Compiled by Mark St.J. Couhig
Sequim Gazette
Easter, the most important day on the Christian calendar, falls this year on Sunday, April 24. The celebration is the culmination of Lent — the time of preparation — and finally, Holy Week. Good Friday begins the Triduum, the annual remembrance of the last days before Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. The Gazette asked the fourth- and fifth-grade classes at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church to explain Good Friday, which they did, in drawings and in their words.
Grace Tolberd: These are the Stations of the Cross. We do this to remind us of when he got crucified on the cross.
Alberto Tinoco: We do this to remember the torturing he went through so he could forgive all sins.
Station One, Liam Braaten: That’s Pontius Pilate and that’s a guard. Pontius Pilate wanted people to like him. If he did what they said, they would like him and he would be a good leader. Jesus was guilty of … They thought he said he was the Christ. The savior. And the people didn’t think he was.
Station Two, David Calderon: He was carrying his cross because he was going to go up. The cross — I think he just carried part of it. Pontius Pilate said he was the king — and the people all liked him (Pilate).
Station Three, Alberto Tinoco: The cross was too heavy for him.
Station Four, Comment by Bryan Perez, art by Rudy Franco: I think it’s where Jesus is carrying the cross and he meets his mother in a crowd of people. She was sad, horrified, scared.
Station Five, Comment by Caitlyn Turner, art by Brenton Dryke: Simon helped Jesus because he didn’t want him to suffer. Jesus needed help.
Station Six, Emmanuel Gomez: Veronica wiped his face with her dress. She wiped the blood and sweat.
Station Seven, Blake Wiker: This is when he fell a second time. That’s a guard walking him to the site. He had a crown of thorns because they said he was a king and they were making fun of him.
Station Eight, Emmanuel Gomez: The women were feeling sad.
Station Nine, Liam Braaten: He was exhausted and he was ready to die.
Station Ten, Blake Wiker: When they got to the site where they were going to hang him, they gambled them — the soldiers who took them. Someone eventually won his clothes.
Station Eleven, Art by Ruby Franco. Grace Tolberd: They nailed him to the cross, his hands and his feet. Blake Wiker: He said, ‘Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.’ The two thieves: one of them was … like, mad, I guess you could say. And the other said, ‘He didn’t do anything. And he shouldn’t even be on the cross.’ Jesus said, ‘You will live in the kingdom of God forever.’
Station Twelve, Jazmin Preciado: That’s a mom getting a little baby. And a person with a whip hitting a person. Jesus was on the cross maybe a day.
Station Thirteen, David Calderon: They took him down because he was dead. Emmanuel Gomez: It turned all stormy and it was like an earthquake. Blake Wiker: They asked if he could bring him down and put oils on his body. That was the women’s job.
Station Fourteen, Alberto Tinoco: Peter and other people put him in the tomb. He was dead and they didn’t want him up there. They put him on a little bed. They sealed him in. He rose from the dead and his body was gone from the tomb. Emmanuel Gomez: He didn’t save himself. He died for us — to save the world.
