The
stations of the cross is an ancient devotion in which we meditate
on the
suffering of Jesus leading up to his death and burial. It consists
of 14
pictures or crosses arrayed around the walls of a church - prayers
and
meditations are made at each station. The development of the stations
of
the cross comes from the practice of people making pilgrimages to
the Holy
Land to pray at the important sites of Jesus' passion and death
- gradually
copies of these shrines were built in other countries, and in time
these
further developed into pictorial representations of the sites and
events -
the current order of 14 stations was set in 1731. With this is mind
the
stations of the cross are a kind of virtual pilrimage to the via
dolarossa
in Jerusalem in which a pilgrim can walk in the footsteps of Christ
during
his final hours.
The Stations of the Cross in St Theodore's
Church.
The Stations
were installed in 2001, given in memory of Mrs Marjorie Evans
although they themselves probably date back to the late Victorian
Era. They
were blessed by Bishop David Thomas,Provincial Assistant Bishop,
on the The Feast of St Theodore in the Centenary Year of the formation
of the Parish - 19 September 2001.
The stations are hung in the traditional manner in the North isle
hang stations
1 to 6 moving away from the high altar, stations 7 and 8 are on
the back
wall of the church, either side of the entance to the tower and
the
remaining 6 stations make their way back towards the front of the
church in
the south isle. In this way a pilgrim walks west before turning
south for a
short while and then continuing east towards calvary - an orientation
which
is said to match the actual way of the cross in Jerusalem.
What
follows on the following pages is a meditation on the Stations of
the
Cross using photographs of the Stations in St Theodore's Church
with text
based on the Writings of St Alphonsus Liguori.
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