The stations of the cross in our church were painted by two ladies, Barbara Benedinger and another artist.  Fr. John Maxwell changed the interior of our church for our 75th anniversary.  The stations at the time were up high by the upper windows and were all grey.  Fr. John wanted the stations to be lower where they would be more accessible for devotion.  Of course, there was no money available to buy stations so Barbara volunteered to paint stations for the parish.  Barbara was a leader in the El Cerrito Art Society and a founding member of the El Cerrito community theater.  Barbara volunteered to do this even though she had never painted faces before.

If you look at the stations you can easily pick out some of the guidelines that they was given when creating the stations.  Fr. John wanted the stations to reflect the diversity of our parishioners.  If you look at the stations, the figures are not all Caucasian.  The images show a lot of diversity.  Station 8, Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem, most obviously show this.  All of they ladies appear to have different ethnic backgrounds.  This diversity theme is reflected throughout all 14 stations.

The artists carefully choose the color pallet for the stations.  Our church was painted with St. John the Baptist in mind.  If you go to the baptism site of Jesus in the holy land, you will notice the brightly lit blue sky and the light brown sands of the earth.  Our church was painted to put us at this site.  Up high we have the light blue sky and down low we have two light brown colors that show the earth at that site.

In the Stations, the artists, based their pallet on the colors of the church.  You will notice that there is a predominance of blues and browns in the paintings.

Mallory Tripp added the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head and arranged to have the pictures framed.

You are invited to pray the stations of the cross anytime.  During Lent, St. Johns we will pray the stations every Friday morning after the 8 am Mass and every Friday evening with Benediction at 7:30 pm.  Friday March 13 we will have our communal reconciliation service instead of Stations.

We adore thee, O Christ, and we praise thee …
          because by thy holy cross thou hast redeemed the world.