Why the Cross?

Holy Week is an almost entirely privateevent in our culture. Apart from Palm Sunday and Easter there are nopublic holidays, no processions, no pageantry, often not even Churchservices to mark the last days of Christ on earth. There may be someevening worship, mostly poorly attended, to guide us through Hispassion. But this is a week that deserves ourfocused attention even if we are busy and find no time to attendchurch. Why the Cross? is acollection of meditations, beginning with Palm Sunday, restingbriefly on every day's events, reaching into Good Friday withreflections on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the cross, andmoving on to the stillness of Holy Saturday and finding its climax inthe celebration of Easter. Thisis a book superbly suited to the needs of those who want tounderstand His passion for abundant life, who wish to go beyond thefacile phrases of pulpit lingo, who suspect that He did not come todie but to live that we might have life. This journey through HolyWeek dwells on the various representations of the cross in arthistory. It encourages the readers not just to think about thatcross, but to make it and take it up and follow Him who gave His lifeon it.