Walking through Lent

By REV. JOHN P. ROSSON- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

Walking is a wonderful experience.

We take walking for granted. Studies reveal walking is good for physical health. It also is conducive to emotional health. Walking improves memory.

Walking strengthens, heals. Patients in a hospital measure their progress by their ability to walk from the bed to a commode, then to the bathroom and then to the door and the hallway.

Walking is the opposite of standing still. When Moses sets the choice between life and death before the Israelites, he urges them to love God, to "walk in God's ways."

Lent is our "walker," our cane. We move, even inch our way, during the 40 days of Lent to Easter. Lent is a pilgrimage.

We have the opportunity to walk with Jesus during the days of Lent by praying the Stations of the Cross; I've coined the term for this a "walk with the Cross."

On the walls of any Catholic Church, there are 14 stations - steps, signs, symbols - that depict the last steps of Jesus on this earth. These are called "the walk with the Cross."

Those wall images are Lent's version of the Christmas crèche. Both Gospels-in-pictorial-form (the crèche and the Stations) were inspired by St. Francis of Assisi.

The walk with the Cross is a principal devotion of the Lenten season. We have an opportunity to stand with the Lord and with our suffering brothers and sisters. They are the devotion of witness and the school of charity.

Like stops on a city subway, there are many stops on the trip to Jesus' Calvary. While celebrating the walk with the Cross, we literally circle the Church together to pray the Stations, with alternating prayer between leader and congregation.

At each stop along this holy walk, we step into the scene, beginning in Pilate's courtyard, where Jesus is sentenced to death. Pope Benedict XVI has called this walk with the Cross "the path of the grain of wheat."

We could all profit from employing the "lectio divina" (literally, "holy reading") approach to the Scriptures when making the walk with the Cross: Listen afresh. See anew. Walk prayerfully.

There are many ways of awakening during the 40 days of Lent:

• Try not to waste anything for one whole day.

• Call someone who is lonely.

• Give away all your "extras."

• Listen to others' point of view.

• Find out what a dollar will buy in Peru or Haiti.

The best advice is to "go for a walk." Walk with the Cross of Jesus this Lent.

(Father Rosson is pastor of St. Mary's parish in Cooperstown.)[[In-content Ad]]