The Word of the cross is a living word, crying out for reinterpretation as life takes new shape and expression. Reinterpreting the Gospel was particularly compelling for Matthew's church because his Christians lived in a time of profound transition. The Passion of Jesus, then, was not simply a story of suffering out of the past but a point of identification for the Christians of Matthew's own time.
For us twentieth-century Christians, who also know the peculiar suffering and hope of living in an age that is both dying and being born, the Passion of Jesus according to Matthew has special meaning.
Donald Senior, CP, has labored long to fathom and share the meaning of the passion of Jesus in all its aspects. The passion narratives have been a major focus of his scholarly career, beginning with his dissertation at the University of Louvain on the passion narrative according to Matthew, which is a significant contribution to scholarship on the death of Jesus. Now the harvest of his years of biblical, theological and historical studies on the passion is presented in The Passion Series.
