Stations of the Cross

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The other day I was trying to share with a dear P friend the deep effects that meditation on Catholic mysteries has on the Christian soul. We took up the Stations;but before I started familiarising him with them,I decided to assure him that this meditation,like all other Catholic forms of prayer,is highly Biblical.
And then came all the questions…I struggled with the 4th Station,the 3 falls by the merits of which we beseech God…but I got totally stuck when we came to Veronica & the True Image.
So

Was it foolish of me to have said that all Catholic prayers are “highly Biblical”?😊​

If I was right,what’s with Veronica,the cloth with the Lord’s Face on it and the picture of the Pieta in our Chapel??🤷​

Please help.
I’m not sure this is the right forum,though…Sorry if I’m on the wrong one.:confused:
 
My understanding of the Stations wasn’t so much that they were “exactly what happened” but symbolic ways of walking with Christ on his Via Dolorosa. Surely he stumbled after being severely flogged and made to carry a large wooden cross. The story of Veronica, to me, is more of a reminder to us Christians today to look for the “least of these,” because they are Christ in disguise. The Bible says that Christ’s mother was with him at the foot of the cross, so it’s likely that she followed him as he bore it, and was the first to hold his body after he died.
 
Father Nisbet suggested that Veronica is derived from vera icon = true image. The saint is the true image of Jesus when she reachis out to the one in need.
 
Remeber reading somewhere that The Stations of The Cross devotion was actually developed by our Bl.Mother , during her stay in Ephesus and that this was furthur supported by the visions of Bl.Catherine Ann Emercih ; this might account for the popularity and wide spread acceptance of this devotion from even olden days .

Again, one reason for us to be gratewful to Holy Mother Church and the richness of her T/traditions - in both the old and the new !
 
the stations are actual locations in and around Jerusalem where, according to tradition, the events commemorated in this devotion occured, including those not specifically mentioned in the gospel accounts, and most of them are or were marked by ancient churches or shrines erected as soon as possible after persecutions against Christians were lifted. so until definitely proven that such an event did not take place, it is best to assume that it did, since it was enshrined in sacred tradition and popular memory. the icon purporting to be the actual Veronica’s veil or copied from that image, is very old, as are replicas of it, and it fits quite logically in context of the gospel account of Jesus speaking to the women of Jerusalem.
 
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