World Youth Day Stations for Madrid 2011

Right now there is a not a lot of time to be posting on this blog, but you're all being kept in my prayers.

Meanwhile, here's the stations of the cross planned for Madrid 2011. I'm not going to be in Madrid for WYD (just think Spain in August; heat; and me!) but nonetheless these stations will be awe inspiring, I'm sure. They are so typically Spanish and remind me much of Holy Week in Valladolid. Ah, to return.

Enjoy, if that's the right word. Alternatively, just pray. Pray and enjoy!

Stations of the Cross with Mary and with children

Whilst I'm sure that many of us are engaged in making the 'way of the cross' or doing the Stations over the weeks of Lent, I have been particularly struck by two aspects.

Firstly, we have begun to bring the children of our schools over to Church to do the stations. This has necessitated finding child-friendly stations in our current climate. Though I recall, as a child, doing the stations on a Friday afternoon and they were the Alphonsus Liguori set, here. For this reason, we have spent the first week of Lent just concentrating on learning the opening versicle for each station. We plan to build up the children's confidence and knowledge over the weeks of Lent.

Secondly, we have used a couple of meditative sets of Stations based on praying with Mary, or walking the way with Mary. Personally, these have been very powerful, spiritually at least, and often quite dramatic. I can highly recommend the Praying the Stations with Mary the Mother of Jesus, written by Richard Furey and published by Twenty-Third Publications. You can get them in most good Catholic bookstores, but on amazon (.co.uk at least) I can only find them in Spanish, here. St Paul's didn't seem to carry them, but I'm sure if you look around their website you may find them - if not there's plenty to grab your attention for Lent, here.

Whichever Stations you're using, or not as the case may be, I pray that your Lenten observance continues to be nourishing you as we journey with Jesus towards Jerusalem.