The Stations of the Way of the Cross.
A very frequent and most touching devotion of Christians in former times was 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 made sacred by His presence, and especially the places which were known as the stations of His passion and death, and to honor them by prayer and 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, the present exercise of the Way to the Cross was invented as a substitute. Pictures representing the most moving and remarkable events of our Lord's passion, from the time He was sentenced to death by Pilate 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, though by a pilgrimage far less long and dangerous.
