The Way of the Passion
Forty Stations With Jesus
Julien Chilcott-Monk
ISBN 9780819883483
eISBN 9780819883490
ASIN B0CH4DTBYQ
I try and pray a stations of the cross each Friday throughout the year and each day over Lent. I had picked up this one a few years back, but had not got around to reading it yet. At the beginning of Lent I found I had 10 Stations of the Cross that I had collected but had not worked through. Now during Holy week, I have finished 20 new stations and still have 4 to go. This one is very different but I do include it as a special Stations and a volume well worth working through.
The description of this book is:
“Spend some time with Christ this Lent using these forty meditations on the passion-- one for each Lenten day (except Sundays) from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday.
The Way of the Passion: Forty Stations with Jesus expands on the traditional fourteen Stations of the Cross, taking a closer look at all of the events of Holy Week. Let these meditations help you explore Christ's death in a deeper and more personal way, bringing you closer to him.”
The chapters are:
Introduction
Station 1 The Entry into Jerusalem
Station 2 The Anointing of Jesus at Bethany
Station 3 Preparation for the Passover
Station 4 Jesus Washes the Feet of His Disciples
Station 5 The Warning of Betrayal
Station 6 The Institution of the Eucharist
Station 7 Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denials
Station 8 Jesus in Gethsemane
Station 9 Jesus Is Arrested
Station 10 Jesus Is Taken Before Annas
Station 11 Peter’s First Denial
Station 12 Jesus Before Caiaphas, and Peter’s Further Denials
Station 13 Jesus Before the Sanhedrin and the Suicide of Judas
Station 14 Jesus Before Pilate
Station 15 Jesus Before Herod
Station 16 Jesus Again Before Pilate
Station 17 Pilate Washes His Hands
Station 18 Jesus Receives His Cross
Station 19 Jesus Falls
Station 20 Jesus Greets His Mother
Station 21 Simon of Cyrene Is Ordered to Assist with the Cross
Station 22 Jesus Meets the Woman with the Towel
Station 23 Jesus Falls a Second Time
Station 24 Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
Station 25 Jesus Falls a Third Time
Station 26 Jesus Arrives at Golgotha
Station 27 Jesus Is Stripped and Nailed to the Cross
Station 28 The Indictment
Station 29 Jesus Suffers the Taunts of the Bystanders
Station 30 The First Word from the Cross
Station 31 The Second Word from the Cross
Station 32 The Third Word from the Cross
Station 33 The Fourth Word from the Cross
Station 34 The Fifth Word from the Cross
Station 35 The Sixth Word from the Cross
Station 36 The Seventh Word from the Cross
Station 37 Jesus Dies on the Cross
Station 38 The Side of Jesus Is Pierced
Station 39 Jesus Is Taken from the Cross and Laid in His Mother’s Arms
Station 40 Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb
Appendix
Bibliography
I highlighted several passages while working through this volume. Some of them are:
“Let us consider the change in people’s hearts that transforms their “Hosanna!” of adulation into their “Crucify!” of hate.”
“The lesson of this acted parable is much more profound. As the Creator cares for the needs of his creatures, so must we care for the needs of others. The vocation of serving others, of being other Christs, is our general Christian vocation, to be exercised along with the vocation that is specific to us.
“This is a night of contrasts. The disciples have been taught the lesson of service; they know one of them is seeking to betray Jesus; they now know unequivocally that the Heavenly Father and their Master are one. Everything is in place for their complete understanding, when they consider this night afresh in the light of the resurrection.”
“Why did our Lord nickname him Peter? Was there ever anyone less like a rock? But that is what Jesus was training him to be. How unlikely! Nevertheless, let us never suppose that we cannot be changed and molded by Christ if we allow him to do so.”
“How often do we forsake him? How often have we, as Christians, set Christ up for a fall by our un-Christian behavior? The Church, in the eyes of the world, is only what is seen in us.”
“By Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross the wrongs we have done are already forgiven and we can make amends and restitution with prayer, penance, and good works. Let us learn from the grave error of Judas.”
“If we walk the Way of the Cross, the Way of Duty, the Way of Love, how many will be encouraged to acknowledge Christ by our example?”
“We find it easy to visualize this horror, but let us concentrate our thoughts for a moment on those hands. Those hands that have healed and touched the beggar and the blind man, the dead man and the dumb, are now fixed to rough, un-planed timber in such grievous pain only to be guessed at.”
A sample day is:
“STATION 13
Jesus Before the Sanhedrin and the Suicide of Judas
When the day came, the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes; and they led him away to their council (Luke 22:66–71).
When Judas saw that he [Jesus] was condemned, he repented (Matthew 27:3–10).
The Sanhedrin was probably convened in an assembly room close to the Temple about a quarter of a mile across the lower city.
Within the chamber, there is much questioning and cross-questioning of Jesus before the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes. Jesus points out to them that there is no purpose in pursuing a particular line of examination because their minds are already closed. “But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” They ask, “Are you the Son of God, then?” With a sigh and perhaps even a wry smile, Jesus replies: “You say that I am” (Lk 22:70).
Satisfied that Jesus has blasphemed, the council is confident that they will find false witnesses to make a case of treason and sedition to place before the governor, Pontius Pilate.
Judas is present, inside the chamber or outside, but close enough to the proceedings to discover quickly that Jesus is to be taken to the governor’s seat of judgment where the verdict is likely to be death. Then, in order to undo the damage he has done, Judas returns to the chief priests the money he was paid. He tries to assure them that Jesus is an innocent man and that the matter is spiraling out of control. From their point of view, however, everything is going according to plan. The matter is out of their hands; Judas can do exactly as he pleases, but there is no hope that any decision will be reversed.
What had Judas expected—an uprising in support of the maligned teacher from Nazareth after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane? Had he envisaged the overthrow of the Roman authority in Jerusalem by catching that authority unawares? Judas had played with fire and was about to be responsible for the death of the man he called his friend.
Judas casts down the silver at the feet of the chief priests and hangs himself because he cannot face asking our Lord’s forgiveness.
~
By Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross the wrongs we have done are already forgiven and we can make amends and restitution with prayer, penance, and good works. Let us learn from the grave error of Judas.
What did the chief priests know of the Son of Man, the Son of God, or the Messiah? They could not see in Jesus their preconception of a divinely-appointed soldier: they had not understood the prophets.
Be none submerged in sin’s distress,
None lifted up in boastfulness;
That contrite hearts be not dismayed,
Nor haughty souls in ruin laid.
— Anonymous, “Magnae Deus potentiae”
(sixth century)
Our Father … Hail Mary … Glory be …”
I hope those quotes and sample chapter give you a good feel for this volume. The introduction states:
“This Lenten companion is intended to ignite ideas and fresh thoughts about forty episodes of the passion of our Lord. It offers a “station” every day throughout Lent—Sundays are omitted, of course—from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. The non-canonical material contained here is the result of the author’s “reading between the lines” of the Gospel narratives and is meant to help the pilgrim focus more clearly on the events we recall ceremonially during Holy Week.
The Gospels give us only the essential details of the passion because a meticulous report of the proceedings is not the intention of the evangelists, who are concerned primarily with our Lord’s teaching and in establishing, in the light of the resurrection, who he is and how he fulfills God’s promise of a Savior. However, 2,000 years later we find it helpful to enter more fully into these events in order to feel something of the horror and trauma experienced by Jesus and those around him, and so grasp more easily the impact of his teaching and how our salvation was secured.
In reflecting on these daily episodes, the pilgrim can explore fresh and personal paths of contemplation by giving his or her mind free rein throughout the forty days.
To complete each session, a prompt or two is given to aid further self-examination or intercession before the more formal suggested prayers. An expanded Paternoster is given in the Appendix as an aid to fuller intercession.
The translation of the Holy Bible used in this book is the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version, which, in the author’s view, is still the best. In the text, quotations from the RSV are given in italics, but transliterations, conjectural speech, and the author’s translations are given in Roman type.
The present tense is frequently employed in this book to give immediacy to the narrative.”
I did not skip Sundays and just read it from Ash Wednesday until Palm Sunday. It was one of a few books I tried to work through during lend in 2026, and it is an excellent offering. I could easily see myself going back and working through it again during a future Lent.
I have three criteria that for me makes a book excellent, above and beyond 5/5 Stars so to say.
First would I read it again?
Second would I recommend it to my kids or friends and family?
Third if I keep talking about it, both while reading and after finishing.
This one hits big time on all three. And with this one I send days to a few friends who could really use it, with the hopes they would pick up the book.
It is easy to engage with but also deep, meaningful and moving. Anyone from teens, to young adults to older retirees could all engage and benefit from reading this book. This is the third volume I have read by Julien Chilcott-Monk, and there is only 1 of the 14 I can find remaining available as an eBook. I do wish some of the others were available digitally.
This is a book I highly recommend, any Catholic would benefit from working through it!
Link to other Lent Resources.
Books by Julien Chilcott-Monk:
A Basic Dictionary of Bible People
A Calendar of Catholic Devotion
Advent Joy. Journeying Towards the Nativity
Call Me Tim: A Portrait of Robert Hardy
Come, Lord Jesus!
Flesh, Bone, Wood
In the Name of the Father
John Henry Newman and the Path to Sainthood
Praying the Crucifix - Reflections on the CrossSaints of the Roman Canon
The English Office Book
The English Ritual: A Companion to the English Missal
Walking the Way of the Cross
...
