Beyond The 14 Stations Of The Cross

By Dr jalarth Uche Opara

Lent is the time one identifies without struggles devout Catholics who fiddle and kid not with their faith. Like a rising sun, one would spot them, shining forth with diligence, faithfulness without missing the details of their lenten observances.

To the crowd one sees during Ash Wednesday, using it to identify real devout Catholics would be very misleading.

More than half of the crowd seen on Ash Wednesday were accidental Catholics, who drop like droplets of water at major Catholic events celebration and dry up like water on the leaf under a scorching sun.

They are devout Catholics those who hardly miss their Stations of the Cross, dutifully they go through the stations at least once in a week for the period of lent.

Stations of the Cross is usually an experience that leaves many in nostalgia. It stirs emotions, bringing back in a very soul searching manner memories of what happened many years ago.

To those whose spiritual antennas are robust and sensitive, the pains and gory feelings of Jesus then could be their reality, real time experience.

The truth is, however real time one feels the pains of Jesus during Stations of the Cross what remains relevant and spiritually beneficial is what that experience produces in ones life. To some, it ends with the goosebumps it produces, to others the emotional fragility it caused for them.

However and whatever it produces in ones life if it doesn’t change lifestyle to be positive, mindset to be Christ driven and the Godly disposition it create thereafter to live a renewed life, one at best has engaged in movie that offers nothing but momentary emotional impression of Jesus’s golgotha experience

For want of better word to use, stations of the cross is not an end rather a means to an end. It is a raw material made available for a good spiritual menu, one can either use it for positive impacts or ignore it to waste as mere raw material.

After the 14 stations, after hearing the words of the Lord, after the prayer of commitment, promises etc what happens beyond the 14th stations?

If it doesn’t help one become better Christian, Christ centered , broken and renewed, it is at best perfunctory, a drama or movie that gives immediate mood change without lasting and sustainable spiritual growth.

#Jarlathuche@gmail.com