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By Sister Kelly Williams
Lent is visceral.
As I think of the Stations of the Cross, I am brought to my childhood parish, St. Frances Cabrini in Savannah, Georgia. I am hoping I get to hold the incense because I’m nervous the candle will catch my hair on fire. Thankfully, one of the women at my parish is one of our best servers. She takes the candle, thrilled to hold this light which she couldn’t as a child in her parish. We process around our church, freshly fortified by a meal of fish and soup in the hall across the way. From my privileged role as server, I get a closer look at the artwork on our Stations. Let us walk the Stations of the Cross together.
The bell rings.
The First Station: Jesus is condemned to death.
Let us look at the image of this First Station. The pause, always so powerful. That space of looking deeply, as we hear only breaths in the room with us.
Often the artists depict Jesus standing alone, hands bound. Ultimate surrender.
Sometimes we see soldiers holding his arms. Sometimes we see Pilate. But the position of arrest is there.
The journey has only begun.
All too often we see similar images on the news. Do we keep our eyes open to these images? Do we turn away? If we were the disciples, would we turn away and deny Christ? Do we deny Christ today? Let us sit with our response.
We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.
This phrase calls us out of our silence and invites us to praise. How can we feel like praising? Weren’t we just witnessing this awful condemnation? How are we to move to praise at this time?
Perhaps God is inviting us into a mystery and asking us to feel and breathe in many different feelings. Are we being asked to enter into that which we don’t understand?
Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.
So, our response is called forward. That, through this suffering, redemption must be the other half. The suffering happens and is awful, but it is not the end of the story. The redemption does not happen without the suffering that comes before.
At the cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful Mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last.
We sing and move to the next station, holding the pain in our hearts, our awareness deeper, we move together in song.
I think a normal response to Lent is to shy away from this season because we want to jump straight to hope and resurrection. We have too much pain in our world; why should we willingly and annually enter into this painful remembrance? And yet, in this walking with Jesus in his pain, we are reminded that Jesus always walks with us in ours.