The Way of the Cross

Among the expiatory exercises, the Way of the Cross is one of the most touching and salutary. It was the Blessed Virgin Mary Herself who gave us the first example of this devotion. “It is said that after the Ascension, when the Mother of God was still living in Jerusalem, She never ceased to follow the sorrowful path of Her Son and to water with Her tears the places where He had suffered. She had measured the distances step by step and Her love could not grow weary of contemplating this road of sorrows. Far away, in Ephesus, from those places so dear to Her Heart, She did not discontinue a single day Her meditations on the Passion. Near Her home was a path that led to the top of a hill… She often went there alone and followed it in prayer, as She used to on the way to Calvary. Later, She divided it into fourteen stations, measuring, according to the number of steps She had so often counted, the distance between the various places where some event of the Saviour’s Passion had taken place. At each of these places She erected a stone, or if there was a tree there, She made a mark. The path led to a wood, where a mound represented Calvary and a small grotto, the Holy Sepulchre. Our Blessed Mother would follow this new way of the Cross, immersed in deep contemplation. She stopped at each of the stations and meditated in Her Heart the mysterious meaning and thanked the Lord for His love, shedding tears of compassion.” (According to the most ancient tradition)