for March 2005

Liber†y is hosting a Praise Festival on Friday, April 8, 2005. The festivities commence at 7:00pm and continue to 10:00pm. We have four participating praise teams and we hope to fill our place with enthusiastic songs of joy. The Liberty praise team of Hannah, Mike, Steve and William will lift up their voices and their instruments to the glory of God. You are certainly invited to praise, sing along, raise your arms, and clap your hands. Bring your friends, too. As the writer of Hebrews says, “Let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise--the fruit of lips that confess his name.”

Stations of the Cross

On Easter Sunday, after a short Resurrection message, the Liberty congregation will trace seven steps of Jesus in a tradition called “the Stations of the Cross”. You are invited to join us as we follow in the footsteps of Christ.

Origin of this Tradition
Where did the Stations of the Cross come from? After Jesus died and rose from the dead, many people reflected upon his passion and death.

They began to make visits to Jerusalem and walk in Jesus' footsteps. The street Jesus walked is still called Via Dolorosa, “the way of pain”. People would stop along the way and remember what had happened to Jesus. It is likely that they marked the places for those who came after them to follow as well.

The Tradition Begins in Europe
As Christianity spread throughout the known world, distance made it nearly impossible for people to make the trip to Jerusalem. That didn't stop their need to know and remember.

By the twelfth century the fervor of the Crusades and a heightened devotion to the Passion of Jesus created a demand in Europe for representations of the last events in Jesus' life.

The Franciscans take charge
When the Franciscans took over the custody of the shrines in the Holy Land in 1342, they saw it as their mission to encourage devotion to these places. In western Europe a series of shrines erected to help the faithful remember Christ's passion became commonplace. They were erected outside Churches and monasteries and in other places as well. For many years there was a considerable variety in the number and title of these "stations." The current number of fourteen first appeared in the Low Countries in the sixteenth century and became standard in the eighteenth century with a series of official pronouncements.

Leonard of Port Maurice
The chief promoter of this tradition was the Franciscan Leonard of Port Maurice [died 1751], who set up more than five hundred sets of stations, the best known being the one in the Coliseum of Rome. Modern Christians have emphasized that any devotion to the Passion is incomplete without reference to the Resurrection and have thus fostered the addition of a "fifteenth station," the Resurrection of Jesus.

Because of space and time constraints, we will be walking seven of the fifteen stations this Easter Sunday:

• Station One: Jesus is condemned
• Station Two: Jesus carries his cross
• Station Three: Jesus Falls
• Station Four: Simon helps carry the cross
• Station Five: Jesus is crucified and dies
• Station Six: Jesus is taken down from the cross and is buried
• Station Seven: Jesus rises from the dead

At each station we pray: “We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your cross, you have redeemed the world.”