Watching The Passion with the confirmation kids. They were all good. Left as soon as the movie was over. No talking. Too bad, I wanted to hear their reactions, won’t see them for two weeks since next Sunday is Easter.
I wanted to say to them: if you want to know what is the difference between Christian belief and any other faith, look at this film. This is it. The creator of the universe who made the great galaxies and the smallest subatomic particles, became an insignifigant man and died so that we might live.
There are stories in other cultures about dying gods, there are stories about gods who pretend to be men. But there is no other faith that teaches such great love. The god who lays down his life for the people who do not believe in him, who do not love him, who do not wroship him. This is new, this is radical. We have become so complactent that we cannot see how strange and beautiful and unlikely this story is. What God instead of demanding worship allows himself to be ridiculed, spit on, mocked, beaten, scourged, condemned like a common criminal, tortured, and nailed?
