Stations Of The Cross Quotes

The Passion of Christ was an experience which included in itself every experience except sin, of every member of the human race. If one may say this with reverence, the fourteen incidents of the Stations of the Cross show not only the suffering but the Psychology of Christ. Above all, they show, in detail, his way of transforming suffering by love. He shows us, step by step, how that plan of love can be carried out by men, women, and children today, both alone in the loneliness of their individual lives and together in communion with one another. ~ Caryll Houselander

There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me. ~ Frank McCourt

When you grow up being taught to worship, whatever that means, there is an array of body-rich symbols: tears, blood, crucifixion, the stations of the cross, transubstantiation ... Faith is a belief in something that is irrational, and so to have faith, there is some correlation there with the belief in the art. ~ Robert Gober

I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles; I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows. ~ Anne Lamott

I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another. ~ Julie Orringer

I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire. ~ Lynn Nottage

Thirty minutes later, Dan is sipping his double something or other frappe latte. His order nearly made me cross my eyes trying to keep up with all the extra stuff he added. I still don't get what everyone sees in all those overpriced flavored coffees. Don't get me wrong - I love my caramel macchiato from Starbucks, but even I can't see paying five dollars every couple of hours for coffee. You'd spend an entire paycheck in ~ Apryl Baker

The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way. ~ Carl Sagan

I sit back on my bed cross-legged and find myself rubbing the smooth iridescent surface of the pearl back and forth against my lips. For some reason, it's soothing. A cool kiss ~ Suzanne Collins

Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present-day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties- and this against their own nation. ~ Adolf Hitler

I expect to see the coming decades transform the planet into an art form; the new man, linked in a cosmic harmony that transcends time and space, will sensuously caress and mold and pattern every facet of the terrestrial artifact as if it were a work of art, and man himself will become an organic art form. There is a long road ahead, and the stars are only way stations, but we have begun the journey. To be born in this age is a precious gift, and I regret the prospect of my own death only because I will leave so many pages of man's destiny - if you will excuse the Gutenbergian image - tantalizingly unread. But perhaps, as I've tried to demonstrate in my examination of the postliterate culture, the story begins only when the book closes. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Our democratic system, national identity, and international space must be respected. Any forms of suppression will harm the stability of cross-strait relations. ~ Tsai Ing-wen

We know that new ideas often come from the cross-fertilisation of different fields, occurring in the mind of a widely knowledgeable person. ~ Ian Leslie

To suggest that the grief of Christ issues from his perfect wisdom and
charity would confirm that true sorrow is human and therefore cannot
correspond to despair, since the hopelessness of despair would yield nothing
about which to sorrow. If life is meaningless, there is no reason to
mourn. Truth is what makes grief authentic and real, and so it follows
that Truth Incarnate, come down from heaven to our vale of tears, would
grieve at the highest pitch. The "tragic experience of the most complete
desolation"49 depends on "the knowledge and experience of the Father."50
Or as Adrienne von Speyr puts it: "The Father is never more present than
in this absence on the Cross. ~ Aaron Riches

The hill of comfort is the hill of Calvary; the house of consolation is built with the wood of the cross; the temple of heavenly blessing is founded upon the riven rock--riven by the spear which pierced his side. No scene in sacred history ever gladdens the soul like Calvary's tragedy. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Accepting the Cross, entering into fellowship with Christ, means entering the realm of transformation and expiation. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

We cross the point of no return. . . . ~ Kresley Cole

One day I won't be in love with you, I'll just love you and the occasional thought of you might cross my mind, but it'll be bittersweet. ~ Dominic Riccitello

I was born the son of a lawless man, always spoke my mind with a gun in my hand. ~ Christopher Cross

My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Just as women fought for the vote, and that very achievement compels us to the polling stations, so women have fought for the right to exercise and participate in sport, and we cannot throw that away. From the women of ancient Greece putting their lives on the line just by watching sport, and the women in Iran who continue to risk imprisonment today by doing the same, to the likes of Kathrine Switzer who campaigned for women to be allowed to run any distance they liked, or Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand who demand the right to participate in sport as women, without being told what their labia should look like. We ~ Anna Kessel

But that's the thing Artie. What if Romani isn't a man " Amelia said leaning forward.
"Great. We'll alert Scotland Yard and tell them they're looking for a vampire. Or a werewolf. I'm assuming you've cross-referenced this with the lunar cycles."
"What if it's a name " Amelia said undaunted. She spread the files across the desk. "A name that has been used by a lot of people for a very long time."
"Excellent." Her boss pushed the files aside and returned to his order and his lists and his life. "You cracked it. Great work. I'll call the Henley right away and tell them Leonardo's Angel Returning to Heaven was stolen by a name. ~ Ally Carter

There comes an inevitable time in every life when we must cross a threshold and encounter that invisible divider between who we are and who we must become. Sometimes, the passage is evident - a sudden catastrophe that tests our mettle, a tragic loss that opens our eyes to the bane of our mortality, or a personal triumph that instills in us the confidence we need to cast aside our fears. Other times, our passage is obscured by the minutiae of an overcrowded life until we catch it in a glimpse of forbidden desire; in an inexplicable sense of melancholic emptiness or a craving for more, always more, than what we already possess.

Sometimes we embrace the chance to embark on our passage, welcoming it as a chance to finally shed the adolescent skin and prove our worth against the incessant vagaries of fate. Other times, we rail against its unexpected cruelty, against the sharp thrust into a world we're not ready to explore, one we do not know or trust. For us, the past is a haven that we are loathe to depart, lest the future corrupt our soul.

Better not to change at all, rather than become someone we will not recognize. ~ C.W. Gortner

If we want proof of God's love for us, then we must look first at the Cross where God offered up His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God's love for us. ~ Jerry Bridges

She didn't want to believe the pretty gentleman capable of such violence, but she had learned the hard way that pretty gentlemen were often the worst of the lot. ~ Kady Cross

Her walls were like mine, which was another part of the allure. I understood walls. They'd kept me safe from people most of my life. Only my Inked Armor crew got past them, and even then, I only let them into the rooms I wanted to. There were locked closets no one but me could enter. But by keeping my walls in place with Sarah, I'd created a distance I didn't know how to cross any more. ~ Helena Hunting

But leave me to my beer! Gold is dross, love is loss, so if I gulp my sorrows down, or see them drown in foamy draughts of old nut-brown, then I do wear the crown, without the cross! ~ George Arnold

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ ... is God's only self-justification in such a world" as ours....' 'The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone. ~ John R.W. Stott

Unfortunately, we forget the cruel details of the agonizing sacrifice God made on our behalf. Familiarity breeds complacency. Even before his crucifixion, the Son of God was stripped naked, beaten until almost unrecognizable, whipped, scorned and mocked, crowned with thorns, and spit on contemptuously.
Abused and ridiculed by heartless men, he was treated worse than an animal.
Then, nearly unconscious fromblood loss, he was forced to drag a cumbersome cross up a hill, was nailed to it, and was left to die the slow, excruciating torture of death by crucifixion. While his lifeblood drained out, hecklers stood by and shouted insults, making fun of his pain and challenging his claim to be God. ~ Rick Warren

Isn't it what life is about, after all? A series of images that pass us by like towns as you cross along a long road? Then suddenly, a scenario stands and we know that image, that moment and all the feelings connected to it will remain alive no matter what? ~ Angélica Calheiros - Nove Dias Para Amar

Discipline brings freedom.

The purpose of meditation is to enable us to hear God more clearly. Meditation is listening, sensing, heeding the life and light of Christ. This comes right to the heart of our faith. The life that pleases God is not a set of religious duties; it is to hear His voice and obey His word. Meditation opens the door to this way of living.

To pray is to change. All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives.

For those explorers in the frontiers of faith, prayer was no little habit tacked on to the periphery of their lives; it was their lives. It was the most serious work of their most productive years. Prayer – nothing draws us closer to the heart of God.

Fasting must forever centre on God. More than any other Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us.

The most difficult problem is not finding time but convincing myself that this is important enough to set aside the time.

Disciplines are not the answer; they only lead us to the Answer. We must clearly understand this limitation of the Disciplines if we are to avoid bondage.

Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don't.

Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no lo ~ Richard J. Foster

In search of my Love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers. ~ John Of The Cross

Thus, we may observe, it is usual with God to smite us in those very comforts which stole away too much of the love and delight of our souls from God; to cross us in those things from which we raised up too great expectations of comfort. ~ John Flavel

Doubting Thomas was the one who gave the strongest and most conclusive testimony to the absolute Deity of the Savior which ever came from the lips of a man! Just as the railing thief became the one to own Christ's Lordship from the cross, just as timid Joseph and Nicodemus were the ones who honored the dead body of the Savior, just as the women were the boldest at the sepulcher, just as unfaithful Peter was the one whom Christ bade "Feed my sheep," just as the prime persecutor of the early church became the apostle to the Gentiles, so the sceptical and materialistic Thomas was the one to say "My Lord and my God." Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound! ~ Arthur W. Pink

If God wishes to be born as man and to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, He suffers the terrible torment of having to bear the world in its reality. It is a crux; indeed, He Himself is His own cross. The world is God's suffering, and every individual human being who wishes even to approach his own wholeness knows very well that this means bearing his own cross. But the eternal promise for him who bears his own cross is the Paraclete. ~ Carl Jung

The second call

The first call is frequently to follow Jesus or to prepare ourselves to do wonderful and noble things for the Kingdom. We are appreciated and admired by family, by friends or by the community. The second call comes later, when we accept that we cannot do big or heroic things for Jesus; it is a time of renunciation, humiliation and humility. We feel useless; we are no longer appreciated. If the first passage is made at high noon, under a shining sun, the second call is often made at night. We feel alone and are afraid because we are in a world of confusion. We begin to doubt the commitment we made in the light of day. We seem deeply broken in some way. But this suffering is not useless. Through the renunciation we can reach a new wisdom of love. It is only through the pain of the cross that we discover what the resurrection means. ~ Jean Vanier

The beauty of the cross and our crucified Lord cannot be easily fathomed by human mind or by barely reading scriptures in bits, but by careful reading of entire scripture in the spirit which will in turn engulf one with wisdom n love. ~ Henrietta Newton Martin

You're not going to take advantage of me, are you?" The cushions felt so nice behind her head. It was so nice to lie down. "Novels are always warning young women of the dangers of being taken advantage of by wealthy young men."
"You are perfectly safe. Emily is here to protect your virtue."
"That's too bad. ~ Kady Cross

SHE TOLD THE TRUSTEES, who had surely vacationed in the Caribbean, about the Carib Indian chief who was about to be burned at the stake by Spaniards. His crime was his failure to see the beauty of his people's becoming slaves in their own country.
This chief was offered a cross to kiss before a professional soldier or maybe a priest set fire to the kindling and logs piled up above his kneecaps. He asked why he should kiss it, and he was told that the kiss would get him into Paradise, where he would meet God and so on.
He asked if there were more people like the Spaniards up there.
He was told that of course there were.
In that case, he said, he would leave the cross unkissed. He said he didn't want to go to yet another place where people were so cruel. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

But once you cross the Shannon - even though geographically you have only come a short distance - different rules of time apply, and most people still understand the crucial secret of human happiness: that it's better to do a few things slowly, than a lot of things fast. ~ Pete McCarthy

But since the Fall in the Garden of Eden, things haven't been fair. Bad things happen to good people. But if we wait for justice, we are putting our lives under the control of those who hurt us. Better far to take God's solution of grief and forgiveness and grow through the unfair situation. Remember that God himself didn't demand fairness and justice for us; rather, he valued his relationship with us so much that he went to the cross for us: "Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). ~ Henry Cloud

The Liars believe in no afterlife, no God. We see the universe as it is, Father Damien, and these naked truths are cruel ones. We who believe in life, and treasure it, will die. Afterward there will be nothing, eternal emptiness, blackness, nonexistence. In our living there has been no purpose, no poetry, no meaning. Nor do our deaths possess these qualities. When we are gone, the universe will not long remember us, and shortly it will be as if we had never lived at all. Our worlds and our universe will not long outlive us. Ultimately entropy will consume all, and our puny efforts cannot stay that awful end. It will be gone. It has never been. It has never mattered. The universe itself is doomed, transient, uncaring. [...] The truths, the great truths - and most of the lesser ones as well - they are unbearable for most men. We find our shield in faith. Your faith, my faith, any faith. It doesn't matter, as long as we believe, really and truly believe, in whatever lie we cling to. [...] We know truth for the cruel instrument it is. Beauty is infinitely preferable to truth. We invent beauty. Faiths, political movements, high ideals, belief in love and fellowship. All of them are lies. [...] Our lies are not perfect, of course. The truths are too big. But perhaps someday we will find one great lie that all humanity can use. Until then, a thousand small lies will do.
(from Way of Cross and Dragon) ~ George R.R. Martin

A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not 'die to itself' that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of 'adjustment' or 'mental cruelty.' It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the Kingdom of God. This is expressed in the sentiment that one would 'do anything' for his family, even steal. The family has here ceased to be for the glory of God; it has ceased to be a sacramental entrance into his presence. It is not the lack of respect for the family, it is the idolization of the family that breaks the modern family so easily, making divorce its almost natural shadow. It is the identification of marriage with happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it. In a Christian marriage, in fact, three are married; and the united loyalty of the two toward the third, who is God, keeps the two in an active unity with each other as well as with God. Yet it is the presence of God which is the death of the marriage as something only 'natural.' It is the cross of Christ that brings the self-sufficiency of nature to its end. But 'by the cross, joy entered the whole world.' Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage. It is the joyful certitude that the marriage vow, in the perspective of the eternal Kingdom, is not taken 'until death parts,' but until death unites us completely. ~ Alexander Schmemann

I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child's faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously as every other way, though some never do.
What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you fell you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Desolation is a file, and the endurance of darkness is preparation for great light. ~ John Of The Cross

Even Sally wound't want to cross fans with the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale. The woman had a tongue of steel and drank the blood of young virgins for breakfast. ~ Lauren Willig

I spent two years figuring out how I could turn it into something that would satisfy me as a musician but also make some kind of cross-cultural link. I feel that I kind of at least touched on the possibilities of cross-cultural music, but it is a lifetime's work, and I don't profess to be anything other than a novice at it. ~ Damon Albarn

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross. ~ H. Richard Niebuhr

Once you inject fear into a society of people, they become more and more afraid because they don't cross over the neighbourhoods and the only information they get about other people is through the media. ~ Helen Prejean

His were always lighthearted notes from the places they'd visited, scrawled in the limited space on the back of the cards, whereas hers tended to be longer and slightly rambling, unrestricted by the confines of paper. But sitting there with the cursor blinking at him, he wasn't sure what to say. There was something too immediate about an e-mail, the idea that she might get it in mere moments, that just one click of the mouse would make it appear on her screen in an instant, like magic. He realized how much he preferred the safety of a letter, the physicality of it, the distance it had to cross on its way from here to there, which felt honest and somehow more real. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

I can't explain the motive of ever Christian, but for me... the answer is obvious. Our Savior was Jewish. His disciples were Jewish. They were born in Israel. They lived in the Promised Land. Jesus preached to 'the lost sheep of Israel.' He died on the cross in Jerusalem. He was raised from the dead in Jerusalem. And the Bible teaches that our Savior is coming back again to reign and rule from Jerusalem. Why shouldn't we love Jews, then? Jesus never taught us to hate anyone. He taught us to love, and he set the supreme example for us to follow. Jesus commanded us to love one another. He commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. You're my neighbor, Jacob, If not you, then who? You're from the same family and people as my Savior. How could I hate you or do you wrong? ~ Joel C. Rosenberg