Going to Stations of the Cross at 7:30 PM with our four boys (right now they are 6 and under) is not going to happen this Lent, or for many more Lents for that matter. For now, my husband and I take turns week by week. (It feels more like a vacation than a sacrifice, but pretend you didn’t read that!)
The boys don’t have to wait to pray the Stations until they are all well-behaved enough to attend this beautiful Lenten devotion, though. There are many great ideas on the web for how to pray the Stations at home with your kids, and I’ll share some of the ones I love, and give you a little tour of the Stations at our home.
Two resources that inspired me are Holy Heroes and Catholic Heritage Curricula.
From Holy Heroes, I bought their CD of the Stations of the Cross. It is a dramatic presentation; it feels like the events of the Stations are happening in our living room. We hear the shouts of the crowds, the horses neighing, the soldiers yelling, the cross dragging on the road…
It is relatively long (about 30 minutes), and the Holy Heroes website recommends giving little ones coloring books of the Stations while the others are praying. I haven’t yet tried this, and we haven’t used the CD to actually pray the Stations. The boys just listened. And asked a thousand questions. (Love these moments!)
From Catholic Heritage Curricula, I bought 4 X 6 prints of the Stations of the Cross. They are from Italy, and are traditional prints that were familiar to me. I attached them with mounting puddy to the woodwork above our windows and doors throughout the first floor of our home.
The traditional prayers for the Stations are included on the Laudate app that I use daily, and that’s easy – and free – to use for now, but I’d rather give the boys booklets to hold. I’ve seen some Stations of the Cross for children, but most of them have ugly pictures and/or awkward prayers. Two that look promising are sold by Holy Heroes and Catholic Heritage Curricula: Stations of the Cross Prayer Book for Children and Walking with Jesus to Calvary. Has anyone used these and would you recommend them?
Here are what the stations look like at our home:
We start the Stations in the living room.
We move on to the dining room for 3 more stations. This is the 7th Station: Jesus Falls the Second Time
The 9th Station: Jesus Falls the Third Time – in the dining room
And by the way, Jesus probably would fall down in our dining room because there is always a Lego minefield in this room!
Stations 10 and 11 in the kitchen.
I made sure the 12th station was in a place that I would be able to see it often: this hangs in the kitchen on the way to the hallway.
14th Station: Jesus is Laid in the Tomb – in the hallway, and we have completed the circle around the house.
I thought about putting all the Stations in a row in the hallway to resemble how it is at Church, but then decided that it would be nice to see pictures of the Passion of Christ all over the downstairs…they serve as a reminder in every room to think about Jesus’ sufferings and death.
May you have a blessed first full week of Lent!
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