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God’s Passion: Praying with Mark

Reviewed by Terry Hinks.

This volume is the first in a series of books, which follow the lectionary cycle and offer individuals a way of praying with each Gospel. There are forty reflections which encourage the reader to engage with short passages from the Gospel and to pray the text into the reader’s life. It thus combines the ancient art of spiritual reading lectio divina with the Ignation tradition of the place of imagination.

This is not a manual showing us how to pray; rather it is the carefully crafted thoughts of a sensitive author. The benefit of the book is to be gained not by speed reading but slow and considered reading with reflection upon the text. Each chapter gives the reader a pattern to follow so the reader is assisted in their quest to spend time deliberately allowing the text to speak.

This is a refreshing book combining scholarship and spirituality in equal measures. It would be valuable for those who follow a lectionary or as a book for Lent.