Photo Essay: Way of the Cross 2014 - UPDATED

I mentioned yesterday I was participating in the Way of the Cross GoodFriday procession in New York City.  You can find links on yesterday’s post to what The Way of the Cross entails.  Well, I participated and here is a little photo essay of the procession.

One correction from yesterday’s post.  There weren’t fourteen stops on the procession reflecting the fourteen stations of the cross.  That was an assumption on my part that turned out to be wrong.  There were five stops where we came to a halt and read a Gospel reading (from the Passion chapters of St. John’s Gospel), read a meditation from the writings of Luigi Giussani (the event was sponsored by the local Communion and Liberation movement), listened to a mini homily by Fr. Richard Veras (my pastor at St. Rita’s who I mentioned here ), and sang hymns.  The five stations were (1) at St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn, (2) at the Brooklyn Bridge, (3) at City Hall in Manhattan, (4) at Ground Zero where 9-11 World Trade Center tragedy occurred, and (5) at St. Peter’s Church in Lower Manhattan. 

This is inside the St. James Cathedral where the Communion and Liberation Choir were magnificent. 

 

And then onto the Brooklyn streets. 

 

 

The highlight for me was the procession over the Brooklyn Bridge.  I had never walked over before.  I took lots of wonderful pictures which I'll have to reserve for another photo essay.  The tall building on the left with the antenna is the new Liberty Tower that replaced the Twin Towers that collapsed.

 

 

You can see the hundreds of people in front of me, and I would say there were even more behind me.  There must have been a thousand people that participated.  At the head of the procession was a man carrying a wooden cross, but within the crowd there was a man carrying a statue of a black Jesus carrying his cross. 

 

At New York City Hall. 

 

 

At Ground Zero.  We weren’t actually at Ground Zero since the construction has closed it off, but about a block away.  I didn’t get a good picture but I have this.

 

And finally at St. Peter’s.  It looks a lot prettier on the inside than the outside. 

 

 

It was a great experience.  The only difficulty was getting to a bathroom.  The bus left in the morning at 8:30 and the last station was at about 1:30 PM.  Thank God St. Peter’s had a bathroom for us to use, even though the line was very long.

 

UPDATE (April, 19, 2014 @ 9:19 AM):

New York Post reports this morning that over 3000 participated in the procession.   Whoo hoo!  That’s a better turn out than I imagined.