked on, bearing the Cross on his pained shoulders he turned in a north-west direction and walked towards the place where, according to tradition, he stumbled for the first time under the weight of the Cross; this is a distance of 80 paces, 200 feet. Thence he proceeded for 63 paces—153 feet—to the spot where he encountered Mary his mother and the disciple John. From that place he continued 71 paces and 1½ feet— 179 feet—to the fork in the road where Simon of Cyrene was forced to walk behind Jesus, carrying his Cross for him…. Thence the 18 paces or 45 feet to the place where the executioners removed his clothing; there he drank wine mixed with myrrh. After that were 12 paces or 30 feet to the place where he was nailed to the Cross. Finally from that point were 14 paces or 35 feet to the place where, hanging upon the Cross, he was set in a hollow in the rocky ground of Calvary. Thus from the palace of Pilate to the place where the Cross was raised it was 1321 paces or, according to the other calculation, 3303 feet.” [Christian Adrichem Urbis Hierosolymae (City of Jerusalem] Theatrum Terræ Sanctæ et Biblicarum Historiarum (Cologne, Officina Birckmannica; Arnold Mylius, 1584 manuscript].
In his Epilogue Adrichem encouraged his readers to follow this Way of the Cross without leaving home: ‘in templo seu cubiculo mentis’ (‘within the temple or chamber of the spirit’]. The aim of the authentic pilgrim was not a touristic visit to Jerusalem but to find the reality of Christ in thought and prayer - an interior, spiritual, ‘Jerusalem’ experience. Augustine had described our exploration of faith as through our “more inward than [our] most inward part.” [Confessions, 3.vi.11]. Adrichem tried to make the pilgrimage alongside Christ realistic in our imagination so that it becomes an inner memory, as though we had physically been there. This he believed would encourage truth in our relationship with God and in our worship. The ecstatic realism of devotional images encouraged by the Council of Trent, especially Counter-Reformation art in Spain, had similar intent.
By contrast to such physical realism, mystics from the Desert Fathers and Meister Eckhart to Christians in the mystic tradition today, suggest that contemplating Christ’s suffering might bring us into a state of ‘detachment’. The ‘via negativa’ or ‘way of purgation’ is a process of stripping from one’s spiritual influences anything that might distract the soul. Gregory of Nyssa wrote of ecstasy as non-attachment: “the true vision of God – never to be satisfied in the desire to see him.” [Life of Moses 239]. In the case of the Cross this might mean a grateful acceptance of all that the Passion achieved, without needing to try to understand the detail of what was achieved. This could be a very different relationship with Salvation to what might be termed an ‘ecstasy of attachment’ experienced by St. Francis or St. Dominic, holding onto the benefits which Christ brought through the Cross, while praying and meditating in the presence of the Crucifix.
Romantically mystics also sometimes identified the Way of the Cross with the suffering lover of the Song of Songs. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Bernard of Clairvaux explored this in their teachings. This metaphorical approach to contemplating the Passion culminates in John of the Cross’s devotional poem on the Atonement, ‘The Young Shepherd’. In its imagery the abandoned Shepherd gave his life, hanging in a tree, for love of the unfaithful beloved.
The stipulations on art of the Council of Trent encouraged systematic meditation on the Passion, following the expressions of spirituality encouraged by the Franciscans or Dominicans. Ignatius of Loyola visited the Holy Land in 1523 intending to spend the rest of his life there. He was refused permission to remain and instead he found ways to remain close to Christ’s experience through his Spiritual Exercises. The Third Week of the Exercises encourages retreatants to appreciate the saving work in the Passion through imaginatively sharing Jesus’ experiences of suffering and death.
There is a danger in all attempts to reach into the experience of Christ. Ultimately we can never know or feel the truth of what he went through; his experience is a ‘mystery’. When we apply our spiritual imagination we cannot easily discern whether something is divinely guided inspiration or our personal invention. We can only make ourselves open to God, protect our imaginative thoughts by being studied and informed in our faith, and test the spirit of our thoughts by our knowledge of scripture, reason, experience, intuition, tradition and trust.
Many of the late C16th/early C17th Caroline Divines (Andrews, Montague, Cosin, Fuller, Taylor, Farrer, Laud and George Herbert) combined rationalism with personal spiritual emotion as they developed various private devotional practices of meditation on the Passion. Their personal contemplation is reflected in many of their published writings, which became essential parts of their ministry. John Donne [1571/2-1631], George Herbert [1593-1633], Isaac Watts (1674-1748], and Charles Wesley (1707-88] used poetry and hymn-writing both for personal contemplation and to encourage prayerful meditation and worship among their congregations. Herbert’s poem ‘The Sacrifice’ linked mediaeval Passion imagery with the Reproaches from the Good Friday Mass of the Pre-Sanctified. Donne wrote in one of his last sermons, ‘Death’s Duel’, of our “blessed dependency - to hand upon him who hung upon the Cross.” Henry Vaughan [1621-95] often drew attention to the scriptural source behind his poetic meditations, as in ‘The Mount of Olives – or Solitary Devotions’ [1652] or ‘Silex Scintillans’ [1650-55].
Moravian spirituality (which influenced figures like Wesley) similarly combined rationalism with rich emotion. They celebrated the tenderness of Christ as our Redeemer, particularly through contemplating his wounds. They ‘found refuge’ in the suffering Christ; seeing, through his wounds, an expression of his sacred humanity. They aimed to accept the benefit of Christ’s wounds and reflect them in their own lives. Christ’s compassion and human realism comforted them through years of persecution, suffering and exile in various cultures. This included the experience of the Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemőller, working under Nazi oppression. Moravian preaching on the Cross was less on judgement or narrow doctrinal arguments about Atonement than on recognising Christ as a bleeding Saviour identifying with us through compassion. As Zinzendorf wrote:
“Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are and glorious dress.”
As printing and literacy widened, the printed circulation of writings on the Cross expanded. The 18th Century Italian bishop Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787), wrote a brief commentary and meditations on the stations that remained popular in the 19th and 20th Centuries and set a model for many later Stations liturgies. Ligouri’s Stations are still in use today, particularly in America. His introductory prayer before the Stations encourages us to approach the exercise intimately and feel a renewal of Christ’s presence with us, in heart and mind:
“My Lord, Jesus Christ, you have made this journey to die for me with unspeakable love; and I have so many times ungratefully abandoned you. But now I love you with all my heart; and, because I love you, I am sincerely sorry for ever having offended you. Pardon me, my God, and permit me to accompany you on this journey. You go to die for love of me; I want, my beloved Redeemer, to die for love of you. My Jesus, I will live and die always united to you.”
Richard Meux Benson [1824-1915] encouraged spiritual contemplation in the Anglican tradition, co-founding the first Anglican male religious community ‘The Society of St. John the Evangelist’. His commentary ‘The Final Passover’ explored the relevance of the Passion and Resurrection. Space and my knowledge are insufficient to list all the modern writers of inspiring meditation on the Stations of the Cross, from various traditions. There is a plethora of literature and illustrations of varying qualities.
As scholarship broadened in the late 19th & 20th Centuries, research into the history and Jewish/Roman culture behind the Cross and Passion has continued to advance enormously. Adrichem‘s C16th attempt to open the real events the Passion to educated believers is seen again in the ‘Search for the Historical Jesus’ which began with the Enlightenment, was developed by C19th scholars like Albert Schweitzer, and continues today. The aims are largely to answer uncomfortable questions that arise from the biblical text and rational faith, to inform belief by expanding our knowledge of the context of Christ’s life and Passion and to try to understand mysteries as fully as possible. The benefits can make our worship more truthful and our apologetics & witness more convincing.
A search for realism was also a feature of visual artists who sought to represent biblical scenes more authentically. In the late C19th painting Holman Hunt, James Tissot, Carl Bloch and Henry Ossawa Tanner visited the Holy Land as a source for authentic images. With modern changing preoccupations in art, authenticity of setting or costume have become more the province of Bible illustrators than fine artists.
The literary equivalent of this research can be seen in the writings of Alfred Edersheim (1825-1899), William Temple (1881-1944), and more recently the thorough exploration of Christ’s Passion by Raymond Brown (1928-1998). Their scholarly work aimed to make the historical and cultural details of the Passion intellectually understandable and spiritually vivid, if not tangible, by carefully exploring and commentating on the context and textual detail of the biblical and non-biblical accounts. Temple’s ‘The Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ’ had a particularly devotional emphasis. Scholars and ministers of various theological backgrounds have plumbed the doctrinal and theological meaning of the Cross, as John Stott did from an Evangelical perspective. Many, writers from all perspectives of Christianity, particularly Roman Catholic, have written devotional study books or meditations to accompany Stations of the Cross or to contemplate Christ’s Passion & wounds, either liturgically, as Lenten exercises or for general personal devotion.
Yet ultimately the facts, historicity, apologetic arguments or doctrinal understandings about ‘Salvation’ and ‘Redemption’ are not what convince and convict us. Scholarship adds tremendous evidence, details of what were the possible realities of the Passion, meaningful background context, and may lead us to particular theological or doctrinal beliefs. Devotional literature may encourage us to approach the Passion from various perspectives. But the main spiritual content and achievement of Christ’s Passion reach deeper than all literature. The Passion and the Cross are for all; they need to be communicated as effectively as possible and allowed to reach into our inner selves, letting God’s Spirit awaken our responses. This can become as true an experience for those who know little detail of their faith as those who think they know more.
We may never be sure of many details of what happened through the Cross. Yet I believe that the power and achievement of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection are still alive and active. St Paul’s theology encourages us to believe that the Cross’s power influences the world, the cosmos and all spiritual dimensions through Christ’s Spirit. Contemplating the Passion can awaken our imagination, intuition, insight into scripture and spiritual understandings. It can help us sense important aspects of what Christ achieved and our reflections can help us apply his example to our lives and ministries. It is my hope and prayer that contemplating the Passion and journeying in imagination and spirit alongside Christ will leads us to greater appreciation, thankfulness and truth in our faith, Christian actions and worship.
Through 2016 I worked on 25 Stations of Christ’s Passion, a series designed for first exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral during Lent 2017. Although I have portrayed Christ’s Passion more than any other theme in my painting career, This ‘Through Passion’ series took me on a journey in which I more thoroughly reconsidered the Way of the Cross tradition - a path I continue to travel. In form the pictures may not suggest radical rethinking but I studied and contemplated my relationship with Christ through his death and resurrection, how the tradition speaks into and encourages faith and how images communicate to us. I reconsidered the Stations themes, the theology of the Passion, the theology behind painting religious images, styles appropriate to encouraging contemplation, my personal painting techniques and most particularly what each stage of the Passion story means to me. This study records only a fraction of the process of thought involved, but I hope that it will be useful in considering & helping to follow the Stations in meaningful ways.
From my study of theology, ecclesiastical history, art history and my own church background and experience, I was initially suspicious of the ‘Stations of the Cross’ tradition. The themes seemed to combine biblical belief with superstition, invented religious legend and, for a Protestant, uncomfortable old Roman Catholic theology of penance and indulgences. Yet, from the moment I started to paint my first series of Passion paintings nearly 30 years ago I recognised that taking an imaginative, visual, mental, spiritual journey alongside Christ can deepen our faith, especially through increasing our sensitivity to what was brought about through the Passion. I have come to realise that the Way of the Cross provides far more than a liturgical practice of prayer, meditation & worship. It takes us on a journey with Christ where we can recognise aspects of God’s nature, opening our relationship with him. This does not need to be just a Lenten exercise; the Passion is relevant at all times through our personal life-journey and exploration of faith, especially in times of regret, questioning, or when we need to know particularly the reality and love of God for us.
THE TRADITION OF STATIONS OF THE CROSS (in brief)
Appendix 1 follows the historic development of the ‘Way of the Cross’ tradition more fully and systematically. We don’t know for sure when the practice of walking stages of Christ’s Passion began. One dubious legend ascribed its origins to believers following Jesus’ mother Mary’s personal daily practice after his death of following his path to Calvary in tears and prayer. This was first recorded by Felix Fabri in his 1480 account of the Via Dolorosa. It probably stems from the rise of devotion to Mary in the Church. Several early pilgrims to the Holy Land like Egeria (late C4th) mention following a route in Jerusalem as part of the weekly devotions and Holy Week tradition. This was almost certainly not the Via Dolorosa route followed today, though some of the shrine locations date from the C4th. Various pilgrimage routes developed; the present route was marked out in the streets by 1231.
By the 5th Century, for believers unable to journey to Jerusalem but wanting to share the spiritual benefits of recollecting tangibly Christ’s journey of Passion, European religious centres began to set up ‘replicas’ of the pilgrim’s stopping-points on the Way of the Cross. They encouraged the faithful to follow Christ’s journey to his death through prayerful meditation and imagination. Liturgical words and images for these developed. By the 17th Century Stations of the Cross were a feature of most Catholic churches. The 14 subjects for Stations that have now become traditional were regulated in the 18th Century. Prior to that between 7 and 37 stations (occasionally more) were used. My latest series uses 25 Stations but the traditional themes regulated by Pope Clement XII in 1731 are:
1. Jesus is Condemned to Death.
2. The Cross is Laid upon Jesus.
3. Jesus Falls for the First Time.
4. Jesus Meets his Mother.
5. Simon of Cyrene is Forced to Bear the Cross.
6. Jesus’ Face is Wiped by Veronica.
7. Jesus Falls for the Second Time.
8. Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem.
9. Jesus Falls for the Third Time.
10. Jesus is Stripped of His Clothes.
11. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross.
12. Jesus Dies on the Cross.
13. Jesus’ Body is Taken Down from the Cross.
14. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb.
These themes were formulated by Jan van Paesschen, Prior of the Carmelites at Malines. His book The Spiritual Pilgrimage was first published in Louvain in 1563. It follows a year-long pilgrimage of daily contemplations imagining and describing for each day a return journey to the Holy Land, though he had never visited there on pilgrimage. The distances followed on his Way of the Cross are derived from the series of Stations erected in Louvain in 1505, imitating those in Nuremberg.
Devotion to Christ’s Cross, recollecting the benefits achieved through Jesus’ death has always been a feature of Christian prayer and theological understanding. St Francis, like most reformers throughout Church history saw the Cross as central to his understanding of God. As part of his mission he encouraged the re-enactment of the Passion story, just as he popularised tradition of the Christmas Crib. Both were intended to make God’s message vivid in the minds of ordinary believers. There is a missional or evangelistic element in following the Stations. They challenge the viewer to take the Cross and its message seriously as well as encouraging believers to deepen their devotional contemplation and pilgrimage journey of exploring faith. The Franciscans became particularly associated with Stations of the Cross through being granted official guardianship of the sacred sites of the Holy Land and acting as guides to the sites. They developed a working relationship with the Turks who governed the city. The Pope also granted them the exclusive rights to control and dedicate Stations in all churches, a monopoly which held until fairly recently. Passion plays developed in Mediaeval Europe promoting a popular approach to following the stages of the Passion. As well as entertaining on religious festivals, like St. Frances’ tableaux they had an evangelistic purpose, reminding people of central aspects of Christ’s experience, to encourage faith. Stations offered a similar but more personal practice.
Stations may be used at any time of the Church’s year. They are often walked on Fridays in memory of the day on which Christ died. But Lent is the period of the liturgical calendar when they are regarded as particularly appropriate and significant. Lent is not just a ‘penitential season’ in which we give up negative things; we are intended to adopt positive practices that expand us spiritually. With its roots in the northern hemisphere, the title ‘Lent’ seems to refer to the lengthening day [‘Lencten’ = Old English for ‘springtime’/‘lengan’ = ‘become longer’]. It came to relate not just to longer days and plants rising to the warming of earth; we want it to be a time when our souls and spirits are warmed, nourished and grow. Traditional Lenten spiritual disciplines, like following Stations of the Cross, are designed to develop and ‘lengthen’ us, under the light and nourishment of God’s grace and promises.
A tradition of Stations that has persisted longer than their penitential use has been their broader use for contemplative devotion, either as corporate liturgy or individual meditation. Many liturgical or devotional texts have been published to accompany Stations [see Appendix 3]. Most liturgies combine scripture verses, a meditative commentary, a prayer, perhaps a hymn or poetic verse and a response – most commonly the seemingly ancient ‘Adoramus Te’: “We adore you O Christ and we bless you for by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”.
Although commentaries & sermons on the Passion are not mentioned in ancient pilgrim’s accounts of following the Way of the Cross, it is probable that the bishops or priests who led supplemented scripture readings with further thoughts. In late mediaeval times the tradition of exploring the Passion through written meditation expanded exponentially. Feeling close to God through considering Christ’s wounds and what he suffered on our behalf has been a feature of much contemplative writing. The Anglo-Saxon Dream of the Rood imagines Christ’s redemption through the mind of the Cross itself. Christian mystics like Brigitta of Sweden. Margery Kempe and Richard Rolle’s vivid Meditations on the Passion have particularly added to our appreciation of God’s love within Christ as he experienced agony. The reflective exercises of Thomas à Kempis or Ignatius of Loyola’s later Spiritual Exercises encourage similar contemplation.
THE SPIRITUAL PROCESS OF DESIGNING
Creating a series of Stations can be a long, meaningful and challenging imaginative and contemplative exercise. I try to visualise the scene as vividly as possible and imagine I am presence at each stage. The artist imagines, invents and arranges characters to interact with meaningful gestures. I move angle around the scene like a film director to create perspectives that suggest or focus on emotion and faith. I consider the meaning evoked by light, shadow and colour. It is always important to think of those who will view the pictures; this is not just a personal expression of the artist’s feelings and faith, you are trying to encourage true, meaningful faith-responses in others. Although compositions, figures and anatomy are mostly worked out in my sketchbooks before I begin painting, I always make many major changes as I paint: Mistakes, fortuitous accidents. unplanned or instinctive marks may suggest new ideas and permutations of meaning. A detail, gesture or background effect might take on extra-significance or appear symbolic as you think about it or work into it, changing the emphasis of the image. Characters you are attempting to portray change as you feel your way into and form their personalities or try to express their emotions with the brush.
Picasso said rightly that “All art is a lie”. Stations are always ‘untrue’ images in several senses: They are products of imagination and intuition, not portraiture; we cannot reconstruct the historical scene. We’ve no idea what the real biblical characters or places looked like. The best art we can make is a metaphor seeking to represent or unveil important truths. This is an advantage, not a limitation; Faith is not based on what we see. God has communicated and nurtured though believers’ imagination and intuition for centuries: Even our exposition of scripture and doctrines are probably ‘untrue’ in the sense that they go beyond what has been revealed. Theology involves informed guesswork, imagination, experience and intuition which we trust God’s Spirit to inspire and guide, as much as we seek to apply biblical research, reason and historical perspective.
Creating a religious work should never be an ego-trip for an artist; we are artisans not geniuses. One is sincerely trying to introduce viewers to spiritual truth, so, in the words of John the Baptist “Christ must increase; I must decrease” [Jn.3:30]. The quality of what we produce must be the highest we can attain, as befits such important subjects and the significance of the work in expressing faith. In church contexts, the subject of the picture and what it conveys are more important than the picture itself. The artwork is intended as a source and catalyst for spiritual contemplation; preferably it should not demand attention. So art for a church should not be about the fame or skill of the artist, the history or importance of the church, the cultural value church-members feel in using art for spirituality or any similar considerations should be relatively unimportant. The encounter with God is what we should concentrate upon – worship ‘in spirit and in truth’ [Jn.4:23]. I have deliberately attempted to make this new series of images feel understated, even slightly ‘unfinished’ to help viewers regard them as tentative representations, studies to begin to transport our minds into the spiritual realities they represent. These are far from spontaneous images; like Rouault I worked into them repeatedly to try to make them feel spontaneous and express emotion.
EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT WITH THE PASSION CYCLES
Painting is for me a way of contemplating faith. Exploring the Way of the Cross visually made me consider what the Passion may have entailed in terms of suffering and emotion and Christ’s trust in his Father. Faith seeks to appreciate what was achieved through such suffering. A young schoolboy, considering my Crucifixion Station in St. John’s Bury St. Edmunds, asked me searchingly: “Why did Jesus have to die in such a painful way?” The full answer still flaws us. Our most honest reply is surely: “We can’t be certain but we can be sure that if there was any other way that God could have improved the world, God would have used it and saved Jesus the suffering, because he loved him so much.” Yet ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…’ [Jn.3:16]
Stirring emotion, particularly ‘sentiment; is dangerous in religion; it may encourage us to indulge our emotions beyond spiritual truth. Some ecstatic spiritual responses to God seem to approach this danger. Margery Kempe attributed her regular weeping over sin and unworthiness to her experience at the pilgrimage site of Calvary. Her sentiment irritated contemporaries and was repeatedly questioned, yet exonerated, by church-leaders examining her for possible heresy. However many treat their sin too lightly; it does, after all, separate us from God and true ways of life. Many might benefit from allowing themselves to a feel deeper sense of remorse for sin and failure. Journeying alongside Christ in his suffering could encourage self-reflection. We need to balance this with an acceptance that Christ has dealt with our sin and, rather than remaining maudlin, transform regret and penitence into gratitude and worship.
For centuries religious art and some mysticism has sought to evoke emotion. Giotto’s angels weeping in the heavens as they surround Christ on the Cross, Mantegna’s poignant ‘Man of Sorrows’; Bellini’s ‘Christ in Gethsemane’, Guido Reni’s weeping ‘Head of Christ on the Cross’, Michelangelo’s Pietas, Titian’s late ‘Crowning with Thorns’ all manage to capture a sense of truth and just avoid too much sentimentality. A fraction more sentiment and each might have become kitsch. This is a great danger in creating Christian art. True Faith and its expression often involve emotion, but feeling ‘sentiment’ is not ‘faith’, just as feeling ‘guilt’ is not ‘repentance’. If we are designing art, writing poetry, devising liturgical dance, composing religious music, planning a meaningful liturgical service or forming an emotive sermon, we have a responsibility to try to be ‘true’ in spirit, not stir false emotions. It is relatively easy to awaken emotionalism, even tears in Passion images. The Passion story’s intense content encourages us to consider why Christ was suffering, recognise our guilt, need and gratitude and act repentantly in response. Penitence involves making true changes of heart, mind and actions, not just empathetic feeling, grief or sorrow. Artists and clerics have to be careful not to manipulate viewers’ emotions. Though art is able to make people cry as much as to entertain we have a responsibility to make sure that we use art to stir real not false emotions. Any penitential resource needs to have an encounter with God’s truth as its aim. Spiritual growth and holiness, like the Kingdom of God and the true Church cannot be based on falsehood. Though there will always be weaknesses and failings in our practices, we are working towards building faith that is real & true.
If we portray Christ’s suffering or wounds in over-violent or visceral manners (as in Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ or my ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ 2003) we may be ‘truthful’ in representing some of the torture he underwent. But suffering is not the main point of the Crucifixion that a Christian seeks to appreciate. We want to feel the truth of what was happening through Christ’s Passion and death. Our response to the Crucifixion as a Christian image should be able to recognise the presence of love, care, endurance, long-suffering, divine and human sorrow for human sin, forgiveness, regret and penitence, hope, God’s promise of Redemption and resurrection to eternal life. Most especially we want to feel the truth that through this horrific event humanity, particularly the individual or corporate viewers contemplating the image, are promised release from the stain of sin and the freedom of eternal life in the love of God. Following the Way of the Passion can help to sensitise us to this recognition because it progresses through so many aspects of Christ’s journey and his work.
THE THEOLOGY BEHIND THE PASSION CYCLE
Self-sacrifice was the greatest way for Jesus to express God’s love, so representing the Passion may be the greatest subject for any artist to attempt. The strongest challenge for anyone trying to depict or help people consider Christ’s death is to convey the hope and love behind the suffering. This is a story of loving self-sacrifice: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” [Jn.3:16]. Christ’s death was a tragedy and unjust, but its effect on all Creation is sublime and positive.
Christians, especially preachers, sometimes give the exaggerated impression that Christ’s primary reason for coming to earth was to die. In eternal terms the world’s redemption through Christ’s self-sacrifice was probably his greatest achievement. But to over-focus on Jesus death alone may mask Jesus’ message that he came to bring abundant life by uniting people as closely as possible to God [Jn.10:10]. The Stations tradition may have declined today because some contemporary believers prefer their spirituality to consider happier aspects of Jesus’ story and message. But we must not avoid the Cross as an important aspect of our gospel: Jesus told Peter ‘Get behind me Satan’ [Mk.8:33] when he tried to deflect his focus from dying. Jesus’ ‘High-Priestly Prayer’ [Jn.17] and the Gospel accounts of his prayers in Gethsemane show that he realised that self-sacrifice was the only sure way to achieve life for others: “Father take this cup away from me; nevertheless, not my will but yours” [Lk.22:42].
Jesus’ teachings encouraged humanity to change its priorities and live to our full spiritual as well as physical potential. Christ’s Resurrection and the giving of his Spirit at Pentecost opened the way for us to begin to access that new life. But the Cross in the unavoidable seed from which a positive faith can grow. Roger Hilton called the Cross “the door to contemplation”. Helping people interpret the Cross truthfully and holistically is a responsibility of every witnessing Christian and of the artist designing Stations of the Passion. We need to handle and present the substance and message of Salvation responsibly. We aim to help people recognise the love within the self-sacrifice, the glory beyond the degradation, the eternal life offered beyond death. We portray and proclaim not just the tragic death of a young, innocent victim. The Anglo Saxon Dream of the Rood presents Christ as an heroic warrior and his Cross as the glorious hub on which history, the future of the world & humanity’s salvation depends. Luther’s imagery presented Christ as our champion, ‘the proper man’ chosen by God as our mediator. This reflected positive early Christian imagery, which promoted belief in the grace, freedom and peace brought by Christ. Sadly some Churches built their power by keeping people submissive, concentrating on our guilt & penitence, encouraging dependence on the Church’s power to mediate forgiveness. That diminishes the freeing message of the Cross: it is God through Christ who frees us, not church practices.
Various theologians and spiritualities focus on different aspects of the Passion. The Book of Common Prayer, like Calvin’s Institutes, concentrates on atoning sacrifice. Traditionally the Cross was primarily associated with ‘substitutionary atonement’ for human sin. John Stott’s magisterial study ‘The Cross of Christ’ is written largely with this perspective in mind, while showing wider perspectives on Christ’s death. Several contemporary believers and theologians, of varying theological background, react against this emphasis. They argue that the God who Jesus’ described and opened to human understanding, would not cruelly sacrifice an innocent victim, even part of himself. They regard the meaning and process of redemption as broader and more mysterious. When we contemplate a single idea of Christ on the Cross the major focus tends to be on atonement or our empathy with his suffering on our behalf. Perhaps following Stations of the Cross might help us recognise more broadly that sacrifice is not the only (or even the primary) message within the Passion. The Way of the Cross shows Jesus as loving, empathetic, humane, humble, forgiving, prophetic, willing to undergo suffering for others, both strong and fragile, human and godly, longsuffering, holy, servant-like and kingly. He set examples for us to learn from and follow. Historically and culturally Christ’s Cross brought an end to the repeated cruelty of animal sacrifice. Politically the story warns against corruption in political and religious institutions intent on maintaining position or status even if truth is compromised and sacrificed. The Passion demonstrates how humility can be more powerful ultimately than abuse of power, and how the meek, despised or rejected can inherit and redeem the earth. Change can be led by self-sacrificial example. More emotionally, Christ’s suffering demonstrates that God is willing to go as far as Eternal Life and Love can possibly go to bring good to humanity; God’s love for us led to him enduring his own death. The Passion also shows God most fully experiencing the pain & isolation of our human experience.
The narrative provides us with models of faith. Characters who remain faithful contrast with others whose cowardice or weaknesses overpower their professed support & belief. This story understands our humanity and vulnerabilities. Christ is our example for selflessly carrying others’ needs. He is also our model through suggesting alternative responses to our own personal suffering, helping us endure undeserved abuse in response to his Gospel. Stations may be transformational.
Like Eternity, the effects and benefits of the Crucifixion reach beyond the time of Jesus death. The Cross happened once in history but its effects work through time and its relevance spans cultures. One problem of representing Jesus’ Passion in contemporary dress or settings is that, though these suggest the Cross’s relevance to today, particular modern references may distract from the breadth of relevance of the story across time. It can also lead images to become quickly ‘out of fashion’; contemporary references age. Perhaps we do not need to represent the Cross as ‘of today’ since its eternal relevance makes it contemporary enough as a subject.
A major original objective of following the Stations of the Cross has been to help the Christian believer make a spiritual pilgrimage through contemplating Christ’s Passion. We are not directly responsible for the sufferings and insults that Jesus endured, but in retrospect, he was acting on our behalf, recognising and atoning for the past and future sin of humanity, including ours. The pilgrimage journey is a penitential one, recalling the failings in ourselves and our world that led Christ to give himself for us in love. True penitence is expressed in our active response and reparation, not just in sorrow or guilt. Our best response to following Stations would be to transform our lives with the support of Christ’s Spirit. We also need to add a praise element, responding to the Passion through thanksgiving for all Christ achieved and particularly for how he frees and transforms us.
Following the Stations of the Cross is a ‘memorial’ activity. Stations are not ‘sacraments’ in the traditional sense. Following them does not convey particular blessings as sacraments are believed to do (unless one accepts Catholic practices of ‘indulgences’ discussed later). Yet the Way of the Cross can be followed ‘sacramentally’ in the sense that we link our minds, activities and liturgy with the actions of Christ through the Passion. Stations of the Cross can feel close to the Eucharist in aligning our thoughts to the process & meaning of Salvation.
The Roman Catholic Church took this sacramental understanding of Passion theology several steps further in granting plenary indulgences to those who took this memorial journey. When Jerusalem was largely under Muslim control, few European pilgrims felt able to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Those who did were prevented by the authorities from stopping to venerate at outside sites of the Way of the Cross and worship at sacred sites was restricted. The Church therefore transferred the benefits previously conferred on pilgrims to Jerusalem to any who piously followed the Stations of the Cross within their own communities and churches Coming from a Protestant tradition I find the idea of indulgences uncomfortable, being more used to thinking in terms of ‘relying on God’s grace’. I discuss the indulgences tradition more fully at the end of Appendix 2.
Stations raise the question of the place of ‘imagination’ in theology and faith. The traditional 14 Stations subjects are not just based on events recounted or implied in Gospel accounts. They rely on spiritual imagination and inventions in ancient, Mediaeval, Counter-Reformation, 18th & 19th Century and modern times. Despite some fundamentalist teaching that faith should be founded on scripture alone, Christian spirituality has never been solely based on scripture. It involves many other faculties: reason, tradition, experience, imagination, intuition, trust in God’s Spirit’s intervention and guidance, perhaps many more. These can all be involved in forming ‘true’ responses to the message and content of Salvation.
Christ’s Passion contains many theological meanings and interpretations; no single reading can be definitive. So our representation of the story should allow for breadth of exploration and interpretation, not suggest one definitive response. We must remember that any series of images can only be a selective slice out of Christ’s life, which reflected and represented God to human beings.
Further discussion of the theology behind Stations is contained in Appendix 2.
WHAT WE ARE SEEKING TO EVOKE IN CREATING STATIONS?
My partner recently attended an old country-village Methodist Chapel where an elderly, slightly dour small-holder we know was reading the lesson about “the Spirit of God in the world.” After the final verse he solemnly closed the book looked at the congregation and in his broad Suffolk accent glumly pronounced: “I’m afraid I don’t see much of the Spirit of God in this world, or this village!” My challenge to myself as a Christian and as an artist, is to try to find and express the Spirit of God within the sorrows of the Passion story, the promise of Life within Jesus’ death and suffering. In my youth Good Friday was a solemn day: people were quiet, shops closed early; you didn’t do or indulge in certain things: Lenten penitence was ‘writ large!’ Approaches to Good Friday have changed. Some churches have children’s Easter Egg hunts on the day of Jesus’ death, lightening the presentation the story of the Cross to children. Children’s Stations of the Cross are often over-simplistic, with cute, bright naïve figures. The challenge in devising Stations of the Cross is to find a way to present the positive message within the Cross yet treat the Passion with realism, dignity, sorrow that leads to true repentance, assurance of forgiveness and peace. Through the tragedy, injustice and suffering a promise came of renewal and redeemed life, which began to be fulfilled and proclaimed with Christ’s Resurrection.
Walking Stations has been traditionally described as a ‘devotional’ & ‘penitential’ act. Its ultimate goal is meaningful worship of God, rising from appreciation and love for all that was achieved through Christ’s self-sacrifice and the promise in his Resurrection. Inevitably contemplating the Passion will make us realise that we do not deserve such grace and love. Unlike Christ our model, we fail to ‘be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt.5:48]. We need regularly to face reality and be open before God about failings. Movement and growth towards holiness recognises what we have been forgiven and the freedom we have in potential. Walking the Stations might help us look forward as well as back to past experiences and feelings.
The Way of the Cross may be contemplated rather like a visual ‘Lectio Divina’. Stations add visual stimuli to the contemplative process, rather than just basing our imagination in the words of scripture (though readings may be part of the liturgy we use). Lectio involves:
· Praying,
· Reading carefully,
· Meditatively analysing what we’ve read and thought,
· Contemplatively internalising this and applying it to inner life and daily life,
· Actively applying what we’ve considered and learned – living it out.
Stations involve:
· Praying – lifting to God our activity of walking, looking and thinking,
· Looking carefully – reading the image and any text we are using,
· Meditatively analysing the content of the images and the thoughts that arise,
· Contemplatively internalising this and applying it to inner life and daily life,
· Actively applying what we’ve considered and leaned – living it out.
Walking the Stations is not primarily an intellectual or art-appreciation exercise, it encourages us to spiritually, emotionally and actively respond to Christ’s activity. We look beyond each image, using it as a door to spiritual perception. In the background of our thoughts will inevitably be our doctrinal understanding of Salvation and what the Cross achieved. Our aesthetic appreciation of the image also needs to remain in the background: The quality and expressiveness of the images will inevitably colour how much we are able to derive from them. The style and approach to the subject may influence what message we take out of them. But we don’t want the art to distract us from our spiritual appreciation of the subject. We are exploring the relevance of Salvation, not touring a gallery.
Images that will stimulate spiritual response vary between viewers. Some respond to simplicity, others to detail; some to naturalism, some to expressionist feeling; some to abstraction, some to figurative representation. Response is not just dependent on individual taste; it also depends on the visual biblical and emotional literacy and spiritual understanding of the viewer. Many today, particularly in the Protestant, Evangelical and Charismatic traditions, need to be taught or more precisely ‘trained’ to read pictures contemplatively because it is not a natural part of their spiritual culture. They more often use images as surface illustration in books or as over-head projections to illustrate talks, not for prayerful contemplation. Protestants have more often trained their faculties to read and analyse scripture rather than visual imagery. Many still treat images with suspicion, as did the early Reformers, who purged them from their worship places. Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic Churches retained visual contemplation as part of their spirituality, but even those who share these traditions may benefit from training in contemplatively reading images, as we train people in Lectio Divina. Such training is not difficult; it could simply involve being led through the Stations, pointing out details and ideas, or (a better educational practice) a leader drawing out the viewers’ responses to the images by encouraging them to analyse and discuss the content, to feel with and identify with the characters and to reflect on the ideas that each picture suggests.
Every artist has an individual style, personal skills and varied approach to their subject matter. But creating art for a church is not just about the artist’s personal expression. Christian artists need to keep in mind what they are communicating to their viewers, because the intention is to awaken responses in others, not just to express the artist’s own.
Congregations are diverse, so often their responses will be broad and varied, sometimes contradictory. Generally you want people to:
· Recognise and read the content,
· Recognise its relevance to them,
· Respond mentally and spiritually,
· Make changes in their lives in response, traditionally associated with ‘repentance’ and turning to follow Christ’s way.
· Awaken appreciation, thanks, love & devotion to God for what he has done,
· Understand a little more of what Salvation entailed,
· Apply salvation to their personal situation,
· Recognise that this content is not just for them, but is relevant and applicable to all around. Too much contemporary spirituality is used primarily for self-satisfaction, or to nurture personal spiritual growth. We mustn’t neglect our evangelistic responsibilities. (The Station tradition for Franciscans seems to have begun with evangelistic as much as devotional aims.)
THE FORM WE CHOOSE FOR STATIONS
Artists have chosen many styles to try to convey meaning and awaken responses. As an art-historian, as well as an artist with broad interests, I see qualities and potential in many styles and approaches. I also use a few different painting styles in my own work. When I devised my new Stations, like Wordsworth starting his Prelude journey, the initial difficulty was to decide which direction to follow and which tradition would most suit my aims.. Form should be ‘appropriate’ to content. This was one of Calvin’s criteria for religious music. Perhaps some visual styles are more ‘appropriate’ to Stations than others. (Surrealist, Fantasy-Art, Photo-Realist/Hyper-Realist styles, I would suggest, may be less appropriate because of their other connotations.)
In the best art ‘form’, ‘function’ and ‘content’ complement each other. Calvin Seerveldt suggested that the most useful Christian art has ‘suggestion-rich allusivity’, a clumsy term but a useful idea: The image should not be too overt or didactic: we grow by our inner involvement, not by being ‘told’; we learn spiritually by a process of ‘formation’. We learn through art when it awakens thoughts by spiritual and mental processes inside us, not when the artist or commentator preaches at us. So the content in a Station image may influence our formation best when it ‘suggests’ rather than dominates or demands a response. We want the images which ‘spark’ interest, engagement of thought and ideas, so God’s Spirit can ignite the process of contemplation.
In the North Choir-aisle of Southwell Minster a series of semi-abstract modernist, aluminium sculptures by Jonathan Clark [1999] aim to enable you to experience physical sensations by touching and feeling the figures, rather like braille. I appreciate the idea, though I personally don’t find them easy to engage with; I do not sense much humanity in these modernist figures though I recognise that others do. The process of ‘involving’ us in Christ’s journey to achieve Salvation is important. When our senses are active our spiritual sensitivity can become alive in response. This needs to be subtle not overt; when our senses are over-activated we are rarely able to concentrate on inner meaning. Rubens’ dynamic masterpieces, for example, are often so full of sense-awakening activity and rich colour that it is hard to concentrate on ‘contemplating’ their meaning. This can also be a danger in liturgy: If you make activities in ‘Fresh Expressions of Church’, ‘Messy Church’ or High Liturgy over-exciting, over-absorbing, or over-aesthetically stimulating, participants can be distracted from learning the inner lessons on which one hopes to focus.
Art communicates in many ways: through subject, form, content, colour, quality of mark, texture, composition, tonality, expression, gesture, narrative, symbolic or metaphoric content, physical and emotive presence or appeal to the viewer’s intellect and reason. It may convey something to the viewer intuitively, perhaps content that the artist never intended. The most meaningful abstract Stations I have experienced were sculptures by Oliver Barratt - a series of interfolding, interweaving metal forms of different textures and surfaces. Some were etched with Passion music others were oxidised and rusty. To me they suggested the movement, internal pain and emotion of Christ. They moved me more than almost any Stations I have yet seen because they sensitised me and spoke of inner spiritual meaning. Jean Lamb also created a vibrant series of large, abstract, linocut Stations, of which I own a set. In these colour, expressive gouges, interacting forms help convey movement and action as well as uniting our sensations and thoughts with those of Christ within the Passion.
The challenge in Abstract Stations is to use communicative qualities of form, texture, light and shade, colour or mark-making to evoke feeling and the sense of progressive narrative or redemptive meaning. Barnet Newman’s cool, hard-edged Stations are mysterious. In one sense they convey almost no narrative content; you walk them and struggle to reason a correlation between title and the image. Occasionally a bar of grey suggests separation, movement or the isolation of Christ in journeying through the process of Salvation. Their content is not meant to be easily apparent; they are mostly about the presence of form tone and shade. But the series has a power that draws me in to feel or intuit a sense of the mysterious presence of God. As I move from one painting to another I experience the sensation that the most important subject in the world, ‘Salvation’, is somewhere contained, intuitively felt and appreciated within the act of contemplating caused by the arrangement of forms and moving from one canvas to the next. Their esoteric mystery leaves the viewer in part frustrated, but reminds me that no theology satisfactorily explains the full mystery of God, the content of the Passion Story or the mystery of how Redemption works individually or cosmically. Abstract Expressionism had strong roots in esoteric religious practices, which may account for some of Newman’s content.
In some ways the simplest form of Stations - a series of identical simple crosses, (numerals on a church’s walls are insufficient according to Catholic regulations,) can be spiritually intense if we engage our minds with them. Without visual content we are forced directly into our imagination and belief, encouraging us to direct our minds to the Jerusalem scene 2000 years ago. This may even be more spiritually truthful than the most historically realistic artwork or trying to contemplate the Way of the Cross in the bustling streets of modern, commercial Jerusalem, set up for tourists to follow a journey through alleys which are possibly very different from the path Christ trod. A simple Cross rather than a scenic representation may force us to rely more on our internal world and to imagine ourselves at the scene, as Ignatius of Loyola encouraged in his Spiritual Exercises. Such contemplation might help us find the Passion’s meaning to us more truly and directly than if we lean upon someone else’s visual imagination.
I am a painter and art-historian who loves looking at and learning from a wide spectrum of the arts; I am saturated in images that speak to me of faith. It may therefore appear strange that I often find it difficult to use images by others for my personal spiritual contemplation. I spend countless hours in galleries or studying and appreciating visual images. I especially study Christian art. Yet words, unspoken thoughts or music are often more conducive to my imaginative contemplation when I am considering my faith. Perhaps, as some psychologists suggest, our spirituality often works within ‘shadow’ sides of our personality. Faith is not entirely based on rationalism; it engages with and awakens sensitivities that are sometimes different from those gifts or skills we use most dominantly in our working lives. Some may find that a simple cross or mark on the wall awakens our minds to imagine a scene more evocatively than someone else’s creation, which we may find ourselves comparing and contrasting to our own imaginative construct of the event. A suggestion, rather than a fully resolved image might also be more spiritually true. None of us will ever know what Jesus or the scenes of his death looked like. That is why I have left my new Stations images rather sketchy, though resolved in form and composition. I wish I could achieve the freedom and looseness of Daumier’s ‘Christ Condemned’, which inspired the composition of Station 9.
Thomas Merton wrote: “We should live as if we are seeing God face to face, but we should not conceive an image of God. ….On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realising him in all.” [Hidden Ground of Love p.63-64] This echoes John Chrysostom’s earlier words: “Let us evoke him as the inexpressible God, incomprehensible and unknowable. Let us affirm that he surpasses all power of human speech, that he eludes the grasp of every mortal intelligence, that angels cannot penetrate him, that cherubim cannot fully understand him. For he is invisible to the principalities and powers, the virtues and all creatures. Only the Son and the Holy Spirit can know him”
Only God knows exactly what Jesus’ Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection were like, what he went through and what it meant and means to him in Eternity. Calvin would have been very uncomfortable with any Stations of the Cross images, recognising that no image can truly present spiritual reality. Reformers who followed him maintained Calvin’s dictum against religious art that “the physical cannot contain the spiritual”. (I’m not sure that he is right. The Orthodox theology behind the justification of icons, about which I have written elsewhere, would also disagree.) Any religious image on those grounds is false. But by similar reasoning most of our preaching and teaching could be spiritually suspect: Even our ‘soundest’ theology and doctrines, like our imagination, are just reaching for an imperfect understanding. Yet Christians believe that God revealed himself most clearly in Christ’s physical form and in all he did and said. Christ revealed the extent of God’s love, justice, longsuffering and forgiveness in his Passion. By presenting this as a subject we are creating metaphors for the original event that reach towards contemplating the most meaningful subject on which our minds might focus,
The Stations tradition, if followed in spirit and in truth, can be a way of engaging our spiritual selves with what such suffering might have entailed and meant. We aim to awaken our gratitude, our confidence in our faith, our understanding and love of our invisible God and to enhance the depth and focus of our worship. Some visual Stations of the Cross have helped people do this for generations.
THE CHOICE OF SUBJECTS TO REPRESENT
The subjects we select for contemplation from the Passion story influence the spiritual content we draw from it. The biblical narrative could be divided into several hundred scenes, from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem or even his earlier predictions of his death until his Resurrection and beyond. The rear panels of Duccio’s Maiestas and many altarpiece predellas divide the Passion into a series of scenes. Appendix 1 shows how varied the subjects chosen for Stations over the centuries have been.
For years it seemed strange to me that the 14 traditional Stations include such a large percentage of scenes not described in the Gospels when so many meaningful scriptural scenes were available. Traditional Stations 3, 4, 6, 7 & 9 are not recorded in the Gospels. There is no record of Station 6 (Veronica) being known before medieval times. Biblical subjects more significant to the meaning of Atonement and our close relationship with God could be found in the Betrayal and Arrest, Peter’s Denial, The Flagellation, The Seven Last Words, the drink of wine vinegar, the Centurion’s realisation “Truly this was the Son of God”, Nicodemus Requesting Christ’s Body, Embalming Christ with Spices or the Guard at the Tomb. I have painted some of these themes in my new ‘Through Passion’ series and previous projects.
Having previously painted three series of traditional stations as well as two series that contain biblical Passion scenes, I recognise that the traditional 14 can pull rather more at the soul and the emotions than just following scenes form the Bible narrative. They make the viewer empathise with Christ through watching his relationships with others, especially those he loves, his sorrow and his growing weakness as he falls three times. The number of these three falls may have a significance; perhaps a reminder that the Trinity is together in this work of Redemption. It may have origins in cultural memory of significant falls on Jesus’ journey to Calvary (I guess that there must have been many more stumbles as he weakened.) In historical context there was a long period when Seven Falls were regularly used as a Stations Liturgy. A tradition circulated that Christ fell seven times on the way to Calvary. The ‘perfect number’ seven may just have been spiritually symbolic or it has been suggested that it may have been associated with his atoning death conquering the ‘seven deadly sins’. Some commentators think that most of the non-biblical traditional station themes are continuations of these Seven Falls tradition: The encounters with Mary, Veronica, and the Gate of Jerusalem, (as well as his fall when Simon of Cyrene took the Cross) were all times when he was thought to have fallen or stopped.
In human terms the Veronica legend suggests Jesus’ human need for refreshment, comfort, relief and rest, but theologically I find it more suspicious than the other traditions. The legend of a miraculously formed image of Christ on a cloth held out to him in compassion became promoted particularly in the 15th and 16th Centuries. It is not inconceivable that a woman may have reached out with compassion and succour to Jesus (that is the emphasis I give to this scene in my representation). ‘Veronica’ is not found in early accounts of the Way of the Cross before Mediaeval times. The earliest lists that include the encounter place her just before Jesus reached Calvary, not early in his journey as in the traditional arrangement. Elements of the story of St. Veronica are found in the apocryphal ‘Gospel of Nicodemus’ but are probably a much later insertion into that Gospel. Veronica (the Latinised version of Bernice) allegedly used a cloth to wipe Jesus’ face and brow on the journey to Calvary and upon it Christ’s image became miraculously imprinted. According to the addition to the Gospel of Nicodemus Bernice may have been the woman healed of an issue of blood by Jesus (Matt.9:20-22). Tradition relates that Bernice (martyred in Nero’s persecution of Christians) gave the cloth to Pope Clement. It is said that this cloth has been venerated in Rome as a relic since the 8th Century. I suspect that the scene was included in the Stations to add credence to the relic and promote cultic devotion.
The inclusion in the Stations of so many figures who empathise with Christ’s condition, (including his Mother, Simon of Cyrene, the Women of Jerusalem and those who take down Christ’s body,) may be intentional, encouraging us too to empathise with what he is doing on our behalf. Veronica’s legendary story also encourages us to reach to help others as Christ has done to us & as she did to him.
‘Jesus Meets his Mother’ is an understandable inclusion, encouraging us to also empathise with the most significant female figures in the narrative, though the Gospels only mention Mary’s presence at Calvary. As the emphasis on Mary in churches and Catholic theology grew, her part in the Passion story was advanced. Devotions to her were devised to be prayed at places where she may have met Christ on the way and at Calvary. It is inevitable that Mary must have watched at some stage, suffering alongside her son from the moment she heard about his arrest. The scene of their meeting brings loving humanity, poignancy and intimacy to the Passion series. It echoes the biblical story of Jesus from the Cross giving his mother and St John into each other’s care [Jn.19:27]. The traditional way of representing Station 13 as a Pieta, with Jesus's body laid in the arms of his mother Mary alters the emphasis of the Gospel record, which focused on Joseph of Arimathea’s involvement in the retrieval and burial of Christ’s body.
Fourteen Stations is of course significant in numerology. Seven is symbolically a perfect number; doubling seven implies that the Stations help us follow a perfect journey of recollection. But fourteen often seems rather too many Stations to complete meaningfully in one liturgical progress. In my series for St Mary’s Ewell I suggested that the Stations be demountable so that a smaller, more practical number could be selected to be reflected upon liturgically. My latest series, like my first Meditations on the Cross [2000], includes a larger number than usual, which may seem counter-intuitive, but the intention is that they should be viewed as a progressive narrative, not a liturgy. Within that group individual images or a small number may be selected for contemplation.
I have chosen to start my present series with an image of Jesus in contemplative prayer. Logically it would seem right to begin a narrative of the Passion around the Last Supper which links the Cross with the sign of Redemption that Christians remember and share in the Eucharist. But this would help to emphasise that the Stations are rooted in the pain of sacrificial death. I wanted to suggest the more positive emphasis that Christ made the deliberate choice to offer his life, so I begin at a point where Jesus could have chosen a different way. Showing Christ in prayer also encourages the viewer subliminally to approach the series prayerfully. I then show Mary anointing him at Bethany, a fragrant, positive, loving scene interwoven with the realisation that Jesus recognised that she was (probably unintentionally) anointing him for his death. Mary of Bethany’s loving service is then reflected in Jesus teaching the disciples that they should be servants through the personal example of washing their feet before the Last Supper.
WHY TAKE PEOPLE ON A JOURNEY RATHER THAN CONTEMPLATING A SINGLE PASSION SUBJECT?
Time travel is not yet possible; probably it never will be. But we take a journey of the imagination every time we look at a memorial or a biblical image. In viewing an image of a Gospel story we may reach towards Jesus’ historic and spiritual life and are transported into his culture, experiences and intentions. Following Stations of the Cross asks us to bring back into our world all that we find spiritually truthful, valuable and learn from such a journey of contemplative experience so that we can apply it in our faith and lives now.
At least three facets of ourselves are engaged in the journey with Christ:
1. Our unregenerate selves - the parts of us that retain our sin and failure, where the ‘flesh’ feels more dominant or successful in controlling us than the ‘Spirit’. This includes our past, our memories of the life that Christ has redeemed. We thank God for his work in us and pray for growth and improvement.
2. Ourselves as we are - struggling to be spiritual and holy yet recognising our failures, weaknesses and tendencies to sin. We pray for endurance and Christ’s Spirit’s strength to succeed in the struggle.
3. Our spiritual hope for the future, longing for the grace poured out through Christ’s Spirit to fully redeem, renew, free and help us control our lives. We pray that we might be Christ-like citizens of God’s fulfilled Kingdom.
Our past, present and future are dependent on what Christ achieved on the Cross.
It is not surprising that Stations grew and developed within the practices of a mendicant order of preachers, the Franciscans who, like their founder, revered the Cross encouraged contemplation, gospel teaching and a life of poverty and renunciation of self. All these can be elements of Walking the Way of the Cross. Contemplative processes like Lectio Divina are journeys in themselves – journeys into scripture, into the biblical culture and world, into the spiritual world, into our own inner world, into how we apply scripture to ourselves, and an impossible journey into trying to comprehend aspects of the mind and aims of God.
Walking the Stations can engage our body, mind and spirit in worship and communion with Christ. Often our spirituality is cerebral or emotional. Monastic traditions often recognised that humans have a need for physical activity, which help us integrate our spiritual life with our physical lives. Roy DeLeon wrote: “While Christians may have one of - if not the - highest theology of the body among the religions of the world, they also have one of the lowest levels of embodied spiritual practice.” [‘Praying with the Body’ ix. 23 in Bringing the Psalms to Life, 2009, Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA,].
We cannot be sure what St/ Paul meant by “completing in his own body the sufferings of Christ.” [Col.1:24] I have read various interpretations of this passage. One aspect may be explored in walking the Stations: If we are authentically living for Christ and sincerely, energetically taking his truth into our world, we will inevitably encounter a degree of suffering, opposition, distrust or misinterpretation. To journey alongside Jesus in thought along the Way of the Cross could help us to learn to respond like him when we face our own struggles.
It is impossible to convey in one image a comprehensive view of all that Christ or his Cross means. How can a single work suggest divinity and humanity, dignity and humility, the victory of Redemption and the truth of suffering, love, sorrow, pain and joyful hope? Even the greatest artists are selective and show limited aspects in each image. In a linked series of paintings it is easier to build a more holistic view of what is happening through the Passion than a single, more limited image can hold. The cumulative sum of what is being conveyed in a series may be greater than its parts.
The concept of a journey in thought and imagination is different from using one artwork as a single point of meditation. At times we just need to hold onto selective facets of God at moments of ‘static’ faith. But our faith rarely stays still. The ways God relates to us alter with our lives and circumstances. Various metaphors and biblical stories by which we understand aspects of God are relevant at different times. While Christ’s redemptive action encompasses all, different aspects of Jesus’ Passion may apply at different times to different aspects of our lives. So a journey of faith might help us reflect on God’s relevance to us in many areas of our faith and prepare us for many different experiences Jesus’ trial may help us deepen our trust in God despite memories of incidents when we have been misunderstood or misrepresented: It recalls Christ’s beatitude: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.” [Matt.5:10-11]. ‘Jesus Meets his Mother’ may awaken memories of times of separation, or feelings of impotence to help those we love. His ‘Nailing to the Cross’ may remind us of past pain and help us recollect that Christ’s love found ways to forgive those who were intent on his destruction: “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” [Lk.23:34]
Various churches begin the Stations on different sides of the church. It became most common to begin on the Gospel side, following the narrative anti-clockwise. Some traditions regard clockwise procession as celebratory and anti-clockwise as penitential. The Roman Catholic Sacred Congregation of Indulgences was asked to explore this and ruled in 1837 that, though there was no official requirement, beginning on the Gospel side seemed the most appropriate. It recognised however that the form, arrangement and ordering of churches may make it more convenient to move in the other direction and that the composition or arrangement of figures in the images may suggest which direction the viewer should move.
There are values and potential dangers in all forms of art. A value of a cycle of Passion paintings, by contrast to a single subject, is that they allow the viewer to recognise the endurance, dedication and strength in Christ as he gave himself for the world. His was a prolonged painful journey and torture, not a quick, easy death. It was a long process, far more gruesome than I have ever painted, even in my most painful works like ‘The Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’. A series helps people recognise a little of the breadth of meanings and experiences within what Jesus underwent to secure Salvation for the world. Christ’s was not an easy achievement; God didn’t snap his fingers and create Salvation. Redemption and eternal freedom were gained through long, hard struggle, not dissimilar to the journey of life through which so many of us labour. A faith found through journeying alongside Jesus in the confusion and torment of the Stations experiences may become more practical and true to real everyday life than a faith based primarily on learned doctrines or comfortable contemplation. It is not surprising if we struggle to see the hope within Christ’s suffering or the love within the pain. Hope and love are hard to find or be assured of in many difficult lives and experiences too. In our complex, struggling world God’s love, care and healing often seem hidden. That was a theological problem with which Bonhoeffer struggled, like so many who have faith as well as those who find faith difficult to accept. Life was a struggle for Jesus too: he sweated blood in Gethsemane. Following the Way of the Cross could help us be realistic and develop trust, endurance and hope, while we are in the process of dealing with difficult questions, complex lives or painful experiences.
THE STYLE OF REPRESENTATION
An enormous challenge for the artist or liturgist is to find ways of representing the scenes that help to awaken people’s inner spiritual senses and responses in the contemporary world and which feel valid as contemporary art. It is relatively easy to create expressive pictures of such evocative events as those of Christ’s Passion; thousands of artist and craftspeople have done so effectively. Sad art often feels more ‘real’ today than happy art. (Positive art may seem escapist or over-idealistic, though artists like Chagall and Der Blaue Reiter achieved it without sentiment. The apparent ‘realism’ found in negative images sand subjects may be why there has been a revival in paintings of Passion subjects by contemporary artists. It is harder to go the step further, to find qualities of form, mark-making, composition, texture, light, shade and colour that will, for our contemporary generations and future viewers, evoke positive empathetic feelings and faith, igniting true spiritual meanings and real understanding of the reasons behind Christ’s death. That’s what I want to be able to do in my painted meditations, though I am all too aware of failings and technical frustrations.
A number of artists have reached to create positive images. Eric Gill and his followers devised classic, simple, sensual forms which, even in reproduction, spoke to multiple-thousands of worshippers across Catholic, Anglican and non-conformist traditions. He combined Catholic tradition with forms that to his contemporaries) felt modern, helping faith seem relevant. They also made religious subjects seem valid themes for modern art, which had been largely secular (despite the spiritual influences of the Nabis, Symbolists and Rouault). While still beautiful, immaculately designed and crafted, the work of Gill and his followers can sometimes feel over-idealised and unreal today. But that may be helpful too: We recognise that the images we use for contemplation are not reality but rather metaphorical representations, in Gill’s case sanitised and honed to simple ideal forms and compositions. We have enough common imagination and experience of horrors in the world to look beyond the beautiful carving or prints to imagine the grislier reality of what Jesus truly went through to bring the promise of Salvation to us. Distancing us slightly from the reality, good idealised Stations, like those by Gill’s early assistant Jonathan Cribb in the Chapel of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, Yorkshire [1954-5] can act as catalysts to help us walk through the story in our imagination focusing on realities of Christ’s Passion beyond the image. They present the narrative with cool confidence, rather like the tradition that taught readers to not use expression when proclaiming the Gospel liturgically, in order to encourage listeners to be moved by the words themselves. This reading tradition has largely been replaced in modern liturgy by more natural expression or inflection. Too much feeling can seem theatrical. Simplicity does often prove to be effective in our response to good visual images. They may help us view the subject with clarity, yet we might remain cold to them, unless we suspend disbelief and focus on the meaning behind each part of the narrative..
A tradition of life-size station sculptures developed in various Catholic countries, especially in the 18th late 19th and late 20th Centuries; most recently they have been popular in the Americas. They can act partly like static Passion Plays, pageants or tableaux-vivants, helping devotees feel the realism and presence of the scene. Unfortunately their large scale may also sometimes suggest a degree of ‘showiness’ by the artist or the commissioning body, if the figures over-dominate their setting. The most effective large scale Stations are part of long pilgrimage routes, where the scene is encountered on a meditative journey, as in San Louis, Colerado by Huberto Maestas, Coquimbo, Chile by Pasquale Nava and Guiseppe Allampresa, St John’, Indiana along Route 41, Jeju, Korea, or the steps to the much earlier Käppele Pilgrim Church (Wallfahrtskirche Mariä Heimsuchung 1748-50), Würzburg, designed by Balthasar Neumann. Until 2014 the Capuchin order was responsible for the chapel. There the statue groups, consisting of 77 life-sized figures, were created by Simon & Peter Wagner to ideas by Neumann but not completed until 1799. Such large tableaux may have their origin in early Franciscan reconstructions of the scene and Passion Plays.
Most of my own representations of the Passion have been relatively small in scale. This prevents images from being too dominant within the worship space, where art should enhance not distract and feel comfortable in size within the context of their setting but not dominate it. In planning Stations of the Cross with St. John’s Bury St Edmunds, I spent several hours with a small committee testing different proportions and tones of paper templates around the walls. We wanted to select the form, shape, size and colour for the panels that would complement the architectural setting best, yet contain a size of image of that would be readable from a distance, if a large group were following the series as a liturgical practice. In many cases ‘less is more’: simple, less dominant work can speak profoundly. Art usually works most subtly and effectively when viewers engage closely with it. We often view small, expressive paintings with more attention than large pictures. Large images may not be so closely analysed and read by a viewer but they have an overall impact. The quality of spiritual truth in the response that an image evokes is more important than size, style or dominance.
REPRESENTING THE PASSION AS A CONTEMPORARY SCENE
At different stages in Church History biblical subjects have been represented in dress and setting contemporary with the artist and viewer. Mark Cazalet [2000] produced a vibrant series of Stations, set in a journey around familiar landmarks of his own North London. The Passion has been represented in settings including those of Fascism, military dictatorship, pop, drug-culture, commerce, slum areas, West Indian and various ethnic cultures. Such contemporisation is not just a modern trend. Many cultures and nationalities have represented Christ and biblical scenes in their own dress and culture for centuries. It is perhaps easier to identify with a Jesus who in many ways is like us, being ‘fully human’. Much that we regard as a traditional ‘biblical costume’ in religious art of the Middle Ages or Renaissance was in fact Mediaeval or Renaissance contemporary dress. Perhaps, as today, they believed that the images made the scenes spiritually relevant to their contemporary viewers.
One problem generally recurs is that pictures which show Christ in distinctively contemporary settings can have a tendency to fall out of fashion relatively quickly. Stanley Spencer’s settings and figures are often now often admired for their vintage nostalgia qualities rather than present relevance - Cookham village captured at a particular point of time. This may distract later viewers from the artist’s intention of relating Christ’s life and activity as closely as possible to our present ordinary daily lives and activities. It can also make the references too specific. I sometimes add anachronistic contemporary elements and references, like the rolls of barbed wire in my ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ to clarify meanings, emphasis and relevance. However the representation of biblical scenes in a simple, vaguely historic costume might remind us of the biblical truth that “Christ died for sins at the appropriate time, once for all.” We do not need to deliberately modernise an image to make it and its subject of contemporary relevance. Christ died on the Cross at the one right time in history and its power extends to today. A painting of the Cross in historic context can therefore be as contemporary as one in modern dress. We do not need to go to the archaeological and historical detail that Holman Hunt, James Tissot or Carl Bloch researched painstakingly to create. But it is useful if the viewer is helped to believe that Jesus is a real, historical person, giving his life at a significant point in time, in order to effect the world for all time in ways that are relevant to our lives today.
Contemporary references or allusions may also be found in the subject matter we choose. My ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ was specifically intended to suggest parallels between the Roman occupation of Jerusalem and contemporary persecution of Palestinians in modern Israel, as well as injustices in the Iraq war, Rwanda and Burundi. My Seven Last Words were closely related to the injustice of the 2nd World War destruction of Wurzburg. My latest series ‘Through Passion’, which supplements the Last Words, has suggested parallels to the injustices of ISIS, the western abandonment of Aleppo in the Syrian War, Saudi-Arabian activity in Yemen and current problems with President Trump’s America. Contemporary parallels can always be found in the biblical narrative, since scripture is always relevant and history has a tendency to repeat itself. Finding contemporary parallels of relevance to us is also an essential element of the contemplative process we use in journeying through Stations, applying Christ’s activity to our lives.
CHARACTER
In much Modernist figurative art the style was more important than the characterisation. Style may even dominate. I have come to believe that the way we present character in our Stations figures is vitally important: The story is too significant to be misrepresented, misunderstood or misinterpreted. The people involved in the scenes and any lessons we learn from them influence the message conveyed within the images. No image can contain the complexity and realism of the complete character of Christ we find in scripture, nor can we realistically flesh out the other participants in the biblical drama, who are described in less detail. Only small elements of character and meaning can be conveyed, yet good art can challenge us through its portrayal of a character, as in Rembrandt’s ‘Peter Denying Christ’. Some art exaggerates character, like Orozco’s fierce Christ who gives the impression of a strong, raw revolutionary. Fra Angelico or a mild Pre-Raphaelite Christ exhibit gentleness. We choose the style and characterisation that best represents the concept of Christ that we aim to present in each image. In a large series of paintings one is able to develop character in a more ‘fleshed-out’ context and perspective than in individual paintings. This is one reason that I have often worked in series. The Bible’s message is complex, never simplistic.
I personally find representations of Stations which use simple children’s-book-like figures uncomfortable, particularly when the figures are themselves reduced to infant-like proportions or look like children or cute characters. The journey to the Cross is serious; we aim to encourage mature spiritual responses, not cute sympathy. The Passion applies to all of every age and culture so illustrations that speak to children are important. But Passion series for use in Church are intended to encourage maturity of faith through thoughtful engagement, relevant to the age and spiritual understanding of the viewer. Stations pictures are not about entertaining the viewer with pretty Lenten images. Nor are they primarily about adding to the aesthetic of the church building, though the best ecclesiastical art should enhance its environment. The most effective Christian art challenges ideas, creates thoughts and focuses the believer on faith in truthful imagery of Christ. Too much that is presented as ‘Christian art’ seems to consider ‘naïve’ simplistic styles and figures ‘spiritual.’ This does not easily give the impression of depth of meaning and maturity of faith which such an important and theologically fecund subject as Christ’s Passion deserves.
Serious simple images can be valuable. As discussed earlier, they may be ‘truer’ than over-naturalistic ones. The theological justifications behind the stylisation of icons in Orthodox and Coptic Art recognise this. Matisse’s liner Stations at his Vence Chapel are simplified or honed-down realist imagery. These are not perhaps the easiest Stations to follow sequentially, since their arrangement on the chapel wall is rather confusing despite their Latin numerals. His drawing studies for these Stations are more full of feeling, as are some of Eric Gill’s linear designs. Sensitive, good line drawings can be effective precisely because they do not give too much detail. This could encourage the viewer to explore the subject deeply in our spiritual imagination rather than just reflecting on the images. These are not merely ‘illustration’; they act as signs, seeking to awaken spiritual responses by the quality of line, composition and mark as well as subject. By contrast the more expressionist line drawing Stations in the Jesuit College Chapel of the University of Central America, San Salvador are agonising. The images are realist, expressive and dramatic.
Sometimes more expressionist or visceral images may encourage us to concentrate on the surface and the pain, sorrow and suffering that the artist is depicting stylistically. Too much expression may prevent us from looking beyond a surface reading of the image: We may not recognise the beautiful meaning of Salvation being achieved beyond the immediate suffering. I greatly admire the work of Peter Howson, in fact a Church Times article once compared my work favourably and undeservedly to his, but sometimes his imagery has moved this way. The raw energy, lack of sentimental beauty, and violent realism suggested in his figures manage to remove any sense of sentimentality in the representation of religious scenes. But realist or expressionist representation isn’t the main aim of painting the Passion. Faith, gratitude and trust in God are main goals. Although they were important to my expression of faith at the time, I am now uncomfortable with my Stations series ‘The Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ [2003]. I was responding politically to the Iraq War and Israel’s barriers to Palestinian territories. I used those Stations to draw parallels between world injustice, lack of peace and Christ’s situation and peaceful aims. After my 32 Meditations on the Passion and Resurrection [2000], which were based on the biblical narrative, I had wanted to explore the 14 traditional stations themes, to see what true spiritual meaning I could express within a tradition of which I had previous suspicions. I deliberately moved away from sentimentalism towards depiction of suffering, not to subvert the tradition but to add realism. Gislaine Howard’s large Stations of the Cross create an effective balance. They use thick black and white paint gesturally to convey expression without wallowing in the physical pain of the Passion.
WHAT ARE WE AIMING TO CONTEMPLATE IN THE STATIONS?
Contemplating the meaning behind the story can be a cathartic process. This is at the root of walking the Stations as a penitential pilgrimage act. If we’re spiritually honest we realise that none of us deserve the self-sacrifice of the most perfect being. God our source of life did not need to tear himself apart over our failures. Yet Christ’s self-giving demonstrates our importance to God. He aimed to cleanse, heal and renew our world, which so often fails to live up to our good potential and God’s aims. As I assured the schoolchild in Bury St. Edmunds, if there was any other way of resolving world problems other than by the pain of crucifixion I’m sure that God would have taken it. Yet at one point in history God entered the world to teach us a better way of life, to give himself, to make salvation possible and to live as an example for us. Using the Stations may encourage internal searching. We should often be asking: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” [Ps.139:23-24]
One aim of walking the Passion is to open our awareness, to help us apprehend more closely and broadly our relationship with God and appreciate more personally the extent of God’s activity on our behalf. ‘Station’ from its Latin root means ‘to stand’; it is a place to stop, be still, think, revolve, meditate and apply our thoughts. We do not live constantly at a Station; it is a temporary place to be, to think and respond, while we are on the journey of life, waiting a while before progressing on to somewhere else – hopefully improved by our experience. Spiritually a ‘Station of the Cross’ is not just somewhere to stand, think and pray: it is somewhere where we ‘wait on God’, asking for inspiration, enlightenment or guidance of our thoughts on Christ’s Passion and asking his Spirit to move us forward in response. We seek to be moved forward by God’s Spirit’s inspiration and power, to a better place of understanding, appreciation and discipleship. If we contemplate a Station with this aim of transformation, we will not just get caught up in the emotion of the scene or be lost in visceral thoughts about what Christ endured; we make ourselves open to allow God to speak into our minds and improve us. Moving from station to station is intended to be transformative, applying the stages of Christ’s journey and his achievements to our lives.
Many personal challenges come from the Passion story:
Are we willing to follow Jesus’ example to bring others a better life?
Are we willing to undergo similar committed work, which may entail pain, lies about us or degradation for the sake of improving the life of our world?
‘Through Passion’ Christ achieved far more than we understand yet, above all, he promises abundant eternal life for us to trust in and follow.
Visitors to art-galleries and exhibitions view images at very different paces. The average time spent looking at an artwork in some galleries is a couple of seconds – not enough time to take in what you are seeing. The idea of walking Stations of the Cross is to take an unhurried, prayerful pace, laying ourselves open to God’s inspiration of our thoughts and intuitive responses. Stations have similarities to the Christian discipline of lectio divina where a Bible verse or short passage is read repeatedly with careful attention, meditation and contemplation on the implication of each word, then it is applied to our lives. Walking the Way of the Cross is often accompanied by reading sections of scripture that apply to each scene. One commentator has suggested that Stations of the Cross are a form of ‘ambulatio divina’ (“divine walking”), a practice of prayer similar to that encouraged by St. Dominic in his Nine Modes of Prayer.
Though words are often an integral accompaniment to Stations, making room for silence is also important. Learning to listen to God’s prompting in silent meditation and contemplation is part of walking the Stations. We live in an age where silence is often rare; even Christians fill their personal time and corporate worship with activity and sound. Yet, as John of the Cross wrote in the 16th Century, “Silence is God’s first language”. We frequently learn more spiritually by listening than by telling God what we think or want. Even when reading scripture, studying spiritual writings and commentaries or exploring images, we receive more when we stop and let the work speak to us in silence.
Walking the Stations of the Cross, as believers who recognise that we are not yet living fully sanctified lives, includes an aspect of ‘waiting for God’ for his intervention in our life. We have been redeemed but we wait for the fulfilment of all that Christ achieved, just as we wait for God’s Kingdom to be fully formed, though Christ assured us that he had already established it. The different Hebrew terms for ‘wait’ suggest its various connotations that may be appropriate to devotional use of Stations:
· ‘yachal’ – ‘to wait in hope’ - implies that there is still a sense of incompleteness, though God is reliable.
· ‘damam’ –‘to become silent and still’ - includes learning to trust God with calm confidence based on his promises and past fulfilment of his covenant with us.
· ‘chakah’ – ‘to long for’ - implies a desperate longing for something not yet fully achieved.
· ‘qavah' – ‘to wait patiently and look eagerly’ - involves our active participation as we reflect on God’s promises. (cf. Prov. 8:34, Ps.27:14
All these aspects of spiritual waiting could be applied to how we use the Stations as part of our prayer, longing to realise in our lives and in the world, spiritual understanding, wholeness of salvation, holiness and the building of God’s Kingdom.
THE TEXTS USED WITH THE STATIONS
Many books of meditations have been written for use with Stations, either as sources for personal contemplation or group liturgy. I discuss the development of some of these in Appendix 2. It is traditional to accompany each Station with a relevant scripture passage, written meditation, prayer response & perhaps a hymn.
In many ways images should be able to stand for themselves, without the need for words or commentary. When many walk Stations as a form of personal devotion, they use no devotional or liturgical literature, preferring to just watch the images as the focus for contemplation. Those familiar with the biblical story, perhaps rely less on the Bible’s words as their starting-point. But every re-reading can bring out new facets or thoughts, so scripture should never be left too far away, even with the most stirring images. Images, however, may often inspire very different ideas and approaches to the theme than biblical words, so we should be open to let God communicate through our response to the image.
Protestants, particularly the Reformed, Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions have been suspicious of the non-biblical aspects of the Stations tradition as well as its reliance on images to inform or encourage faith. Many retain the theological distrust of images that led to Reformers destroying or removing them from churches. Some Protestant churches have rediscovered the value of the visual as part of spirituality and teaching, but they remain less familiar than Catholics, Copts or Orthodox Christians with the practices and mind-set that help us read images spiritually. This sensitivity needs to be nurtured and educated. We can train or help people find ways to use images effectively but words remain important to give keys to sensitise us to the potential meaning within images. Not all people learn visually. But we must not ‘explain away’ images by describing or commenting on every detail; if we do people won’t look sufficiently to benefit from the visual stimulus. Any text should give just enough information to awaken ideas, which enable the image to convey its message.
Although there is a ‘mission’ or evangelistic element to the Stations, as the Franciscans taught, art is rarely good art when it is propagandist. The message and the medium are a unity. It is not the artist or commentator’s role to preach at or direct the viewer: Art works best when it awakens sensitivity. The image may be full of content, suggestions, feelings and allusions, but it should not be overtly didactic. That is not the role of art, or the way it most effectively communicates.
Poetry may be a useful key, as it uses literary metaphors rather than prosaic, literal descriptions. For some of my early Stations series I wrote sonnet meditations, linking the traditional 14 lines of poetry with the 14 images. Often the first octet of the Sonnet contemplated the meaning of the theme, the final 6 lines being a prayer response. I wonder now if even the sonnet form may be too long. Rouault accompanied his Miserere et Guerre series with a simple, sometimes enigmatic line, which enabled the image to retain an element of mystery. My most recent series is accompanied by poems of just 6 lines. Even these are too literal and descriptive; they need to become more allusive or metaphoric, but I am not sure that I have the literary ability to achieve this.
MY OWN PERSONAL CHOICE OF STYLE - EXPRESSIVE REALISM
We live in an age where many are sceptical about faith. At the same time our world had developed a plethora of different approaches to spirituality, new and old. We shouldn’t be afraid of representing Christian subjects like the Way of the Cross. Churches have become increasingly interested in the potential of using visual art, though they are not always aware of how best to use it and tastes and qualities vary greatly. The contemporary professional art world is still somewhat cynical or at least suspicious about art based on faith, perhaps because it is not commercial. Though more contemporary art references religious symbolism than 30 years ago, committedly ‘Christian’ art is rarely treated as seriously as are broader, vaguer or more esoteric spiritual approaches.
There is sometimes confusion even in churches about what is ‘Christian’. Even some Cathedral gift-shops sell esoteric New Age ‘angel charms’, more relevant to child-like hope in fairies than the faith that Christ sought to teach. I don’t want my art to feel too distant or esoteric. There is enough in the Christian faith that is mysterious and inexplicable. Christ made God tangible [1Jn.1:1]; there should be an element of this in church art too. The subjects of Christian art contain many layers of meaning, and underlying symbolism. But I want people to recognise primarily that each image has meaning for their faith, and to feel able to respond.
In a sceptical society I find that many thinking people are most convinced by faith that seems real, relevant and reasonable. They are less convinced by religion or philosophy that appears over-idealistic, symbolic or esoteric. After years of practicing to express my faith communicatively through painting, I have come to believe that ‘expressive realism’ is an appropriate style to convey my understanding of faith. It communicates in ways that seem to help contemporary people respond, but should not present the Passion in too gory detail.
Some art can be too expressive of pain: I personally feel Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ went too far in representing violence. It was hard to glimpse the love of God expressed through the suffering. The film’s brutality was influenced by a form of theology present in some Catholicism and Puritanism that comes close to suggesting that ‘if we hadn’t sinned quite so much Christ might not have had to suffer so much.’ Nowhere does orthodox biblical Christian doctrine suggest this, even in most substitutionary atonement theories. The painful realism in some late Middle Ages Northern European representations of the Passion or Crucifixion has been attributed to a cultural and religious response to suffering in society after years of plague and European wars. Representation of the ‘Pieta’, the ‘Man of Sorrows’/‘Suffering Servant’ and Plague Crosses expanded greatly at that time. Some 20th Century artists responded similarly to the violence of war, as in Otto Dix, Rouault’s Miserere et Guerre, Sutherland’s Crucifixion, especially the studies for St Matthew’s Northampton, or Orozco’s Christ and his Cross responding’ to South American revolutionary violence.
My sensitivity is drawn to each work mentioned above; they have gritty realism not present in much 19th Century Christian art or Stanley Spencer’s realism, which I like for different reasons. In devising my own style I have adopted qualities from Expressionism and Realism. I hope that in these recent ‘Through Passion’ images I have learned from the mistakes made in the ‘Way of the Cross in a Suffering World’ series, to reduce the strength of the impact of suffering. I want, with the viewer, to empathise with the suffering rather than have thought dominated by it, to more sensitively consider why this Passion is happening and realise its relevance to us. Following the ‘Way of the Cross’ in our prayer and imagination isn’t meant to macabrely concentrate on Jesus’ torture, degradation and suffering. He was willing to undergo this pain to win a better life for us. The Church aims to encourage faith, worship, thanksgiving & trust as well as empathy with Christ’s suffering. Faith helps us recognise in the Passion the extent of God’s love for us, and art designed to promote faith should have a similar aim.
For ecclesiastical art the degrees of realism and expression have to be tamed, or more precisely ‘transformed’, so that they may truly represent the subject in ways that encourage faith. Artists are not compromising their vision or being untruthful if they moderate their art out of consideration of how the work communicates best to others. Part of the role of designing art for use in church is to consider the spirituality of the viewer and to form images that encourage response and challenge spiritually. Church art should not be anodyne, nor should it alienate the viewer.
My personal style, which attempts ‘expressive realism’ is not ‘naturalistic’. No-one would mistake it for a photograph - neither is it particularly exaggerated in emotion or caricature. I want to suggest that the figures are historically real and each scene really happened, though not necessarily as I have imagined it. The Passion is not fantasy; faith is grounded in realism not wishful thinking.
In the most recent paintings I have worked to leave the images free, almost as though they remain unfinished. Although the paintings are as complete and resolved as I can at present make them, some may continue to change. I am still on a journey of discovery with them. I want the viewer to see the image as just a start of their own thought-journey. The aim is to help viewers find enough in each image to remind them of the story and its meaning and help to immerse their imaginations in it. An artist shouldn’t ‘dot the ‘i’s or cross the ‘t’s’ for the viewer; I can’t determine what ideas or aspects of faith they might open to others. I want the images to awaken thoughts in viewers’ minds, as they have in mine, so that each viewer can take the image forward and resolve its meaning in their imagination, devotion and prayer.
I have painted my latest Stations in grisaille, partly to reduce the horror of the scenes, but also to suggest that the images are more like thoughts or memories than observed naturalistic reality. This is a real man, experiencing the full gamut of emotions and suffering. The almost monochromatic effect, mixing tones and hues from just four colours, Paynes Grey, White, Yellow Ochre and a little Scarlet, help to distance us slightly from imagining that this was the reality of the historic scene. The sketchy texture and mode of representation is raw but I have tried to keep it relatively tentative, to suggest that each image is not definitive; rather these are considered, imagined explorations of the real event.
An observant, critical viewer will discover several inconsistencies in the journey. Characters and clothing occasionally change slightly between scenes. The features and physique of Christ are inconsistent, to prevent us from imagining or pinning down his image too precisely. Yet I repeatedly show him as strong, to suggest his vigour as a young former-carpenter, despite three years of a more mendicant, ascetic ministry. I want to emphasise primarily that Christ is strong enough to support and carry us physically, mentally and spiritually through the struggle to Salvation and to support us now through any trouble or questioning of faith we might meet. In several images the sun casts strong raking shadows for symbolic, dramatic and compositional effect but the light is not always consistent with the time of day in the biblical narrative. The degree of Christ’s nakedness is inconsistent for modesty reasons. This is not a film demanding continuity; it is a series of related but individual painted meditations. We can never relive Christ’s Passion with historic accuracy. Even if we could, that is not our aim. Through suspending disbelief and contemplating the themes seriously we may appreciate more deeply the Passion’s meaning to God, to ourselves and to our world.
THE PERSONAL CONTEXT
This is my most personal series of Passion paintings to date, partly because they were painted in the suspicion that this might be my last long series. They provide a context for my much larger panels of Seven Last Words and Seven Resurrection Songs, completed a couple of years ago, but which occupied my thoughts for several years during the process of ordination training and through my early work as a priest. I would like to eventually show both series together.as they have unifying features.
This new series was partly conceived at the suggestion of the Dean of Lichfield, Very Revd. Adrian Dorber. The Cathedral has hosted many of my previous exhibitions and is of personal significance to me. As well as being beautiful and rich in the history of faith, it is one of the friendliest, most encouraging cathedral communities with which I have worked. I knew Lichfield Cathedral well as a child. I was raised in Gloucester and have lived and worked in Surrey as an art lecturer, painter and church minister for over 30 years. But my grandparents, uncle and aunt lived in Rugeley and my cousins still live nearby. Lichfield’s spires and sculptures fascinated me long before I came to faith - even before I became an art-historian. One summer, hitchhiking here from university I was dropped off near the motorway at Stoke on Trent and walked through the night across Cannock Chase to be here in the early morning. It was not long after the tragic events on the Chase, so I wasn’t surprised that drivers didn’t offer me further lifts! First seeing the spires through the morning mist is as uplifting as first glimpsing the sea on a journey to the coast. More recently a school-friend and two former teaching colleagues and friends have moved to the area. So there is more than coincidence behind these paintings, through the links I feel with Lichfied. The mother of a good friend in my former church in Surrey was an active member of Lichfield Cathedral congregation for many years. It was she who first introduced my work to the then Chancellor, Tony Barnard and his wife, and I felt drawn into the friendship of the community of the Cathedral. I’m grateful that I have continued to be invited to exhibit here since.
When Dean Adrian invited me to provide a Lent exhibition for 2017 I had no new works of a Lenten nature to exhibit. I initially planned to create a rather different exhibition of fewer, larger paintings on the meaning of the Cross. The Dean’s request for the inclusion of some traditional Station subjects re-moulded this series. As I began working on a new set of Stations of the Cross the relevance of Christ’s Passion to recent personal circumstances became increasingly apparent. The painting process led to long periods of contemplation of my own faith and ministry and a complete rethinking of what the art of the Passion means to me.
It has been a painful few of years since my last Lichfield exhibition, but I sense that experiences have strengthened my faith. A fellow priest and colleague, who I had considered a close friend of 25 years standing, damaged me through duplicity and lies told about me. This conspired with a diocesan cover-up of abusive bullying and the duplicity of a dominating senior manager in my diocese, to cause a heart attack and consequent heart operation, with recurring health repercussions. Sadly I have been forced, through the bad experiences, lack of diocesan pastoral support and the Church’s hesitancy, then failure, to deal with the bullying, the bully or the lies, to realise how far some institutional churches and leaders are from yet truly representing the Kingdom of God. Falsehood in the Church reflects the duplicity that Christ encountered from the High Priests and Sanhedrin. How much greater is the need for all Christian priests, as for all Christians, to follow Christ’s example and be images of God’s truth in the world! Supporting my partner through recent cancer treatment and involvement with sensitive pastoral issues in my present priestly ministry further added to my empathy with the Passion theme.
The sad experiences led me closer to the Psalms, which I had recently studied and painted as Artist in Residence with the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield in Yorkshire. I reflected on the psalmist’s love, his longing for God’s healing, for lies told about him to be cleansed, for the peace of vindication in finding refuge in God’s love, and to be righteous himself. This linked with my re-thinking the Gospel accounts of the Passion to feed into the new paintings. So many aspects of Jesus’ suffering seem relevant to human contemporary troubles in the world. I have drawn from all this emotionally and thematically in devising these new images.
Importantly the painting process became a response of gratitude for my restored life and a recognition that Christ endured far worse for us, to make the world and the Church a better place than it is. We have huge responsibilities; the Church must not relive or return to the situation of the Sadducees, Pharisees and politicians of Jesus’ day, where legalism, compromise and the desire for power brought injustice, innocent suffering and the neglect of faith’s true priorities. We are meant to follow Christ more closely than we do, to seek truth and open that truth to the world. I now minister alongside a holy and supportive vicar who, like my partner, has taught me, by his example, even more about the sacrificial love and selflessness behind Christ’s Passion story. We partly relive and represent Christ’s Passion in many areas of pastoral ministry, as we work in the world Christ suffered to redeem. All Christians are meant to model Christ to this world. Unfortunately suffering is sometimes the result, but following the Way of the Cross can help strengthen us and give us determination.
So these paintings have become very personal and significant to me. While painting them I have relived each theme almost as an Ignatian Spiritual Exercise, considering what each scene means to me and to the world, as well as their potential theological and pastoral meanings. The spiritual exercise of contemplation continued throughout the long process of creating the Stations - conceiving, sketching, more detailed drawing, developing and creating compositions, exploring each individual figure, preparing panels, then sketching in, painting, changing and developing the pictures over many months of revision and contemplation of their meaning. It has been a challenging and thought-provoking journey.
All aspects of Christ’s life and teaching present challenges if we explore them with open, receptive minds. An educated faith challenges us to always try to work out what is true, to ask in what ways we can relate such truth to our lives now and how to apply this to our world in ways that are relevant, can bring transformation, and may help to build God’s Kingdom. The major challenge is to live up to all that we discover and learn through following Christ and to become living examples of his Way. I hope and pray that others find that the Stations awaken a journey towards Truth in themselves.
APPENDIX 1 HISTORY OF THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS TRADITION
Stations of the Cross started as a form of pilgrimage. A legend first recorded by Felix Fabri in 1480, attributed the origin of the tradition of following the Way of the Cross to Jesus’ mother daily returning to sites of her son’s Passion to pour out her emotion and faith. Others were said to have then followed her example. This legend is almost certainly a later invention, based on the growing importance of Mary in Church teaching and practice in the Middle Ages. Surely, after Christ’s Resurrection there would be no need for Mary to revisit the sites of Jesus’ suffering. Presumably the joy, hope and new understandings that grew among the disciples and in the emerging Church following Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension changed their attitude to the sorrow of his Passion.
Archaeological remains show that early devotion developed in sites associated with Christ’s life & death as early as the C2nd, probably before. In Origen’s time [c185-254] Christians were already visiting to walk in Christ’s footsteps. Emperor Constantine permitted Christians in the Roman Empire to legally worship in 313, following 250 years of persecution. He supported the erection of the Holy Sepulchre Church in 335, at the site where Jesus’ tomb was believed to have been. Pilgrim processions became popular soon after its completion, especially during Holy Week. These processions and liturgies are mentioned in the records of early pilgrims like those of the Pilgrim of Bordeaux, the earliest surviving written account. Helena, Constantine’s mother, founded basilicas on the Mount of Olives and at Bethlehem, as well as purportedly finding the True Cross..
Pilgrimage developed as visitors from all parts of the Roman world came to walk where Jesus walked. Jerome (342-420), living in Bethlehem towards the end of his life, mentioned crowds of pilgrims. As Jerusalem had been almost completely destroyed by Roman armies in 70CE and rebuilt several times, some sites and Jesus’ original route to his death may have been largely conjecture. St. Sylvia, in ‘Peregrination ad loca sancta’ (380), described in detail many pilgrim practices yet did not mention following the Way of the Cross. Early pilgrimage routes appear to have varied considerably starting at different places and following different routes. c382 Egeria/Aetheria a Gallic woman on pilgrimage, described in her journal memorial processions on Golgotha from the Anastasis to the largest church, the Martyrium via a smaller church ad Crucem. She recounts that on Holy Thursday night the bishop of Jerusalem and many Christians pilgrims gathered at the site of Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. They said a prayer, sang a hymn, listened to a Gospel passage, then entered the garden of Gethsemane where another prayer was said, then a hymn and Gospel reading before moving towards Jerusalem, eventually finishing at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where they commemorated the Crucifixion and Resurrection:
“At the first cockcrow they come down from the Imbomon with hymns and arrive at the place where the Lord prayed, as it is written in the Gospel: “and he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and prayed…” There is in that place a graceful church. The bishop and all the people enter, a prayer suitable to the place and to the day is said, with one suitable hymn, and the passage from the Gospel is read where he said to his disciples: “Watch, that you enter not into temptation.” The whole passage is read and prayer is made. And then all, even to the smallest child, go down with the Bishop, on foot, with hymns to Gethsemane. There, on account of the great number of people in the crowd who are wearied owing to the vigils and weak through the daily fasts, and because they have so great a hill to descend, they come very slowly with hymns to Gethsemane. And over two hundred church candles are prepared to give light to all the people. On their arrival at Gethsemane, first a suitable prayer is made then a hymn is said, then the passage of the Gospel is read where the Lord was taken. And when this passage has been read there is so great a moaning and groaning of all the people, together with weeping, that their lamentation may be heard perhaps as far as the city. From that hour they go with hymns to the city on foot, reaching the gate about the time when one man begins to be able to recognize another, and thence right on through the midst of the city. All, to a man, both great and small, rich and poor, all are ready there, for on that special day not a soul withdraws from the vigils until morning. The bishop is escorted from Gethsemane to the gate, & then through the whole of the city to the Cross.”[Peregrinatio Etheriae 30]
This enlightens us over several details: Egeria’s knowledge of scripture at so early a stage in the church’s foundation, the mixture of social classes in the service, the use of hymns and readings in the liturgy, the bishop’s leadership and the early involvement of ‘lamentation’, which was to become such a feature of Mediaeval devotion to the Cross. Egeria’s account was not the traditional Way of the Cross known today but it could contain sources and elements of some later Stations liturgies. It did not follow today’s Via Dolorosa nor the Via Sacra, touring shrines & sites of Jerusalem that various 5th & 6th Century pilgrims also described, as devotional tours round Jerusalem grew in popularity. Pilgrims brought back oil from the lamps that burned around Jesus’ tomb and relics from the holy places to sanctify their own places of prayer and worship.
By the 5th Century some churches tried to recreate in Europe what they had seen in the Holy Land and ‘reproduced’ Jerusalem’s holy places in other to enable believers who could not travel on pilgrimage to Palestine to journey devotionally and spiritually alongside Christ on his way of Passion. In the 400s, Petronius, Bishop of Bologna, constructed a group of chapels representing important Holy Land shrines around San Stefano monastery. Several of these were of the ‘Stations’ themes we recognise today. The Moslem conquest of Palestine in the 7th Century made such European shrines more significant, since travel to the Holy Land became even more dangerous. Some priests and pilgrims, intent on verisimilitude, tried to reproduce the exact intervals of distance between the Jerusalem sites of the Stations. They measured out the paces, so that devout devotees might cover precisely the same distances as Christ, or pilgrims to the Holy Land would have experienced. Christian van Adrichem in C16th Holland was to produce a devotional book based on similar geographical literalism.
The Way of the Cross, as we understand the term today, is a largely mediaeval tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153), Francis of Assisi (died 1226) and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (died 1274), developed profound practices of contemplative devotion based on the Passion. Stations of the Cross became particularly associated with the Franciscans due to Saint Francis’ special devotion to the Passion of Christ. Jerusalem fell to Muslim invaders after a siege in 1187. In the shadow of this, in 1217 Francis founded, ‘The Custody of the Holy Land’ in an attempt to guard Israel’s Holy places and promote devotion. When Franciscans were allowed back into the Holy Land in 1233 they sought to protect pilgrimage sites and Franciscans were officially appointed as custodians of holy places by Pope Clement VI in 1342. Devotions to the Way of the Cross increased greatly after this date, when the Franciscan friars in custody of the holy sites promoted the idea of pilgrimage, They advanced the idea that the faithful could receive ‘indulgences’ for praying at certain stations, notably: Pilate's house, the Antonine Fortress, the sites where Christ met Mary, where he addressed the women of Jerusalem, where Simon of Cyrene helped shoulder the Cross, the site where soldiers stripped him, cast lots for his clothing and nailed him and the Holy Sepulchre, Christ’s empty tomb. We don’t know for sure when such indulgences began to be granted officially, but it was at some time early in the Franciscan guardianship of the holy sites.
The Crusades (1095-1270) promoted and helped to advance interest in pilgrimage. 12th to 14th C travellers like James of Verona and Burchard of Mount Sion mention a ‘Via Sacra’ in Jerusalem but again this is not today’s traditional Way of the Cross. The Dominican friar Rinaldo de Monte Crucis, c1294, mentioned in his Liber peregrinationis going up to the Holy Sepulchre ‘by the way Christ went to the Cross’ and described various stations. William Wey, an English pilgrim, in his description of his visit in 1462 was the first to use the term "stations" to describe pilgrims’ devotional stopping-places on Jerusalem’s ‘Via Sacra’. Wey visited the Holy Land in 1458 and again in 1462. He used the “stations” term only of the places visited in the process of following in Christ’s footsteps on his journey to death, not for other sites visited in Jerusalem or beyond. Up to Wey’s time it seems to have been a common practice to commence the route at Calvary and proceed in the opposite direction to Christ’s journey, working back to Pilate’s home. By the early part of the sixteenth century, the more logical, chronological way of traversing the route was most regularly followed, beginning at Pilate’s Judgment Hall in the Antonine Fortress (now incorporated into the Ecce Homo Convent). It ended at the reputed site of Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This had developed into a recognised devotional exercise. Wey mentions 14 Stations, but only five of them correspond to today’s traditional themes. Seven seem only remotely related to the traditional Way of the Cross:
· The house of Dives (in the Parable of Lazarus the beggar)
· The city gate through which Christ passed on his way to Golgotha
· A pool by which he was tested and where he taught
· The arch where Pilate declared “Ecce Homo”
· Mary’s School
· Herod’s houses
· The home of Simon the Pharisee.
The 15th and 16th Centuries saw a further rise in the popularity of Stations. A number of confraternities were devoted to the practice and supporting its devotional use. Turks blocked access to the Holy Land and suppressed Christian devotion. In 1587 Zuallardo reported that the Moslems forbade anyone "to make any halt, nor to pay veneration to [the stations] with uncovered head, nor to make any other demonstration." He published a full account of prayers and liturgical practices used at shrines within the Holy Sepulchre but mentioned none for the Stations or the Via Crucis, as such open devotion was forbidden. Henry Maundrell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD1697 mentions the Turks’ financial monopoly over admission to the sacred sites and seems to describe some different sites for the Way of the Cross than today’s Via Dolorosa. As an Anglican he does not describe the detail of all the ceremonies and Latin liturgies which he experienced, as his contemporary, Sandys, had published them in detail.
With external ceremonies on the Via Dolorosa suppressed under Muslim domination of the Holy Land and pilgrimage to Jerusalem dangerous, European devotion to the Stations grew in popularity. They provided alternative focuses for pilgrims.
The mystic Henry Suso (c1295-1366) developed the practice of following Christ’s Passion step by step in his imagination, but others felt the need for visual reminders. Franciscans built several outdoor shrines in small buildings or under canopies along the approach to churches; sometimes housing near-life-size sculptures in elaborate groups. Craftspeople and artists of repute began to receive commissions for these sculptures or paintings. Reproductions of the Jerusalem stations were erected at popular spiritual centres. The earliest example was the C5th church of Santo Stefano in Bologna, which replicated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives and Valley of Josaphat. Initially its stations seem to have been an isolated example and the monastery became popularly known as ‘Hierusalem’. As pilgrimage increased the Stations practice increased. Often chapels were erected with altars dedicated to the incidents of the Passion Story, reflecting the chapels on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa. Famous early replicas were at the Dominican Friary at Cordova (commissioned by Alvarez d.1420 on his return from the Holy Land), the Poor Clare Convent at Messina (in the early 1400s by Eustochia); Görlitz (erected by G. Emmerich c1465); Nuremberg (by Ketzel, in 1468); Varallo (1491 by Bernardino Caimi, once the Franciscan custodian of the holy places); Louvain (by Peter Sterckx in 1505); St. Getreu in Bamberg (1507); Fribourg and Rhodes (by the Knights of Rhodes c1507); Romans in Dauphine (by Romanet Bofin 1515 imitating those at Fribourg); and Antwerp 1520).
Such devotion was not entirely selfless: in 1520 Leo X granted an indulgence of a hundred days to people following each of a set of sculpted Stations representing ‘The Seven Dolours of Our Lady’ in the cemetery of the Franciscan Friary at Antwerp. Soon indulgences were available to all who meditated on the Stations or Passion of Christ, a practice and approach to the Cross that many Protestants came to abhor.
The representation of scenes varied. Unlike the pattern-books of the Middle Ages, which unified the iconography of the saints, Stations imagery developed at a time when variety was more valued as an artistic quality. St. Alphonsus promoted the use of already common ‘Pieta’ iconography as the 13th station, with Jesus’ body laid in the arms of his mother. In the preceding two centuries devotion to Mary in her sorrow had become particularly popular and often the figure of Christ’s mother was emphasised in the scenes. Margery Kempe’s journal meditations on the Passion were viewed from the perspective of Mary with Margery imagining herself in the role of Mary’s servant-companion.
By the 17th Century Stations were in general use by nearly all Catholic churches, as they continue to be today. Before 1731 (when Pope Clement XII regulated the Stations and formulated the traditional 14 subjects) the number of stations of the Passion varied greatly, between seven and thirty-seven. On visiting Jerusalem in 1515 to glean as correct details as possible for designing a set of Stations, Romanet Boffin was assured by two Franciscan Friars there ought to be thirty-one Stations in total, but contemporary printed devotional manuals for using these Stations mention nineteen, twenty-five, and thirty-seven. Evidently different devotional practices were in use at the same places of pilgrimage. Few mediaeval accounts mention Station 2 (Christ Receiving the Cross) or Station 10 (Christ Stripped of His Garments). A common former Station was Pilate’s declaration “Ecce Homo”, presumably because the ruins of the arch from which it was supposed to have been pronounced was still visible to pilgrims. Before mediaeval times Veronica was never mentioned, leading one to believe that this was a mediaeval invention to promote the cult of her ‘miraculous veil’.
Seven Stations was a common number. It was not just a ‘perfect number’ symbolically, but it is also a comfortable number to undertake as an intense devotional exercise without the practice becoming monotonous or distracting. The Seven themes most commonly used included:
1. Christ Carries his Cross (Traditional Station no. 2)
2. Jesus Falls the First Time (Traditional Station no. 3)
3. Jesus Meets his Mother (Traditional Station no. 4)
4. Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus (Traditional Station no.6)
5. Jesus Falls the Second Time (Traditional Station no. 7)
6. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, (Traditional Station no. 11)
7. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb (Traditional Station no.14)
The Three Falls of Christ, (the tradition of Stations 3, 7 and 9,) seem to survive from this older tradition of Seven Falls. These were famously sculpted by Adam Krafft at Nuremburg. They were commissioned and inspired by Martin Ketzel who went to the Holy Land on pilgrimage in 1468 then revisited to remind himself of details and the distances between the Jerusalem Stations. Ketzel himself paced them out in Nuremberg. His Seven Falls were:
1. Jesus Meets his Mother (Traditional Station no. 4)
2. Simon of Cyrene helps to Carry the Cross (Traditional Station no.5)
3. Jesus meets the Women of Jerusalem (Traditional Station no. 8)
4. Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus (Traditional Station no.6)
5. Jesus Falls (Traditional Station no. 3 or 7)
6. Christ on the ground beneath the Cross (Traditional Station no. 9)
7. Christ taken down from the Cross & laid in his mothers’ arms. (Station 13)
Many imitators followed his example, though several illustrated versions began even before Jesus’ condemnation by Pilate.. The representation of Christ as falling or fallen, may have been a way of promoting empathy with his suffering, and faith that Christ identified with our own fallen state and can raise us. The four lost falls may survive in the themes of the four non-biblical Stations where Jesus appears to stop on his journey to death: Jesus Meeting His Mother, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica, and the Women of Jerusalem. All of these scenes show Jesus as vulnerable, in need of support and identifying with others. A few mediaeval commentators conflate the scenes of Simon of Cyrene with the Women of Jerusalem.
C16th Franciscans produced printed guide-books to the Holy Land sites. In the Low Countries particularly many C16th devotional books were published, which included 14 stations with devotional prayers. These supplemented early printed records of liturgies & practices used in Jerusalem with devotional practices to be used at home. ‘Geystlich Strass’/‘Spiritual Road’[1521] printed in Germany included wood engravings of the Jerusalem stations. An influential volume ‘Jerusalem sicut Christi Tempore floruit’/’Jerusalem at the Time of Christ’ (1584), written by Adrichomius listed 12 stations which have common themes to those in present Catholic tradition. This book circulated widely in Europe, being translation into several languages and may be a source that influenced the eventual choice of the traditional themes. Like Jan van Paesschen, author of ‘The Spiritual Pilgrimage’ [1563] (another probable source for the 14 traditional themes), Adrichomius had never visited the Holy Land but formed his meditations from imaginative contemplative journey, following Falls or Stations of the Cross and the described experiences of others.
Pope Innocent XI recognised that few could travel to Jerusalem due to religious oppression, financial constraints and fear about the safety on journeys. In 1686 he granted Franciscans, in answer to their petition, the right to erect stations in their own churches. German monastic cloisters are named ‘Kreuzweg’/’The Way of the Cross’, as Stations are often positioned in cloisters, but this positioning was not general practice before the late C17th. In 1731 Clement XII extended the right to erect Stations to all churches on the condition that a Franciscan friar erected and consecrated them, with the consent of the local bishop. His directive actively encouraged all churches to erect stations. At the same time Clement fixed the number of Stations formally to fourteen and regulated the themes traditional today. The Franciscans held a form of monopoly over the Stations tradition until the late 19th Century. Franciscans were granted the same indulgences for following reproductions of the Stations as pilgrims who practiced the devotion on an actual pilgrimage. In 1726 Pope Benedict XIII extended these indulgences to all the faithful who followed the Way of the Cross, and Clement XII confirmed this benefit of indulgences when he formulated the 14 traditional Stations in 1731. In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV further exhorted all priests to decorate their churches with the Way of the Cross. All stations were required to include 14 crosses and they usually included images of each scene. It was regulated that the Cross must be made of wood, or the Station was invalid.
Many 18th Century preachers popularised the devotional exercise. Perhaps the most renowned was Leonard Casanova of Porto Maurizio, Italy (Leonard of Port Maurice) (1676-1751) who was reputedly responsible for erecting 572 series of Stations in Europe, Most famously these included the Stations in the Colosseum in Rome commissioned by Benedict XIV in 1750 to commemorate the Holy Year. Walking these became the Pope’s regular Good Friday practice.
Devotion to Stations was supported by successive popes, who, like St. Francis, saw the devotional exercise as a means of strengthening faith. Religious communities, particularly the Jesuits and the Passionists encouraged Stations as part of their missions and retreats. Outdoor Stations were sometimes erected in rural settings or on wooded hills like Sacro Monte di Domodossola (1657) and Sacro Monte di Belmonte (1712). The 18th Century Italian bishop Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787) wrote an influential commentary and liturgy for the Stations. This was widely used throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries in Europe and America and still popular today. It became popular to sing a stana of the Stabat Mater between Stations. Gradually the Franciscan monopoly of Stations declined. The Stations practice did not develop in England until the middle of the C19th and in America about the same time. In 1857, Catholic bishops in England were allowed to erect and dedicate stations themselves, without involving a Franciscan priest. This right was extended in 1862 to bishops throughout the Catholic Church. Someone with spiritual authority in the Catholic Church is still required to erect and bless them.
Great composers, like Franz Liszt in 1879, composed music for the liturgy of the Stations, supplementing the traditional Adoramus Te and Stabat Mater (traditionally ascribed to the 13th C. Franciscan Jacapone da Todi). In the 20th Century the musical tradition expanded as spiritual and artistic creativity supplemented the traditions. Marcel Dupré composed organ meditations in 1931 based on Stations poems by Paul Claudel; Peter Maxwell Davies's Vesalii Icones (1969), interpreted the Stations for male dancer, solo cello, instrumental ensemble and anatomical illustrations by Vesalius (1543). David Bowie’s 1976 song, "Station to Station" refers to the Stations of the Cross. The 14 traditional Stations have inspired several oratorios: Stefano Vagnini's 2002 Via Crucis for organ, computer, choir, string orchestra and brass quartet and Broadway composer Michael Valenti and librettist Diane Seymour’s 1991 oratorio ‘The Way’. The storyline of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ [2004] followed the narrative of the Stations, including the three Falls. Dietrich Brüggemann’s film ‘Stations of the Cross’ has the structure of 14 Stations running through it. It is not primarily about Christ’s Passion but explores the relevance and struggle of faith in the contemporary world. The film Jesus of Montreal successfully parallels the Passion of Christ with the life-journeys of a group of actors presenting a Passion Play relevant to the contemporary city. Scott Erickson, when artist-in-residence at Ecclesia Church, Houston, designed a set of 10 tattoos of various Stations of the Cross to help people carry the Passion with them through Lent. More than 75 members of the congregation including the pastor, adopted the tattoos as part of their Lenten observance, so when congregational groups met they became living ‘Stations.'
Visually so many artists and craftspeople have worked with the Stations tradition that here is not the place to discuss them in detail. Application of our creative imagination can help us keep relevant the memory of Christ’s Passion and what it achieved. Stations are usually an outward expression of an inner journey.
Today, liturgically a 15th Resurrection Station is increasingly added providing a positive focus at the end of the progress. Anglican, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist and Western Orthodox parishes have begun to use stations more, though Protestants (and increasingly some Catholics) are sometimes uncomfortable with the non-biblical scenes and revise the themes to include solely biblical scenes. An early attempt to create a series of biblical Stations was seen in 11 stations specially ordered for the Diocese of Vienna in 1799. These portrayed:
1. Jesus’ Agony in the Garden
2. Judas Betrays Jesus
3. The Scourging
4. The Crowning with Thorns
5. Jesus is Condemned to Death
6. Jesus meets Simon of Cyrene
7. Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
8. Jesus Tastes the Gall
9. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
10. Jesus Dies on the Cross
11. Jesus’ Body is Taken Down from the Cross
Pope Paul VI, approved a Gospel-based version of the stations in 1975. Franciscans had a long tradition of celebrating the Stations in the Colosseum in Rome on Fridays. Pope John Paul II made this observance an annual element his Holy Week practice. He wrote his own version and a new form of devotion - ‘The Scriptural Way of the Cross’, which he first led on Good Friday 1991 around the Colosseum. This tradition continues. He originally carried the Cross himself between stations but later with growing infirmity he presided over the Stations from a platform on the Palatine Hill or his private chapel in the Vatican, via a televised link. Each year, a different person is invited to write the meditation text for the Pope’s Stations, including non-Catholics. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI formally approved the scriptural set of stations for meditation and public celebration using the following sequence:
1. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
2. Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested
3. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin
4. Jesus is denied by Peter
5. Jesus is judged by Pilate
6. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns
7. Jesus takes up his Cross
8. Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry his Cross
9. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
10. Jesus is crucified
11. Jesus promises his Kingdom to the repentant thief
12. Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other
13. Jesus dies on the Cross
14. Jesus is laid in the tomb
The Catholic Church in the Philippines uses a third scriptural version of the Stations, approved by their Bishops’ Conference. Starting at the Last Supper, it omits Peter’s Denial, conflates Condemnation by Pilate with Christ Accepting the Cross and concludes with the Resurrection as the 14th Station:
1. The Last Supper
2. The Agony in the Garden
3. Jesus before the Sanhedrin
4. The Scourging and Crowning with Thorns
5. Jesus Receives the Cross
6. Jesus Falls under the Weight of the Cross
7. Jesus is Helped by Simon of Cyrene
8. Jesus Meets the Pious Women of Jerusalem
9. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
10. Jesus and the Repentant Thief
11. Mary and John at the Foot of the Cross
12. Jesus Dies on the Cross
13. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb
14. Jesus Rises from Death
The Resurrection of Jesus, though not traditionally part of the Stations, is now often included at Number 15. A series of Resurrection Stations is also growing in popularity. The ‘Way of Light’ (‘Via Lucis’) was developed in the 1990s to take contemplation forward during the Easter Season (fifty days from Easter to Pentecost). A Salesian priest in Rome, Fr. Sabino Palumbieri, promoted the idea. This devotional exercise was first blessed on Easter Sunday 1994, at Becchi, Turin, the birthplace of Saint John Bocso, founder of the Salesian Order. Palumbieri explained his reasons for developing ‘The Way of Light’ in ‘Give Me a Firm Footing’ [1999]. He combined references on an ancient inscription on a wall of the San Callisto Catacombs on the Appian Way in Rome with the Gospel texts of other Resurrection appearances. Saint Callistus was a former slave who served as the 16th Pope between 217-222. The inscription in his catacomb is a fragment of 1Cor.15:3-8: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I had been taught myself, namely that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all, he appeared to me, too, as though I was born when no one expected it.”
The 14 ‘Way of Light’ Stations emphasise aspects of the Christian hope that build from the promise of Redemption contained within the Way of the Cross.
1. Jesus rises from the dead [Matt.28:5-6]
2. Women find the empty tomb [Matt.28:1-6]
3. The risen Lord appears to Mary Magdalene [Jn.20:16]
4. Mary Magdalene proclaims the Resurrection to the apostles [Jn. 20:18]
5. The risen Lord appears on the road to Emmaus [Lk.24:13-27]
6. The risen Lord is recognized in the breaking of the bread [Lk.24:28-32]
7. The risen Lord appears to the disciples in Jerusalem [Lk.24:36-39]
8. The risen Lord gives the disciples the power to forgive [John 20:22-23]
9. The risen Lord strengthens the faith of Thomas [John 20:24-29]
10. The risen Lord says to Peter, "Feed my sheep" [John 21:15-17]
11. The risen Lord sends the disciples into the whole world [Matt.28:16-20]
12. The risen Lord ascends into heaven [Acts 1:9-11]
13. The Disciples wait with Mary in the Upper Room [Acts 1:12-14]
14. The risen Lord sends the Holy Spirit [Acts 2:2-4]
Sculptor Giovanni Dragoni was the first to carve this series in wood for Becchi and created a second outdoor series in metal at the San Callisto Catacombs, along the route from the Domino Quo Vadis Church to the Basilica of San Sebastiano.
Protestantism, Evangelicals particularly, traditionally preferred the sign of an empty Cross, if they used one at all. A crucifix was used more by those churches which worship with a more pronounced theological emphasis on the sacraments. However towards the end of the C20th. increasing numbers of Protestant churches, even some Evangelical congregations returned to using art as part of their communal, liturgical or personal devotional practices, including forms of Stations of the Cross and representations of the Crucifix. Where they are considered, most prefer Stations based on Gospel events rather than the Catholic traditional 14. They often include a Resurrection Station. Non-biblical Station themes are frequently replaced with others scriptural scenes or just 8 Stations may be used:
1. Pilate Condemns Jesus to Die
2. Jesus Accepts His Cross
3. Simon Helps to Carry the Cross
4. Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem
5. Jesus Is Stripped of His Clothes
6. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
7. Jesus Shows Cares for His Mother and John
8. Jesus Dies on the Cross
This is a comfortable number to follow in a liturgical service, allowing time for thought and personal focus in prayer. Often Protestant biblical Stations begin with Jesus dedicating himself in prayer Gethsemane, or with the Last Supper:
1. Jesus Prays Alone in Gethsemane
2. Jesus is Arrested
3. The Sanhedrin Tries Jesus
4. Pilate Tries Jesus
5. Pilate Condemns Jesus to Die
6. Jesus is Crowned with Thorns
7. Jesus Carries His Cross
8. Simon of Cyrene Helps to Carry the Cross
9. Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem
10. Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
11. The Two Criminals Speak with Jesus
12. Jesus Shows Care for his Mother and John
13. Jesus Dies on the Cross
14. Jesus is Laid in the Tomb
APPENDIX 2
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS OF THE THEOLOGY OF STATIONS
The Passion was not just a tragic past event; it has lasting relevance. We live in a popular and political culture which increasingly values the present over the past or future. Despite interest in history, many disregard the past as ‘being over’, relevant primarily to the particular time and place where events occurred. We commemorate and memorialise some events and people but rarely consider fully their implications to us now. Faith, like politics, history, sociology and psychology, encourages us to consider ‘why’ something happened and its current implications. The Passion and Death of Christ are of lasting relevance and importance. What God was doing in and through Jesus relates inseparably to our own life-journey because Jesus underwent the Passion for us. It is significant to our community and the whole world. Christ’s Great Commission [Matt.28:19-20] makes us responsible for communicating this relevance effectively to others.
Scripture regularly calls people of faith to ‘remember’. The Pentateuch’s festival regulations, biblical memorials or Psalm 105 are good examples. Memorialising is not just to ‘keep things in mind and not forget’. Significant events are an essential part of culture, story, life and identity, they have helped to shape people’s understanding of themselves, their value, characters and activities. They also sometimes point to what a people will become. We try to learn from history to make better future choices. In the history of Redemption Jews understood that God led their people through history. This covenant commitment was essential to their understanding of their value. Once they had been considered to be a people of no significance, they groped for truth and political existence [Isa 9:2]; God’s care helped them to recognise their significance and status [Ex.6:7]. Christ’s coming helped Christians realise that this was also true for them. As gentiles they had once been ‘far off’; now they were God’s people [1 Pet.2:10]. From darkness had been brought to the light of God's presence and grace [Jn.8:12]. Christ’s endurance on his journey to redeem humanity enabled him to accomplish this. The Way of the Cross can be a journey to help us remember our own position and value, as part of our personal, humble, act of commitment to God.
We may follow Stations as internal personal devotion, but this is also an important communal element to the memorial activity: remembering who we are together, recalling what we corporately owe to Christ and committing ourselves as a body. Communal aspects are important; too often spirituality is taught in ways that encourage individual or self-centred growth. We frequently nurture individualistic personal development more than communal growth. The Cross and Resurrection were intended to unify and reunite people, not encourage us to remain separate. The exercise of the Stations may also help us develop empathy towards others who are suffering or spiritually journeying alongside us. Pilgrimage has always been a corporate journey as well as an individual search for spiritual growth. Journeying with others helps us include them in this spiritual progress; we are meant to encourage and learn from each other.
Reflecting on the Cross reminds us that Jesus crucifixion happened at a particular, auspicious time and place: ‘once for all’… “just at the right time” [Rom.5:6]. But its achievement acts throughout time. It redeems us now. It also shows us many aspects of the character of God, expressed through Christ, and how Jesus worked and acts as an example for us. These are important facets to contemplate when we follow the Stations. We are not just following a narrative; we are encouraged to take time to consider what the Passion says about the powers that rule our life and how the events of the Passion might encourage us to be ‘more perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’ [Matt.5:48]. How might what Jesus achieved through his Passion act as an example for us in our attempt to improve the world? I attempt to list some ways at the end of this Appendix.
Though the Cross is a central theme of Christianity, the sad events of Holy Week are sometimes not as emphasised in some contemporary Christian spirituality as Easter and the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment of our lives. Many believers prefer imagery of the Church triumphant, worshipping with positive praise. This contrasts with much Mediaeval Christianity, which wallowed in penitence and grief as in, with its fear of death and judgement. Both emphases need to be kept in balance. The Cross is still of primary significance in the process that heals us and brings us future promise.
The Passion is also important for psychological balance and health; we live in a world where pain is a real and common experience. True faith must engage with and be able to cope with human realities. We are not meant to lose ourselves in idealism; we are part of a suffering world. Dealing with the issues and questions brought up by the Way of the Cross should help us develop a realistic faith and an apologetic that is able to cope with and speak into the needs and challenges of life and thinking. The Passion shows that winning new life is not an easy journey. If Christ suffered, we too are likely to face similar difficulties, in our commitment to improving the world by promoting Christ’s message and way. Most things of value are not gained easily. By showing the reality of Jesus’ pain and suffering in tangible, even semi-visceral ways we emphasise that redemption is not just a spiritual ideal, as some gnostic or heretical teachings of the past implied. Jesus’ suffering, and death were real and effective; he did not just ‘appear to die’
William Temple called Christians ‘an Easter People’ with ‘Alleluia’ as our triumphant song. But if we’re honest most of us fail to live up to this triumphal aspect of our nature most of the time. Life’s experiences are hard. Remaining true to our faith is a struggle between what St. Paul called ‘the Flesh and the Spirit’ [Rom.8]; sometimes we even endure persecution, as Christ prophesied that his followers would. Life is painful and often we don’t see light and hope through the darkness of experience. Following Jesus’ journey may help us reflect on how our experiences may be similar to his. Jesus’ Passion may reassure us that there can be true hope, not just wishful thinking, in the difficult journey of life. We may experience similar emotions, similar helplessness or hopelessness as Christ may have felt at times on his journey to his death. Yet he persevered and in remaining faithful, held onto God’s promises in trust. This may shine a little positive light of hope into our difficult situations. It may also help us recognise that our situation is not as bad as that experienced by some others in our world. It may aid us in developing perseverance, even courage or faith and trust in God through the unknown, or insecure situations. With God difficulties, passions, even ruined lives may become foundations for new beginnings or building a new type of life, with different attitudes and priorities. God often helps people grow through dark experiences like those of John of the Cross, who found hope and trust through his ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.
Some theologians today are rightly wary of potential excesses in some doctrines of substitutionary Atonement. Yet Jesus taught his followers that his death was inevitable. Peter was rebuked severely when he tried to deflect Jesus from the path to death: “Get behind me Satan!” [Mk.8:33]. We need to interweave into our positive theology an understanding that Christ’s death was necessary, not just a tragedy and travesty of human justice. Somewhere in God’s economy suffering can be transformed into triumph. It is not easy to explain; often attempts flounder and seem simplistic or naïve. Like much around Jesus’ death and Resurrection, how redemption works is shrouded in mysteries that probably only God understands. Representing it visually through the Stations could help us sense an understanding of the mysterious truths by intuition or osmosis rather than logical or theological explanation.
The Cross is far more profound than just a symbol or sign of Jesus’ suffering and death. It shows Christ’s faithfulness, his willingness to act as a servant and deny himself. It demonstrates how one who is committed to healing and supporting others will not abandon those he loves, even if they reject, betray or deny him. The Cross shows love in action: how powerful love and commitment can be. It declares how much God cares for humanity and creation and how faithful God is in pouring out grace and love, even to the extent of self-sacrifice. It shows how self-sacrifice can be a spark to renew and reform life. Contemplation may relate all these elements to our own ministries, mission, ways of life & priorities, helping us follow Christ’s example and be examples for others.
Some churches lay emphasis on doctrine at the expense of love and compassion. Their pronouncements may make God seem less loving and more legalistic than human beings. The practice of walking the Way of the Cross may help to humanise people’s understanding and counter many religious institutions’ doctrinal arrogance. The Church will never be able to bring Christ’s true salvation to the world unless it presents God truthfully and teaches holistically, following the example of selfless love and self-sacrifice displayed in Christ’s Passion. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of suffering considers how Christ’s experience and our understanding of a God who could work through such difficulties, can help us through the experiences of life. He wrote of God’s power of love being: “whelmed under the weight of the wicked, the weak and the dead.” His application of the Passion to our social and political situations could broaden and speak into our faith. .
We need to remember, and include somewhere in our message, that the Passion was not the whole story. Jesus’ tragic death was certainly not the end of the story; it was followed by the Resurrection and Pentecost, which hold out tremendous promises and implications for new life for us and for our world. If we are to remember and represent the Passion and Cross correctly, we should set the suffering in the context of Christ’s entire journey and achievement.
Our journey alongside Christ to his Cross also encourages us to realise our dependency on God. Recalling Jesus’ suffering and death on our behalf can help us recall our failings, confess them and recognise God’s forgiveness of us. He endured this for love and care for us. Surely he would not over-quickly condemn people over whom he has expended so much past trouble and pain.
Stations are not primarily about contemplating or identifying with suffering and pain. They encourage us to consider why this suffering was endured, what it achieved and how it applies to us. Stations of the Cross are primarily a context for prayer and reflection, not just beautiful liturgy, following a story or being inspired by paintings. Stations provide a liturgical or personal contemplative way to consider the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. It is hoped that they lead to truer worship and devotion to God, through recognising more fully the extent of his devotion to us. We need to let them help us encounter God by opening our hearts, minds and spirits to Christ’s story. This involves listening for God’s prompting as we follow the real, metaphorical and symbolic journey of the Passion. One aim is to draw closer to the way God worked and expressed himself through Jesus’ actions. We’ll never fully recognise what Christ endured or what were his thoughts through the journey of the Passion. We aim to touch a little of his care, to recognise that Jesus identified with us and to realise his love for us. This might help us identify with the needs of others, learn from and through his example and apply his message to bring some of his healing and love to the world around us and inside us.
Many Protestants rejected using Stations of the Cross for centuries, mostly because they disagreed theologically with the issue of indulgences or the use of images in churches. Catholic teaching on indulgences and the spirituality associated with Stations has changed in the modern world. So has modern Protestant understanding. Protestant teachers today are less concerned with fighting Catholic practices than thinking through those truths that may be retained within traditions. It is useful to consider how Catholic traditions like this might be assimilated or transformed to add to our spiritual growth, enrich our spiritual practices and draw us into greater unity with other traditions. One Catholic bishop wrote recently that “Christian unity is not an option.” Although we are not aiming for ‘uniformity’, many Christian churches are seeking ways to reconnect with or reclaim others’ traditions for our own use, if they offer valuable ways to worship ‘in spirit and in truth’ [Jn.4:23].
Stations of the Cross carry many positive implications. But following them encourages us to, for a while, hold Easter in the back of our mind and focus on what Jesus endured out of care for us and the world. Easter and the promise of Resurrection will gain greater meaning if we have come to understand in greater depth the enormity of what went into achieving redemption and renewal of life.
The question of whether Stations should include the Resurrection is important. Traditionally, when used in Holy Week, part of Tenebrae or Good Friday services, it is understandable that the Stations end with the Cross and Jesus’ entombment. A journey alongside Christ in his Passion entails a certain degree of darkness, self-searching, reflection, repentance and penitence as well our need to recognise God’s forgiveness of us. In the context of following a meaningful Holy Week, Easter Sunday morning is the appropriate time for celebrating the victory that the Cross achieved. But when Stations are permanently part of the church’s liturgical setting there also needs to be some way of emphasising that Jesus death was far from being the end of the journey. Stations should not bring gloom to a church building. Christ on the Cross is a starting point-for our spiritual lives; we grow from Jesus death to live in the presence of the risen and ascended Christ. So if no Resurrection Station is included in a permanent set of stations, there needs to be some emphatic sign of Resurrection in the liturgical space to balance the Stations. In my Stations for St. John’s, Bury St. Edmunds this is emphasised by a large Resurrection altarpiece as the last Station.
Traditionally Eucharist is not offered on Good Friday because ‘Eucharist’, as its name implies is primarily about ‘Thanksgiving’. Eucharist celebrates holistically God’s salvation and restoration by bringing together the events of Good Friday and Easter. Following the journey of the Passion might be a liturgical substitute for this, thanking God for the grace achieved through Jesus’ self-sacrifice. The Eucharist is our ‘sacrifice of worship’. Following the Way of the Cross could also be for us a meaningful way of “offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship' [Rom.12:1]. Richard Hooker wrote of our discernment of Christ in the Eucharist: “These mysteries do as nails fasten us to this very Cross, that by them we draw out such touching efficacy, force and virtue, even the blood of his gentle side… why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this: ‘O my God thou art true, O my soul thou art happy.’” This could be true of any worship that enables us to rightly discern the truth of God and his message for us within Christ’s activity.
THOUGHTS CONCERNING CATHOLIC PLENARY INDULGENCES'
Traditionally the Roman Catholic Church granted ‘plenary indulgences’ for certain spiritual devotions & activities, including following the Stations. Indulgences supposedly remove temporal punishment by forgiving sin. They are not part of my Protestant tradition and I personally find them hard to balance with the understandings of God’s forgiveness which have developed in my faith. My understandings are regularly developing and Catholic ideas are also in the process of change, development and transformation. Popular ideas, understandings and beliefs that punishment for sins could be relieved by human payment or actions are very different from the way Roman Catholic theologians regard the mediation of God’s forgiveness. Some explain people’s acts of penance as a practical outworking or expression of the journey we take in repentance, trusting in God’s transformation. As an Anglican priest I may proclaim God’s forgiveness to a penitent, but I do so trusting God’s grace, not my act of blessing. Catholic teaching takes the thinking rather further in regarding Confession as a Sacrament; so in a way walking the Stations as a penitential act is seeking a near-equivalent to sacramental forgiveness. Only God knows for certain when or whether forgiveness is truly gained or how Christ’s self-sacrifice applies forgiveness to people. Only God knows our inner selves, our thoughts and intentions, or whether repentance is true, deserved, given and received. Even sincere penitence is often inadequate: we all hold things back and we recognise that few, if any of us, deserve God’s freely-offered grace. Our psychologies and our motives are complex; we are not always aware of the root of our sins and continue to sin though we might long to be pure.
In the Catholic Church the Way of the Cross may be prayed as a form of penance, to make reparation for past sins and, from Mediaeval times, to receive a plenary indulgence. Roman Catholic theology applies significant conditions to those seeking plenary indulgences. It requires that “all attachment to sin, even venial, must be absent”. But knowing our weaknesses, self-deceptiveness and tendency to return to practised weak, sinful habits, we can never be sure that we are letting go of, or free from, our sin. The idea of walking Stations as a ‘journey’ alongside Christ, links to our spiritual journey to his achievement, through states of recognition of our sin, sorrow, seeking, asking for forgiveness & transformation, receiving and accepting forgiveness and moving towards transformation. Searching for forgiveness and holiness, like becoming a Christian, is not a one- off event: it is a process and a life-long journey. Those who believe in penitential acts see rites and plenary indulgences as elements of this process.
The Roman Catholic Church granted plenary indulgences for those who followed the Way of the Cross ‘piously, mediating on Christ’s passion and death’ in walking the Stations. The same indulgence could be achieved in practicing this devotion on a single day as was granted to someone who had made the long pilgrimage journey to Jerusalem and walked the Via Dolorosa. This indulgence was later further extended to any who, ‘for legitimate reasons, could not attend church’. They may be granted the same indulgence through sincerely meditating on Christ’s Passion at home for half an hour each day. Concerning such regulation of indulgences, the official Enchiridion 63 states:
Exercise of the Way of the Cross (Viae Crucis exercitium)
A plenary indulgence is granted to the faithful, who make the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross.
In the pious exercise of the Way of the Cross we recall anew the sufferings, which the divine Redeemer endured, while going from the praetorium of Pilate, where he was condemned to death, to the mount of Calvary, where he died on the cross for our salvation.
The gaining of the plenary indulgence is regulated by the following norms:
1. The pious exercise must be made before stations of the Way of the Cross legitimately erected.
2. For the erection of the Way of the Cross fourteen crosses are required, to which it is customary to add fourteen pictures or images, which represent the stations of Jerusalem.
3. According to the more common practice, the pious exercise consists of fourteen pious readings, to which some vocal prayers are added. However, nothing more is required than a pious meditation on the Passion and Death of the Lord, which need not be a particular consideration of the individual mysteries of the stations.
4. A movement from one station to the next is required.
But if the pious exercise is made publicly and if it is not possible for all taking part to go in an orderly way from station to station, it suffices if at least the one conducting the exercise goes from station to station, the others remaining in their place. Those who are “impeded” can gain the same indulgence, if they spend at least one half an hour in pious reading and meditation on the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Some Catholic Oriental rites do not use Stations of the Cross, but their Patriarchs determine other exercises to gain similar indulgences and help believers meditate on Christ’s Passion and Death. I have discussed this with priestly friends trained in Catholic theology and studied the ideas with sympathy. I have wanted to understand and not disparage a tradition of which I am not a part, and in which I have not been trained. Many of my most holy friends come from the Catholic tradition. I still do not fully comprehend how the regulations about indulgences developed, and find them difficult to justify biblically, theologically or logically. They are more easy to understand pastorally: people long to know that they are right with God, that they are safe. The Church wants to assure penitents of forgiveness, and to set them free through Christ. It is less pastorally sensitive to suggest that our declaration of forgiveness is ‘provisional’. Theologically, forgiveness depends totally on God, even though priestly ordination in the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions grants priests the right to ‘declare forgiveness of sins’. This is assurance of God’s forgiveness, not ours. But granting indulgences, even if it is emphasised these are just part of a process in the penitential life-journey, seems theologically uncomfortable. Our penitential actions cannot obtain God’s favour. God’s forgiveness is a result of his grace, made possible and opened to us freely through Jesus’ self-sacrifice. Any explanation of why we walk the Stations needs to emphasise that our faith and trust are in this mystery of God’s love; we are free from legalism of having to do things to win that love.
Indulgences seem closer to the idea of reciprocal covenant actions in the Hebrew Scriptures and Law. We can do nothing to win forgiveness; all the activity that brings forgiveness happened on God’s side of the Covenant relationship. This is depicted in the narrative of the Stations. Biblical Christian theology emphasises that the Cross, with the Salvation it brought, is God’s ultimate act of grace: “While we were still sinners Christ died for us; the just for the unjust”[Rom.5:8]. No human activities, even our most loving, devoted, holy works, deserve such a great reward as Christ’s Salvation. In this light the idea of believing that walking alongside Christ’s Passion in our imagination and prayer could win us a measure of God’s grace seems ironic. The message to us from devotionally walking the Stations is that Christ allowed himself to go through such suffering because only he could bring eternal forgiveness and redemption, and he was offering it freely.
Even obeying the Laws in the Pentateuch was, for the Jews, ultimately not intended primarily as teaching ‘do this to be accepted by God.’ The development of such legalism by Lawyers, Pharisees and Sadducees led to the problems challenged by Christ and explored by Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. Rather the emphasis of biblical laws seems to have been upon the fact that the Jews were God’s particular chosen people already. They were meant to obey God’s ways as part of ‘being God’s children’. Holiness was their covenant and ontological responsibility, an expression of their nature. The sacrificial system was given to them for restoring their covenant vows and cleansing them, not a way to curry God’s favour. Christians recognise that we too are God’s family; we are already redeemed by Christ’s love, expressed in his self-sacrifice. We follow devotional ways as a form of remembering, responding, learning, reaffirming our vows and worshipping. Christ’s death won freedom for all who he has redeemed. We do not need to follow any particular devotional practices to be assured of his cleansing and forgiveness. We follow Stations and other devotional practices out of acceptance of God’s gift, thanks, memorial, penitence, prayer, contemplation, worship and a dedication to follow more closely Christ’s example and teaching.
WAYS IN WHICH THE STATIONS SHOW CHRIST AS OUR EXAMPLE
Unlike Christ we cannot atone for others’ lives but in many ways Christ’s example, shown through his Passion, sets models for our own lives and attiudes. Some are:
· Thinking of and acting for the good of others before his own.
· Seeing a bigger picture than his own personal circumstances.
· Looking through God’s viewpoint at what will being good to the whole world, not living by a limited, individualistic perspective.
· Considering future, eternal good before personal, temporary gain and comfort.
· Being willing to give his life to rescue others.
· Setting an example of true servanthood and giving memorable models of service that others can follow.
· Reliance on God’s will. Maintaining a prayerful, contemplative, dependent life, even through times of suffering, to keep aligned with God’s will & truth.
· Remaining cool, reflective, true and forgiving while under extreme pressure, false accusation, hostility, violence and agony.
· Remaining true, even if others are false, mocking or violent,.
· Remaining aware, even expectant of the duplicity in human hearts and wills, yet still loving others, wanting the best for them and working towards righteous equity and restoration of what is good in people.
· Forgiving through recognising people’s underlying motives and weaknesses.
· Considering the support of those we love, not leaving them abandoned.
· Working to restore people who have failed or who feel a sense of failure.
· Strength, endurance and determination; not giving up in the struggle of life.
· Showing God’s understanding of our human weaknesses and predicaments through having personally endured much that humanity has to cope with.
· Letting others help him; not facing ordeal alone, knowing that people can grow and learn through their support of others.
· A sense of assurance that death and suffering are not the end to life; there is a greater good beyond.
· The need for self-restraint if we are to bring about righteous justice, while damaging as few as possible and strengthening & raising as many as possible.
· If we have any personal power, using it for the good of others. Seeing power as responsibility towards others, not expecting privileges. Being prepared to withhold or constrain personal power if others will be helped personally.
· Acting in considered, rather than impulsive ways.
· Being motivated by the love of others.
· Carrying others’ weights as well as our own.
· Being prepared to warn others of the dangers they are in, not keeping silent. Also showing them ways of escape and release and helping them forward.
· Confidence that death is not the end of life; that God’s power can bring healing & restoration and that he wants us, through our activities & example, to be part of bringing this hope to others. Christ brought about Salvation that is broader and more encompassing than we yet understand. We are recipients of this grace but it is not just for our benefit. As followers, friends & family of this man who suffered for us, we are his ambassadors, trusted to share Christ’s gifts & benefits with our contemporary world & generations to come.
APPENDIX 3
SOME DEVOTIONAL WRITINGS ON THE CROSS THAT MIGHT ENRICH OUR CONTEMPLATION OF THE CONTENT OF STATIONS
There has been a long tradition of writing meditations on the Passion. Because of the disparity of surviving early evidence and my limited experience of varying traditions, it is hard for me to record systematically how devotional meditation on the Cross developed, but here I mention a few sources that I have found most meaningful, spiritually inspiring or challenging.
Because the Cross has always been so central to Christian faith and to believers’ understanding of God & Salvation, many have written meditations on the Passion in various ways, designed to encourage growth, faith and devotion, and to try to explain the Cross doctrinally. Meanings derived from the Cross have sometimes varied, according to culture, the age in which writers lived, their theological preoccupations or the spiritual experience of writers and readers. Latin hymns like Fortunatus’ Vexilla Regis Prodeunt [c600] and Pange Lingua celebrated Jesus’ achievement and Cross in imagery that was relevant to the Roman imperial and military culture. The Anglo Saxon Dream of the Rood [c.C8th] contrasts the suffering and the triumph of Christian imagery that would have spoken to an age of warrior sagas. In the poem Christ climbs the Cross as a young warrior and suffers agonies voluntarily as a hero. The verses describe the Passion in a personal and imaginative way, perhaps the most creative approach to the Passion ever devised: In the context of a visionary dream the author makes the Cross’s wood animate and sentient; he imagines the experience of the wood of the Cross as it recalls witnessing Christ’s suffering. Its theology is rooted in the early tradition or ancient superstition that the ‘True Cross’ on which Christ died, grew from a seed of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge eaten by Adam. The poem describes the Cross as a bejewelled relic. It was believed that venerating relics of the wood of the True Cross put the believer within the heart of the Passion. Journeying alongside Christ, following Stations scene by scene, became regarded as placing yourself as closely as possible to the heart of the one who was pouring his life out for you. The poem ends in describing the poet in this devotional state.
From the C12th an intense emotional interaction with Christ developed in Western Spirituality, particularly concentrating on his agony, wounds and dying love. This was reflected in the development of visual art as well as writing. Franciscan and Dominican spirituality encouraged depth of emotional engagement with the Cross. Francis [1181-1226] and Dominic [1173-1221] encouraged prayerful, emotional embrace of the Cross. Dominic particularly developed various physical stances for prayer in the presence of the crucifix to help devotees focus internally on the meaning and relevance of Christ’s Cross. These were written up by his followers as the Nine Modes of Prayer. Dominican theologians wrote texts to deepen contemplation of the Cross, like Alvaro of Cordoba’s encouragement of devotion to the Way of the Cross [died c.1430].
Richard Rolle [c.1300-49] was not a scholarly theologian but rooted his mysticism in the imagination and human senses and experience. In his affective spirituality he imagined the wounds of Christ vividly, viscerally and poetically, as described in his Meditations on the Passion. He found messages in Christ’s wounds, which he applied to himself personally and to the spiritual and physical needs and troubles of his contemporary world.
The C14th noblewoman Birgitta of Sweden only managed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her 70s but had contemplated Christ’s Passion for much of her earlier life. She wrote of ‘Walking the Walk’ (i.e. following meditatively the Stations of the Cross). Her daily meditation on the Bible was the main source for her Revelations. Like Rolle Brigitta’s meditations have tangible, visceral realism:
“At the executioner’s command, [Christ] undressed himself and freely embraced the pillar. He was bound with rope then scourged with barbed whips. The barbs caught in his skin and were then pulled away, not just tearing but ploughing into him, ripping his whole body. At the first blow, it was as though my heart was pierced and I had lost the use of my senses.” Birgitta’s prayers encourage us to reflect on Christ’s suffering: “Infinite glory to you, my Lord Jesus Christ! For us, you humbly endured the Cross. Your holy hands and feet were stretched out with rope. Your hands and feet were secured cruelly with iron nails to the wood of the Cross. You were abused as “Traitor!” You were ridiculed in many ways. . . .Eternal praise to you, Lord, for every hour you endured such terrible bitterness and agony on the Cross for us sinners!” [‘A Vision of the Crucifixion’ Ch.7].
Thomas à Kempis [1379/80-1471] encouraged imitation of Jesus by meditation on Christ’s life, particularly his Passion and Death: “The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom… the royal road of the Holy Cross.” This he believed should bring hope to our own lives and experience and, through us, help to influence the world. We should immerse ourselves in Christ’s experience as though we too are present, experiencing the reality. This trust in the Spirit-inspired imagination is also part of the experience of walking the Stations.
In the 15th Century, open-air processions of the Cross became popular through Europe and devotional following of the Way of the Cross seems to have increased in its emotional expression. Christ’s Passion was a central focus for many English Mystics. Julian of Norwich [1342-1420] asked that she might share Christ’s sufferings (though not his death). In her ‘Showings’ she contemplated Christ’s wounded body. Her emotive approach to Jesus’ Passion has been attributed partly to the influence of Europe-wide experiences - the Black Death, social unrest and spiritual troubles of her time. These also probably influenced the development of painful imagery in Northern European religious art. Devotees contemplated the iconography of Pietas, The Man of Sorrows or carved Northern European crucifixes which emphasised the torturous nature of the Cross (like the ‘Plague Cross’ iconography). The emphasis on identification with sorrow and the pains of human experience culminated in works like Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, designed to suggest God’s compassion and identification with those who suffer and those who seek to bring God’s healing.
Margery Kempe in the 15th Century was inspired by Brigitta of Sweden’s writings. She also knew Julian of Norwich and had been guided by her. Margery made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land during which she recounts following the Way of the Cross, and being moved to paroxysms of grief and lamentation, particularly at the site of Calvary (ch.28). Her subsequent meditations on Christ’s wounds became so vivid that she recognised them in life’s experiences:
“Sometimes if she saw a crucifix or saw a man, or it might be an animal, wounded or if a man beat a child in front of her or struck a horse or other animal with a whip, if she saw or heard this it seemed to her that she saw our Lord beaten or wounded as were the men or animals whom she could see.”
This may seem to take contemplation of Christ’s Passion a little too far, (Margery’s own contemporaries were irritated by and suspicious of her weeping habits,) but lament is a useful contrast to later dry commentary on doctrines of Atonement by some Reformers, scholars and iconoclasts. Many today might benefit from a deeper sense of remorse for sin and failure as long as this is enabled to turn to gratitude and worship rather than remaining maudlin. In chapters 79-81 of her journal Margery describes a contemplative vision of the Passion in which she appears to have regarded herself as a companion or maidservant to Mary, witnessing the Passion events reaching into her soul.
Roger Hilton considered devotion to the Passion ‘the door to contemplation’. To attempt to go in by any other way, he regarded as ‘robbery’. Christ was most perfectly to be understood through his sufferings, which could teach Christians compassion and humility. The Cloud of Unknowing rightly points out that at some stage of mystical prayer and devotion we need to reach beyond the scenes of the Passion. Stations or visually contemplating the Cross can become a distraction, which needs to be put into the background, given up as one empties the soul for contemplation. Following the Way of the Cross may be a primary source for meditation but it is only part of our journey to be passed through in responding more fully in relationship with God. Miguel de Molinos [1640-97] encouraged the nuns for whom he was responsible to divest their spirituality of religious images in order to concentrate contemplatively on the inner meaning behind the Passion and faith, an almost ‘protestant’ teaching in Catholic mysticism, at a time when Counter Reformation teaching was promoting the increased use of images as sources for prayer and devotion.
The printed books Bible of the Poor (Biblia Pauperum) c1460 and Mirror of Salvation (Speculum Humanae Salvationis) published c1470 use woodcuts and printed commentaries as a source of contemplation of Christ’s life. They compare and pair Old Testament and legendary events with Gospel and apocryphal scenes, to show how Christ’s life and activities were part of God’s eternal plan. It is interesting that 14 chapters, (the number of Stations of the Cross) of the 29 chapters in the Mirror of Salvation depict subjects related to the Passion. This number may, or may not be coincidental. Of 116 woodcut images 56 relate to the Passion cycle between chapters 15 to 28.
Spiritual guides from early times, but particularly during the period when Christian mysticism rose, in the late mediaeval age and Counter-Reformation, taught ‘The Unitive Way’ as s a third stage in our spiritual journey. They emphasise that we need to grow in love through reading, studying and internalising the Gospel story, particularly those parts and symbols that most deeply expressed the extent of God’s love. Internally recognising and feeling personally the significance of Christ’s Passion and Death was essential to this. It is represented visually in Murillo and Ribera’s paintings of monks contemplating and being embraced by Christ on the Cross or Fra Angelico’s earlier San Marco frescoes illustrating several of Dominic’s Nine Modes of Prayer.
The C16th Dutch priest-geographer Christian van Adrichem researched painstakingly to write meditations on the Passion, which circulated widely in translation throughout Europe. They influenced the growth of devotion to the Way of the Cross by presenting the possible physical realities of Christ’s Passion and Death to an increasingly educated merchant-class. His was a religious response to the quest for learning and fascination with the world, exemplified in a growing fashion for printed atlases or encyclopaedic histories like Abraham Ortelius’ ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ [1570]. Adrichem never managed a personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land but he studied accounts of pilgrims, collected as sources for his contemplation and writings. He imagined and reconstructed Christ’s journey to Calvary in meticulous detail:
“The Way of the Cross which Christ followed to Mount Calvary with the most wretched suffering and bloody footsteps, after he had been condemned to be crucified: Beginning at Pilate’s palace, he walked 26 paces, or 65 feet, to the place where the Cross was placed upon his shoulders. Thence, while the whole city looked on, bearing the Cross on his pained shoulders he turned in a north-west direction and walked towards the place where, according to tradition, he stumbled for the first time under the weight of the Cross; this is a distance of 80 paces, 200 feet. Thence he proceeded for 63 paces—153 feet—to the spot where he encountered Mary his mother and the disciple John. From that place he continued 71 paces and 1½ feet— 179 feet—to the fork in the road where Simon of Cyrene was forced to walk behind Jesus, carrying his Cross for him…. Thence the 18 paces or 45 feet to the place where the executioners removed his clothing; there he drank wine mixed with myrrh. After that were 12 paces or 30 feet to the place where he was nailed to the Cross. Finally from that point were 14 paces or 35 feet to the place where, hanging upon the Cross, he was set in a hollow in the rocky ground of Calvary. Thus from the palace of Pilate to the place where the Cross was raised it was 1321 paces or, according to the other calculation, 3303 feet.” [Christian Adrichem Urbis Hierosolymae (City of Jerusalem] Theatrum Terræ Sanctæ et Biblicarum Historiarum (Cologne, Officina Birckmannica; Arnold Mylius, 1584 manuscript].
In his Epilogue Adrichem encouraged his readers to follow this Way of the Cross without leaving home: ‘in templo seu cubiculo mentis’ (‘within the temple or chamber of the spirit’]. The aim of the authentic pilgrim was not a touristic visit to Jerusalem but to find the reality of Christ in thought and prayer - an interior, spiritual, ‘Jerusalem’ experience. Augustine had described our exploration of faith as through our “more inward than [our] most inward part.” [Confessions, 3.vi.11]. Adrichem tried to make the pilgrimage alongside Christ realistic in our imagination so that it becomes an inner memory, as though we had physically been there. This he believed would encourage truth in our relationship with God and in our worship. The ecstatic realism of devotional images encouraged by the Council of Trent, especially Counter-Reformation art in Spain, had similar intent.
By contrast to such physical realism, mystics from the Desert Fathers and Meister Eckhart to Christians in the mystic tradition today, suggest that contemplating Christ’s suffering might bring us into a state of ‘detachment’. The ‘via negativa’ or ‘way of purgation’ is a process of stripping from one’s spiritual influences anything that might distract the soul. Gregory of Nyssa wrote of ecstasy as non-attachment: “the true vision of God – never to be satisfied in the desire to see him.” [Life of Moses 239]. In the case of the Cross this might mean a grateful acceptance of all that the Passion achieved, without needing to try to understand the detail of what was achieved. This could be a very different relationship with Salvation to what might be termed an ‘ecstasy of attachment’ experienced by St. Francis or St. Dominic, holding onto the benefits which Christ brought through the Cross, while praying and meditating in the presence of the Crucifix.
Romantically mystics also sometimes identified the Way of the Cross with the suffering lover of the Song of Songs. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Bernard of Clairvaux explored this in their teachings. This metaphorical approach to contemplating the Passion culminates in John of the Cross’s devotional poem on the Atonement, ‘The Young Shepherd’. In its imagery the abandoned Shepherd gave his life, hanging in a tree, for love of the unfaithful beloved.
The stipulations on art of the Council of Trent encouraged systematic meditation on the Passion, following the expressions of spirituality encouraged by the Franciscans or Dominicans. Ignatius of Loyola visited the Holy Land in 1523 intending to spend the rest of his life there. He was refused permission to remain and instead he found ways to remain close to Christ’s experience through his Spiritual Exercises. The Third Week of the Exercises encourages retreatants to appreciate the saving work in the Passion through imaginatively sharing Jesus’ experiences of suffering and death.
There is a danger in all attempts to reach into the experience of Christ. Ultimately we can never know or feel the truth of what he went through; his experience is a ‘mystery’. When we apply our spiritual imagination we cannot easily discern whether something is divinely guided inspiration or our personal invention. We can only make ourselves open to God, protect our imaginative thoughts by being studied and informed in our faith, and test the spirit of our thoughts by our knowledge of scripture, reason, experience, intuition, tradition and trust.
Many of the late C16th/early C17th Caroline Divines (Andrews, Montague, Cosin, Fuller, Taylor, Farrer, Laud and George Herbert) combined rationalism with personal spiritual emotion as they developed various private devotional practices of meditation on the Passion. Their personal contemplation is reflected in many of their published writings, which became essential parts of their ministry. John Donne [1571/2-1631], George Herbert [1593-1633], Isaac Watts (1674-1748], and Charles Wesley (1707-88] used poetry and hymn-writing both for personal contemplation and to encourage prayerful meditation and worship among their congregations. Herbert’s poem ‘The Sacrifice’ linked mediaeval Passion imagery with the Reproaches from the Good Friday Mass of the Pre-Sanctified. Donne wrote in one of his last sermons, ‘Death’s Duel’, of our “blessed dependency - to hand upon him who hung upon the Cross.” Henry Vaughan [1621-95] often drew attention to the scriptural source behind his poetic meditations, as in ‘The Mount of Olives – or Solitary Devotions’ [1652] or ‘Silex Scintillans’ [1650-55].
Moravian spirituality (which influenced figures like Wesley) similarly combined rationalism with rich emotion. They celebrated the tenderness of Christ as our Redeemer, particularly through contemplating his wounds. They ‘found refuge’ in the suffering Christ; seeing, through his wounds, an expression of his sacred humanity. They aimed to accept the benefit of Christ’s wounds and reflect them in their own lives. Christ’s compassion and human realism comforted them through years of persecution, suffering and exile in various cultures. This included the experience of the Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemőller, working under Nazi oppression. Moravian preaching on the Cross was less on judgement or narrow doctrinal arguments about Atonement than on recognising Christ as a bleeding Saviour identifying with us through compassion. As Zinzendorf wrote:
“Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are and glorious dress.”
As printing and literacy widened, the printed circulation of writings on the Cross expanded. The 18th Century Italian bishop Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787), wrote a brief commentary and meditations on the stations that remained popular in the 19th and 20th Centuries and set a model for many later Stations liturgies. Ligouri’s Stations are still in use today, particularly in America. His introductory prayer before the Stations encourages us to approach the exercise intimately and feel a renewal of Christ’s presence with us, in heart and mind:
“My Lord, Jesus Christ, you have made this journey to die for me with unspeakable love; and I have so many times ungratefully abandoned you. But now I love you with all my heart; and, because I love you, I am sincerely sorry for ever having offended you. Pardon me, my God, and permit me to accompany you on this journey. You go to die for love of me; I want, my beloved Redeemer, to die for love of you. My Jesus, I will live and die always united to you.”
Richard Meux Benson [1824-1915] encouraged spiritual contemplation in the Anglican tradition, co-founding the first Anglican male religious community ‘The Society of St. John the Evangelist’. His commentary ‘The Final Passover’ explored the relevance of the Passion and Resurrection. Space and my knowledge are insufficient to list all the modern writers of inspiring meditation on the Stations of the Cross, from various traditions. There is a plethora of literature and illustrations of varying qualities.
As scholarship broadened in the late 19th & 20th Centuries, research into the history and Jewish/Roman culture behind the Cross and Passion has continued to advance enormously. Adrichem‘s C16th attempt to open the real events the Passion to educated believers is seen again in the ‘Search for the Historical Jesus’ which began with the Enlightenment, was developed by C19th scholars like Albert Schweitzer, and continues today. The aims are largely to answer uncomfortable questions that arise from the biblical text and rational faith, to inform belief by expanding our knowledge of the context of Christ’s life and Passion and to try to understand mysteries as fully as possible. The benefits can make our worship more truthful and our apologetics & witness more convincing.
A search for realism was also a feature of visual artists who sought to represent biblical scenes more authentically. In the late C19th painting Holman Hunt, James Tissot, Carl Bloch and Henry Ossawa Tanner visited the Holy Land as a source for authentic images. With modern changing preoccupations in art, authenticity of setting or costume have become more the province of Bible illustrators than fine artists.
The literary equivalent of this research can be seen in the writings of Alfred Edersheim (1825-1899), William Temple (1881-1944), and more recently the thorough exploration of Christ’s Passion by Raymond Brown (1928-1998). Their scholarly work aimed to make the historical and cultural details of the Passion intellectually understandable and spiritually vivid, if not tangible, by carefully exploring and commentating on the context and textual detail of the biblical and non-biblical accounts. Temple’s ‘The Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ’ had a particularly devotional emphasis. Scholars and ministers of various theological backgrounds have plumbed the doctrinal and theological meaning of the Cross, as John Stott did from an Evangelical perspective. Many, writers from all perspectives of Christianity, particularly Roman Catholic, have written devotional study books or meditations to accompany Stations of the Cross or to contemplate Christ’s Passion & wounds, either liturgically, as Lenten exercises or for general personal devotion.
Yet ultimately the facts, historicity, apologetic arguments or doctrinal understandings about ‘Salvation’ and ‘Redemption’ are not what convince and convict us. Scholarship adds tremendous evidence, details of what were the possible realities of the Passion, meaningful background context, and may lead us to particular theological or doctrinal beliefs. Devotional literature may encourage us to approach the Passion from various perspectives. But the main spiritual content and achievement of Christ’s Passion reach deeper than all literature. The Passion and the Cross are for all; they need to be communicated as effectively as possible and allowed to reach into our inner selves, letting God’s Spirit awaken our responses. This can become as true an experience for those who know little detail of their faith as those who think they know more.
We may never be sure of many details of what happened through the Cross. Yet I believe that the power and achievement of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection are still alive and active. St Paul’s theology encourages us to believe that the Cross’s power influences the world, the cosmos and all spiritual dimensions through Christ’s Spirit. Contemplating the Passion can awaken our imagination, intuition, insight into scripture and spiritual understandings. It can help us sense important aspects of what Christ achieved and our reflections can help us apply his example to our lives and ministries. It is my hope and prayer that contemplating the Passion and journeying in imagination and spirit alongside Christ will leads us to greater appreciation, thankfulness and truth in our faith, Christian actions and worship.