Quid ultra debui tibi facere, et non feci? What is there that I ought to do more for thee, that I have not done? Isa 5:4
We can safely say that the Holy Way (or Stations) of the Cross are the oldest devotion Christianity knows because it began while Our Lord was still undergoing His bitter Passion. Consider this account from The Visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich:
The Blessed Virgin, standing with Magdalene and John in a corner of the forum hall, had with unspeakable pain beheld the whole of the dreadful scene just described, had heard the clamorous shouts and cries.
The scene the Blessed Virgin, Magdalene and John had witnessed, was Jesus being led before Pilate for the first time around 6am on April 3rd, AD 33. When Pilate, shocked at how roughly Jesus had been handled (“You began early to flay him, to slaughter him”), eventually decided to send Jesus on to Herod, “Jesus enemies were in the highest degree exasperated at being thus dismissed before the populace;” consequently, “they vented their rage upon him” and drove Him “in furious haste with cuffs and blows” to the palace of Herod.
And now when Jesus was taken to Herod, she begged to be conducted by John and Magdalene back over the whole way of suffering trodden by her divine son since his arrest the preceding evening. (…) On many places where Jesus had suffered outrage and injury, they paused in heartfelt grief and compassion, and wherever he had fallen to the ground the blessed mother fell down and kissed the earth. (…)
This was the origin of that devotion of the church, the Holy Way of the Cross, the origin of that sympathetic meditation upon the bitter Passion of our divine Redeemer even before it was fully accomplished by him. Even then, when Jesus was transversing that most painful way of suffering, did his pure and immaculate mother, in her undying, holy love, seek to share the inward and outward pains of her Son and her God, venerate and weep over his footsteps as he went to die for us, and offer all to the heavenly Father for the salvation of the world.
Praying the Stations of the Cross originated thus with the Blessed Virgin, and was “by her bequeathed to the church.”
“By this devotion so rich in blessings, so pleasing to God, will the soul advance in faith and in love to the most holy Redeemer.”
The devotion of The Holy Way/ Stations of the Cross consists of 14 Stations:
