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.
Resurrection
Without the death of the victim, a religious sacrifice is incomplete, since only a total obliteration can signify one’s total dependence on God’s favor. In Christ’s case, the death also expresses the extent of His love. He Himself had defined total love during the Last Supper: “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:33).
The archetype of heroism is total self-sacrifice for the sake of the beloved. It is an act that says more eloquently than any other, “I am glad that you exist; I want you to exist, to be all that you are meant to be; I want it so much that I will even give up my own life to make it happen.” That is how one modern philosopher has defined the virtue of love, and that is what Christ’s death on the Cross says to every man, woman, and child who ever walked or ever will walk the face of the earth: I am glad that you exist, I want you to exist, to have “life, and have life more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). He wanted it so badly that He was willing to hand Himself over to the powers of evil, to let them give Him their worst treatment, so as to pay the price for the redemption of sinners.
If it had ended there, however, the world may have been impressed by Jesus’s goodness, but that’s it. Someone who is good is not automatically worthy of one’s faith or hope. The Resurrection, the real conclusion of Christ’s sacrifice, adds a crucial characteristic to His incomparable goodness: incomparable power. As He had explained long before, “I have the power to lay My life down and to take it back up again” (Jn 10:18). The Resurrection, as mysterious as it is, is Christ’s identity card. If He had not risen from the dead, as the Old Covenant had predicted the Savior would, He would not be a true Savior, because He would be weaker than the powers of darkness, which had introduced evil, suffering, and death into the world.
Since He did rise from the dead, He shows that the powers of darkness have no power over Him. They gave it their very best shot, but His love is stronger. “Many waters cannot quench charity” (Song 8:7). That kind of love, that unconquerably strong love, that’s the kind of love you can build (or rebuild) a life around. The film recognizes this. Some critics try to make light of Christ’s sacrifice. They say the Romans killed four thousand Jews that year, and one more was no big deal. But from the Christian perspective it was the ultimate big deal. Countless people were crucified, only one ever got back up again. Only one person ever came back to life and walked away. That does indeed make a big difference.
Therefore, the film had to depict the Resurrection, but how do you show something so extraordinary and make it look believable? They thought long and hard about it. One option was to show the resurrected Christ encountering one of His disciples or Apostles, as the Gospels record. But that would, in essence, be the start of a whole other story, the story of the Resurrection. This movie was about the Passion. Co-screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald explains how they first stumbled across the idea they finally used.
I was visiting Florence and took my children to the Academia [the museum that displays Michelangelo’s famous fourteen-foot statue of David]. Most people don’t realize how many wonderful paintings there are in that museum. I was looking at some of them, and suddenly one caught my eye. It was a painting by Andrea del Verocchio, Da Vinci’s mentor. And it showed Christ’s Resurrection — not his post-Resurrection appearances, but the Resurrection itself. It showed Him sitting on the empty tomb and looking at the wounds in His hands. It mesmerized me. And that’s when I knew that we had to do the same thing; somehow we had to show the Resurrection, not the appearances, because the Resurrection really was the conclusion of the Passion.
And that’s what they did. The viewer sees the rock rolling back of its own accord, letting in a stream of sunlight (that doesn’t exactly accord with the Gospel accounts, which seem to indicate that the stone was rolled back later by an angel, but it works cinematographically). The light rests on the white shroud just as the body of Christ is mysteriously freed from it. On the one hand it looks natural — you see only sunlight, linen, and rock — but on the other hand it is entirely supernatural, because the body simply leaves the shroud behind, passing through the linen fibers just as sunlight passes through a window pane. Then the camera focuses on the resurrected Christ Himself.
His youth and strength have returned, and His face shows a fresh eagerness and joyful determination, as if He is about to go forth on a great task. You see none of His horrible wounds, and the contrast to the last glimpse of His tortured body is shocking — you even wonder if it’s really Him, or if the Passion really happened; maybe it was only a dream. But as He steps forward to begin the next stage of His redeeming mission you glimpse His right hand, and you know that it’s the same Christ, because you see the hole that the spike had ripped open. Now, though, it appears less gruesome than glorious. It too somehow glows. His other wounds were erased, but not these. They are telltale signs of His self-sacrificing love, of His unconditional willingness to forgive. Even though His suffering has come to an end, the story of His love and forgiveness has only just begun.
They decided not to extend the Resurrection sequence, even though the Gospels all end by narrating a series of encounters between the resurrected Christ and His Apostles and other disciples. For forty days Christ mingled with His followers, as the New Testament records, “To whom also He shewed Himself alive after His Passion, by many proofs, for forty days appearing to them, and speaking of the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Much Christian doctrine is derived from these encounters, but their lessons are complementary to the great lesson taught by the Passion. And that was the lesson, the living lesson, the story, that this film is really meant to tell.
What About a Sequel?
Will there be a sequel? That was one of the most popular questions audiences asked after the early screenings. They never got a direct answer. The Passion is the ultimate hero-story — the definitive act of self-sacrificing love. Nobody ever did more, nobody ever could. So if it’s the ultimate hero-story, and if great movies are great hero-stories, wouldn’t this mark the end of the line? Not necessarily. There are other hero-stories that are still worth telling. Maybe it’s time to tell stories about a different kind of heroism — “love in the little things” type of heroism. What about the kind of lives that most people don’t think of as heroic? Maybe the average Joe walking down the street is living a truly heroic life day after day, invisibly, and nobody knows it. That’s heroism too. Those stories could be told. Maybe they should be told; maybe the world needs to hear those stories too.
That’s the kind of heroism that Christ’s love has been inspiring ever since He gave His life on the Cross two thousand years ago. The kind of heroism fed by faith in the power of good to triumph over evil, and nourished by hope in the wisdom and love of a God who would die to give every man, woman, and child a ticket to heaven. The kind of heroism that the Apostle John, writing to the first Christian communities in his old age, identifies as the true mark of those who believe in Jesus:
In this we have known the charity of God, because He hath laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. He that hath the substance of this world and shall see his brother in need and shall shut up his bowels from him: how doth the charity of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth. In this we know that we are of the truth and in His sight shall persuade our hearts” (1 Jn 3:14-19).
Epilogue
by CE Senior Editor Mary Kochan
These Holy Week reflections have ended at Easter, calling us to live in the Resurrection power of our Lord. We conclude them with this portion of a letter from a Catholic man who is in a Georgia state prison:
I just got back from watching The Passion of The Christ. Let me tell you, that movie was just awesome, awesome, awesome! I have often used my imagination to picture what our Lord had to endure and many times I have tried to describe in detail to other people the torture and pain of His Passion, but nothing prepared me for that movie. I don’t have a weak stomach, but I was nauseous because I was thinking about the sins that I have committed and how it should have been me getting beaten like that. I have no idea what suffering is!
I found the movie to be scary and beautiful at the same time. On my way back to the dorm, I heard one guy telling another guy that the movie didn’t end right and that Mel Gibson must be going to make a Part 2. I told him, “This is Part 2” and I pointed at the moon in the sky and said, “The camera is on.”
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.
