The Stations of the Cross, also known as the Way of the Cross, is a popular devotion used to meditate on different scenes from the Passion and death of Christ. Its function is to dramatize the passion and so to make it real to us on an emotive as well as an intellectual level.

The fourteen stations, or "halting places" where one stops to meditate on a different scene from the Passion of Christ, are represented by pictures, statues, or bas reliefs, each of which is to include a small cross.

The earliest precedents for the Stations of the Cross to back to the 400s, but the first true forms of the Stations developed in the 1400s. These were modeled after the via dolorosa in Jerusalem, which had been marked out since the early centuries and used as a devotional site for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem.

Not all details in the Stations of the Cross are recorded in Scripture, as with any dramatic presentation of a Bible scene. If you watch a movie about the birth or death or Christ or about the events of the Exodus or any other Bible story, elements will appear in it which are not documented in the Bible but which are added because they make the account more vivid.

For example, the Bible does not mention Jesus stumbling as he carried the cross, but he most certainly did since, after starting to carry it himself (John 19:17), the Romans found it necessary to press into service Simon of Cyrene to carry it (e.g., Matthew 27:32). This inference is given dramatic form in the Stations of the Cross, and, in a dramatic triple (triples are regularly used literary form in both drama and comedy), Jesus is pictured as falling three times as he journeys toward his death. This brings out in dramatic form the extreme physical suffering Jesus endured even before he was nailed to the cross.

Aside from this, the only other element not directly stated or implied in Scripture is the wiping of Jesus' face by Veronica, which is a tradition that apparently developed in the Middle Ages.

For centuries, the stations of the cross have helped Christian people think about the mystery of the suffering and death of Jesus in an intimate way. Sometimes communities and individuals have taken to the streets, pausing at hospitals, gaols, hostels, courthouses, war memorials, cemeteries and refuges to ponder the ways in which Jesus continues to suffer in the midst of us.

This Lent, we have taken that idea a step further. You can sit at your keyboard and visit fourteen web sites. At each site, you may care to pause for a moment to consider the human face of suffering and wonder again at the improbable way God has chosen to save us: by sharing that suffering. Of course, the sites we have listed are just suggestions. Often they will lead you on to other places.