Today we begin the solemn period of Holy Week with the Mass for the Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. The beautiful readings lay out the story of God’s plan of salvation: Isaiah’s Song of the Suffering Servant and the ancient hymn of Christ’s kenosis, his emptying himself of his divinity, highlighting the power of the Passion narrative of Mark.
When we talk about the Passion of Christ, we relate it to his suffering that leads to his death on the Cross. Let me invite you to look at the Passion of Christ from another perspective.
Fr. Hans Kung, SJ, said that to give people a good and meaningful life, we need to give them something to live on, something to live for, and something to die for. So it was in the life of Christ.
Christ had a period in his life when he had to have something to live on. All available evidence shows that he was a carpenter—Jesus the son of Joseph the carpenter.
Then at a certain point, age 30, he discovers his something to live for, his mission. He sees this clearly in his beatific vision in the Baptism narrative: “You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.” (cf. Mark’s version)
Core
For three years, he lives out this mission as teacher; more than being a teacher, his core came from his identity as the beloved son of God. His mission focused on this, and in the words of Parker Palmer, “Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
So it was in the mission of Christ. His identity and integrity—“You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased”—became more and more central to his life and work. This had evolved into a mission where he had something to die for.
On his way to Jerusalem, where he was to fulfill this mission, God reveals Christ’s mission and identity to Peter, James and John: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” The confirmation is not just for Christ, but a public confirmation through the three apostles.
“The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.” (Isaiah 50: 7) He “set his face like flint” towards Jerusalem, entrusting himself to his Father confident he “shall not be put to shame.”
Christ journeyed to Jerusalem to complete his “something to die for.” He was to enter now his Passion, which is a living out of his “something to die for.”
The Passion started with his entry into Jerusalem. He is welcomed by the crowds: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The crowds who probably—most, if not some of them, at least—would, days later, jeer at him: “We have no king but Caesar! Crucify him!”
This is part of the Passion—the rejection, the betrayal of the very people for whom “He came to serve and not to be served, and to give his life as a ransom for all.” It was the rejection, betrayal and abandonment of his friends that brought him to the point of surrender: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Psalm 22)
Struggle
Our college professor in our Philosophy of Religion class said in our discussion of philosopher Gabriel Marcel’s phenomenology of hope that we must remember that Christ being fully human struggled on the Cross. Will his Father, for whom he lived, fulfill his promise?
This was part of Christ’s Passion. He agonized over this in the garden to the point of asking his Father to spare him, and then at that point he makes his final choice and surrender: “…Not my will, but your will be done.”
The Passion of Christ gave birth to Christian hope. “It is finished.” “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” The Passion of Christ broke his body and led to his death. Now he empties himself of his human life and his Father rewards him.
He completes the cycle, “though he was in the form of God… he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him…”
The Passion of Christ is our Passion because it is our hope. Our hope is that everything in our life has meaning—our something to live on and to live for—because of Christ’s Passion, Cross and Resurrection.
All this will not end in death; rather our something to die for is what gives us the fullness of life, the great freedom to make the great choice and the great act to offer in great love and great service to God and to others, “that others may have life, and life to the full.”
The Passion of Christ proved this “yesterday, today and forever.” The synthesis of our life that allows new life to emerge is in this pattern of his Passion, in our discovering and living our “something to die for,” our own passion. —CONTRIBUTED
