Episcopalians hit Pennsylvania Avenue today to pray the Stations of the Cross in an effort to battle the scourge of gun violence menacing the United States. From MSNBC.com:
Hundreds of Episcopalian bishops, clergy, and lay people challenged violence on Monday while praying the Stations of the Cross in Washington, D.C. More than 20 Episcopal bishops from throughout the church led the procession along Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the U.S. Capitol to defy violence, especially the epidemic of gun violence that claims thousands of American lives each year.
Read MSNBC’s account here. Religious News Service presents an inspiring slide show of today’s event here. And Mary Frances Schjonberg of Episcopal News Service provides this report:
Rain, snow, and temperatures that were barely above freezing did not deter a group of about 400 Episcopalians from taking to the streets of the nation’s capital March 25 to transform the traditional re-enactment of Jesus’ journey to Calvary and the tomb into a prayer procession meant to challenge what they called a culture of violence.
The modern-day version of the ancient Holy Week ritual of the Stations of the Cross began outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, at the corner of 16th and H streets northwest, across from the White House. The moving liturgy went past the White House and concluded on the west steps of the U.S. Capitol some two and a half hours later. Bishops, priests and deacons in the procession wore cassocks or other clerical attire, and the worshippers were led by a wooden cross as they made their way past the White House and down a lane of Pennsylvania Avenue that had been blocked off from traffic.
“You walked for Christ at a time when most people would have just gone inside and found something else to do,” Connecticut Bishop Suffragan James Curry told the worshippers after they finished the Way of the Cross.
Read full ENS story here.