Into the tomb

Two things one hears from time to time these days about the Stations of the Cross include the claim that there really should be a fifteenth station, the Resurrection, and that some of the stations are "unscriptural". I had occasion to look into these questions a few years ago when I designed a set of stations for our church and the short answer to both of these views is that they are mistaken. The traditional fourteen stations were fixed in the eighteenth century and did not include the Resurrection and furthermore they are only unscriptural if one applies a strictly literal interpretation to the scriptures.

The gospels do not tell us explicitly of Jesus falling on the way to Calvary so are we to assume that he did not? Nor are we told of him meeting his blessed mother but to suggest that he did not meet her at some point given the clear assertion of her being beside the cross seems to me to be splitting hairs to little purpose. The episode of Veronica and her veil is not mentioned in the gospels but its obvious meaning is, as it were, saturated in the scriptures. The psalmist asks "When shall I see the face of God?" and in the account of the Last Judgement wicked and virtuous alike ask, "Lord when did we see you hungry...thirsty...sick or in prison...naked... a stranger...?" And express surprise on being told, "As long as you did it to the least...."

Perhaps, sometimes, in our concern to follow the Way of the Cross we overlook the Stations of the Cross. A station is, simply, a stopping place and the fact that we refer to the stations is, I think, testimony to their origin in a pilgrimage involving real places. In other words the stations are not convenient illustrations of scripture but the trace or record of a real journey which, undertaken by pilgrims in Jerusalem, was transferred to the local church. Initially the Franciscans, traditional custodians of the holy places, were instrumental in the spread of the devotion before papal endorsement extended it to the whole church in 1731. At this point the last two stations were added with the final, fourteenth station referring to our Lord's burial in the Sepulchre.

The significance of this last station should not be underestimated for it refers to the traditional and ultimate goal of all Christian pilgrimage from the earliest times, the Holy Sepulchre. Considered as a place, a station, it is not just the site of Christ's burial but, at one and the same time,that of his glorious Resurrection. In going there we not only follow the Lord on his way of the cross but, it seems to me, we go back to our very beginnings as Christians. "In baptism," as St Paul says, "we went into the tomb with him."