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We continue to pray on the Passion and Death of Jesus as we enter the Holy Days.
It’s never easy to pray on the passion and death of Jesus. But when we do, we need to remember that the story doesn’t end with the death of Jesus; it ends with the resurrection and ascension in glory. The focus should always be on Jesus. Try to learn from Jesus as much as possible in praying on the passion.
opening song
opening song
The Grace I Seek
“I ask for what I desire. Here it is what is proper for the Passion: sorrow with Christ in sorrow; a broken spirit with Christ so broken; tears; and interior suffering because of the great suffering which Christ endured for me”
Read: Mark 15:1-47
Take the time this week to read more reflectively, the Passion of Christ
Jesus Before Pilate.
1a As soon as morning came,b the chief priests with the elders and the scribes, that is, the whole Sanhedrin, held a council.* They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate.
2Pilate questioned him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”* He said to him in reply, “You say so.”
3The chief priests accused him of many things.
4Again Pilate questioned him, “Have you no answer? See how many things they accuse you of.”
5Jesus gave him no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.
The Sentence of Death.*
6Now on the occasion of the feast he used to release to them one prisoner whom they requested.c
7A man called Barabbas* was then in prison along with the rebels who had committed murder in a rebellion.
8The crowd came forward and began to ask him to do for them as he was accustomed.
9Pilate answered, “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?”
10For he knew that it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed him over.
11But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead.
12Pilate again said to them in reply, “Then what [do you want] me to do with [the man you call] the king of the Jews?”
13* They shouted again, “Crucify him.”
14Pilate said to them, “Why? What evil has he done?” They only shouted the louder, “Crucify him.”
15* So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas to them and, after he had Jesus scourged, handed him over to be crucified.
Mockery by the Soldiers.
16* d The soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is, the praetorium, and assembled the whole cohort.
17They clothed him in purple and, weaving a crown of thorns, placed it on him.
18They began to salute him with, “Hail, King of the Jews!”
19and kept striking his head with a reed and spitting upon him. They knelt before him in homage.
20And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, dressed him in his own clothes, and led him out to crucify him.
The Way of the Cross.
21They pressed into service a passer-by, Simon, a Cyrenian,* who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.e
The Crucifixion.
22f They brought him to the place of Golgotha (which is translated Place of the Skull).
23They gave him wine drugged with myrrh, but he did not take it.
24* g Then they crucified him and divided his garments by casting lots for them to see what each should take.
25It was nine o’clock in the morning* when they crucified him.
26* The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.”
27With him they crucified two revolutionaries, one on his right and one on his left.h
[28]*
29* Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads and saying,i “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days,
30save yourself by coming down from the cross.”
31Likewise the chief priests, with the scribes, mocked him among themselves and said, “He saved others; he cannot save himself.
32Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also kept abusing him.j
The Death of Jesus.
33At noon darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.
34And at three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”* which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”k
35* Some of the bystanders who heard it said, “Look, he is calling Elijah.”
36One of them ran, soaked a sponge with wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to take him down.”
37Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
38* The veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.
39* l When the centurion who stood facing him saw how he breathed his last he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
40* There were also women looking on from a distance.m Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses, and Salome.
41These women had followed him when he was in Galilee and ministered to him. There were also many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.
The Burial of Jesus.
42n When it was already evening, since it was the day of preparation, the day before the sabbath,
43Joseph of Arimathea,* a distinguished member of the council, who was himself awaiting the kingdom of God, came and courageously went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
44Pilate was amazed that he was already dead. He summoned the centurion and asked him if Jesus had already died.
45And when he learned of it from the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.
46Having bought a linen cloth, he took him down, wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb.
47Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus watched where he was laid.
For Reflection
The Human Part of Jesus’ Suffering
Jesus’ brutal physical sufferings can be painted and sculpted, but it is not so easy to put the human part of what he suffered into words. Perhaps we have to start with this: Jesus was the victim of political and religious abuses. His murder was politically inane, because in the long run the abuse of political power with violence wipes out what it pretends to achieve: right order. Then again, his execution was religiously senseless, because right from the start violent religious persecution destroys the holiness of the persecutor, and holiness is what religion is about. So Jesus suffered an inane and senseless horror, an experience only too many of us are familiar with today. This is what he “wanted to suffer”: to live to the very end in solidarity with humankind, familiar with inanity and meaninglessness.
Jesus suffered as we all suffer. Each one of us, when we suffer bitterly, can hardly believe that there exists any suffering like our own. But suffering is like language: my words are not merely mine; however much I have made them my own, they belong to all of us. Suffering is among us, and no suffering is any one person’s possession. I can talk about “my” cancer, but many others around me are suffering with it, too.
None of us is at all likely to suffer the physical torture that Jesus suffered (God grant this freedom to us all). But each one of us inescapably suffers physical pains and decay. This human suffering that afflicts all of us is what Jesus wanted to suffer. He was no masochist. He chose to embrace even bitter suffering so that he could be like us in everything—except sin—and by his obedience turn the whole of human experience from its journey into death and onto the way of eternal life.
Jesus Refused to Suffer Despair
Master Ignatius tells the one praying on Jesus’ passion to “begin with great effort to strive to grieve, be sad, and weep.” It is never easy to suffer, and it is particularly difficult to enter into another’s suffering. We have to work to grasp that Jesus, on his cross, knew the terrifying vacuum of God’s hiding and leaving him to the merciless experiences that scotch life. Most of us will sink into that dreadful feeling at some point in the chaos of our world.
Despair is a choice just as much as hope is a choice, and Jesus did not suffer despair because he refused to. He trusted that the Father would save him; he said more than once that he would die and that he expected to rise from the dead. On the cross, he trusted that his suffering made some kind of sense, to be revealed when the Father chose. Every day of his human life, he wanted to do whatever he could to alleviate the suffering of those around him. But he was thwarted. He had to die in the hope that he would live again in our flesh.
Jesus’ Passion Brings Us to Embrace the World as it Really Is
Those who really do know and love him will suffer this way, his way. They will also see the suffering of all the people whom God puts in their life world and strive with great effort to grieve with them and do whatever they can to alleviate their suffering. Right here is the deepest spiritual root of the impulse to work for peace and justice. Anything less would be an unworthy motive for those who love Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ passion brings us to embrace the world as it really is: full of violence and pain. We refuse to let religion and grace become an easy analgesic, buffering us from the real sufferings around us. Instead, we embrace whatever suffering comes into our lives as no longer senseless. Our suffering has a meaning in “the language of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18). We join the sufferings of the crucified Christ, the sufferings of humankind that he chose to embrace. We cling to Jesus, to “a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). When we do less, we are using our faith in Christ as a pain pill.
Excerpt from Making Choices in Christ by Joseph A. Tetlow, SJ.
Closing song
Closing song
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