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

by Walter Wangerin Jr.

The death he died reflects a selfishness so extreme that by it I was divorced from God and life and light completely: I raised my self higher than God! But because the Lord God is the only true God, my pride did no more, in the end, than to condemn this false god of my self to death. For God will be God, and all false gods will fall before him.

“Jesus has many who love His Kingdom in Heaven,” writes Thomas a Kempis in The Imitation of Christ, “but few who bear his Cross. Many follow Jesus to the Breaking of the Bread, but few to the drinking of the Cup of His Passion. They who love Jesus for His own sake, and not for the sake of comfort for themselves, bless Him in every trial and anguish of heart, no less than in the greatest joy.”