Fr. J.ABANDONMENT
Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled(Matthew 26:56).
Mel Gibson's new movie, which opens shortly, depicts the last twelve hours of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. This movie is, according to those who have seen advanced screenings, exceptionally violent, showing in great detail the physical brutality meted out to Our Savior. And this violence has "Catholic" writer James Carroll Greatly Concerned:
Can a pious Christian make too much of the passion of the Christ? Can the suffering of Jesus be remembered as too bloody? Or too unique, for that matter? Can the crucifixion be made too central to Christian faith? Indeed, can that faith be distorted by an overemphasis on blood and cruelty into a perversion of the message Jesus preached -- or even into a source of new cruelty? These are questions in my mind as I sit outside the small chapel that marks the place where Jesus died. Sensational news stories and a clever publicity campaign lead me to associate Golgotha with Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ." I am aware of the danger of prejudgment, having not seen the film, yet Gibson's many comments and selective screenings of excerpts, which I have seen, are enough to have me thinking of it here. The possibility that the film levels the old "Christ-killer" charge against Jews prompted my first concern.
After all, the early church didn't make a big deal about Christ's wounds or even his death, for that matter:
In the first centuries of the church, the bloody crucifixion had little hold on the religious imagination of Christians. Scratched on the walls of the ancient catacombs, for example, one finds drawings of the communion cup, the loaf of bread, the fish -- but rarely if ever the cross.
Early Christians revered the death of Jesus, of course, but they evoked it metaphorically, not literally, more with the image of going down into the waters of baptism than with nails and blood. The cross comes into the center of Christian symbolism only in the fourth century, with Constantine and his mother, Helena, who is remembered as having discovered it here, only yards from where I sit. But even then, the cross was taken more as a token of resurrection than of brutal death.
But the medieval church screwed everything up:
It was only in the medieval period that the Latin church began to put the violent death of Jesus at the center of faith, but that theology was tied to a broader cultural obsession with death related to plagues, millennialism, and the carnage of the Crusades. Grotesquely literal renditions of the crucifixion came into art only as self-flagellation and other "mortifications" came into devotion. Good Friday began to replace Easter as the high point of the liturgical year. And God came to be understood as so cruel as to will his son's agonizing death as the only way to "atone" for the sins of fallen humanity.
And hasn't Mel heard that serious Christians don't do violence anymore?
Such is the piety into which many Christians, including Catholics of my generation, were born. From all reports, it is the piety on display in Mel Gibson's movie. But in nothing have the reforms of the Second Vatican Council been more significant than in a rejection of that piety and a return of the Resurrection to the center of faith. That is why, in the Catholic Church, white vestments replaced black at funeral services, why Easter rites have been reemphasized, why the cross itself, in church architecture, is downplayed.
Jesus, thinks Carroll, didn't come into the world to die but to live:
All of this is to say that death was not the purpose of Jesus' life but only one part of a story that stretches from incarnation at Bethlehem to life as a Jew in Nazareth to preaching in Galilee to a courageous challenge to Roman imperialism in Jerusalem to permanent faith in the God of Israel whose promise is fulfilled in resurrection. In this full context, the death of Jesus can be seen as a full signal of his humanity -- and more.
Been hitting the higher criticism pretty hard lately, haven't you, Jim?
And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again(Matthew 17:22-23)
For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day(Mark 9:31).
Let these sayings sink down into your ears: for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men(Luke 9:44).
Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory(Luke 24:25-26)?
As for the depictions of Christ's suffering and death, Jim's right about that. Christian art has never been all that great. There are few paintings of the Crucifixion that come close to doing it justice(Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece and the illustration in an edition of the King James Bible created by Barry Moser are the two finest that I've ever seen).
I suspect the reason for this is much the same as Carroll's discomfort. No one likes to view the results of their evil; get drunk, get behind the wheel and kill someone or cripple them for life and you're not going to want to spend a whole lot of time looking at their picture. It's psychologically easier for Christians to focus on Christ walking out of the tomb than to think about the torture their sins inflicted on Him and the agony and death this torture eventually caused.
Two thousand years on, many of us shake our heads in disgust at the fear and cowardice of Jesus' inner circle who left Him alone at the end of His earthly life. We would be brave, we think; we would never desert our Lord. In a very small and indirect way, Mel Gibson is giving us a chance to stay with our Savior during His most terrible hours. And it's interesting that lots of alleged Christians still prefer to run away.
Submitted by Donald R. McClarey
at 2/17/2004 12:41:32 PM| James Carroll, former priest and apostate Catholic, is Catholic only in the same sense that Benedict Arnold was an American. |
Submitted by Christopher Johnson
at 2/17/2004 12:54:58 PM| Thus the quotes. |
Submitted by Katherine
at 2/17/2004 1:20:03 PM| The crucifixion was "a courageous challenge to Roman imperialism in Jerusalem?" This guy hasn't read the gospels too closely. The challenge to Roman imperialism came a few decades later, and ended at Masada. |
Submitted by Bret
at 2/17/2004 1:38:21 PM| Carroll could be writing swill for Grizzy, Peter Judas Lee, or Rowan Williams. I honestly see no difference between the spin doctors at 815 or Peter Lee's HQ and types like Carroll; the GCUSAites and the catholic-very-lites like Carroll seem like the same animal to me. And he's a former priest?!??!?! Ugh! I wonder what type of incense people like this smoke. Their brains/souls are addled. |
Submitted by Paul
at 2/17/2004 1:59:57 PM| At least Carroll is a former priest of church with a few basic rules. In the ECUSA he would have been accommodated, coddled, praised to the skies for his progressive stance, and probably the Bishop of [insert name of theologically-bankrupt revisionist diocese here] by now. |
Submitted by Don
at 2/17/2004 2:05:09 PM| Why does the revelation of heresey often bring a hymn to mind?
He was wounded for our transgressions, He bore our sins in His body on the tree For our guilt He gave us peace From our bondage gave release And with His stripes, and with His stripes, And with His stripes our souls are healed For sure we can't count His cost but we sure should be thankful for what we do know and have. |
Submitted by Susan
at 2/17/2004 2:08:20 PM| After seeing "The Passion," The Revd Mark Stagner of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco said (along with a lot of other nutty stuff): “I think a 5-year-old who has to get cancer surgery and radiation and chemotherapy suffers more than Jesus suffered; I think that a kid in the Gaza Strip who steps on a land mine and loses two limbs suffers more; I think a battered wife with no resources suffers more; I think people without medical care dying of AIDS in Africa suffer more than Jesus did that day.”
God help us! |
Submitted by Therese Z
at 2/17/2004 2:30:29 PM| James Carroll is an ex-priest Of A Certain Age. John Dominic Crossan is also an ex-priest Of A Certain Age. Wasn't he swell on Mel Gibson's interview last night?
When will the 1960's be over, dear Lord? |
Submitted by MC from CA
at 2/17/2004 2:35:31 PM| Lutheran scholar Martin Marty writes, "Today, all over the world, people are suffering physically as much as the crucified Jesus." ( Eastern Orthodox writer Frederica Mathews-Green writes "in the earliest Christian writings we see a different understanding of the meaning of the Cross, one which, shockingly, didn’t think it was important for us to identify with Jesus’ suffering." These are highly regarded writers, of unimpeachable orthodoxy. (Mrs. M-G left the Episcopal Church long ago because of its heresies -- Mr. Johnson here is still dithering about that. (In fairness, so am I.)) You folks might try actually answering the objections of people like this, instead of just taking potshots at silly people like James Carroll. |
Submitted by MC from CA
at 2/17/2004 2:36:35 PM| Hmm, somehow my hyperlinks got lost. Let me try again.
Martin Marty on the Passion: http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive_2004/0209.shtml Frederica Mathews-Green on the Passion: http://www.frederica.com/orthodox/meaning_of_his_suffering.html |
Submitted by Paul
at 2/17/2004 2:40:16 PM| Every time one of these "experts" opens his piehole, it probably means another 1,500 paying customers for Gibson's film. Speaking of Priests of a Certain Age, I think they all watched Godspell a few too many times. |
Submitted by William in Texas
at 2/17/2004 2:48:17 PM| Susan,
Just a few added thoughts about what you wrote. Yes, I had previously read what that pitiful excuse for an Episcopal priest, Rev. Mark Stagner, said. You're right; he also said a lot more nonsense, as well. But his claim that the tragic sufferings of other humans are equivalent to and often in excess of Christ's sufferings is beyond the pale! The thing is: Yes, as the apostate priest said, there indeed have been (and continue to be) many people who have undergone horrible, horrible physical suffering on the level of what Christ endured physically. Nonetheless, there are NO comparisons, no parallels, of Christ's suffering with other human suffering because (1) Jesus was the only completely sinless, totally guiltless, person to ever undergo such physical suffering, and (2) even more profoundly, Jesus took on the incomprehensible, massive, smothering, crushing burden of every conceivable sin (past, present, and future), thereby resulting in a spiritual suffering that makes all physical suffering seem mild by comparison. Imagine the sinless Christ, already in indescribable physical agony, suddenly so enveloped with the sins of the world until even the face of God had to turn the other way for a moment in a seeming abandonment of His Son ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?") I’m sure after “The Passion of the Christ” has been seen by enough people, we will start hearing some folks fallaciously try to equate Jesus’ suffering with other human suffering. Whenever someone thus claims that "lots of people" have suffered as much physical pain as Christ did on the Good Friday, they need to remember that His suffering went far beyond the mere physical. No one has ever endured such total physical and spiritual suffering and no one ever will. |
Submitted by Christopher Johnson
at 2/17/2004 2:48:24 PM| MC from CA,
As far as the Episcopal Church is concerned, I'm not dithering about it. I am out. I just don't know where I'm going to end up yet. And as far as the portrayal of Christ's suffering by the early church is concerned, I'm suggesting here that the early church emphasized other things because, like us today, they also couldn't bear to look upon the pain and agony their sins had brought about. |
Submitted by Jim the Fireman
at 2/17/2004 2:51:47 PM| I find it interesting that Mr. Carroll would write this:
"Such is the piety into which many Christians, including Catholics of my generation, were born. From all reports, it is the piety on display in Mel Gibson's movie. But in nothing have the reforms of the Second Vatican Council been more significant than in a rejection of that piety and a return of the Resurrection to the center of faith. That is why, in the Catholic Church, white vestments replaced black at funeral services, why Easter rites have been reemphasized, why the cross itself, in church architecture, is downplayed." So, the Christian denomination that has Christ bleeding on the Cross as the central display in each of its sanctuaries is upset at Mel Gibson for showing a bleeding Christ on the Cross? If the RC church has put the Resurrection as the centerpiece of their faith, then why not have an empty tomb instead of the Cross of Christ? Mel did a great job last night and I'm really eager to see the movie. |
Submitted by Susan
at 2/17/2004 2:55:16 PM| William wrote: "Jesus took on the incomprehensible, massive, smothering, crushing burden of every conceivable sin (past, present, and future), thereby resulting in a spiritual suffering that makes all physical suffering seem mild by comparison."
I'm going to have to look this up again--but I believe that there's a meditation before the Blessed Sacrament ("very high church!") contained in the St. Augustine Prayer Book that asks the reader something like--as Jesus took on all the sins of the world, did he see my face? |
Submitted by Peter
at 2/17/2004 3:04:33 PM| Such is the piety into which many Christians, including Catholics of my generation, were born. From all reports, it is the piety on display in Mel Gibson's movie. But in nothing have the reforms of the Second Vatican Council been more significant than in a rejection of that piety
Are we not sure that Carroll is not a closet ECUSA priest of the high-toned bi-coastal Brahmin caste? Such sneering contempt for the sensibilities of the common man's piety, and revisiting quel horreur those benighted days before the second Vatican Council sound very Episcopagan to me. |
Submitted by Michael King
at 2/17/2004 3:17:28 PM| As far as FMG is concerned, she has that typical Orthodox convert attitude that see's everything Western Christianity has ever done as corrupt-add to that Orthodoxy's preference for the Resurrection over the Passion, and you've got yourself a crash course in Anti-Catholic Polemics 101.
What needs to be realized is that both East and West have different (one is not necessairly better than the other) of doing things-and for the West many of these things predate the East-West schism by quite a bit. In Christ there is no East or West, and I say that as an Eastern Orthodox Christian. |
Submitted by William in Texas
at 2/17/2004 3:22:09 PM| MC from CA,
What I wrote above would also be my response to Lutheran scholar Martin Marty's point. To reiterate: Jesus' suffering was NOT only physical, it also reached a level of spiritual agony that none of us, even in our most extreme moments of despair, can fathom. Imagine God (the Son) being severed from God (the Father) because of the sin and evil He freely accepted into his sinless being in order to save mankind. The resulting utter loneliness, isolation, and pain that Jesus felt during those moments of his Passion, after suffering the inevitable rejection of His own Father for doing what He had to do--a suffering that was further compounded by His physical torture--is simply too profound for us to grasp. That is how I view the real Passion: in awe and utter humility. |
Submitted by Patrick
at 2/17/2004 3:50:25 PM| "Imagine the sinless Christ, already in indescribable physical agony, suddenly so enveloped with the sins of the world until even the face of God had to turn the other way for a moment in a seeming abandonment of His Son ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?")"
Amen William, my brother in Christ. Your words above have struck a chord deep in my soul, and the thought of Our Savior having to suffer so much for me, and for you, and for all of us has brought me to tears. My hope is that many that go to see this film (including the apostate clergy) will be cut to the heart and come to repentance, and a right relationship with Christ. I'm sure that my wife and I will need a box of tissues when we view it. |
Submitted by Baillie
at 2/17/2004 3:57:54 PM| Apparently, Christ is a nice idea God came up with to counteract his own tendency to fire-and-brimstone-flinging - a sweet little baby in a Nativity scene or someone to inspire us to sing Kumbaya and hold hands. 'Come to Jesus, brother, and live the happy life of a born-again Christian! Pour sugar syrup all over the world's troubles and let your light shine for the Lord!' Or alternatively, 'Jesus was such a good man! He was god, friend, and we can be god, too! All is love and all is god and we can all be one in that oneness! Be lifted up into his ‘resurrection’ together!'
This movie is going to knock a good many people off their treacle barrels and hopefully some more off their moral-equivalence, la-la–land inanities. And who knows – some of them might realize what Christianity is. Not sweetness and light, not cookies and Koolaid at Sunday School, not ‘understanding’ terrorists and marching for ‘peace’, but death and sorrow and pain. This doesn’t mean that every Christian has to go see ‘The Passion’. (Elijah Wood’s Frodo depicts Christ’s ordeal as vividly as I can take it, personally.) But we have to accept Christ’s blood. If we hide from it, we deny it and we dishonor it and make a mockery of it. We can’t say, “Ick!” and turn away. To denounce an accurate rendition of the crucifixion because it’s so much more comfortable to focus on sweetness and light is to invalidate those sufferings. God commands us, “Look! This is how much I love you. This is my only child and he’s dying in unbelievable pain. He’s terrified and broken and bleeding. But he’s enduring it for you. Do not despise it. Look at it, know what you are, what you have done, could do - and bear his grief as he bears yours.” The Foreseeing When did you understand? Which breath drew knowing harshly in And gave it flesh and bone and skin, And sped your heart to beat in sudden dread on ebon wings? When did you first perceive? Was it a thought, a waking sight? Or telling dream come in the night With ancient words that spoke to you of dark and fearful things? When did you see? When did you bow your head? And cup the truth in gentle hands To drink like salt and desert sands, And trade for cold, black winter All your summers and your springs. |
Submitted by Southern Methodist
at 2/17/2004 4:21:41 PM| Susan, maybe we should cut the Revd Stagner from San Francisco some slack. He's probably strung out from all of the marriages he's had to perform (or at least enjoy). Bet he hasn't slept in days.
It's funny, the jews of Christ's day wanted Him killed to keep from messing up their "thing". I guess these clowns today (like Stagner) must feel the same way today. I understand that Gibson made a committment to follow the Holy Scriptures. I guess that's what they object to the most. They don't believe it anyway. |
Submitted by J. Scott
at 2/17/2004 4:22:08 PM| Whenever someone thus claims that "lots of people" have suffered as much physical pain as Christ did on the Good Friday, they need to remember that His suffering went far beyond the mere physical. No one has ever endured such total physical and spiritual suffering and no one ever will.
This is true, but Who suffered is more the point of the Passion than how much Christ suffered. The fact that it was God himself who suffered and was crucified, is what makes the Passion potent. The perception of that is what makes the difference for eternity. Failing to appreciate that and even to be dismissive of it, as Stagner and his ilk seem to be, is to be both spiritually dull and dangerous. And I have to agree with Chris that the extent of Christ's suffering reveals what a ghastly horror my sin must be if going to this extremity on God's part is what was required to expiate it! |
Submitted by J. Scott
at 2/17/2004 4:23:34 PM| I forgot to say in conclusion, it is not the quantity of the suffering but the quality of the sufferer that makes atonement for our sins. |
Submitted by Cuthbert
at 2/17/2004 4:37:27 PM| The Apostle Paul strongly emphasizes in I Corinthians that his message to the Corinthians was "Christ and Christ crucified". In Paul's preaching and in his letters, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus are the two key aspects of Jesus' saving work. The fact that God's Messiah was executed like a criminal of the lowest order is the "foolishness of the Gospel" that Paul talks about in several of his letters.
I don't understand how it can be said that the early church did not emphasize the crucifixion? Am I missing something? |
Submitted by Lacey
at 2/17/2004 5:16:06 PM| BTW, that egregious Rev. Mark Stanger from San Francisco is also an ex-RC. Would that ECUSA would kick such people out, but instead it welcomes them warmly from the RC. |
Submitted by Duane
at 2/17/2004 5:36:20 PM| Sorry to break it you revisionists, but Jesus was more than just some swell Peace Corps volunteer using his carpentry skills and helping out some fisherman. He died so that we don't have to. It's all in the Bib..... oh never mind, you can't be bothered to read it. |
Submitted by Katherine
at 2/17/2004 6:14:34 PM| Perhaps a reason that early Christian piety did not emphasize the suffering of Christ in the crucifixion may have been that it would been a familiar subject. Everyone knew how it was done and how the crucified suffered. Saying "Christ crucified" brought up a clear picture to the first-century mind, a picture most of us don't have in our memories -- at least until we see Mel Gibson's movie. |
Submitted by MC from CA
at 2/17/2004 6:33:23 PM| It's beginning to look like a whole lot of people who have not seen the movie have nevertheless managed to decide that liking Mel Gibson's film is a litmus test of Christian orthodoxy.
Look: among Christian writers I respect who have seen the movie, some think it's great, and some don't like it. I've read both sides, and I'll make up my own mind when I see the film. Those who don't like the film generally make use of a couple of facts that seem incontrovertible: first, the practice of really dwelling in detail on the intensity of Chris's *physical* suffering is not a universal one in Christianity. It has been popular with some Christians, especially Roman Catholics since the Middle Ages, but not with all. Second, there is no particular reason to think that Christ's *physical* sufferings were particularly exceptional compared to other victims of crucifixion, or other kinds of torture in other eras. Now, the critics may or may not be right in applying these facts to their judgment of Gibson's film. But simply pointing these things out does not make anybody a heretic or apostate or "revisionist." This is my last comment on the film until I see it. |
Submitted by Baillie
at 2/17/2004 6:33:48 PM| "The Apostle Paul strongly emphasizes in I Corinthians that his message to the Corinthians was "Christ and Christ crucified"...The fact that God's Messiah was executed like a criminal of the lowest order is the "foolishness of the Gospel" that Paul talks about in several of his letters."
Excellent points, Cuthbert. |
Submitted by Terrence, in Vancouver, BC
at 2/17/2004 9:59:20 PM| Katherine,
Your comment is far too rational and meaningful (to the point of obviousness). Of course, the early folks had a much closer experience of crucifixion. The pain and suffering on the cross would have been blatantly obvious to them. Crucifixion was designed to maximize pain and suffering, and it did. Because of all this obviousness, the “higher-purpose persons” will not accept it. They must look for deeper, more universal and profound explanations. Their god is, after all, doing a “new thing”; and something obvious must be wrong or beside the point. There must be more than mere obviousness; and the all-caring saintly “higher-purpose persons” will discover it and lead us lesser creatures to the TRUTH that they reveal. Or else, we are just not getting it; we just do not understand and must cling to our simplistic (pronounced with a French accent) Bible stories. |
Submitted by MC from CA
at 2/17/2004 10:25:10 PM| Okay, I'm going to add one comment on a movie I haven't seen:
I hope you've heard of the forthcoming blockbuster, "The Incarnation," by noted director Gel Mibson. It is expected to be controversial because of its historically and medically accurate graphical depiction of the Virgin Birth. The hour-long sequence of the Virgin Mary in labor and childbirth may shock some viewers. But all real Christians will love this film. The best will buy up huge blocks of tickets in advance. A handful of "Christians" will dislike the film and even claim to find it offensive. They will say there is no reason to watch an intense graphical realistic depiction of the virgin birth, as long as you believe it happened. Such people will just be revealing themselves as pseudo-Christian apostates who don't really believe in the incarnation at all. Do not listen to anything they say. MC |
Submitted by Steve
at 2/17/2004 11:01:36 PM| Martin Marty as having "unimpeachable orthodoxy"
You've -got- to be kidding. If you think that ELCA, let alone Dr. Marty, is orthodox, you must think that the Griz is a member of the SSPX. |
Submitted by Ann R.
at 2/17/2004 11:26:13 PM| One point no one has touched on: Folks who are suffering, like those Mark Stanger refers to, should know now that God Himself has shared in their sufferings. The early Christians followed in Christ's suffering footsteps by being torches for Emperial parties, as lion food, or were themselves crucified. But they knew Jesus had been there already and had triumphed. Think of the courage Christ's sufferings gave English priests being drawn and quartered, Japanese converts being crucified, etc.
If Christ had been able to carry our sins without the Passion, would he have prepared his followers for the reality of the persecution to come? All Christians who suffer can draw strength from the sufferings of Jesus. I know that when suffering and death come to me, as they do to all, I hope to have a crucifix before my eyes, to remind me. |
Submitted by Fr. G. McComas
at 2/17/2004 11:42:15 PM| I saw the film a few weeks ago, so I'll chime in.
I don't think many Jews will be offended by it or even consider it antisemitic. Some, though, will be concerned that bigots will use the film to justify and champion their preexisting antisemitic prejudices. Nevertheless, there will be some people who will be truly, and greatly, offended. These people, as we've seen, are revisionists who are committed to minimizing both the magnitude of Christ's Passion and correspondingly, their own sin. "How barbarous to show Jesus suffering greatly! What? is God a sicko? There's no need for such intense suffering (because my sins can't possibly be that grievous)." The gospel of Christ crucified remains an offense and a stumbling block to this day. Next comment, I'll echo the fact that the first century Church needed no written elaborations concerning the horror of crucifixion. That said, this film's approach to the brutality is only one of many faithful perspectives that could have been emphasized. It's a great sermon; but there's no one sermon that says it all. Finally, since it is indeed a multi-dimensional *sermon*, I have no interest or even feel for "liking" or "not liking" the movie; in the same way I don't much care if people *like* my sermons or not. Is the word of God faithfully communicated?--That's the key question, and Gibson done did right. I was moved, gripped, with the reality of God's loving sacrifice, and I think the Holy Spirit will similarly touch others through this artistic production. Lord, have mercy upon me--whose sins crushed thy sacred heart and wrenched forth from thy holy lips, "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me". |
Submitted by Russ+
at 2/18/2004 3:12:03 AM| Jesus referred to some particular moment as the one that was his "hour" and the one where he would the son of man would be "lifted up in glory". Could that same moment have been the crucifixion? I think so... Yep, I think it was! Guess that that Jesus dude really did see his crucifixion as a pinnacle moment, as Mel also does, and so should we.
I can't believe that we even need to be discussing this point!?!?! I am not and have never been a blame it on Satan kind of guy but there is a dark and pernicious ugliness to this and I am beginning to change my 'tude. This in itself is commentary enough for the forces of Satan in our world and the effectivness of their work. |
Submitted by Southern Methodist
at 2/18/2004 9:03:15 AM| To MC from CA. I can't wait to see the "Incarnation". I understand that it's being directed by an apostate ex-anglican bishop from California named A.Y. Zass. He's a transplant from the middle east. Should be able to offer a fresh and new perspective on an old and controversial subject.
Zass had to quit the church because he didn't believe the Rule Book and refused to follow it. If his film career doesn't pan out he intends on becoming an NBA official. My friends and I can't wait to see it. We've got this outrageous opinion that Christians should be able to worship as they please too. We also do not see the need to return all of the holy ground that the Saints have bleed and died for over the centuries as do those that don't really belive the Bible anyway. Those that worry about satisfying everyone and every group before Christ will never get the point. |
Submitted by Katherine
at 2/18/2004 9:56:25 AM| MC from CA: I think my point still stands. Any woman who has delivered a child knows about the gritty details of childbirth, and these days, so do fathers since they're usually in the delivery room. We don't need a film to remind us of the pain and of the helplessness of a newborn child.
I haven't seen the movie, either. I'm sure I'm not going to enjoy the violence. Based on what people who've seen it have written, I expect it to be a valuable spiritual exercise, especially appropriate to the Lenten season. We'll see. Isn't it a good thing, by the way, that it's opening on Ash Wednesday? Think of how many people who never observe Lent may be brought to think about Christ and their own sins in this coming Lenten season. |
Submitted by Chip
at 2/18/2004 3:04:47 PM| I agree with William that the agony of taking on every sin was far more than the physical agony of the crucifixion as horrible as that process is. Remember it took Jesus about 3 hours to die on the cross. Remember that when the Roman soldiers were breaking the femurs of the two thieves, they came to Jesus to do the same, but they were surprised that he was already dead. Often, it took a day or more to die from crucifixion. To know my sins were part of that agony is almost too much to bear. Yet it is the truth and like others have said, not a truth with which we care to be confronted. Yes, William, I am also humbled, and feel like Peter after he denied Him 3 times. But like Peter, we are, by this inestimable loving act are given a shot at redemption. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ Our Lord. (didn't someone put that to music -- one of the most beautiful works ever written?) |
Submitted by Gayle
at 2/18/2004 3:33:48 PM| Wow. To me the furor over this along with everything else that has been happening over the past year is just one more indicator of the chasm that is widening and deepening between the secular world view and the sacred.
I have orthodox Jewish friends who are very concerned about the movie and have asked me to go and report back because they trust me to have a fair judgement. I tried to explain to them that the movie points to us as Christians that each one of us was there saying "crucify him". She didn't understand the concept of the profound sense of personal conviction I feel when I contemplate Christ passion and death. I already know how difficult it will be for me to watch the movie, but I will, with a box of kleenex. I also know that I will be praying through most of it, that the Lord will give me the strength to serve Him who loved me enough to die for me. I have known times of despair and loneliness, but I have also known in those times that Christ was with me and that He had already borne them for me on Calvary. I am always mindful that in my life as in Christ's that there is no crown before the cross and that Easter Sunday follows Good Friday. I would like to get a couple of the interview with Mel Gibson. It was amazing. It was such a incredible witness and it was such a joy to listen to someone talk about their relationship with our Lord. The look on Diane Sawyer's face was a total lack of understanding, as if Mel himself had broken into speaking tongues in Aramaic and she kept looking for the subtitles. |
Submitted by James P
at 2/18/2004 4:08:32 PM| ****Those who don't like the film generally make use of a couple of facts that seem incontrovertible: first, the practice of really dwelling in detail on the intensity of Chris's *physical* suffering is not a universal one in Christianity. It has been popular with some Christians, especially Roman Catholics since the Middle Ages, but not with all. Second, there is no particular reason to think that Christ's *physical* sufferings were particularly exceptional compared to other victims of crucifixion, or other kinds of torture in other eras. ****
It's true that Christ was not the only person the Romans executed by crucifixion. It's also true that Christ's true suffering was the spiritual separation he felt from His Father. However, as sinful human beings we are utterly incapable of fully understanding the spiritual suffering he endured. The physical pain is the only part of it we have full understanding of. I think as you grow in Christianity you can begin to understand small parts of that spiritual suffering, but never can we really understand it. Those scars will be bore by Christ, and Christ alone, for eternity. Gibson, like any other man, can never fully understand that spiritual suffering, so he made due with what he could understand. |
Submitted by James P
at 2/18/2004 4:16:09 PM| When I saw the excerpts from the crucifixion scene in The Passion, one of the greatest Christian hymns of all time came to my mind:
To God be the glory, great things He hath done. |
Submitted by Miguela
at 8/26/2004 3:40:25 PM| First of all, I don't think Jesus was ever "rejected" by His Father, as was alleged above in an earlier post.
Second of all, my friend Isabella (a visionary, to whom Jesus and Our Lady appear) was right...Mel's movie did NOT follow the Gospels---none of them. It was, instead, taken literally from the writings of the Emmerich woman. I have a copy of her book and it, in quite a few places, contradicts the Gospels. Saw the movie and it absolutely did NOT touch my heart in any way. I didn't cry a bit and wondered if I had suddenly turned into a zombie. The fact is that my subconscious recognized that the movie was not fact. Jim Caviezel did a bang-up marketing on himself in the weeks prior to the movie's release. He kept telling the story of how his initials are JC and he was 33 years old and how he was struck by lightning. If I recall correctly, being struck by lightning is a sign of God's displeasure. As to the subject of the cross, I think that early Christians had to use other symbols to avoid being caught by the Romans...fish...keys, etc. Saw Peter's tomb under the Vatican and the markings that were used to confirm it involves a Key made out of the letter P. Quite ingenious. Even Jesus didn't dwell on the crucifixion when talking with His disciples. He only said that he would have to suffer at the hands of the chief priests and Romans, but then told his disciples to kind of "hang in there and don't lose the faith because I'll be baaaaack" of course in not those words (although the way certain Protestant scholars enjoy re-interpreting the Bible, maybe my phrase will eventually end up in one of their "bibles") ;-) spoken like the Baptist I was raised as.... Now a |