This set of seven reflections follows the traditional church sequence of ‘The Seven Last Words of the Cross’ utterances that the gospel narratives place on the lips of Jesus and attempts to connect them with the reality of faith and abuse in our contemporary world. In his foreword to the book, Richard Rohr says this:

Each powerful meditation … was not the sentimentalised Good Friday ‘seven last words’ that I had grown up with but a full body blow of contact with Reality. Making use of the biblical scholarship and sharp insight that we have all come to expect of him, Walter Bruegemann then goes further. He reveals an amazing awareness of human suffering, family, relationships, despair, hard won faith and personal grief that the crucifixion accounts beautifully and subtly reveal.’