Thoughts on (the) Passion
It's a play on words, juxtaposing our current fixation with intense feeling and action on behalf of something we champion and the usage recently brought back to public consciousness by Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I've been watching snatches of the film lately, trying to reflect on Jesus' voluntary acceptance of the unjust suffering imposed on him by both his own people and the Romans. There is a moment during the flogging that moved me the first time I saw it, and it did again yesterday. When the soldiers have finished beating him to the ground with the rods, thinking they are done, Jesus gathers his strength and stands back up, apparently inviting more. Some have criticized this moment, calling it too "John Wayne," too Clint Eastwood "make my day." But it moves me not as a sort of macho rebuttal of the guards--or of Satan for that matter, though it could be that--but as a moment in which Jesus simply lets it be known that he takes on this brutal suffering willingly, without hate, without resentment. As the guards renew their vicious attacks, this time with barbed whips, his mother Mary walks away, wondering when and how Jesus will choose to lay this suffering down. Again, his choice, his willingness to become the lamb of God led to the slaughter.
I suppose I believe this compassion of Jesus for the ones to whom he brought the good news--the poor, the lame, the blind, the outcast--is a supernatural thing. A miraculous gift given by God. Truly, this compassion is holy, and driven by love.
There's that love thing again, the one that never fails, that always hopes, always endures, always trusts. That, too...miraculous.
Confession time...in recent years, my passion has waned, driven underground by perhaps nothing more than an aversion to the other meaning of the word. Reading again in Merton's Seeds of Contemplation is leading me again to think of the role willing suffering plays in the process of transformation. The mistake of the world is to think that the love of God would naturally lead to an erasure of suffering, and since suffering rages on unabated, there must be no God's love, and therefore no God.
What we miss--what I miss--is that love and suffering are joined at the heart, that suffering is a primary means of transformation, especially when we take on the suffering of those unjustly wounded. Not to say God causes it, to change us, but no, he demonstrates his love by taking it on to himself, and we imitate him as we do the same.
Paul said, "I want to know Christ and the power of his rising, to share in his suffering..."
O Lord, make us willing to love as you do...
11:39:49 AM
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