“Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus – a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you.” – Mother Teresa of Kolkata

“Mount Calvary is the mount of lovers. All love that does not take its origin from the Savior’s passion is foolish and perilous. Unhappy is love without the Savior’s death. Love and death are so mingled in the Savior’s passion that we cannot have one in our hearts without the other. Upon Calvary, we cannot have life without love, or love without the Redeemer’s death.” – St. Francis de Sales

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – C. S. Lewis

The “Stations of the Cross” grew out of an ancient liturgy and describe 14 stops along the way to Golgotha. These stops follow Jesus from the moment he is condemned to death until his entombment. Traditionally, the faithful prayed the liturgy alongside visual depictions of the Stations, where the pray-er could literally stop and contemplate each event of Christ’s Passion. This year, as we shelter in place, we invite you into a time of contemplation by experiencing an online version of the Stations of the Cross.

The Rev. W. David O. Taylor, of Church of the Cross in Austin, invited 14 artists from around the state of Texas in 2003 to interpret the journey of Christ. Their task was to interpret a specific stop, or station, in light of their own stories of pain and of the suffering of the world at large. In a culture that rewards productivity at the expense of reflection, where noise sedates the hurt inside, our hope then, as now, is to invite people to pause, to set aside all forms of clatter, and to listen to the voice of the wounded Christ speaking to them, and to offer their own pain to this God who suffers with and for the broken of our world.