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Soon after it opened I went to see Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. What I saw was immensely moving as a presentation of what Christ suffered out of love for us sinners.
As with any work of art, people are free to judge the movie according to their own preferences, what they like or dislike. That is as it should be. A movie is not the Gospel itself.
Personally, however, I think that Gibson has created a powerful and enduring movie that presents Christ’s Passion for today’s world much like the art forms of earlier centuries did for the people of those times.
This is not always an easy movie to watch. There is much that is brutal, but for me this is overcome by the movie’s clear message that out of love for us Jesus freely entered into the Passion knowing what was to happen to him. The words of John’s Gospel are recalled: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself” (Jn 10:18). And it is not only Jesus who consents. His mother and ours, Mary, shares in the consent, shares in the wrenching sorrow from beginning to end.
Is the movie faithful to the Gospel? I certainly think so. Most of the dialogue is taken directly from the Scriptures. There are some additional elements, both symbolic and dramatic, but nothing that distorts the Gospel.
This is a profoundly Catholic presentation of the Passion. I have already mentioned the presence of Mary from beginning to end as Our Lady of Sorrows. The very opening scene includes a dramatic allusion to God’s words to the serpent in Genesis: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; he shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heal” (3:15). There are also striking flashbacks from Calvary to the institution of the Most Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper.
Is the movie anti-Semitic? In my opinion, no, for several reasons. First, I do not believe the Gospel to be anti-Semitic, and the movie presents the Gospel. The sacred text can be misused by people of bad will for evil purposes, but that is a distortion of the word of God. Second, I think the movie succeeds in communicating that Jesus--a Jew like his Mother and his disciples-- took upon himself the sins of the whole world—your sins and mine. He did this out of obedience to the Father and out of a love that excluded or rejected no one.
As a drama of forgiveness and redemption, the movie, in my opinion, reflects the teaching of the Second Vatican Council which states: “Even though the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ, neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his passion. . . . [The Church] deplores all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-semitism directed against the Jews at any time or from any source. The Church always held and continues to hold that Christ out of infinite love freely underwent suffering and death because of the sins of all, so that all might attain salvation. It is the duty of the church, therefore, in her preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God's universal love and the source of all grace” (Nostra Aetate, no. 4).
If I have one caution it is that the R rating is appropriate. Parents will want to exercise good judgment about children seeing this movie in light of the violence presented.
I don’t know that much about Mel Gibson. What I do know is that he has given us a very spiritual and moving testimony of Christian faith for which we can be grateful. Most Rev. Leonard P. Blair Bishop of Toledo March 1, 2004 |
