Sincere apologies for the long delay in posting on this blogsite 'whitesmokeahoy', I hope to post more frequently in the future. You may well say that you didn't really notice, in which case I definitely must do better! I have managed to keep my other blogsite 'umblepie' ticking along, just, but time is at a premium as it always is of course, particularly as the years go and the writer gets older!
Over the years I have posted a number of poems from different sources and by different writers, one of whom Caryll Houselander is a particular favourite of mine. As well as poetry, Houselander, a devout Roman Catholic, wrote several books for children, and many books on spiritual matters, one of which is the subject of this post, and one I think is particularly appropriate for Passiontide, with Easter Sunday only one week away. The book is entitled 'The Stations of the Cross', and deals with the circumstances of Christ's final agonising journey on foot, forced to carry his Cross to Mount Calvary, where he was nailed to the Cross by his hands and his feet, hanged between two criminals, and left to die.
In all, if not most Catholic churches in the UK (possibly the world), will be displayed around the inner walls fourteen representations eg. paintings, prints, wall-carvings, wood carvings, of Christ's tortuous final hours prior to his crucifixion and death on the Cross. In this particular post, Caryll Houselander introduces on a general basis the long-standing liturgical practice of procession and prayer before the fourteen Stations by church congregations, most popular in Passiontide just prior to Easter. I hope to reproduce some of her articles on these Stations, during Holy Week, alternating them between this blog and my other blog 'umblepie'. Please watch this space!
‘The Stations
of the Cross’ - Caryll Houselander
‘ Via Crucis’
Three
o’clock on a grey afternoon. Outside, a
steady drizzle of rain; inside the church, an odd motley of people.
A smartly dressed woman, side by
side with one who is shabby and threadbare.
A boy and a girl who appear to be in love. A very old man, so bowed that he is
permanently in an attitude of adoration.
A stalwart young soldier whose polished buttons glitter like gems in the
candlelight. A couple of students,
shabbily but elegantly dressed in corduroys and bright scarves, rubbing
shoulders with a gaunt, round-shouldered man who looks like a tramp. A sprinkle
of small children; and behind them all, as if he felt himself to be the modern
publican, though there is no reason why he should, a thick-set,
square-shouldered businessman. And, a
few seconds before the priest, in come a couple of rather flustered little
nuns, like birds shaking the rain off their black feathers.
What a diversity of places these
people must have come from: luxury flats,
tenements, small boarding-houses, institutions, barracks, studios, colleges,
dosshouses, schools, offices, convents.
What sharp contrasts there must be between their different lives and
circumstances!
But they seem to be strangely at one
here, gathered round a crude coloured picture on the wall of the Church, “The
First Station of the Cross”; and it seems to come naturally for them to join
together in the same prayer:
“We adore thee, O Christ, and we
bless thee, because by thy holy Cross thou hast redeemed the world.”
The tender rhythmic prayer, that has
been on the lips of men all through the ages, is repeated fourteen times as
they move slowly around the church, following the priest from Station to
Station, until they reach the last of all, “Jesus Laid in the Tomb”.
An onlooker -- one, that is, who was
uninitiated – would be puzzled.
In between the repeated ejaculations,
he would hear the priest reading meditations; at least he would hear the drone
in his voice, but perhaps not what he said, as he would probably read without
expression or punctuation. Even if he
did hear the words, they would hardly be likely to enlighten him, for the
meditations would, very likely, be couched in the most extravagant terms of
sentimental piety and seem to have no relationship to the stark reality of the
human suffering which they attempt to describe.
Neither would the pictures on the
wall help him to understand what it is that brings such incongruous, oddly
assorted people together, in this seemingly formal and curious devotion. As likely as not the pictures would be
uninspiring, crude, and without any aesthetic value.
If this onlooker asked one of the
people there to enlighten him, she would probably be surprised that he should
expect the pictures to attempt either aesthetic beauty, or to represent the
physical aspects of the Passion of Christ realistically. She might explain that the Church does not
ask for pictures at all, but simply for fourteen numbered crosses marking
fourteen incidents on the way to Calvary, showing not so much the exterior incidents
of the Passion as their inward meaning.
She might
add, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the Church tolerates the pictures that
we use, just as a mother tolerates the crude and almost symbolic pictures that
the older members of the family draw for the younger, knowing that little
children will read into them just those things which are already in their own
hearts.
The Stations of the Cross are not
given to us only to remind us of the historical Passion of Christ, but to show
us what is happening now, and happening to each one of us.
Christ did not become man, only to
lead his short life on earth (unimaginable mercy though that would have been),
but to live each of our lives. He
did not choose his Passion, only to suffer it in his own human nature,
tremendous though that would have been, but
to suffer it in the suffering of each one of his members, through all
ages, until the end of time.
Most of Christ’s earthly life was
hidden. He was hidden in his Mother’s
womb, he was hidden in Egypt and in Nazareth.
During his public life he was often hidden when he fled into “a mountain
to pray”. During the forty days of his
risen life, again and again he disappeared and hid himself from men. Today he is hidden in the Blessed Sacrament,
in Heaven, and in his Mystical Body on earth.
But in his Passion he was exposed,
made public property to the whole of mankind.
The last time he went up into a mountain to pray, it was to pray out loud,
in a voice that would echo down the ages, ringing in the ears of mankind for
ever. It was to be stripped naked before
the whole world, for ever, not only in body,
but in mind and soul. To reveal
not only the height and the depth and the breadth of his love for men, but its
intimacy, its sensitivity, its humanity.
All his
secrets were out. Every detail of his
Passion revealed something more of his character as man. Not only his heroism and his majesty, but his
human necessities, and the human limitations which he deliberately adopted as
part of his plan of love, in order to in-dwell us as we are, with our
limitations and psychological as well as physical necessities and
interdependence on one another.
He was not only simulating our
humanness outwardly, but feeling as we feel.
Not only feeling his own grief, fear, compassion, need of
sympathy, and so on, as man, but ours.
Not only knowing every nerve and fibre of his own love for us, but
that of each one of us for one another.
The Passion of Christ was an
experience which included every
experience, except sin, of every member of the human race.
If one may say this with reverence,
the fourteen incidents of the Stations of the Cross show not only the
suffering, but the psychology of Christ.
Above all they show, in detail, his way of transforming suffering by
love. He shows us, step by step, how that plan of love can be carried out by men,
women and children today, both alone in the loneliness of their individual
lives, and together in communion with one another.
Different though each human being is
from every other, uniquely his own though each one’s experience is, there are
certain inevitable experiences which are common to all men and from which none
can escape.
One of these is death. Another is love. Every human being alive is
on the road to death. Everyone is
capable of love for someone, even if it is only for himself, and the
price of love, perhaps particularly of self-love, is suffering. But the power of love, and this does
not apply to self-love, is to transform suffering, to heal its inevitable
wounds.
Now it is easier to understand what
it is that brings the incongruous motley of people together to “make the way of
the Cross”
Each one meets himself on the “Via
Crucis”, which is the road through death to life. In Christ he finds the meaning of his own
suffering, the power of his own capacity for love. He finds the explanation of himself in Our
Lady, the Mother of Christ. And in those
others too, who are taking part in the Passion of the Son of Man – Simon of
Cyrene, Magdalen and John, Veronica, the women of Jerusalem, the good thief,
the centurion, the man who lent his tomb, the scattered apostles who crept back,
and ran to the empty tomb on the morning of resurrection. Those in whom, through grace and mercy Christ
is being formed, and growing from the darkness of the buried seed to his full
flowering.
Yes, in the Stations of the Cross,
he who has the eye of faith sees the story of Christ’s historical Passion – his
own individual story – and the story of the suffering world, in which Christ’s
Passion goes on through time; the way of the Cross which, though it leads to
the tomb and the dark sleep of death, leads on beyond it to the waking morning
of resurrection and the everlasting springtime of life.
For us, here and now, there is a
more immediate and more practical meaning in those fourteen incidents on the
way to Calvary. It is a showing not
simply of the way of sorrows, which we are all destined to walk, if we will or
not, but of the way of love, which heals sorrow, and which we all can take if
we walk in the footsteps Christ has marked out for us, and not only imitate him
but identify ourselves with him.
The Stations show us how each one
can lighten the heavy Cross that is laid upon the bent back of the whole human
race now. Now each one in the power of
Christ’s love can sweeten his own suffering and that of those who are dear to
him.
This is why the prayer “We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee, because by thy holy Cross thou hast redeemed the world” echoes down the centuries, not in tones of fear and reluctance, but as a cry of welcome, a tender cry, in the tones of a lover’s greeting, to him, whom every man must meet on the way of sorrows, changed for him to the way of love.
