I am really bad at reading this kind of books, that is slow meditative reading. (I read it in roughly two hours.) So I am in no way the right person to discuss this book, I can merely describe it, and even that is kind of unnecessary, given the title of the book. It is precisely this, seven meditations on the last Words of Christ. It is a very pretty book, for a paperback at least, with nice wood block prints to illustrate each meditation. (Though they are printed at a too low resolution – you see the pixels). Hauerwas tells of the background to this book in Hannah’s Child:
After I turned sixty, I noticed that I was growing old, but I dealt with that the way I have dealt with most of my life — I worked all the harder. And the combination of the Gifford Lectures and September 11, 2001, gave me good reason to do so. Still, I did begin to notice a difference. I do not know if the difference was different enough to say that I was “changing,” but I noticed I was able to write and speak with less hesitancy about God. I noticed it first when I wrote sermons on the seven last words of Christ for the Good Friday service at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York in 2003. I found that to be an exacting assignment. It was as serious as it gets.
So, If you’re the kind of person that wants a little book to go through slowly, for example during easter, this might be the book for you.
