[Introduction] Early in the Lenten season of 1986 when I was a student at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, a friend, Jesuit classmate Joe O'Keefe, now dean of the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, invited me to participate in the service of the Seven Last Words at Saint Ignatius Parish in Chestnut Hill, Mass., where he was serving as transitional deacon that year.

What a common human experience these words of Jesus convey.