For Holy Week, Catholic Exchange is presenting a series of condensed excerpts from Inside the Passion by Father John Bartunek. These reflections will greatly enhance your appreciation of the movie The Passion of The Christ, but even more, they are rich in theological insights into the suffering our Lord experienced for our salvation.
The Authority to Kill
According to the Jewish law of the time, the just punishment for blasphemy — the crime Jesus had been convicted of — was death. The Jewish leaders, however, lacked the authority to administer the death penalty; the Romans had usurped that authority to further their plan of conquest and assimilation. As a result, Caiaphas and his accomplices had to bring Jesus before the Roman Procurator and convince him to ratify the death sentence. They knew it would be tricky, for two reasons.
First, Pilate had little respect for Jewish laws and customs, as he had already demonstrated more than once during his tour of duty there. The Romans tended to stay aloof from their subjects’ religious practices, though they were tolerant as long as the practices didn’t interfere with the mandatory worship of the state gods. Getting embroiled in religious disputes with “the natives” would likely be unappetizing for Pilate.
Second, Caiaphas and his contingent of leaders knew that Pilate would be well aware of Jesus’s popularity. His triumphant entry into Jerusalem amid adoring crowds hailing Him as the Messiah, the Son of David, and the promised King of Israel would hardly have gone unnoticed by this astute politician. How was Pilate to know that the same crowds who hailed Jesus as their Messiah five days earlier wouldn’t react violently against the Procurator’s handing out a death sentence? Hindsight shows the unlikelihood of such an eventuality, but Pilate didn’t have the luxury of hindsight.
More than Mere Politics
The repartee among Caiaphas, Annas, and Pilate brings these issues to light, and understanding the background helps clarify the subtext of those exchanges. But Christian tradition sees a deeper meaning behind the mundane political reality.
One of the differences between God’s Old Covenant and Jesus’s New Covenant is the idea of universality. The New Covenant, so Christians believe, extends the favor God had shown to a single nation in the Old Covenant (the Chosen People of Israel) to the entire human family (the “Gentile nations” as the Old Testament refers to non-Israelites). This idea appears frequently throughout the New Testament. After His Resurrection, Jesus sends His Apostles on a mission to the whole world:
Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Mt 28:19-20)
St. Paul repeatedly expresses the universality of Christ’s redemption by applying it to both Jews and Greeks (“Greeks” was a catch-all term for non-Jews, since Greek was the common language spoken by the different peoples who comprised the eastern Empire): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).
The frequent cropping up of heretical and schismatic factions in the early Christian Church often threatened this universality. By the second century, the bishops who remained faithful to the doctrine of Christ’s Apostles were using the term “catholic” (from the Greek word for “universal”) to distinguish between those divisive factions and the many authentic Christian communities. This was the origin of the name “the Catholic Church.”
For Christ’s self-sacrifice to have such universal repercussions, it would have to be offered in a universal context, under the condemnation not only of Caiaphas and other Jewish leaders, but also with the approval of the Gentile leaders, represented by Pilate. Since “one died for all” (2 Cor 5:14), since the Savior takes upon Himself the responsibility for the sins of all, it is appropriate that all nations, all peoples are implicated in His suffering and death. As a result, the salvation purchased by that suffering and death is offered to all peoples, not only to Israel. “For the grace of God our Savior hath appeared to all men,” St. Paul writes in his New Testament letter to Titus (Ti 2:11).
Flesh and Blood Realities
Since God is all-powerful and all-knowing, He could have chosen to send the Savior at a different moment in history, one when Israel was independent, for instance. But He didn’t. From a Christian perspective, the involvement of the Roman government in Christ’s Passion and death is no accident, just as it was no accident that Jesus was born in Bethlehem instead of Joseph and Mary’s hometown of Nazareth. In that case as well, God’s plan of salvation mysteriously moved forward through the mediation of a mundane governmental reality: a decree requiring all families to travel back to their tribal city so Caesar could take an imperial census.
Authentic Christian spirituality always includes this incarnational — i.e. concrete and historical — dimension. For Christians, God’s omnipotence doesn’t show itself in His forceful domination of human freedom. Rather, it is revealed in His marvelous orchestration of a divine plan of salvation in and through the flesh-and-blood realities of the human condition, human freedom included. As St. Theresa of Avila expressed it in the 1500s: “I find God amidst the pots and pans.”
Fr. John Bartunek received a Bachelor of Arts in history from Stanford University in 1990, graduating cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He spent a year as a professional actor in Chicago before entering the Legionaries of Christ, a religious congregation. He is currently studying for an advanced degree in moral theology in Rome, where he resides. You can write to him at fatherjohn@insidethepassion.com.
Deepen your journey into the unforgettable film, The Passion of The Christ, with the only authorized book that goes behind the scenes. Fr. John Bartunek, LC, provides biblical, historical, and theological insights gleaned from hours spent on the set and interviews with the director, actors, and filmmaking crew. Inside the Passion is the most complete and thorough commentary on the movie you will read. Foreword by Mel Gibson. Click here for more information or to order.
