Hundreds of people took part today in Pax Christi-Metro New York's 27th annual Good Friday Way of the Cross along 42nd Street through Times Square. The surrounding cacophony always heightens the prayerful intensity of these socially conscious Stations of the Cross. Torture, appropriately (for the story of the Passion), was the issue that probably was stressed the most in the meditations and prayers. There was also an eloquent reflection on the death penalty at the twelfth station, Jesus dies on the cross, beside the military recruiting station in Times Square. Jesus was called "the Divine Convict."When this event was begun in the 1980s, it was a journey through a seamy porn district. Now, Times Square is a garish monument to consumerism - and still an interesting place to be with hundreds of people chanting "Salvator Mundi." Here, on 42nd Street west of Times Square, is an excerpt from the meditation offered at the fourteenth station, Jesus is laid in the tomb:
