I grew up attending a Stations of the Cross service at my parish every Friday evening in Lent, and for the majority of those services, the same Stations booklet – Everyone’s Way of the Cross – was used.

This is notable because while the 14 stations commemorating the key events in Jesus’s passion are constant, various authors have depicted the details in different ways. For instance, the parish I attend now uses a book with text that’s almost entirely Scriptural, whereas a church that I attended in graduate school had a Stations service and prayer book directed towards children. In addition to booklets intended specifically for church gatherings, there are also designs such as this one and this one that are especially well tailored for individual or family use. 

There are probably at least one hundred variations of the Stations, but because I grew up praying with one in particular – and because that one was written in rhyme, making its words especially memorable – I find myself mentally reciting lines from it throughout my Lenten season. Actually, the words come to mind in all seasons, as the lessons from Jesus’ way of the cross are relevant to people of faith at all times. Lent, though, and Good Friday in particular, are especially appropriate times to reflect on how Jesus’ condemnation, walk to Calvary, crucifixion, and burial speak to my daily struggles as a broken person living in a broken world.

Here are a few reflections on how the story of Good Friday helps me make meaning of my daily struggles, inspired by words from Everyone’s Way of the Cross (indicated in italics throughout).

Taking Our Cross (the second station)

My Jesus, Lord, I take my daily cross. I welcome the monotony that often marks my day, discomforts of all kinds, the summer’s heat, the winter’s cold, my disappointments, tensions, setbacks, cares.

So often, when something goes badly for me, it’s easy to complain. “It’s not fair.” “I don’t deserve this.” “Why me?” It’s true – many of the challenges I face in life are not technically “fair,” or “right.” Likewise, it wasn’t fair that Jesus was condemned to death and faced a criminal’s crucifixion. And yet, Jesus accepted his cross without protest. The second station reminds me that hardship is a part of life and that I have a choice in how I face it. 

Falling (the third, seventh, and ninth stations)

Make me content with all my discontents, but give me strength to struggle after you.

I know I must not cease, but persevere in doing good.

When all my strength is gone, and guilt and self-reproach press me to earth and seem to hold me fast, protect  me from the sin of Judas – save me from despair. 

We will fall not once, not twice, but many times as we face the ups and downs of life. The third, seventh and ninth stations – Jesus falls the first, second, and third time – invite me to consider the ways that I fall in my daily life. I lose my temper and yell at my children. I drop the ball on a volunteer project at my church. I fail to connect in empathy to one of my therapy clients. I  neglect to reach out to a friend whom I know is suffering after a miscarriage. 

Like Jesus, we are human. Failure on our way is inevitable. And like Jesus, we choose whether we stay down after we fall or get back up. Persistence is imperative.

Extending a hand (the sixth station)

Lord, live in me, and act in me, and love in me. And not in me alone – in all of us – so that we may reveal no more your bloody but your glorious face on earth.

The stations not only invite us to walk in the way of Jesus, they also invite us to walk in the way of the followers of Jesus – those among his closest, like Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene, and those who were on the fringes, like Simon of Cyrene and Veronica. 

In the sixth station, Veronica – whose story isn’t included in the canonical Gospels but lives large in the Catholic imagination – goes out of her way to wipe Jesus’s bloody, sweaty face. Her gesture is a sign of love and solidarity. It helps me remember the tremendous value in humble acts of care, ones that do little to change the material circumstances of a person in pain, but do much to help them feel less alone. The meal for a friend who has lost a loved one; the listening ear extended towards someone who needs to talk; the hand squeeze for the acquaintance at church whom you know is going through a difficult time. These gestures, like Veronica’s, matter. 

Continuing on (the fourteenth station)

The teachings you could not impart, the sufferings you could not bear, the works of love you could not do in your short life on earth, let me impart, and bear, and do through you.

Jesus’s human life was a short one. Nothing made me realize this quite like turning 33… and realizing how young I still felt at the age when Jesus completed his earthly ministry. As believers in Christ, we know that Jesus lives on…but we also know that his body is not here to do the tangible work that it once did. That is our job, now. We are the hands and feet of Christ, called to be his body to a world in need. This fourteenth station, the final station, asks us to consider the ways that we can use our hands and our hearts to perpetuate God’s love in the world.