Yesterday afternoon, I decided to watch on DVD the one hundred and twenty-six minute film The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson, depicting the final twelve hours in the life of Jesus Christ.
Human Beings have been flaying and butchering one another since the dawn of time. And yet, Mel Gibson’s film, although not without violence, sacrifice and death, carries with it seeds of life, promises of creative and life-giving love. In fact, as I watched this film, I was overcome with a sense of deep fear. I was fearful about a God who could forgive such atrocity. I was fearful that He would answer His Only Begotten Son’s desire: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Fearing God does not mean being scared witless by His implacable wrath; but knowing that it is humanly impossible to love and serve His law of justice and compassion.
Drawing on political, philosophical, literary, and theological sources, I tried to trace some logical understandings about the idea of tragic sacrifice and the scapegoat. Mel Gibson’s film reveals only at the end, the mystery of God’s pure otherness and our need to be converted. This mystery is made manifest through the “tear”.
And so, God wept.
After watching this terrible drama of love not loved, I saw the tear. It was a huge and unforgettable tear that fell to the ground as though it wanted to initiate the seeds of life – those promises of creative and life-giving love. It was the tear of joy mixed with pain to underscore the crucifixion’s severity. It was the tear that brought with it the promise of Easter - the teaching that love is stronger than death.
“My God My God, why have you abandoned me?”
I sensed in that tear the ache of God’s heart and His desire to become, once again, flesh of our flesh. Could it be that He was asking His Only Begotten Son for forgiveness? It certainly would be becoming of the Father who forgives to ask for forgiveness. But this question is what makes this love so disruptive, traumatic and uncompromising. And therefore, this is what makes the mystery of God - a mystery. It shatters all thoughts about an “easy love.”
And so we cried tears of human failure in front of such Divine Love - a love that knows no bounds. It is a love that is alarmingly unconditional, repudiating all compromise and having nothing to do with power, but only mercy. That tear of Divine Love is the remorseless force that casts down the mighty, raises up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.
The film of Mel Gibson brought with it much debate and controversy. I watched it in the silence of my cell, aware of the previous contestation by many parts of the religious world. And it was in the silence of my cell that I understood that the real message of Christ’s passion is that we are saved by love, and that only love is believable. This folly, this scandal, and this weakness supplant knowing, reason, order and power. And I, panic stricken, remembered the words of St. Augustine in his Confessions of God as “one who fills me with terror and burning love: with terror in so much as I am utterly other than it, with love in that I am akin to it.”
And so, in the silence of my cell…I knelt down and listened as the angel cried.
Dom Christopher
Abbot of Peco
