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• stations of the cross
  stations of the cross

  plural noun

  a series of 14 representations of successive incidents from the Passion of Christ, each with a wooden cross, or a series of wooden crosses alone, set up in a church, or sometimes outdoors, and visited in sequence, for prayer and meditation.
• Stations of the Cross
  Stations of the Cross

  plural noun

  a series of 14 crosses, often accompanied by 14 pictures or carvings, arranged in order around the walls of a church, to commemorate 14 supposed stages in Christ's journey to Calvary

stations of the cross

American  

Or Stations of the Cross

plural noun

Ecclesiastical.

1. a series of 14 representations of successive incidents from the Passion of Christ, each with a wooden cross, or a series of wooden crosses alone, set up in a church, or sometimes outdoors, and visited in sequence, for prayer and meditation.

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Stations of the Cross British  

plural noun

1. a series of 14 crosses, often accompanied by 14 pictures or carvings, arranged in order around the walls of a church, to commemorate 14 supposed stages in Christ's journey to Calvary

2. a devotion consisting of 14 prayers relating to each of these stages

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Etymology

Origin of stations of the cross

First recorded in 1885–90

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

stations of the cross Stations of the Cross

The cold marble of the stations of the cross.

From Salon ● May 13, 2023

He explained that the main chapel on post has the stations of the cross.

From Washington Times ● Jan. 30, 2022

Schrader, being Schrader, means to draw those demons back out into the open, to put his gravely conflicted antihero through his own intensely personal yet oddly familiar stations of the cross.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2021

My only complaint is that the film is structured as a kind of stations of the cross for the Jennifer Lawrence character, which necessarily means that she lacks any kind of real agency.

From New York Times ● Sep. 20, 2017

He didn’t eat again until after Mass on Sunday, and he used the twelve flights of stairs he climbed by Bri’s side to meditate on the twelve stations of the cross.

From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer

There were only camouflaged soldiers in a silent procession closer to the Stations of the Cross than a Fourth of July parade.

From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2025

Celebrations in Haiti included a Stations of the Cross reenactment in Port-au-Prince on Good Friday.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 7, 2023

He said the meal at Saint James’ is followed by the Stations of the Cross prayer service, which he said makes for a good blend of the temporal and the spiritual.

From Washington Times ● Feb. 25, 2023

We spent a whole year, all of our first 12 episodes, going through everything, the complete radicalization, eye-opening, Stations of the Cross to becoming a revolutionary.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 23, 2022

Many people around me cried, too, the way they did during the Stations of the Cross when they moaned and said, “Oh, what the Lord did for me” or “He died for a common me!”

From "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie