His Passion: Christ's Journey to the Resurrection

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Year's Worth Of Daily Devotions!
Review: For any serious Christian, this spin-off journal released in conjunction with the new Mel Gibson Movie describing "The Passion" of the Christ is a wonderful daily companion, one that offers a year's worth of daily devotions organized around passages from the Gospels and accompanying reflections from a wide selection of erstwhile Biblical scholars. By focusing attention on the period of Jesus' passion, from Palm Sunday up to Easter Sunday a week later, this series of thought-provoking and educational daily devotions offers an opportunity for both personal experience and religious contemplation.

The book is lovingly illustrated, and is small enough to fit in one's jacket pocket or briefcase for easy reference and daily quiet time. The range of individual contributors referenced herein is impressive indeed, from Saint Augustine to Charles Wesley, from John Bunyan to Max Lucado, and from Philip Yancey to Walter Wangerin. Therefore, given the fact of 365 entries, there is a plethora of individual interpretations to aid one in his or her own spiritual questioning and growth. And the fact that it is such an attractive volume makes it a very personal and meaningful Easter gift for one's loved ones.

To avoid any possible confusion, however, one should mention that although this volume was inspired by and released in conjunction with the movie, and obviously has the same religious subject matter (The Passion of the Christ), as does the movie, it really has nothing to do with the Mel Gibson production in terms of photographs or movie dialogue. Instead, this is a wonderful religious tutorial organized as a series of daily vespers, tracing the course of the events of that most momentous week in the history of the world, the week covering the events leading to the divine sacrifice of the Christ. Beginning with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday through His capture in the Garden of Gethsemane to the raucous trial, His murderous treatment during the final twelve hours, and His final moments on the Cross, bearing the sins of the world. This is a serious book meant to facilitate both personal contemplation and religious devotion, and one I plan to use to my own continuing religious education.