The Way of the Cross
By St. Alphonsus.
It was a very frequent and most touching devotion of Christians, in former times, to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Palestine, where our Blessed Redeemer lived and died, and there to visit every spot of ground which had been made sacred by His presence, and especially those which were known as the stations of His passion and death, and to honor these holy places by prayer and by penance. Afterwards, when the Holy Land had fallen into the hands of the infidel Saracens, and Christians could no longer make this pilgrimage with safety this exercise of the Way of the Cross was invented as a substitute. Pictures representing the most moving and remarkable events of our Lord's passion, from the time of His sentence to His burial, are hung about the walls of the church, and by visiting these in succession, and praying before each one, we are able in some manner to imitate the devotion of Catholics of other days, although by a pilgrimage far less long and painful. The Way of the Cross, in its present form, was instituted in the middle of the fourteenth century, by the Franciscans. The Sovereign Pontiffs have
