The Passion of the Christ |
Mel Gibson’s film has stirred the fury of all those who hate Catholicism and are committed to the new secular, multi-faith world. All the more reason why all LMS members should see this film and encourage their conciliar acquaintances to do likewise. Here, Fr Martin Edwards reviews what may be the first great devotional work of the 21st century. |
The Passion of the Christ is, quite simply, by far the most powerful movie I have ever seen. I attended a press screening at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London on the second day of Lent. The cinema was packed with journalists (many were to write rubbishing reviews the next day) with a sprinkling of clerics, rabbis and sundry academics. When the film ended there was stunned silence and muted applause. Then the arguments began. They are still going on.
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The loudest complaint made against this film is that it is anti-semitic. It is hard to believe that anyone who makes this charge has watched the film with open eyes. Gibson goes out of his way to present the history of the Passion of the Lord without engaging in any anti-semitic stereotyping, nor does he lay undue blame at the door of the Jews. The film dramatises the theological truth that the Passion of Christ was the price of the world’s redemption, that through our sins we all have caused the suffering and death of the Redeemer, without shying away from recording the parts played by the chief actors in the drama of redemption.
Who crucified Jesus?
Yet even here Gibson never allows prejudice to colour his handling of the plots against Our Lord. There is no hint that the Jews are uniquely to blame for the Passion. Indeed Gibson even somewhat elaborates the scriptural texts to reinforce this point. Thus Caiaphas is seen ordering a round up of unsavoury characters to bay for Jesus’ blood; the via crucis is lined with sympathetic Jews, whilst the Roman soldiers exhibit terrifying cruelty.
Gibson’s Caiaphas is no monster: his conduct of Our Lord’s trial evokes uncomfortable memories of clerical pride and fanaticism rather than anti-semitism: of Joan of Arc before her accusers; the heretic and martyr before the inquisitor. Caiaphas is a type that long haunted the synagogue and church before finding, in the last century, its home in totalitarian politics: a personification of the arrogance of power and righteous intolerance. Gibson has Caiaphas and members of the Sanhedrin turning away in disgust from the appalling spectacle of the flagellation. Even his visit to Christ at Calvary is restrained and thoughtful. There is no ‘blood libel’ here. Gibson knows that we all nailed Christ to the cross: in the film the hands that pick up the mallet to drive the nails into Christ’s hands and feet are Gibson’s own.
“It is as it was”
This brings me to the second charge frequently brought against this film, namely that it is gratuitously, indeed grotesquely, violent. It is true that this is a violent film – the Passion is portrayed with relentless realism – but the violence is not gratuitous: “It is as it was” as the holy Father is supposed to have said. Gibson’s use of graphic violence not only allows us to glimpse something of the awful reality of the Passion, it also daringly hints at the inner dynamics of the economy of salvation.
On one level the violence used against our Lord has all the undirected pointlessness of the action of a mindless mob, and yet Gibson manages to convey the truth that Christ suffered because He willed it: “Oblatus est quia ipse uoluit” (Isaias LIII 7). The Passion is thus simultaneously the result of contingent circumstances (malice, cruelty, deceit, greed, simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time) and the timeless will of the eternal Father. The true drama expressed in this film, and underlying the violence, is one that we can only glimpse and guess at: it is Our Blessed Lord, in His Sacred Humanity, submitting to the will of His Father and offering Himself for our salvation.
This is a profoundly moving film. Gibson brings to life on the screen that injunction of St Alphonso’s that we hear so often during the Stations of the Cross: “Compassionate your Saviour thus cruelly treated”. It was Hamlet who famously drew attention to the power of drama to produce profound emotions from trivial and unreal sources: “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?” So often we can be moved by fictitious and bogus calamity: the modern cinema-goer may have forgotten Hecuba, but Bambi and E.T. can move us to tears, while the history of the Passion and death of our Saviour can leave us cold. Gibson’s film brings to the drama of salvation some of the emotional power it should rightly compel. It will move the believer to compassion for the Saviour, and so, more importantly, to contrition.
The power of suffering
This is also a most beautiful film. Father Faber says that there is a strange beauty in nearly all suffering. If this is true it is because the Christian sees in suffering a mysterious sharing in the Passion of Christ, and if our trivial trials are beautiful, how glorious is the Passion of the Incarnate Word of God! It is not sadism that sees a terrible beauty in the sufferings of Christ, it is a fitting response to the vision of a man who has known suffering, but who also appreciates the power of redemption. This film is full of haunting echoes of old masters and devotional art. Caravaggio, in particular, with his palpable realism and themes of darkness and spiritual illumination, is a noticeable inspiration.
Lastly, this is a truly Catholic film. If we did not already know that Mel Gibson was a traditional Catholic, we could guess it from this work. This film, like the mystery it brings to life, speaks to the heart of the believer, in a language that others cannot readily comprehend. It reflects at every stage the Catholic faith of its director, who chose committed Catholics for the leading roles and, it is said, had the traditional Mass said every day on the set. The Passion is faithful to the Word of God as found in Sacred Scripture and Catholic Tradition. It draws chiefly upon the scriptural accounts of the Lord’s passion, and fleshes out these sometimes brief records by incorporating elements from familiar devotions, the writings of saints and works of art. Mel Gibson has done for the mysteries of Calvary something analogous to what St Francis did for those of Bethlehem when he erected the first crib: he has given to contemporary people, in an easily accessible medium, a wonderful illustration of the meaning of the Incarnation and Redemption – the Word made flesh, offered for our sins.
The Passion is a great film; it is, I think, a great and Catholic work of art. Go and see it and encourage others to do so. It will educate and inform, but, more importantly it will enrich and nourish faith and devotion. In the words of the Most Revd John F. Donahue, Archbishop of Atlanta:
...the lesson of The Passion is terrible – and beautiful – to behold, but the truth of accepting and making this lesson a part of our own lives, is to gain deeper faith in the ultimate outcome of Christ’s purpose in coming among mankind – His victory over death, our death – “to give His life as a ransom for many.” May this magnificent film, a gift from God, help us to learn what we need to know... and bring us an abundance of contrition, repentance, and new-found hope in the power of Jesus Christ to save us, and give us eternal life.
[Taken from the Latin Mass Society's May 2004 Newsletter.]