The Messiah Jesus walks resolutely toward Jerusalem. He goes ahead of them, like someone who knows the road perfectly and what awaits him at its end. Behind him, the disciples follow with a mixture of respect, anxiety and incomprehension. Some are struck by their master’s determination; others sense vaguely that this journey carries something grave within it. Even those who accompany the group, a little further back, perceive an unusual tension and are frightened by it.
Seeing their distress, the Messiah Jesus stops and calls the Twelve aside. He wants to speak to them without witnesses, as one entrusts a heavy secret to those who must bear it. He tells them that the moment has come when everything the prophets announced about the Son of Man is going to be fulfilled. He does not speak in parables: he describes precisely what is about to happen.
He tells them that he will be handed over to the leaders of the people, to the priests and to the scribes. They will condemn him to death, then deliver him to the Gentiles. There he will be mocked, insulted, humiliated, struck and finally put to death. The Messiah Jesus hides nothing of the violence that awaits him: he lays out before them the whole chain of events, as if he were already watching each scene unfold.
But he immediately adds that this is not the end. After all this, he will rise on the third day. These words, though full of light, fail to dispel the shadow hanging over the disciples. They hear the announcement, but it remains incomprehensible to them. The meaning escapes them, as if a veil kept them from grasping the scope of what he is saying. They can neither imagine the depth of the suffering foretold, nor conceive the reality of the promised resurrection.
Around them, the road to Jerusalem goes on, and Jesus resumes his walk. He advances with a strange peace, an inner strength that the others do not yet understand. He knows what awaits him, yet he does not draw back. The disciples, for their part, follow without understanding, torn between fear, faithfulness and the inability to grasp what is being fulfilled before their eyes.