Card. Zen’s meditations for the Good Friday Stations available in Italian

The meditations of Card. Zen for the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday are available, only in Italian, on www.vatican.va.

The artwork for the Stations is in a Chinese style. 

For example, here is Jesus before the Sanhedrin:

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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10 Comments

  1. Mark M says:

    Thank you, Father. Beautiful!

    Now I shall have to work out what they all say!

  2. Maureen says:

    I keep having Judge Dee flashbacks…. :) Seriously, though, the majority illustrator seems to have a thing for Chinese crime story art, also. Very appropriate, but a very interesting dip into popular culture. Cardinal Arinze would approve.

  3. J. Wong says:

    Here is Joseph Cardinal Zen’s 2008 Lenten Pastoral Letter:

    http://www.catholic.org.hk/Zen08lentene.htm

  4. Irulats says:

    I’m just looking at the pictures, I don’t speak Italian but these don’t seem to be the Stations that we pray in Ireland. Is there a different Via Crucis in in other countries?

  5. Irulats says:

    I’m replying to my own question having googled first this time. I guess this is what’s happening this year.

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    “The Scriptural Way of the Cross or Scriptural Stations of the Cross is a version of the traditional Stations of the Cross inaugurated as a Catholic devotion by Pope John Paul II on Good Friday 1991. They are an alternative to the traditional stations which assist with reflecting on the scriptural accounts of the Passion of Christ and which Protestants may be more comfortable observing.”

  6. Steve says:

    I thought as Catholics we didn’t believe in Zen Meditation. (LOL):)

  7. Steve: Oh… you had better run…

    o{];¬)

  8. Paul says:

    I comment along the lines of Irulats — I’ve seen these before, and they drive me absolutely nuts. Bonkers. Crazy. The parish in the town where I went to undergrad did them exclusively, accompanied by the world’s most insipid little book, which, presuming I suppose that no modern American knows what the word “redeemed” means, said “…you have saved the world.” Granted, that’s not an incorrect statement, but it’s disconcerting and disorientating to change a longstanding ritual, especially when done for seemingly no purpose.

    What was wrong with the old/real ones? People have been praying them in Jerusalem since before there were Protestants. I always figured this had been a one-time lark of some JPII curia oddball. I’m surprised to see them resurface under BXVI.

    Besides, this isn’t a via crucis; a via dolorosa perhaps, but you have to go through four “stations” to get to where they customarily pick up. And what’s with Station 4, in which the main figure is St. Peter? That’s an important event, but it seems to veer a little off topic. Furthermore, doing these in a church becomes absurd because the physical depictions of the stations don’t line up with the events being discussed. Yet the priest will still walk around the nave as if they did!

    Sorry, I’ll stop griping. His Holiness can do whatever he thinks best. But if I were in charge, these would find some nice musty shelf in the Vatican archives on which to live.

  9. Sooo… has anyone actually read Card. Zen’s stations?  Or are we just sniping from afar?

  10. Irulats says:

    Father Z: I’ve just finished reading them with

    http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

    From the gist I got they seem short, Holy and Catholic. Our persecuted brethren in China and elsewhere are remembered and Lourdes, Fatima and the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania get a mention. I didn’t realise that these type of stations existed, before today, though I see now they were used last year. I’ve been listening to your wonderful podcazts on the Way of the Cross and I think the 3 falls of Our Lord under the weight of our sins are the most humbling part of this ancient liturgy. Thank you again for the prayercazts and for providing the link to these meditations. God Bless.

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