We pick up the second part of Chapter Fifteen at the foot of the cross as Jesus is Crucified at Golgotha.
Darkness spreads over the whole land until the ninth hour when Jesus cries out: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus breathes his last as the women who followed him to Jerusalem look on from a distance.
Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, asks Pilate for the body of Jesus. He takes him down from the cross, wraps him in a linen shroud and lays him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. Joseph rolls a large stone against the entrance.
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
Reading Mark in Advent is an 18-part podcast series that sees us upload a chapter of Mark’s Gospel each weekday of the season.
With a global pandemic sweeping the world and lockdowns and restrictions placed on our everyday living – not to mention patterns of worship and prayer – this is very much “the Word in Lockdown”.
But the Word of God is never locked down, isolated and contained. As Pope Francis says:
“The word of God is alive and active (Hebrews 4:12); it does not die, nor does it age, but it remains for ever (cf. 1 Peter 1:25). It stays young in the presence of all that passes away (cf. Matthew 25:35) and preserves those who put it into practice from inner aging.”
