Pain, passion and faith

THE CATHOLIC Bishops' Conference of the Philippines has endorsed Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" but has warned viewers about the violence in the film.

I would worry too. The film is full of scenes so bloody and brutal that it received an R (restricted) rating in the States.

But I'm hoping Gibson's film can be used to stimulate more discussion about the different Christian views about redemption. One view, represented in Gibson's film, is that it is mainly Jesus' suffering that redeemed humanity. Catholics know this very well, the way we are taught, from an early age, the sorrowful mysteries in the rosary and the many Lenten observances and rituals such as the Stations of the Cross.

There is also a strong Catholic mystical tradition emphasizing pain, an example of which is the phenomenon of the stigmata, wounds appearing on the body corresponding to those of the crucifixion. Padre Pio is a well-known example of a stigmatist. There was also Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a German Augustinian nun, who not only had the stigmata but also claimed she had visions of Christ's passion, which she eventually compiled into a book, "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ," which Gibson acknowledges as having inspired his film.

Not all Christian churches share this focus on Christ's passion. Kenneth Woodward, writing in the Feb. 25 issue of the New York Times, notes that American Christianity has in fact tended to move away from this focus on Jesus' suffering: "Most Americans worship in churches where the bloodied body of Jesus is absent from sanctuary crosses or else styled in ways so abstract that there is no hint of suffering."

Woodward explains that all this is a legacy of the Reformation in the 16th century when radical Protestants reacted against what they saw as the idolatry of Catholics. Statues of saints were removed from churches, human figures from stained-glass windows, and, most importantly, Christ's body from the cross.

Given his assessment of American Christianity, Woodward welcomes Gibson's film despite what he calls "muscular excesses" in the violence. I have no quarrel with the reminders to commemorate Jesus' passion, but I worry that Gibson's film represents an almost morbid fixation on the violence of that passion, to the extent that we lose sight of the other tenets of the Christian faith, in particular the view that Jesus saved humanity by becoming human.

This incarnational view looks at Jesus' entire life, from his conception to his resurrection, as redemptive. This is why I was touched more by scenes in Gibson's film offering glimpses into Jesus' humanity, into his childhood, his trade as a carpenter, his ministry.

This view of Jesus' incarnation does not mean glossing over his suffering, but this does not have to be always in the form of bloodied bodies; in fact, one of the most moving scenes in Gibson's film was Jesus' agony in the garden, his fears and doubts over what was to come again reflecting his humanity.

Tom Beaudoin, a theology professor at Boston College writing in the March 19 issue of the National Catholic Reporter, also points out that Gibson's film has one important failure -- it does not show how Jesus chose to suffer the fate of many other Jews who were then under the Romans.

Historians point out that crucifixions were very common in Jesus' time. In the first century after Christ, Romans crucified as many as 500 Jews a day to try to put down a revolt, and crosses dotted the landscape around Jerusalem. In essence then, Jesus chose to suffer as a "political prisoner" and a Jew, executed for allegedly subverting the Roman Empire.

Gibson's film distorts the facts by obscuring Jesus' Jewish identity and depicting him mainly as a victim of the Jews. No wonder, there were fears among Jews that this would reinforce anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism runs counter to Christianity's own messages about love and forgiveness, which do appear in Gibson's film during Jesus' most tormented and agonizing moments. But Jesus' appeals are easily lost for many reasons. First, the dialogue is all in Aramaic and Latin, with English subtitles that are unlikely to be followed by many of our local audiences, especially with the overwhelming visual images of violence.

Second, amid Jesus' own admonitions about forgiveness, we see scenes of divine wrath: a crow sent to peck the eyes of the "bad thief" who had mocked Jesus and the earthquake after the crucifixion threatening to destroy a Jewish temple.

I would be curious to see how the film will affect our own very powerful concepts of pain and suffering, some from the pre-colonial period and some from Spanish Catholicism. We see pain as a subok, as a trial, and sometimes as punishment for sins. Bearing the pain is glorified as a virtue.

We also look at pain as a kind of moral currency to be used for negotiating with God or the saints. People take a vow (panata) to inflict pain on themselves, the vow made during -- the crisis itselfoften the illness of a close relative -- to be fulfilled after the favor is granted, or even before, as if to make a stronger case for the appeal. I can never forget a news item, many years ago, of an Amerasian born of an American soldier and a Filipina mother, who had himself crucified each year in Pampanga, hoping that eventually God would help him find his father.

Paradoxically, Gibson's film could be counter-productive in the way its violence numbs people. There's a strong possibility this could happen with Filipinos. Precisely because we so emphasize pain and suffering, we have the flagellation and crucifixions during Holy Week, with the blood splashed across the front pages of our newspapers and on television newscasts. When you've seen the real thing, Gibson's footage of blood and maimed bodies come through as special effects, overdone and contrived.

I'm going to end by referring to a letter written by Donald W. Shriver, president emeritus of the Union Theological Seminary, to the New York Times, in reaction to Woodward's article. Shriver says that Woodward failed to mention another more important reason why Protestant crosses do not carry Jesus' body, and this is a "faith in resurrection, which turns the cross from an instrument of torture into a sign of victory over sin and death. Without that faith, early Christianity could hardly have survived the death of Jesus."

We need to think more about how one's faith might endure and grow, with or without Gibson's film, with or without Jesus' body on our crosses.

Comments to miguel@pinoykasi.net