The Passion

                About ten years ago, I started a Good Friday tradition of watching The Passion of the Christ, the 2004 Mel Gibson-directed film starring James Caviezel as Jesus.  It’s a powerful movie that I recommend highly, but be warned, it’s brutally graphic.  So much so, that my tradition only lasted a few years.  As I became more and more familiar with the movie, I started to anticipate the rough scenes and found myself preemptively closing my eyes to shield myself from the horrors of the crucifixion.  Well, if I’m going to close my eyes for two-thirds of the movie, what’s the purpose of watching it?

                It’s embarrassing to think that if I can’t handle the crucifixion in a movie, how would I have handled the real thing?  As much as I’d like to think that I’d bravely join Mary and John at the foot of the cross, I suspect that I would have been one of the disciples who ran away and hid. 

                It’s easy for us today to be numb to the horrors of the crucifixion.  We didn’t witness it for ourselves, and we know that the story has a happy ending.  Besides, who wants to think of such things when they remind us that Jesus wouldn’t have had to go through it if we weren’t a sinful people in the first place?  It’s much easier to focus on the resurrection than it is to contemplate Good Friday.  But as the saying goes, without Good Friday, there’s no Easter Sunday.  The resurrection only makes sense in the full context of Jesus’ life, passion, death and resurrection.  We need to consider Good Friday in order to understand what Easter Sunday really means.

          Since I’ve wimped out of watching The Passion of the Christ, I try to take some time on Good Friday to imagine how Jesus felt.  What it felt like to be falsely accused and condemned to death, scourged at the pillar, crowned with thorns, crushed under the weight of his instrument of execution, stripped, and nailed to the cross.  Of course, I can't really imagine what it was like for Jesus, but this little meditation certainly helps put my own Good Friday “sufferings” in context:  when I’m feeling tired from hours of liturgies; when I'm hangry from fasting for a few hours; and when I grouse about not having enough time to get things done.  It’s humbling to think that Jesus’ Good Friday was much worse than mine could ever be.  And a little humility seems to make Easter Sunday all the more meaningful.