Passion

Last night, I watched The Passion of the Christ. If you have not seen it, let me first say that it is rated R with good reason: it is filled with violence because of all the persecution that Jesus suffered. There's no way to avoid it and still tell the story of Jesus's sacrifice to the extent that it should be told. If you have seen it, then you know what I am talking about.

Long story short, I cried. Hard. And for a long period of time, too. I was mostly in shock the whole movie until he was up on the cross and the criminals started talking to him, especially when Jesus told the nicer criminal that "today you will be with me in paradise." Tears streamed down my face as he suffered on the cross and as he gave up his spirit and as he was stabbed to make sure he was dead and as Mary held him broken in her arms. I cried to see him whole and new at the end of the movie. I went up into my room and cried for forty minutes after the movie was over, sobbing about how awfully they treated my Savior and how they persecuted my Jesus. I am so in love with him and it hurts me to see how much he was hurt, even though I know and he knew that he had to suffer and die in order to save us all from our sins. It felt like my heart was ripped open, to see my Savior lying beaten and broken in his mother's arms.

Before I watched the movie, I knew Jesus suffered to save us. I knew he went through a lot of pain. I even cried for that reason during Sandblast. But this was different. This was indescribable and unbelievable. It has changed the way I percieve Jesus's death. It's more real to me now.

This brings me to the word "passion." Dictionary.com describes it a couple of ways:

1. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion, as related in the New Testament.
2. Ardent love
3. Boundless enthusiasm
4. An overwhelming emotion

We call Jesus's sufferings the Passion. In this Passion, Jesus had passion for us. He so ardently loved us that he was willing to give up his life to persecution and crucifixion. He was passionate for us, passionate that we would be able to spend eternity in Heaven, passionate that we would be given the chance to live.

Are we going through our lives with passion, like Jesus? Are we willing to stake everything for our faith in him? Or are we just going through the motions?