Making All Things New

All Things New

It isn’t possible for Holy Week to become real for me until, after the horrific Palm Sunday gospel, for which no forgiveness should be pronounced except from the Cross, I watch Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. It takes me to Jerusalem, from the Mount of Olives right through to the Place of the Skull. The movie is excessive only in the vicious, bloody beating, the time focused on it, the utter savagery of man’s hatred of man.

But when it came out nearly a dozen years ago, Pope John Paul II viewed it and said, “It happened just that way.” I believe so, yes. Just that way. Oh my God.

Artist’s license is taken in the film story, yes, but neither more nor less than the four evangelists take in their presentation of the gospels. John’s gospel has intricate detail of what Jesus said, moves the events back a day so that Jesus, proclaimed as the Lamb of God at the beginning of John's gospel, dies the day before Passover, on the day the lambs are slaughtered, sacrificed as the Lamb of God. The Synoptics have it so that the Last Supper is the Passover meal. There are lots of detail differences, but as the pope said, it happened just that way. I cannot truly be there unless and until I live again through the horror of Gibson’s film. I did that last evening.

The artist’s license, which is so rich, includes the female demon hovering over Jesus at the Mount of Olives. She vanishes when Jesus crushes the serpent with his foot, but reappears here and there, sometimes drifting at the back of the crowd. And among the demons tormenting Judas.

Who is she? I’m thinking Isaiah 34:14, Lilith, the night hag of the wilderness, who terrorizes the darkness.

The film’s flashbacks are incredibly moving. Early, Mary comes out to ask Jesus if he is hungry -- it seems to be lunch or suppertime -- and he, the carpenter's son, a worker in wood, is making a table, a dining table for a rich man (he hasn’t made the chairs yet). But it could also be a table for the Lord’s Supper, the Altar of Sacrifice.

Carrying his Cross through the streets of Jerusalem, Jesus stumbles and falls. Desperate in the crowd, Mary sees him fall.

The flashback comes of the time he fell as a little boy and she rushed to him, gathered him lovingly in her arms, and held him close. He was her baby.

He will always be her baby. Mothers are like that. So are fathers, some of them. So are Papas, grandfathers. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. Pray for me.

In Gibson’s film, the Beloved Disciple is shielding and protecting and helping Mary. She asks him to help her get to Jesus. One of the times he falls, she is able to rush to him, and their heads come lovingly together, perhaps for the last time.