Stations - a favourite devotion

One of my favourite devotions is to make the Stations of the Cross. I even have a set of meditations on the Stations on my mobile phone so that if I am away anywhere and do not have any book of meditations, I can always use them. The saints who wrote on the spiritual life tell us that the passion of Christ is always a worthy subject of meditation and the Stations are a good way of framing such prayer.

Family Publications have recently published two fine pamphlets with the Stations. First of all, there is the shorter set of meditations by Cardinal Newman. These are included in his "Meditations and Devotions" - I have a copy from 1893 which I picked up many years ago as a student. Family Publications have set them out in a fine glossy pamphlet with good illustrations.

A second set is by Fr Dominic Allain, a fellow-columnist for the Catholic Herald. It is a courageous thing for a priest to set out in print his thoughts on the Stations and I felt it was a privilege to read Father's thoughts and prayers. Here is a link to the pamphlet. Once again, this well produced with beautiful illustrations.

The Stations of the Cross should lead us to repent of our sins. One danger with schemes of meditation is that they focus on evils that happen elsewhere in the world and therefore tend to pander to the easy path of tut-tutting over everyone else's sins but our own. Neither of these excellent publications falls into this trap.

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