As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. It was born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider its legacy. Many posts in this Prison Journal have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:

“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”

And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight for a time to write a post about the ascent to Calvary. Then I repeated that effort year after year, with each post presenting a different scene in the Passion of the Christ.

Taken as a whole, these Holy Week posts now form a complete Way of the Cross. Some readers have found them to be inspiring. So this year we have collected our Holy Week posts, not in the order in which they were written, but in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative. They become, for some readers, a personal Holy Week retreat.

We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance.