Book excerpt: A battle rages between doubt and faith. Combining the words of Scripture, tradition, and legend with the author’s imagination, Silent Voices: Meditations for Holy Week contemplates what those nameless Holy Week silent participants were thinking and feeling. Can we see ourselves in the soldier, the thieves, the Marys, John, Pilate and his wife, Peter, Barabbas, Simon of Cyrene, Cleopas—even Judas? Can we feel what they felt, how they gloated, how they hurt, why they made the decisions they made? Will we put on their dusty sandals and wear their blood-stained robes? Are we willing to walk their walk, stumble, pronounce judgments, sputter denials, hear the taunts, wallow in grief, or be conflicted as they were conflicted? In these meditations the author tries to feel what it felt like to pick up his cross, or to nail him to it. From the perspective of those “silent ones” of the Gospels, with sand between our toes and the festering stench of the ancient world, we witness the sacrifice of our Lord. At the heart of each meditation are the questions “Who was this man?” “How would I have responded to his willing sacrifice?” and “How will I respond today?”