If God Left It Out, Rome Put It In

The Question: The Question: How did the Catholic church come up with all of the stations of the cross? I have read the Gospels and have not found any mention of Jesus having fallen with His cross. I am also wondering who is "Veronica" who, according to tradition, gave Jesus a cloth to wipe His face with and His image appeared on the cloth. I cannot agree with all of the stations except for those written in the Bible.

The Short Answer Is: They made it up.

The Passionist Missionaries operate a website called The Stations of the Cross and other Devotions to the Passion. At the site is a refreshingly simple and clear discussion of the Stations of the Cross and their supposed origins. All quotations below are from that site, which was copyrighted by the Passionist Missionaries in 2002. Victor Hoagland, C.P., author of the essay, informs that the origins of that peculiar Catholic devotion known as the Stations of the Cross began in the 4th Century:

The devotion originated in the late 4th century when pilgrims flocked to the Holy Land from all parts of the world to visit the land of Jesus. Heading the list of places they visited was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which had been built by the Emperor Constantine in 335 AD atop Calvary and the tomb of Jesus.

Hoagland opines that the incidents that are not mentioned in the Scriptures can be traced back to early pilgrims to Jerusalem. One of these unmentioned incidents was Jesus' meeting with Mary as He struggled along the way to Golgotha. As you read the Passionist's explanation, I encourage you to take note of his reasoning.

According to the gospel of John, Mary stood by his Cross (John 19,25-27). Would she not be part of the crowd accompanying him to Calvary, and would they not have met on the way? Pilgrims who walked along the Via Dolorosa surely believed they did.

So there you have one Catholic priest's account of how the station of Jesus' meeting with His mother came to be. The Scriptures do tell us that Mary stood by the cross her Son was hanging on. They do not, however, tell us how she came to be there; whether she was in the crowd that moved with Him as He made His painful way to the site of His immolation or if she if she went there earlier and waited. Not that it matters for, we are told, pilgrims who made their way along the supposed path that Jesus walked more than three centuries previously “surely believed” that she was with the crowd and met with her Son along the way. Please note that the modifier “surely” should not be understood as an indisputable affirmation of the alleged belief of those imaginative pilgrims. As for the falls of Jesus, Hoagland presses those early pilgrims into service once again as likely sources.

Jesus must have been extremely weak during his passion. Why else was Simon of Cyrene pressed into service to carry his cross? Was his scourging by Pilate's soldiers exceptionally severe? Pilgrims on the Via Dolorosa surely concluded that Jesus fell from weakness more than once. As they themselves walked the rough, winding Jerusalem street, they came to believe that he fell many times.

Would Jesus have been weak, even extremely weak during His passion? I do not doubt that He would have been; but not one of the Gospels tells us that He was. From the accounts in the Gospels, we have no way of knowing whether Jesus' scourging was exceptionally severe, but we do know from other historical sources that a Roman scourging was plenty severe enough to start with.

The simple truth of the matter is that we do not know what prompted the Romans to press Simon of Cyrene into service. The inspired writers of the four Gospels provided no explanation as to why Simon of Cyrene was selected to carry the cross, and make no mention of Jesus having fallen once, much less three times.

Not to worry. What God forgot to mention, those ever dependable fourth century pilgrims are thought to have provided. Did you see that use of “surely” again? Hoagland's reasoning is that as those pilgrims worked their way up the difficult slopes, they came to figure that Jesus must have fallen several times. It's not good theology and it's not good history, but it does make for a great story to fashion a wall decoration from.

Veronica's involvement in Christ's passion is not mentioned in the Scriptures, but that seems to be no obstacle when Mother Church is writing doctrine. Catholicism got her story, or so it seems, from one of those writings that circulated in the century after Christ's atoning sacrificial death. As you read Hoagland's words, notice that we supposedly encountered the lady Catholicism knows as Veronica in the scriptural accounts of Jesus' ministry. She supposedly was the unnamed woman with an issue of blood. It is shocking that the inspired writers left so many important details out of the Gospel accounts. How wonderful that the Catholic Church has come up with information to fill in the blanks.

The story of Veronica is not told in the gospels, but in early apocryphal writings. An early 2nd century version of The Acts of Pilate reports that a woman named Veronica (Bernice, in the Greek version) was the same woman Jesus cured of a blood disorder (Matthew 9,20-22), and that she came to his trial before Pilate to claim his innocence.

Later versions of the story from the 4th or 5th century say that Veronica possessed a cloth imprinted with the face of Jesus. Western pilgrims returning to Europe passed her story on. As the Stations of the Cross developed in late medieval times, Veronica was remembered at the 6th Station: she wipes the face of Jesus on his way to Calvary and he leaves an image of his face on her veil. A healing relic, impressed with the image of Jesus' face, which came to be known as "Veronica's Veil," was honored in St. Peter's Church in Rome as early as the 8th century.