The gospel accounts change when we come to the final days of Jesus’ life and for the first time we are given precise timings when things happen, ‘It was night’, ‘the next morning’, ‘it was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him’, ‘it was noon’, ‘it was three o’clock in the afternoon’. The Hour is Come enables readers to enter into the experience of Jesus, his disciples and all the other players in the Passion narrative by using ‘real time’ to immerse us in the story.

Ideal for daily reading during Lent, Holy Week and Easter, it offers scripture reflections and prayers that trace the journey to and beyond the cross. It begins on Mothering Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, with a reminder that Jesus’ journey to the cross began in infancy. The pace is slow at the beginning but during the great ‘Three Days’ from Maundy Thursday evening until Easter Day, the story unfolds hour by hour as it happens. Then the pace slows again as we move through Easter’s fifty days to Pentecost.

This presentation reveals a God so intimately involved with human life that the ticking clock becomes part of how we know Jesus.