Are there 15 stations of the cross

H 55cm Approximate. Stations of the Cross. All rights reserved. Include tags such as place names, people, dates, events and colours. Find something you like on our old website? When on our new website, just enter the item number in the search box to quickly locate the same item there. Join Our Email List Email:. Papal Shop. We're always looking for great people! Traditionally there were fourteen stations. Visco depicts Christ stepping out of the tomb.

His arms are extended outward as his drape blows in the wind, a manifestation of the glorious excitement of the event. According to tradition, towards the end of her life the Blessed Virgin moved from Jerusalem to Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. No longer able to retrace the steps of her Son's Passion where they actually occurred, she set up an identical Stations of the Cross on her property using stones and markings.

This became the first devotional Stations of the Cross. This is described in detail by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich according to her visions, below:. When she was living in Jerusalem, she had never failed, ever since Our Lord's death, to follow His path to Calvary with tears of compassion. She had paced out and measured all the distances between the Stations of that Via Crucis, and her love for her Son made her unable to live without this constant contemplation of His sufferings.

Soon after her arrival at her new home [in Ephesus] I saw her every day climbing part of the way up the hill behind her house to carry out this devotion. At first she went by herself, measuring the number of steps, so often counted by her, which separated the places of Our Lord's different sufferings. At each of these places she put up a stone, or, if there was already a tree there, she made a mark upon it. The way led into a wood, and upon a hill in this wood she had marked the place of Calvary, and the grave of Christ in a little cave in another hill.

After she had marked this Way of the Cross with twelve Stations, she went there with her maidservant in quiet meditation: at each Station they sat down and renewed the mystery of its significance in their hearts, praising the Lord for His love with tears of compassion. Afterwards she arranged the Stations better, and I saw her inscribing on the stones the meaning of each Station, the number of paces and so forth.

I saw, too, that she cleaned out the cave of the Holy Sepulcher and made it a place for prayer. At that time I saw no picture and no fixed cross to designate the Stations, nothing but plain memorial stones with inscriptions, but afterwards, as the result of constant visits and attention, I saw the place becoming increasingly beautiful and easy of approach. After the Blessed Virgin's death I saw this Way of the Cross being visited by Christians, who threw themselves down and kissed the ground.

House of the Virgin Mary. And, naturally, with varying numbers the incidents of the Passion commemorated also varied greatly. Wey's account, written in the middle of the fifteenth century, gives fourteen, but only five of these correspond with ours, and of the others, seven are only remotely connected with our Via Crucis. This new form of the Stations of the Cross has the same number of stations 14 as found traditionally in churches, however they vary somewhat in titles as to be more scriptural than traditional.

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