Help us to plan an Easter equivalent of @onlinecarols - come and join in!
Dear friends,
Now Christmas is over and Lent is fast approaching (Feb 22nd) I have been considering organising something similar to the online 9 lessons and carols for Lent and Easter 2012. The idea is to use the traditional forms of the Stations of the Cross and the Stations of the Resurrection to help people make the journey online of the Passion of Christ through to His Resurrection and celebrate and meditate on this over Lent and Easter.
If you would like to take part (and we'd love some new people this time as well as people who took part before) please fill in the form below and help us to put together something really creative this Easter!
Thanks for your support,
Bryony Taylor (@vahva)
(Image by Deadwords on Flickr)
Background to Stations of the Cross and Resurrection for those unfamiliar with them:
In ancient times, Christians used to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem for Holy Week. One popular activity while they were there was to walk the route from Pilate’s house to Calvary, stopping for devotionals to commemorate various events that took place along the way.
Of course most people didn’t do this every year, but they got so much spiritual benefit from walking the route to Calvary that they thought out a way to do it at home. They made carvings or pictures of each of the events along the way, and placed them at intervals, either outdoors or in a church. Then they could walk the route, stop at each place to do a devotional, and relive the experience. It also made the experience accessible to people who couldn’t afford to travel to Jerusalem.
How the Stations of the Cross Came into their Present Form
The Church at Rome commemorated all the events of Holy Week on Easter Day until the 11th century. At that time, they adopted the widespread custom of observing the events of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday on the appropriate days before Easter Day. In 1342, the Franciscan monks of the Roman Catholic Church were put in authority over the Holy Land. They became familiar with the Stations of the Cross, and decided to promote them as a devotional discipline.
The number of stations and the events commemorated at each station varied from place to place. By the 18th century, the number of stations became fixed at fourteen, and the whole devotion was completely standardized in the 19th century. Of the fourteen stations, eight are preserved in Christian scripture, and six are preserved in Christian memory.
(info from http://www.kencollins.com/instructions/how-15.htm)
The Stations of the Resurrection complement the Stations of the Cross or Via Crucis (the term Via Lucis is intentionally reminiscent of this), a traditional Catholic devotion commemorating the Passion of Jesus. Unlike the traditional form of the Stations of the Cross—though in common with the revised form of that devotion introduced by Pope John Paul II on Good Friday 1991—all the Stations of the Resurrection are based on scripturally-recorded incidents contained in the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.
As with the Stations of the Cross, the devotion takes no fixed form, but typically includes for each Station a reading from Scripture, a short meditation, and a prayer. Where a series of pictures is used to aid the devotion, it takes the form of a procession, with movement from one Station to the next sometimes being accompanied by the singing of one or more verses of a hymn.
(info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stations_of_the_Resurrection)
To help organise this I would love it if you could complete the following survey and let me know how you'd like to take part in either a small or big way! If you don't see the survey below please click here.
