Toronto's Crossings invites a Holy Week contemplation
National Post, 14 April 2022
Politics, as it does everywhere today, intrudes on a few stations, but that too is not altogether unwelcome
It’s Holy Week and Christians the world over are commemorating Jesus making His way to the cross. One traditional devotion is the “Stations of the Cross,” fourteen moments on the way to Calvary — Jesus is condemned by Pontius Pilate; Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry His cross; Jesus is laid in the tomb, etc…
Catholic churches customarily have the fourteen images inside the church. Outdoor processions are sometimes held on Good Friday — most famously across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
This year Toronto has the Stations of the Cross at 16 downtown sites — the fourteen stations plus extra “alpha” and “omega” images at the beginning and the end. The artistic installation is called Crossings and is a project of IMAGO and the Canadian Bible Society. Crossings, I presume, indicates not only the cross itself, but the crossroads of a city. That original Good Friday took place amidst the bustle of busy Jerusalem on the eve of a solemn Sabbath feast.
Walking the various stations around the University of Toronto captures something of that, a sense that the original passion and death of Jesus was a bustling, even boisterous affair. Though I walked the route in early March, it would be an ideal Holy Week in-city pilgrimage.
Crossings consists of outdoor artistic installations, so anyone can walk the route at any time. The various Canadian artists chosen employ approaches ranging from modern abstract to traditional iconography. The works are of varying quality. A few are rather incomprehensible without reading the QR code explanation provided. Art that requires a written explanation fails to a certain extent. Yet push on, for there are treasures along the way.
On balance, Crossings is a highly creative set of interpretations of what has been called for centuries the via dolorosa, the way of sorrow, as Jesus carries His cross from Gabbatha to Golgotha, from the courtyard of judgement to the hill of crucifixion. Crossings chooses fourteen biblical scenes for the stations.
Michael O’Brien, the internationally acclaimed author, is arguably Canada’s leading Christian artist today. His “Peter’s Denial” is the fourth station at Knox College. The evocative figures are actually better viewed from across the street, where Peter has turned his back on Jesus yet still looks toward him. The apostle’s posture tells the story.
Politics, as it does everywhere today, intrudes on a few stations, but that too is not altogether unwelcome, for politics intruded upon that first Holy Week too. The few explicitly political stations are rather forgettable, as politics always is. Temporalities are by definition locked within the temporal, and tempus fugit, time flies.
Continue reading at the National Post.