The film "The Passion of the Christ" has made a tremendous difference this Lenten season. For one, I know it has shocked many people. By the time it gets to the scourging, moviegoers can no longer bring themselves to munch on their popcorn. One elderly lady, after seeing the film, complained to a priest that the movie was way too violent and bloody for her taste. "My crucifix at home is so white and so clean and so beautiful," she explained, still unable to recover from her shock.

     But maybe we all need to be shocked. We have grown so accustomed to the crucifix as decor, found in our churches, homes, and these days even on the ears and necks of our favorite rock stars. We have lost touch with the original horror associated with the crucifixion that Mel Gibson's film tries to reveal to us in all its gore. Through its violence--one might even say, its excessive violence--the film shocks us into remembering that the crucifixion was, in fact, the cruelest form of capital punishment that the Romans reserved for their worst criminals. The man nailed to the cross was subjected to a slow, painful, and humiliating death. In other words, death by crucifixion was supposed to be violent and brutal, not clean and beautiful. Witnesses to a crucifixion weren't supposed to munch on popcorn. So great was the horror of the early Christians from their memory of actual crucifixions that it took them an entire century before they could bring themselves to depict Christ crucified on the cross.

     During Holy Week, especially on Good Friday, we are invited to remember that this was the kind of suffering and this the kind of death that our Lord Jesus embraced. "Why? What for?" we ask. "Why did Christ have to die such a brutal and violent death?" Well, we have all heard the answer before: "For our sake."

     A friend of mine just lost her mother to cancer a couple of weeks ago. She told me how the last three days in the hospital were the most difficult for them because despite the heavy dosage of painkiller, her mother gasped in pain as her lungs filled with fluids and her internal organs began to fail. They could only watch helplessly, pray the rosary, and basically just be there beside their dying mother.

     Their only consolation was the thought of the Passion of our Lord. They believed, they knew that because our Lord suffered and died on the cross, their mother was not alone in her pain. Our Lord was there present in the suffering of their mother. He was there with her because He Himself experienced an agonizing death; and He knows what it means to suffer. Our Lord is no stranger to pain. Because of the Passion, their dying mother was, in her pain, intimately and mysteriously connected to Christ. Even if she could not say a word of prayer, her pain became her prayer, for what is prayer, after all, but our connection to God?

     My friend's mother, however, died surrounded by people who loved her. As we know, our Lord, in His last moments here on earth, felt alone and utterly rejected. He was rejected by His own people, the very same crowds that had cheered and welcomed Him as He entered Jerusalem. He was abandoned by His disciples, betrayed by one of His most trusted friends, and three times denied by one whom He had appointed leader. Till his last breath he was mocked and jeered, surrounded, for the most part, by a sea of hatred. Except for the handful that stood and watched with Him in His last moments, Jesus was abandoned, and He died virtually alone. Of course lest we forget, our Lord didn't just die; he was killed, a victim of human sin and wickedness.

     Again we ask: "Why?" The answer remains the same: "For our sake."

     Our Lord died for us, for all of us who, for whatever reason, feel rejected and far from people we love. Himself a victim, our Lord died for all of us who have been--and are--victims of human sin and wickedness. When we suffer because of other people, when we fall prey to other people's selfishness or greed or wickedness, let us remember that because of the cross, we are intimately and mysteriously linked to Christ. Christ is there with us because He too experienced being victimized. He too experienced being misunderstood and abandoned by friends, and he knows what it means to be alone, rejected, and to suffer at the hands of other people. When we are victimized by others, our victimhood connects us to Christ, and our suffering, our pain, can be our prayer too.

     The film "The Passion" emphasizes the physical suffering of Jesus so much that we might forget the deeper kind of suffering that our Lord experienced on the cross. For Jesus suffered much not only physically and emotionally, but also spiritually.

     How did Jesus suffer spiritually? Theologians tell us that when Jesus finally decided to embrace His Father's Will in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was not only agreeing to the sacrifice of a painful and lonely death, but He was also accepting a sacrifice far more frightening and far more painful: the sacrifice of being separated from his Father.

     For us sinners, separation from God is something we consider quite ordinary, and unfortunately the absence of God in our lives is something many of us can even get used to. For the Son, however, separation from the Father is not at all something to be taken lightly. For One who has all His earthly life basked in the intimate presence of His Abba, the Father; for One, in fact, who, we believe, has for all eternity been united to the Father in the Spirit--nothing can be more frightening and painful, especially at the time when He most needed to feel the Father's presence and closeness--during His terrible suffering and death on the cross.

     In truth, the Father never abandons the Son. The Father and the Son are, beyond all our imaginings, always and forever one in the Spirit. On the cross, more than ever, the Father is united to the Son. God the Father watches the suffering and death of His only Son till the very end. In the film, the entire scene of the crucifixion swims in a single tear of God, a single teardrop that finally falls from heaven to earth, shaking the ground and tearing the temple curtain in half.

     In His self-sacrifice, Jesus agreed to experience this separation, to feel separated from the Father in the same way that we sinners, because of our sins, feel and are separated from God. It was this intolerable experience of separation from the Father that drove Him to cry out from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

     And so, raised between earth and sky, our crucified Lord felt abandoned by both earth and sky. He was nailed to the cross, suffering not only physically and emotionally, but also, more than we can ever imagine, spiritually. Again, if we should ask, "What for?" the answer is still: "For our sake."

     On the cross, Christ died not only for all who are suffering terrible pain. He died not only for all who are victims. But He also--and especially--died for all who are victimizers. That's all of us sinners. He did this by undergoing all the dark and painful human experiences, including the worst of all possible human experiences, which is separation from God. Christ, the Sinless One, identified Himself with us sinners, and He put Himself in our place and experienced the separation from God that is caused by our sins. But precisely by experiencing this separation from God, Christ bridges the gap between God and sinners, so that because of the cross, there no longer exists any separation between God and us. That is why Matthew and Mark give us that little detail about the temple curtain after Christ's death. The temple curtain separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the world. By saying that our Lord's death tore the temple curtain in half, the evangelists are really telling us that because of the cross, there is no more separation between God and the world.

     In another great film "Dead Man Walking," the lead character, Sister Helen Prejean, finds herself counseling a convicted but unrepentant rapist and murderer who is awaiting his execution by lethal injection. Finally, thanks to her relentless prayers and unconditional love, the hardened criminal repents on the eve of his execution. As he walks to his death terrified of what lies ahead, the sister tells him to remember to keep his eyes on her so that he will know that he is not alone. She whispers to him one of the most unforgettable lines in the film: "Let me be the face of love."

     As a result of Christ's death on the cross, we can never say that we are alone. Because of Christ's self sacrifice, we can never claim that we are ever abandoned or God-forsaken: Not when we're in terrible pain. Not when we're abandoned or victimized by others. Not even, and not especially, when we ourselves have victimized others. Even if we insist on abandoning God through our sins, Christ will still be there for us, still within reach, always within access, if only we look. Because of His death on the cross, nothing can ever separate us from His love. Indeed his death has torn the temple curtain in half, and for us sinners--especially for us sinners--if only we look, we shall find His shining Face of Love.

     It would be worthwhile if we allow a film like "The Passion" to lead us to thank our Lord, in our heart of hearts, for a love so great and so wonderful. Every drop of blood that the Lord has shed is a red red rose that He gives to each one of us. We, you and I, do not deserve such a precious and lovely gift. But it is pure gift--entirely undeserved, freely given. All we're asked to do is to open our hearts to receive this gift and to give it permission to change us and make us new.

     I am grateful to Mel Gibson for creating a film as powerful as "The Passion of the Christ." It reminds us that through the cross, the Lord's pain is our prayer, His blood a rose.

(Director's Take features the School Director's reflections--or "take"--on various events, books, films, and other things that may be worth thinking and talking about.   Send comments and questions to jcgosj[AT]xs.edu.ph.)