Via Crucis: since when is this tradition commemorated?

Today, Holy Friday, the way of Jesus from the Mount of Olives to Golgotha, where, according to tradition, he was crucified, thus ending his earthly life. Three days later, he will rise again and then ascend to heaven.

The event is vital to configure the transcendence of Jesus, the breaking point to demonstrate his divinity, so the Catholic Church configured the rite that today is known as Via Crucis or, by its name in Spanish, Way of the Cross.

THE POSSIBLE AUTHORS OF THE RITE

According to Vatican News, “the current meaning of the term dates back to the late Middle Ages”. There were three who coined the rite: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, who would have arranged fourteen stations, the same ones that are traversed to this day.

“The Via Crucis was developed with the impulse of the Franciscans in Spain in the first half of the seventeenth century. In Italy, a great propagator of this practice was Saint Leonardo of Porto Maurizio (1676-1751), a minor friar who introduced meditations for each of the 14 stations.”, Writes the medium.

The Devotional website notes that there is no exact data on how the stations appeared or when they began to “grant indulgences”, But it coincides with the fact that it would have been the Franciscans who established the customs.

Devotional notes: “They were granted custody of the most precious places in the Holy Land in 1342. It is also not clear in which direction they traveled since, it seems, until the 15th century many did it, starting at Mount Calvary and going back to the house of Pilate.”.

In this regard, the website of the Tijuana Church notes that these traditions are inherited from the “Jerusalem Sicut Christi Tempore Floruit” (“Jerusalem Flourished as in the Times of Christ”), a book written “and 1584 por Adrichomius“, While the fourteen stations that are known were set by”Carmelite Jan Pascha”.

From that, and as a solution to the Muslim occupation of the Holy Land – which prevented the faithful from gathering there – the rite could be recreated in other parts of the world.

“The Procession to Calvary” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who drew a serpent’s path in the foreground of which Saint John is seen consoling Mary, while, in the center, Jesus under the cross. Possibly painted in 1564 and currently guarded by the Vienna Art History Museum.

THE JOURNEY IN OTHER LATITUDES

The Rome Reports portal notes that, in Italy, this tradition is specified in “the Colosseum in Rome”, And he cannot help but emphasize how strange it is that this place –where there was“blood and violence“- embrace this religious practice.

The website notes that, in the 18th century, several chapels were built there, which were recently rebuilt.

“The first modern Pope to rescue tradition in this place was John XXIII. Then with Paul VI it was retaken steadily. Naturally, the route of the chapels with the tombs was not followed, since they no longer existed, but a procession followed a route in which episodes of the Passion were evoked. Then the procession continued out of the Colosseum. It currently ends under the terrace of the Temple of Venus“, Add.

Perform it in the Roman Coliseum it is also to remember the martyrs: “There, where so many Christians at the time of the Roman Empire experienced martyrdom”.

In 1750, the Pope Benedict XIV built “14 aedicules and a large cross”. Six years later, the Colosseum in Rome was “consecrated to the memory of the Passion of Christ and the martyrs”.

The “Pieta” by Michelangelo, who would have sculpted it in marble between 1498 and 1499, shows Mary holding the inert body of Jesus. The work is sheltered in the Vatican City.

“Two hundred years later, in 1959, Juan XXIII reestablished the rite of the Stations of the Cross in the Colosseum, then resumed by Paul VI in 1964. The first Via Crucis presided over by Juan Pablo II in the Colosseum, in 1979, is accompanied by the meditation of texts of speeches by Pope Montini”Writes Vatican News.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the Via Crucis is celebrated on the Via Dolorosa, “the path that Jesus traveled to reach the place of crucifixion“, until “get to the “Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher”.

Vatican News recalls: “[En la Ciudad de] Mexico there is one of the most impressive Stations of the Cross in all of South America. The tradition […] dates back to 1833, when the town invoked the help of the Lord of the Cave to end a long epidemic of cholera”.

Similarly, the city of Sevilla Spain, becomes “scene of numerous processions organized and animated by the brotherhoods of medieval origin, each one belonging to a church”.

“Each brotherhood is entrusted with the task of carrying in procession two large and precious wooden sculptures that represent a moment of the Passion of Christ and Our Lady of Sorrows,” writes Vatican News.