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 Bitter Aftertaste of Sin
Theologians and spiritual writers generally agree that there were three essential dimensions, three main causes, of Jesus’s pain in Gethsemane.
First, Christ’s suffering in the Garden was a unique internal experience of sin. Jesus Himself was free from sin. He had never given in to temptation and selfishness; He stayed faithful to the natural law and to God’s will for Him personally all through His life. This sinlessness was an essential characteristic of the Savior, prefigured by the Old Covenant requirement that sacrifices offered in reparation for sin be animals “without blemish.”
In Gethsemane, however, the evil of sin is poured into His soul. He is made the scapegoat of all the sins that men and women had ever committed, and all the sins they were going to commit. He took upon Himself the responsibility for every act of betrayal and infidelity, every injustice, every crime against God, man, and nature perpetrated by the entire human race. Even people who are used to sinning feel agonizing remorse when faced with the true nature and consequences of their sinful actions. That gnawing, deadening weight of guilt was intensified almost beyond recognition in the pristine soul of the Savior, both because of His perfect love for God — which sin scorns — and because of the sheer quantity and atrocity of the crimes He was assuming. The New Testament attempts to describe this indescribable reality with a paradox: “Him [Christ], who knew no sin, He [God] hath made sin for us: that we might be made the justice of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21).
Later, St. Paul explains the paradox more fully, linking what happened in Gethsemane to the whole course of Christ’s Passion: “And you [sinners], when you were dead in your sins…He [God] hath quickened together with Him, forgiving you all offences. Blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us…. And He hath taken the same out of the way, fastening it to the Cross” (Col 2:13-14).
In His Passion, which starts in Gethsemane, Christ took upon Himself the responsibility and consequences of all human sin.
For members of a fallen race, sin is a common occurrence and familiar companion, but for Christ, sin was “the scent and poison of death.” The mere vision of it would have repelled Him utterly. But this was no mere vision; it was a spiritual communion, a spiritual identification with the responsibility, the guilt of all those sins. Consequently, for Jesus, this was an indescribable inner torture.
Through the centuries, other artistic renditions of this biblical scene have depicted this unfathomable burden of sin more explicitly. Some show devils and demons mocking Jesus, an in-your-face parade of sin’s grotesqueness. Such arresting images communicate the theological meaning of the moment, but create an aura of otherworldliness around Christ’s battle. Somehow, they come across as unreal, fairy-tale like images. To keep the struggle as visually real as possible — and perhaps, even more haunting — the film opts to accentuate the cosmic elements. The moon, the clouds, the earth are all caught up in a supernatural tension.
This artistic choice echoes the writers of the New Testament. They don’t describe the details of why Christ was suffering in the Garden. But they do make an allusion to cosmic symbols. One of the Gospel writers, St. John, for example, marks the beginning of the Passion with three simple but heavily charged words: “It was night” (Jn 13:30).
The Torment of Unrequited Love
A second source of Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane was His own privileged knowledge. Jesus knew how useless His self-sacrifice would be for the many individuals who would knowingly reject His offer of salvation. Jesus had nothing to gain personally from coming to earth and redeeming the human family. He did it solely out of love — a love for His Father who looked with mercy on the fallen human race. A love for every person caught in the vicious circle of selfishness. Jesus knew that sin doomed man to a deep, existential frustration. What every human heart needed above all else — intimate friendship with God — became unattainable.
Human beings were created to find meaning and fulfillment in that friendship, but original sin had shattered the possibility. Unless God renewed His offer of friendship and reached out a hand to heal those hearts mortally wounded by their compliance with evil, the world had no hope. Christ embodied the renewed offer of divine friendship with humankind. His hand could heal because it had never given in to evil. He did it out of an intense, knowing, personal love for each person. Yet during those agonizing hours in the Garden, most spiritual writers agree, God showed Jesus the countless people through the centuries who would refuse His offer and persist in their selfishness. That truth added inconsolable distress of unrequited love to the torture of biting remorse.
The film’s visual depiction of this agony is captivating, but in reality it is a mere token of the suffering that must have really taken place. The Bible describes Christ’s suffering as being “sorrowful unto death.” What exactly could that mean? What is that feeling? What must that have been like? Artists — film directors included — tend to have highly sensitive temperaments that exacerbate their own sufferings and increase their capacity for empathy, but even their worst sufferings pale in comparison with what Christ must have experienced.
The Frailty of Human Nature
Taking all human sin upon Himself and knowing that, even so, many people would still reject His offer of salvation were, most spiritual writers agree, the first two causes of Christ’s suffering in the Garden. The third cause was additional privileged information: Jesus knew beforehand, vividly and viscerally, all that He would have to go through in the next twelve hours — the humiliation, the betrayal, the rejection, the injustice, the imprisonment, the beatings, the flagellation, the torture, the mockery, the crucifixion, the death.
Considering the immensity of the first two burdens, this third burden can easily seem almost inconsequential. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ was a real man, a man in His thirties, in the prime of His life. Far from alleviating the indescribable disappointment and anxiety that any man would feel facing such a painful failure (at least naturally speaking it was a failure), His divinity only enhanced it. His humanity was perfect, and therefore perfectly sensitive.
Precisely because of this third reason some people believe that the combat in the Garden must have been easy for Jesus. After all, He was the Son of God; He wasn’t weak, ignorant, and selfish like your average human. Besides, He knew that His suffering would only last a little while, and then He would rise from the dead and reign forever. Sure He suffered, but not like us; He didn’t really suffer the agony of doubt, despair, loneliness — all the real scourges of mankind’s existential precariousness.
The reality of the Passion as narrated in the Gospels disagrees. Although the human mind has difficulty comprehending exactly how the Son of God could combine His special divine prerogatives with an authentic experience of absolute human misery, it is clear that He did. The Gospel writers use the strongest words they can find to describe the experience. The film follows suit. Every element of the scene is orchestrated to communicate agonizing mortal tension. Christ is given a full awareness of what He will endure, why, and for whom; Christ sees all the victories and losses; He sees the whole drama; He sees eternity.
Contemplating deeply and prayerfully the reasons behind His suffering can help the human heart accept the truth of its incomprehensible immensity. This is the common experience of saints and sinners alike through the centuries.
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.
