St. Mary’s Stations of the Cross event set for Friday

St. Mary’s Catholic Church’s Stations of the Cross presentation is set for Friday afternoon on the church grounds in Odessa, as part of the church’s services on Easter weekend.

The annual live performance depicts progressing scenes from the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Live stations are set to begin at 2 p.m. Friday outside St. Mary’s, at the corner of 18th Street and Adams Avenue in Odessa. Service will follow in the church at 3 p.m.

“We’re showing people the physical significance of Good Friday — the passion narrative, live, of Jesus Christ — the suffering that he went through for our own salvation,” St. Mary’s youth group spiritual director Bobby Wright said over the phone Tuesday.

The performance’s cast is made up mostly of teens in the age ranges of junior high and high school, who have been rehearsing the stations for several weeks, Wright said. St. Mary’s has made an annual tradition of the event for nearly a decade.

Wright said the event is open for anyone to stop by and take in, at no charge.

“Everybody is welcome to come watch,” Wright said. “Even when we’re practicing, we’ve had people stop and watch us.”

To that end, Wright noted that visitors don’t have to be members of the St. Mary’s congregation, or even religious, to be welcomed to the event, or to find interest in the performance.

“As Jesus suffered, we in life suffer,” Wright said. “But we have to remember what happened after the suffering and the death — the resurrection and the light.”

“That’s what we do in our daily lives a lot of times. Sometimes we go through struggles and we need God to get through that, and then comes the sunlight and the resurrection. That happens in our daily lives.”