![]() In the name of this love he chose to let himself be mistreated by men like us who did not understand how important and precious he was. We will have to explain to them that Easter reminds us that Jesus died for the salvation of men, but who then rose, as he had promised, bringing joy and hope to everyone, and that every year we remember his death and his resurrection and all the love that he showed us. We could begin by explaining what Lent is, the period of forty days that precedes Easter, which serves to prepare us for this event that is so great and important for the life of each of us. The body of Jesus is placed in the sepulchreīut let’s get back to the initial problem: how do you explain the Via Crucis to children?.Jesus is helped to carry the cross by Simon of Cyrene.The Via Crucis stations are the following: Those who devote themselves to this devotional practice enjoyed the same indulgences granted to those who went to the Holy Land. Progressively in the convents and in the churches began these paths, consisting of fourteen stations, plus a fifteenth with the Resurrection. Since it was not possible for everyone to go there, someone thought to make representations of the various episodes that marked the painful path and make them ‘stations’ along which pilgrims could stop and pray. Certainly there was born of the need for the faithful to make a pilgrimage of faith and penance in the places that had seen the Passion of Jesus. It is probable that the practice was born in the Franciscan context, but there are no certain sources. The Church recalls this devotional path since the XIII century. It is the story of Jesus, naturally, and in particular of the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, his painful path along the road that led him to Mount Golgotha. So it really seems the plot of a story of terror, or a fact of news recently happened, perhaps even in our country … Instead it is the story of the most beautiful Love that has ever been told, the story of a man who sacrificed himself for all other men, who did not hesitate to sacrifice himself to guarantee hope to his own executioners. Via Crucis, a story of loveīut how can you explain to a child the story of a man torn from the affection of his friends, his mother, dragged through an angry mob, to be subjected to the judgment of other men, completely unworthy to judge him, and then beaten, scourged, crowned with thorns, and finally nailed to a cross, amid the shouts of jubilation of an angry mob? For them it becomes normal, they can hardly give the right weight, the right dimension to death. In movies, even in cartoons, they see men hit with violence, killed by other men. Indeed, seeing and knowing, albeit superficially, aspects of life that were hidden from their peers years ago, or at least that they came through mediated by the experience and filter of an adult, makes them even more exposed to error, confusion, existential uncertainty that characterizes our time. Not even for modern children, used to witnessing impressive scenes on television every day, bombarded on all sides by disturbing images, suggestions, media solicitations completely disrespectful of their age, the fragile condition of their psyche still so malleable. It is not easy to explain certain things to a child.
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