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.
An Emphasis on Freedom
Jesus’s free acceptance of the suffering He underwent in His Passion — in spite of having the power to avoid it — distinguishes it from the rest of human suffering. Some skeptics compare the Passion with the horrendous tortures endured by prisoners of war or other victims of unspeakable violence. The intensity of the physical pain, the utter humiliation, and the psycho-emotional affliction are indeed comparable, which is one reason why people through the centuries have been able to find God’s presence even in the midst of atrocious suffering — they know that He experienced it too.
But if prisoners of war and other victims had been able to call down twelve legions of angels to free themselves from their torturers, they would have. Many of these men and women have suffered (and are even now suffering) courageously, and even heroically, but Christ suffered His atrocities voluntarily from start to finish, accepting them even though He had the power to avoid them.
One of the earliest surviving Christian liturgical texts, a third-century Eucharistic prayer (i.e. the prayer that refers to the narration of the Last Supper used by the Catholic priest during the sacrifice of the Mass), places special emphasis on this aspect of the Passion: “Before He was given up to death, a death Hhe freely accepted….” It was the freedom with which Christ accepted the “cup of suffering” that made it redemptive. He did not deserve to suffer; He had never taken part in the cause of suffering — sin, evil, selfishness. Yet He freely accepted it, out of love for the Father and love for every human soul. “Put up thy sword back into the scabbard,” He says to Peter in the Garden, and St. John records how He finished the statement, “The chalice which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (Jn 18:11). It is the bitter cup of suffering that would become the sweet cup of salvation.
Love and Suffering
His uniquely free acceptance of suffering transformed suffering — an evil in itself, a consequence of sin — into an instrument of salvation, because salvation is linked to love, and love means self-giving, and self-giving, in a world inundated with self-indulgence and in a human nature skewed towards self-centeredness, always involves some kind of suffering, some kind of self-denial. This is how Christ defined love, as self-sacrifice for the sake of the beloved. Undergoing His Passion was one way to make sure His disciples understood exactly what He meant, to give them a visual icon of authentic love:
This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you…. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another (Jn 15:12-14; 13:35).
In Christ’s Passion, the redeeming obedience which reversed original sin and overcame the forces of evil also reversed the meaning of human suffering. From then on, any human suffering accepted with faith and hope, and thereby united to Christ’s suffering, could share in the redemptive power of the Savior’s redeeming self-sacrifice. To witness the Passion without keeping that in mind is to miss a large part of the point.
The Silence of a Lamb
Christ knows that He is innocent. He knows that He is being tried unjustly (according to the Sanhedrin’s own rules, trials at night were considered invalid) and the accusations are false. He could have outwitted them in the courtroom just as He had confounded His enemies in many previous verbal battles. But He didn’t. He remained curiously passive, virtually silent. The prophets had predicted that the Redeemer would do so; just as lambs put up no resistance before they are slaughtered, so the suffering servant, the Messiah who was to redeem Israel, would quietly accept His victimhood:
He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth; he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53: 7).
Why? He didn’t really have to defend himself. He told the truth. It was all part of the divine plan, and He knew when to stay silent, when to suffer the injustice, and when to defend himself. There’s a bundle of mysteries here, and not even the most astute theologians admit to having all the answers. In the Gospel accounts Jesus did pepper His silence with certain comments at particular times. But why those comments, and why at those moments, and why so much silence?
Jesus Himself alludes to one of the reasons: He knew they wouldn’t listen. “If I shall tell you, you will not believe Me. And if I shall also ask you, you will not answer Me, nor let Me go” (Lk 22: 67-68). But He also knew that the Redeemer had to suffer in order to merit Redemption, so He wouldn’t defend himself to the point of avoiding suffering, but only to the point of helping His persecutors see the truth of what they were doing. He had predicted His suffering to His Apostles three times, but they only understood after it was over:
The Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the ancients and chief priests and scribes and be killed and the third day rise again…. [A]ll things shall be accomplished which were written by the prophets concerning the Son of man. For He shall be delivered to the Gentiles and shall be mocked and scourged and spit upon, and after they have scourged Him they will put Him to death. And the third day he shall rise again (Lk 9: 22; 18: 31-33).
Jesus foresaw it, every detail of it. Therefore, each of those details has a meaning, each is a strand in this story of faith, hope, love and forgiveness.
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.
