Barabbas

This year for Lent I revisited Shusaku Endo's haunting novel Silence. For Holy Week, I decided to read this one by the Swedish Nobel laureate Pär Lagerkvist. Despite their differences, the parallels between the two books are striking. Here we're invited into the tragic life and the complicated yearnings (if not faith) of Barabbas, the man who was acquitted in the place of Jesus. This is a dark, unsettling book. But this Good Friday it leaves me pondering anew the mystery of faith: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.