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Question 22: What is the origin and meaning of the Stations of the Cross?
Answer: The Stations of the Cross are a series of pictures or tableau, placed on the walls of churches, or in the open air as in the Colosseum at Rome, representing scenes in the Passion of our Lord. They may be said privately or publicly by Catholics, who go0 from one to another of the fourteen stations, singing hymns and reciting prayers, while they meditate on the Savior's sufferings and death.
Pilgrimages to the Holy Land have been popular since the time of Constantine. St. Jerome mentions the crowds of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem in his day. To satisfy the devotion of Catholics, who could only make this pilgrimage in spirit, St. Petronius, in the fifth century, erected in St. Stephen's monastery in Bologna a number of chapels, modeled on the chief shrines of Jerusalem. Blessed Alvarez in the fifteenth century, on his return from the Holy Land, built a number of chapels in the Dominican friary of Cordova, on the walls of which were painted the chief scenes of the Passion.
The erection of Stations in the churches as we have them today did not become widespread until the close of the seventeenth century, when Pope Innocent XI granted special indulgences to the faithful, who would follow Christ in the Way of the Cross.
