Reliving the Passion: Meditations on the Suffering, Death, and the Resurrection of Jesus as Recorded in Mark.

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

this is the strength of our sacred story, that when we hear it we experience it; and in the experience we meet the Christ; and him whom we meet in the extremes of his love, we must likewise love.

if you do not interrupt your life with convictions of the death to come, then neither shall your death, when it comes, be interrupted by life. “Life now, death later,” indeed! But your life will be now only, and brief. Your death will be forever.

we will yearn to hear the Gospel story again and again, ever seeing therein our death in his, and rejoicing that we will therefore know a rising like his as well.

Only when I have the courage fully to look, clearly to know myself—even the evil of myself—will I admit my need for healing. But if I look away from her whom I have hurt, I have also turned away from her who might forgive me. I reject the very source of my healing.

My denial of my sin protects, preserves, perpetuates that sin! Ugliness in me, while I live in illusions, can only grow the uglier.

Jesus did choose—not only to take the sin within himself, not only to reflect the squalid truth of my personal need, but also to reveal the tremendous truth of his grace and forgiveness. He took that sin away.