Having been raised Catholic, the Stations of the Cross were a fixture of my suburban, CCD-attending childhood. The stations, all of which are prominently displayed in many Catholic churches, depict the final hours of Jesus’ life by way of 14 carved scenes. These morbid tableaus, which were recently used to provide a basic framework to Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ,” are specifically ordered and always depict the same graphic events.

Given that I can’t think of any fictional character who suffered as much, or for as long, as Lt. 1st Class Ellen Ripley, I’ve taken the final wimpy moments of Jesus’ last hours as prescribed by the stations, and shown how they reflect years of suffering in Ripley’s tortured existence. Only Jesus’ name and the masculine pronouns have been altered.

Ripley is condemned to death
The Nostromo touches down on LV-426 in response to a phantom signal.

Ripley is given her cross<
An alien creature is loosed onto the Nostromo after exploding from the chest of Executive Officer Kane.

Ripley falls the first time
Stripped to her underwear and caught by surprise, Ripley fights her first punishing solo battle against the monster that will devour her life.

Ripley meets her mother
After being taken aboard Weyland-Yutani’s space station, Ripley discovers that she has been in suspended animation for 57 years, and is shown a picture of her deceased daughter, who passed away at the age of 66. Ripley confronts her own failure as a mother in the form of a daughter old enough to have given birth to the still-young-thanks-to-stasis Ripley.

Simon of Cyrene carries the cross
Carter Burke and the company send a team of space marines to LV-426 (now home to a manned terraforming operation called “Hadley’s Hope”) with the promise that Ripley will not have to face active combat.

Veronica wipes the face of Ripley
In this case, it is Ripley who is doing the literal wiping, cleaning accumulated grime off the orphan Newt; Newt figuratively wipes away some of Ripley’s burden by standing in as both a surrogate daughter and an inspiring survivor of the alien scourge.

Ripley falls the second time
Taken unawares by the evil Burke, Ripley must fight two face huggers in the sealed medlab.

Ripley meets the daughters of Jerusalem
Ripley discovers the aliens’ cavernous egg chamber and, for the first time, witnesses the colossal xenomorph queen.

Ripley falls the third time
Ripley is forced into mortal combat with the queen.

Ripley is stripped of her garments
After crashing on the prison colony Fiorino 161, Ripley must shave her head in order to comply with the institution’s lice prevention policy.

Crucifixion: Ripley is nailed to the cross
Ripley discovers that she is pregnant with an alien spawn.

Ripley dies on the cross
Ripley dies, willingly and with an alien half exploded from her chest, in a vat of molten lead.

Ripley’s body is removed from the cross
Weyland-Yutani recovers Ripley’s DNA from the vat.

Ripley is laid in the tomb and covered in incense.
Ripley is laid in some kind of cloning device and covered in science. (Okay, that’s a stretch, but it confirms that the fourth movie sucked.)