For those of you who are new to Crux Stationalis, you may be wondering: what’s a Roman Station Church? The tradition of Station Churches started as a way to strengthen the sense of community within the Church of Rome. A list was compiled and dates were set on, which the Bishop of Rome – the Pope – would visit the churches on the list and celebrate Mass with the community of Rome. We call this page Crux Stationalis because the different neighborhoods of Rome with their respective deacon would gather behind a Cross, a Crux Stationalis it was called, and they would process from one church to the Station Church.

The tradition is historically Lenten, but further on stations were added for significant liturgies (Papal liturgies) throughout the liturgical year. The Sundays in Advent for example.

On Gaudete Sunday, the Church of Rome goes to St. Peter’s Basilica

The choice of station for Gaudete Sunday may seem rather counterintuitive; on the only Sunday whose Introit is taken from the epistles of St. Paul, we might expect it to be kept at the church which guards his tomb, St. Paul’s outside-the-Walls. Instead, the station is kept at St. Peter’s, formerly the station for the principal Mass of Christmas Day; as the church of Rome proclaims “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice. Let your modesty be known to all men, for the Lord is nigh,” it anticipates the joy of the Savior’s birth in the place where it will be most solemnly celebrated in nearly one weeks’ time, with this shortened Advent.

In a certain sense, however, the basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican is also dedicated to St. Paul. The liturgy of Rome always remembers the two Apostles together, not only in their joint feast on June 29th, but also by adding to feasts such as that of Peter’s Chains or the Conversion of Paul a commemoration of the other Apostolic founder of the church in the Eternal City. This tradition was reflected in the art of the old St. Peter’s Basilica, in which nearly every image of St. Peter was accompanied by one of St. Paul. In the modern basilica, on the other hand, there are many images of its titular Saint, but hardly any of St. Paul; its decorative program, conceived in the Counter-Reformation, answers the Protestant rejection of the Pope’s authority by laying much greater emphasis on Peter alone.

The ninth responsory of this Sunday, taken from the beginning of the second chapter of Isaiah, may also be an oblique reference to the station at St. Peter’s. “The Lord will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths, for the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Come, let us go up to the mountain (ad montem) of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob.” The modern buildings around St. Peter’s, and the massive new basilica itself, largely hide the fact that the Vatican is really a hill; in antiquity, the hills in and around Rome were usually called “mons – mountain” rather than “collis – hill.” The “ways” and “paths” may be a reference to the three ancient roads, Cornelia, Aurelia Nova and Triumphalis, which ran close to the place of St. Peter’s death in the Circus of Nero, and the nearby Vatican Necropolis where he was buried. “The Lord will teach us” and “the law will come forth” would then refer to St. Peter’s God-given role as the first Pope and teacher of the Apostolic faith.