Stations of the Cross & Confessions

Tradition holds that after Christ’s death and resurrection, the Blessed Mother retraced Jesus’ last day every day. Over the centuries following Christ’s Resurrection, this practice transformed into what we know as the Stations of the Cross today. To put it simply, the Good News continued to spread, and so did the popularity of following in the footsteps of Christ, either in the Holy Land or with the stations elsewhere.

The object of the Stations is to help the faithful to make in spirit, as it were, a pilgrimage to the chief scenes of Christ's sufferings and death, and this has become one of the most popular of Catholic devotions. It is carried out by passing from Station to Station, with certain prayers at each and devout meditation on the various incidents in turn. It is very usual, when the devotion is performed publicly, to sing a stanza of the "Stabat Mater" while passing from one Station to the next.