THE CROSS AS REVEALING THE PASSION

THE CROSS AS REVEALING THE PASSION

We tend to think that "passion" here refers to intense sufferings, as in "passionate suffering". This is not wrong, but misses a key point. Passion comes from the Latin, PASSIO, meaning passiveness, non-activity, absorbing something more than actively doing anything. The "Passion" of Jesus refers to that time in his life where his meaning for us is not defined by what he was doing but rather by what was being done to him.

The public life and ministry of Jesus can be divided into two distinct parts: Scholars estimate that Jesus spent about three years preaching and teaching before being put to death. For most of that time, for all of it in fact except the last day, he was very much the doer, in command, the active one, teaching, healing, performing miracles, giving counsel, eating with sinners, debating with church authorities, and generally, by activity of every sort, inviting his contemporaries into the life of God.

From the time he walked out of the last supper room and began to pray in Gethsemane, that activity stops. He is no longer the one who is doing things for others, but the one who is having things done to him. In the garden, they arrest him, bind his hands, lead him to the high priest, then to Pilate. He is beaten, humiliated, stripped of his clothes, and eventually nailed to a cross where he dies. This constitutes his "passion", that time in his life and ministry where he ceases to be the doer and becomes the one who has things done to him.

What is so remarkable about this is that our faith teaches us that we are saved more through his passion (his death and suffering) than through all of his activity of preaching and doing miracles.

The cross teaches us that we, like Jesus, give as much to others in our passivity as in our activity. When we are no longer in charge, beaten down by whatever, humiliated, suffering, and unable even to make ourselves understood by our loved ones, we are undergoing our passion and, like Jesus in his passion, have in that the opportunity to give our love and ourselves to others in a very deep way.

(Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI)