The Stations of the Cross — also called the Way of the Cross or Via Crucis — lead the one praying through the final hours of Jesus, station by station: his condemnation, the carrying of the cross, the falls and meetings along the road, the crucifixion, death, and burial. At each station the worshiper pauses to read, meditate, and pray, moving in body or in mind from one to the next.
The devotion grew from the longing of pilgrims to walk the actual Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. For the many who could never make that journey, the stations brought Jerusalem home: set up along the walls of a church, they let any believer make the pilgrimage of the passion in their own parish. The Franciscans, long custodians of the holy places, did much to spread the practice through the late medieval West.
The Stations are kept chiefly in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, especially during Lent and on Good Friday, and a 'Scriptural Way of the Cross' keyed entirely to biblical events is used more widely. The devotion's aim is the oldest one: not to view the passion from a distance but to walk it — to follow the Lord, step by step, to the place of the skull and the door of the tomb.