As Lent approaches I thought it would be nice to share a craft that my children and I did last year. Because we have little ones, making it to the Stations of the Cross on Fridays is difficult. This craft allows us to meditate on the path that Christ walked during His Passion and reminds us of why this season is so reverent and penitential.

Take a walk with us down the Via Dolorosa- the Way of Suffering. Bring Christ’s Passion into your home and allow it to change you not only for the Lenten season but for all time. When we contemplate Christ’s suffering and enter into it with Him, our perspective on love and hope are forever changed.

The Via Dolorosa- The Way of Suffering

To begin with, gather your supplies. You will need:

Popsicle sticks
White Glue
Hot Glue
Construction paper
Pipe cleaners
Printed Stations of the Cross
Hooks for hanging your stations on the wall

The first step in making your Stations is to build the housing that will hold the Stations. We chose a very simple design- a house or church like structure. Using either hot glue or white glue (we used white) glue the popsicle sticks into the frame you like most. To be honest you can do a simple square, a house frame, or be as elaborate as you wish.

Next, if you haven’t already done so, print off copies of the Stations. You can use whatever beautiful Stations you can find or make them if you are talented enough! We aren’t quite that talented, so printing was our best option. I found mine here. Not only are they beautiful pictures but they come with the prayers to say as you walk and pray the Via Dolorosa. When you print them make sure they are the right dimensions to fit within your frame.

After cutting out the pictures, glue the pictures to the backside of your frame. Flip your frame over and glue the Station name and description at the bottom of the frame. Cut out small pieces of construction paper and draw the Station number on it. Glue this at the top of the frame.

After your Stations have dried you can get creative in how you would like to make the wall hanger to hold it when it is hung up. We used pipe cleaners cut to fit each frame, but I’m sure there are many other ways you could hang them. However, if you want to do yours like we did, using hot glue we secured the ends on either side of the frame (on the backside of course!) and then allowed it to dry.

Our house isn’t very big and so there aren’t many places to hang such a beautiful craft. We decided to hang ours going down our hallway towards the bedrooms. My husband questioned if it was good to hang them at such a low level but 1. there was nowhere higher available to hang them and 2. I wanted the kids to be able to really look at them through Lent and think about what they were seeing and what Jesus actually went through to secure our salvation. And so, we used small, removable hooks and lined our hallway with our Stations of the Cross.

To say we loved them is an understatement. Not only were they beautiful but they also reminded us well past Easter (we left them up for months!) of Christ’s gift to us. They were a reminder to each of us of what God asks of us as well. They were the starting point for discussions and the ending point for prayers. We could walk Christ’s Passion with Him without ever leaving our home.

While I believe we all need to experience the Stations of the Cross at our churches especially during Lent, this activity provided us a way to experience them more often and provided a constant reminder to learn and to grow deeper in faith during Lent.

We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee. Because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.