Our Mission Statement:
XIV Ministries is a ministry inspired by and focused on the Stations of the Cross that strives to build communion between Christ crucified and his people by creating, promoting and presenting versions of the Stations of the Cross that are engaging, meaningful, moving and beautiful.
Through the Stations of the Cross
WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED
(1 Corinthians 1:23)
When we lose touch with the crucified Christ, we lose touch
With the Incarnate God
With our own humanity
With all humanity.
When we lose touch with Christ crucified, we lose touch with Love—
Love at its truest, deepest, darkest, most restless, reckless, relentless beautiful and mysterious depths.
GOD IS LOVE
(1 John 4:8)
Christ crucified is his sign and signature
Christ crucified is his call to communion with him and with all.
“And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”
(John 12:32)
Communion / Love
The mission of XIV Ministries is to foster communion—an intimate exchange of thoughts, feelings, gifts and truest selves—in short, love—between Christ and each and all of his people. XIV Ministries strives to accomplish its mission through a ministry inspired by and focused on the Stations of the Cross.
XIV Ministries works to create, promote and present versions of the Stations of the Cross that are engaging, meaningful, moving and beautiful. Within such experiences of the Stations, “heart speaks unto heart” (in the words of St. Francis de Sales), and we are drawn into communion with Christ.
-----Such communion with Christ enables us to most fully know ourselves and our need for mercy. It leads us to repentance and the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
----Such communion with Christ enables us to approach the altar and the crucifix behind it with deeper reverence and love. It enables us to participate in the Eucharistic communion with Christ more passionately and intimately.
-----Such communion with Christ strengthens and inspires us to better fulfill the First and Second Great Commandments: Love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
21st Century Popes
We believe our mission is supported and encouraged by the long tradition of the Stations and our 21st Century popes.
Pope St. John Paul II: The Cross, the Key
Pope St. John Paul II, in meditations and prayers he personally wrote for the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum in Rome on Good Friday, 2000, said:
“We are here / because we are convinced that the Way of the Cross of the Son of God / was not simply a journey / to the place of execution. / We believe that every step of the Condemned Christ, / every action and every word, / as well as everything felt and done / by those who took part in this tragic drama, / continues to speak to us. / In his suffering and death too, / Christ reveals to us the truth about God and man.”
In a later meditation for the Station XI (Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross) John Paul recalls Christ saying in John 12:32: “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” Then he asks the pivotal questions: “What is it that ‘draws’ us to the Condemned One in agony on the Cross?” and “How is it that, generation after generation, this appalling sight has drawn countless hosts of people who have made the Cross the hallmark of their faith?” He then answers: “From the Cross, Christ draws us by the power of love, divine love which did not recoil from the total gift of self….”
The Cross, then, is, as John Paul says in another meditation in his Stations, a key. With the help of this Cross/key, humanity will “open the door of the deepest mystery of God.”
Pope Benedict XVI: The Deepest and Most Fruitful Prayers of Christendom
Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, understood the essential role the Stations and contemplation of the Cross plays in the faithful’s understanding and appreciation of the love and mystery of God, in particularly of the Eucharist.
Before becoming Pope, he says in The Ratzinger Report: “The Eucharist is the central core of our liturgical life, but for it to be the center, we need a shared total context in which to live. All investigations of the effects of liturgical reform show that if the Mass is over-emphasized pastorally, it becomes devalued. It is placed in a vacuum, as it were, without other liturgical acts to prepare for or deepen it. The Eucharist presupposes the other sacraments and points toward them. But Eucharist also presupposes personal prayer, prayer in the family and extra-liturgical prayer…. I am thinking of the two deepest and most fruitful prayers of Christendom, which are always leading us anew into the mighty river of the Eucharist: The Stations of the Cross and the Rosary.”
Pope Francis: No Doleful Laments
We hear, it seems, report after report of the dropping numbers of those who believe, of those who affiliate themselves to a particular faith, of those who attend church services, of those who participate regularly in the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist. But Pope Francis bids us not despair but embrace the age-old challenge of evangelization.
In Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, he writes, “We should not be trapped wasting our energy in doleful laments, but rather seek new forms of missionary creativity.”
Our call and mission is to develop “new forms of missionary creativity” to present the Stations of the Cross so that people will more fully and truly “see” Christ raised up and be drawn by his total and relentless love into communion with God, His Church, and the Eucharist.