5. The Passion of Christ

"Par la croix et la roue, par le feu et le pal, par la hache et la corde, dans la fosse commune de l'histoire sont tombes tant de supplicies! Et cependant, la mémoire des hommes n'est obsédée que des souffrances d'un seul." (Transl. In footnote!)

Man's memory is obsessed by One only, for all can recognise themselves in Him. The parching thirst which chokes them, He cries it out in public. The word imprisoned in their throat and which they cannot express, he cries out in their stead. When despair gnaws at their very being, He screams at the heavens and, victim of our infernal world He asks: "Why"? Georges Bernanos, in his well known novel: The Diary of a Country Curate, puts into the mouth of the Parish Priest of Tory the reflexion that each of us can, in the Gospel, try to find "his rightful place": some where, in Bethlehem, or Nazareth, on the way to Galilee or wherever find that spot where the Lord met us, that day above all other days, when His eyes met ours.

Now as if by chance, it was in the Garden of Gethsemane that the young priest found himself, and "at that moment yes", it is a strange coincidence at that precise moment when, placing his hand on Peter's shoulder, Jesus asked this question a rather useless and almost naive question yet so tender and courteous: "Are you sleeping"?

We slept profoundly. I was in a deep sleep. I was in a sort of daze, until the day when I looked at a cross and seemed to see it for the first time. It was a cheap crucifix which fortunately one sees less frequently nowadays, but I had heard talk of "The Affair", and my spirit became as it were haunted by it. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to take it seriously as though it were a question of life or death. I began to wake up and to exist. It was for me an electroshock; everything began to Vibrate. I came out of the coma and once more felt my heart beat. A bright light tore at the film which covered my eyes.

Now I did not know at that moment, whether the tortured One was a man or if he was God, one or the other or perhaps both simultaneously. That was not my question. What I did feel was an extraordinary authority emanating from him, a rootedness, a fullness, a presence, a power, a depth, a personality, something never before experienced, never before seen nor imagined; something so strong and so true, that nothing could ever be compared to it, that everything henceforth would be affected by it, in short, the eruption of some unsurpassable and absolute new thing.

How could one ever have become used to the sight of this man nailed to the wood? It is beyond me! But from the moment that the "Affair" took hold of me, I have never been the same as I was before, never more "innocent". I read an account of the Passion and my eyes were opened for good. I did not sleep that evening, nor have I ever recovered completely from that sleepless night. When in Cuba one day, Bartholomew de Las Casas opened his eyes and discovered around him not just one crucifix, but millions and millions; his life too was never the same afterwards.

I saw this unpretentious man, the essence of freedom and goodness, tracked down as if he were a savage beast. I beheld Health and Beauty destroyed, Justice condemned, the Word silenced and Life assassinated. I witnessed totally irresponsible purveyors of knowledge who were absolutely blinded. I saw the fickle crowd, the cruel and bestial populace, the friend who sold his friend, betraying him with a kiss and then hanging himself in a fit of madness and dispair...

"Light was there, but all were blind to its rays. The Word was there but the ears of all were deaf Love was there but no one suspected that Love could be a reality. They were sick to the point that they were ignorant of the very meaning of Health. They were dead and so completely dead, that they considered themselves alive. So turned away from the Living God were they, so far from his truth, that they esteemed that everything was in order. So accustomed were they to sinning, that they could not even conceive what sin is; so vowed to the abyss and so enveloped by its flames, that they interpreted the abyss as God and its flames as love."

Ah indeed! must we listen to the poets, the cursed ones and the rest, to discover that we are already in the abyss, slowly losing our sensitivities, ending up by being ignorant of what could be missing, reduced to brute status, unable to suffer, to weep, to have desires, to regret anything "The world is a bottomless drain, where the most infamous seals scramble about and gyrate on hills of filth." "Daily we descend further step by step, without the batting of an eyelid, through stinking darkness!"

If I had to say where I recognise myself in the Passion, I would have to state without hesitation: in the place of Jesus! And it is also the place where many of us merit to be, as the Good Thief clearly saw. Penitents of another age recognised this very well when they walked barefooted, carrying a cross, jostled by the crowd and insulted by the people: there are kicks which go unrecorded! Who would not merit if not ultimate punishment at least a severe correction? Who then is it who disobeys the most elementary rules of justice, the most sacrosanct laws of life and of love? Who is impious, proud, a blasphemer, taking upon himself the attributes of God? Who then will end up by destroying the wonderful Temple which is creation? Who for a long time has lost all contact with the living God, is unable to pray, is incapable of discovering his presence, incapable of listening to Him, incapable of speaking to Him? Who finds himself lost and abandoned? Who if not the great majority of our contemporaries? Everyone, except Him: He who should never have found Himself in that situation!

Here is the Innocent One, charged with the wrongdoings of which we are guilty! His Face bears marks of insults, the slaps, the spittle merited by our false claims. The roles are reversed!

"You were the high and mighty one! You wished to lord it over everyone! My lord, just a moment: we are about to serve you! You have foreseen everything, prophet of new times to come, can you identify the under the table kicks? You shine with ridicule... ah little god, if only you could see yourself!"

What is really hard is to see our own flesh and blood incarnate in another and carried to the ultimate limits of truth. It is an insupportable wrench, to be snatched from our very skin, and to be a spectator of our own destiny. Here in front of me is One who is living out my very death, someone who is not actually undergoing it, but who sees it clearly, to the very last breath, radically. His cry of despair echoes through my bones, strikes suddenly at my taste for the absurd, and denounces my resignation. The call resonates through my being. A word found for a God who has disappeared. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Yes, why, oh why, are you hiding from me?

In the moist putrefaction, Jesus is our cleansed and disinfected wound. He is our re-opened wound and I cannot endure it. It's too great a scandal, too hard to bear. "It might be just for us, but as for Him, He did no wrong" I suffer for Him. I make protests for Him, I express my solidarity: I begin to love. Hell is split open, hell is inhabited: we are invited to an immense communion...

How can God love us like this? How can He endlessly offer us His friendship, his forgiveness and His truth, however much we insult and reject Him? How can He love us unconditionally and irreversibly, jealously and perseveringly? How can He who created us, who knows us, go so far as to forfeit the initiative, and, sensitive, vulnerable and mortal, put Himself totally in our hands? It is here that all the weight and content of His word of love becomes fully credible: He gives everything, furthermore, to everyone and forever He forgives everything.

If I could put into words how the Passion narrative falls on my cars, I would add that for a long time, it caused me to say "no" to the Resurrection. Never as on those first Easter evenings, did I live through such a nightmare and feel such abandonment. A Resurrection preached in a triumphal manner, leaves Jesus out of the picture and sends Him back to heaven. It overturns the table where He eats with us the pittance of sinners. Stupidly, it passes the sponge and immediately wipes out the fundamental solidarity Jesus establishes with the condemned, the marginalised, the outcasts of all time.

No, the Resurrection cannot efface the Passion. It is just another way of saying that the Crucified One is always present, living personally. When Latin Americans are criticised for their excessively realistic life sized representations of the Crucified, with blood pouring from His wounds, and with locks of real hair, it is because these critics have not yet understood that for Jesus to assume the human condition, it was not necessary for Him just to become a man. He could have lived like some of those rich people one sees in the newspapers or on the TV., unfeeling far away extraterrestrials. The sufferings of Jesus make His Incarnation real. Since He shares the condition of the majority of human beings, so every man and woman can at every moment, speak to Him with the certainty of being heard and fully understood.