Raqqa, Syria: the Stations of the Cross

[ by Charles Cameron — a small devotional exercise for our sometimes too-secular world ]

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In the upper image of the pair above, a crowd in Raqqa, Syria, is protesting the desecration of a church by Islamist enthusiasts who had pulled down the cross atop a church. The people of Raqaa took to the streets in protest, chanting:

Syria belongs to Muslims & Christians.

The Roman Catholic devotion known as the Stations of the Cross involves a prayerful mini-pilgrimage around fourteen “stations” representing stages in the passion and crucifixion of Christ — each of which is traditionally marked with an image of the “station” in question. In the case illustrated in the lower panel above, the station is that of Simon of Cyrene, who was pressganged into bearing the weight of the cross on his shoulders for part of the way, to give the agonized Christ some relief.

The good people of Raqqa are thus enacting, informally, with courage and grace, the Station in which Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross. And there’s an echo here, too, of Christ’s injunction recorded at Luke 9.23:

And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

There’s a spontaneous beauty that crosses the lines between two world religions — and secularism — in all this.

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But the cross itself also suffers its indignities, and thus the two images of the pair that follows can also be considered Stations of the Cross.

In the upper image (below), the cross is removed by State of Iraq and al-Sham militants from its proper station atop the church, to be replaced with their black banner one of their number is holding, while in the lower image we see another screen cap of the townspeople, who have retrieved the cross and are carrying it through the streets to safety:

The people are chanting:

Syria belongs to Muslims & Christians.