Second Week of Lent, Wednesday, March 10

Jesus predicts his Passion and Death and the Church has us recall the prophet Jeremiah. "The people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem said, ‘Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah.'" The plot is contrived by carefully noting Jeremiah's words to see how he might be destroyed "by his own tongue." How striking it is that the same plot and the same protagonists are involved as in the time of Jesus.

Recently, critics of "The Passion of the Christ" have said that the presentation of Jesus is skewed and lopsided because it only focuses on his suffering and death, gives little about his life, and barely presents the Resurrection. Some feel that so much suffering on the big screen is inappropriate and extreme.

Some of the same criticism was leveled at the early Christians' devotion to Christ the Crucified One. Many said that it was barbaric that his followers would adore him in the despicable image of Jesus Crucified on the Cross. They wanted to get past all that and go back to his life as a warm and loving man who explained the truth about love and life to the poor people of his day, as the man who revealed the mysteries of God and healthy, happy living.

But Christ's entire life was a movement toward the Cross. From the time he was born, Jesus was working his way toward Calvary. I remember years ago seeing a statue in a Church in Italy that graphically communicated this idea. It showed the infant, Jesus, peacefully and contentedly asleep, but instead of a pillow and mat, he was curled up on two small tree branches in the form of a cross. In his public life, he predicted that his Passion and Death would happen and after his Resurrection he explained how it was necessary that the Christ should suffer (when he spoke to the disciples on the road to Emmaus). Today's Gospel presents one of those predictions.

Everyone is free to like or dislike the movie. But it seems that many of the criticisms about its being extreme or fanatical are really a smokescreen. People seem to draw the focus away from the basic, inescapable reality that we were saved by the loving sacrifice of our Innocent Savior at the hands of sinners. He shed his blood, just as Moses sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the people to signify their acceptance of the Covenant. This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting Covenant, which will be shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins. We do not want to face that responsibility—understandably—but we must. We are the sinners responsible for Christ's suffering and death on the Cross which redeems us by his blood.

I'd like to share a quote of Pope Paul VI that I have often read because it is so appropriate to our times, though he spoke these words in 1966 shortly after the close of Vatican Council II.

     If we correctly discern the orientation now being given to our modern education we will note that it leads to a certain hedonism, to the easy life, to a certain attempt to eliminate the cross from our concerns [...] How often we also try to eliminate, in our interpretation of the Gospel, those pages of Our Lord's Pas-sion to take from it only what makes our life beautiful, serene, poetic, lyric, resplendent and spiritual! That bloody, tragic page of the Cross terrorizes us, and we want never to open it [...] Also, in these modern times, after the Council, haven't we often felt the temptation to believe that the moment has come to convert Chris-tianity into something easy, to make it comfortable, without any sacrifice; to make it conform to the comfortable, elegant and normal ways of the rest of men and to the worldly way of life? But this cannot be!
     Christianity cannot do away with the cross. Christian life is not possible without the strong and great burden of duty. It is not possible without this passage, this Paschal mystery of sacri-fice. If we were to try to take this away from our life, we would be deluding ourselves and we would weaken Christianity. We would have transformed Christianity into a soft and comfortable interpretation of life, while on the other hand, our Master, Our Lord, has told us that it is necessary to carry the cross with its bitterness and sorrows, and with its absolute and, if necessary, tragic demands. (Paul VI, Address, 8-IX-1966)

Some well-meaning people want a Christianity that does away with the Cross. They propose a Christianity that is soft and comfortable. But anyone who loves, suffers; because love requires sacrifice. Whoever does not want to suffer, does not know how to love. That person may experience pleasure and some kind of fulfillment, but not love. The Cross is an affront to so many, in every age, and now again in our own time. Those who cannot admit they have little or no love in their lives react angrily and resentfully to the story of the Crucifixion and death of the One who demonstrates the greatest love of all time. He lays down his life for his friends.

We should not be taken aback by the constant warnings against the story of the Gospel or give them importance. It has always been the same. The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. As persons who love, we come to serve, to sacrifice, and to love. Mary, the Mother of Jesus and our mother, is the guide for us to discover how to accomplish this in each of our own lives.

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