"Thinking as God Does": The Passion according to Mark

When Jesus first teaches his disciples that he must suffer, be rejected and killed, then rise (Mk 8:31), the response is that this cannot be the way to something great. But Jesus remains committed to God’s way of doing things. Mark’s Passion story tells just how committed Jesus remains to God’s will, dying alone but awakening faith in a lone Roman centurion. This year we will hear Mark’s Passion on Palm Sunday. We will spend this day looking closely at how Mark tells of Jesus bearing his cross and what listening to what Mark writes means for our discipleship and picking up our cross.
Father Joel Macul, OSB, S.T.L., was the abbot of St. Paul’s Abbey in Newton, NJ, from 1997 to 2015. Prior to that, he taught Scripture at Tangaza College and Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. He came to the monastery in Schuyler in January 2017 where he serves as prior.