All during Holy Week Monsignor Albert Hallin, pastor at the Holy Cross
Catholic Church in Champaign, has been on the go.  Services nearly every
day, confessions to hear from the students at the Holy Cross School and
appointments to keep.  
        Hurrying past the sign advertising the raffle for the New St. Thomas More
High School and the grand prize of a Harley Davidson motorcycle, the
monsignor stepped into the sanctuary of the Holy Cross Church.  He
genuflected at the Eucharistic Tabernacle and walked to the first station
of the cross.  Visibly exhaling, he quieted himself.  "It's beautiful,
isn't it?"  
        Monsignor Hallin was looking at a charcoal and pencil drawing of Christ
being condemned by Pilate.  "All these drawings were done by Harry Breen,"
Hallin said.  Breen is a long-time member of Holy Cross Parish and a
retired art professor from the University of Illinois.
        Two school-age boys and an elderly woman with a walker were praying in the
church as Monsignor Hallin reflected on the Good Friday Stations of the
Cross service.  Moving to the second station Hallin said, "The Stations of
the Cross came into existence because of a desire of St. Francis of Assisi.
 He secretly went to the Holy Land and visited the sacred shrines of
Christianity.  He returned and spoke with the pope about his idea of a sort
of mini pilgrimage."
        What emerged was a devotion that combines traveling and prayer.  The
traveling on Good Friday usually involves moving from station to station
inside the church sanctuary.  In the Catholic tradition, there are 14
stopping points, each involving a cross and often very intricate artistic
images.  Each station moves a person devotionally along the route on which
Christ was taken to be crucified.  
        During Good Friday services Monsignor Hallin wears red vestments,
representing the blood of Christ.  He presides from the front of the church
while a member carrying a cross stops at each station.  At each station,
there is a prayer.  As parishioners view Jesus being condemned by Pilate at
the first station of the cross, they pray:  "Lord Jesus, often I judge
others and fail to be understanding or loving.  Help me to see the people
in my life through your eyes, not the eyes of a Pontius Pilate." 
        Jesus accepts his cross at the second station.  Three of the stations are
pictures of Jesus falling under the weight of the cross.  In stations 11
through 14, the drama reaches its highest intensity.  Jesus is nailed to
the cross in station 11.  He dies on the cross in station 12; He is taken
from the cross in station 13; and at the final station of the cross Jesus
is laid in the tomb.
        Artist Breen's rendition of Jesus in the tomb shows punctures in Jesus'
head left by a crown of thorns.  "It almost makes you cry, doesn't it?"
Monsignor Hallin said.  "Harry did not try to make Jesus look like a
Hollywood model.  He is very gaunt.  He looks like a man who has seen
incredible suffering."
        The service ends with people leaving in total silence.  "It's very
sobering," Hallin said.
        The 3-foot wooden cross that is carried during the services is unique.  It
is kept in a room behind the altar in a wall safe.  Affixed at the middle
of the crossbeam is a small glass dome the size of a face on a woman's
watch.  Pointing to the center of the dome, Monsignor Hallin points to a
tiny wooden cross, as small as two staples.  The miniature cross came from
a piece of an ancient cross now kept at the Basilica of the Holy Cross of
Jerusalem in Rome.
        Tradition says that in 325 AD St. Helen, mother of the emperor
Constantine, actually recovered Jesus' cross in Jerusalem.  In time, the
crossbeam made its way to Rome.  Many Catholic churches with the name of
Holy Cross have received tiny slivers of that cross from Rome.  They
receive documentation that the wood is from the crossbeam held in Rome. 
        Not every Catholic Church has such a relic, but they follow the Stations
of the Cross just the same.  But at Easter, the Church of the Holy Cross
recalls the significance of its name and uses the relic to remember that
the cross is the crux of the faith.  
        Even the cornerstone outside the Holy Cross building says the church
erected in 1921 is "the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross."

Don Follis is a University of Illinois campus minister.  His column appears
on Fridays.  Reprinted with permission from the Champaign-Urbana
News-Gazette, copyright 2000.