Foreword

THE Passion constitutes the ‘“‘ Holy of Holies’’ among the mysteries of Jesus. It is the crowning-point of His public life, the summit of His mission here below, the work towards which all the others converge, or from which they derive their value.

Each year during Holy Week, the Church commemorates in detail the various phases of the Passion; each day, in the Sacrifice of the Mass, she renews the remembrance and the reality of it in order to apply its fruits to us.

To this central action of the liturgy is attached a practice of piety which, without

• With a few modifications, these pages are taken from the work Christ in His Mysteries. For typographical reasons, the footnotes giving the references to the texts of Holy Scripture have been omitted.

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IO THE WAY OF THE CROSS belonging to the public official worship organised by the Bride of Christ, has become, on account of the abundance of graces whereof it is the source, very dear to faithful souls. This is the devotion to the Passion of Jesus under the well-known form of the “‘ Way of the Cross.”’

The immediate preparation which the Saviour made before His oblation as High Priest upon Calvary was to bear His Cross from the Pretorium to Golgotha, overwhelmed by sufferings, despised and insulted.

The Blessed Virgin Mary and the first Christians evidently more than once retraced this path, shedding tears of compassion at the places sanctified by the sufferings of the Man-God.

We know with what glowing fervour the faithful of the West undertook, in the Middle Ages, the long and painful pilgrimage to the Holy Places, in order to venerate the Saviour’s blood-stained footsteps ; their piety was nourished at a fruitful source of priceless graces. Returned to their own countries, _ they had it at heart to preserve their re-

THE WAY OF THE CROSS nia @ membrances of the days passed in prayer at Jerusalem. From this it befell that, especially from the fifteenth century, the sanctuaries ‘and “‘stations”’ of the Holy City were reproduced almost everywhere. The piety of the faithful thus found a means of satisfying itself by a spiritual pilgrimage renewed at will. Later on, at a comparatively recent period, the Church enriched this practice with the same indulgences gained by those who made the “ stations ”’ at Jerusalem.

In order to gather the precious fruits of this practice as well as to gain the numerous indulgences with which the Church has enriched it, it suffices to visit the fourteen stations without notable interruption, to stay a while at each of them, and there to meditate upon the Saviour’s Passion. No formula of prayer is prescribed, no form of meditation is imposed, not even that of the subject suggested by the “station.” Full liberty is left to the attraction of each one and to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.