The photograph above is from Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth .” This Holy Week, when I once again saw this 1977 film, I was especially touched by the scene from where this photo comes from. Jesus is standing before the accusing crowds, in front of the Praetorium, Pontius Pilate at the center, and Barabbas on the other side. The crowd is calling for Jesus’ crucifixion.

When I see the Jesus character looking up to heaven, I think of what Fr. John Lee, CP often says about the Passion: “What Jesus was feeling the most was peace and confidence in being in His Father’s Love. He knew He was not alone.”   

 But in this same scene the camera moves to the side and captures Jesus’ profile. There is sweat and blood running down His face. He lowers His head (Is He shivering?), and what I see now is the loneliness of this rejected man, a divine person but also a human being like all of us. I see such great sorrow, a need for comfort when there is no-one around to give it.    

 People are dying separated from family and friends in intensive care units in so many places around the world. Philip Kemmy, an Irish priest is inviting devotees of the Divine Mercy Chaplet to imagine (as St. Faustina did in her time) themselves sitting next to a seriously ill COVID patient, perhaps holding his/her hand, and praying the Chaplet with them.I have been doing this. I feel the Lord with both of us. I am at a loss of words in trying to express what I see and feel during these moments, where the mystery, the light, and the power of Jesus’ Passion is felt with such intensity.

In the end I just feel that it all comes down to Love. Perhaps this is because I have been hanging around Passionists for so long. It would take me pages to list all the priests, brothers, and sisters of the Passion who have blessed my life. I will limit myself to my memory of this one person.   

 Fr. Richard Schiner CP, my spiritual director, whom I considered a friend, died on June 20, 2015. It caught me by surprise, because I thought he was doing better. In these days of the pandemic, my mind goes back to the last time I saw him at Long Island Jewish Hospital. It is haunting to remember that my wife and I had to put on all kinds of gowns, head coverings, rubber gloves, and surgical masks, in order to go into his room. I imagine it was for his protection (or ours?), but at first I found it an obstacle to communication.

However, he immediately put us at ease with his welcoming smile. I felt as if we were chatting at the lounge in the Passionist Monastery at Jamaica, Queens, his home. Even though his life was in danger, he displayed such cheerful optimism and peace. I left his room feeling the same way. Jesus was there with him! He could have possibly had moments of desolation and loneliness, even fear, as his condition became worse, but above all, I believe he was a man who felt loved, in communion with his beloved Lord in His Passion.    

 Now, during Holy Week, in his memory I submit these words that he wrote about the Passion of our Lord:     “ Why, we may ask would a God whom we believe to be a loving Father, require His Son to surrender Himself to such an excruciating death? Why? The traditional answer, and the one we have all probably been taught is : to make up, to satisfy for Adam’s sin. Usually the metaphor employed stated that Adam and Eve had committed such a terrible sin and merited such profound guilt, that only the death of God’s only Son could atone for it. This view pictures God as a fierce judge or a relentless banker who casts all of Adam and Eve’s children into a kind of debtors’ prison, and refuses to release them until the last penny is paid. God, in this view, is very much like the unmerciful servant in the parable Jesus told. And that is not the kind of God I believe in.    

 The God I believe in is like the father we find in the Parable  of the Prodigal Son. Here is a father who does not wait for his son to come to him to ask his forgiveness, but instead rushes out to meet and embrace his son with love and forgiveness. The father has forgiven his son before he even appears on the horizon. And that is the kind of God I believe in.    

 Without denying the insights of the Church Fathers, can we for just a moment ignore them? Can we, right now and maybe for always just see what happened on Calvary as a total and ultimate act of love? Can we see the death of Christ on His cross as an act that expresses God’s complete and all-embracing enchantment with us? With us! And God asks, ‘Is this enough to assure you how much you mean to me, how important you are to me ?’”   

 The Great Teacher again teaches me on the cross: only through love can our precarious life have any meaning. This is the only way out of the nightmare. In my life, Fr. Richard, along with so many other great Passionists, have been living reminders of this great lesson that our patron saint, St. Paul of the Cross, stressed all the time: We are so loved by this wonderful God of the Universe. Accept it with gratitude, humility and trust!          May the Passion of Christ Be Always In Our Hearts.
Orlando Hernández