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   

     At the Scuola di San Roco in Venice, Italy, there is this impressive “Crucifixion” painting by the artist Jacopo Tintoretto. The most powerful aspect of this huge picture is the Christ on the cross. He seems so muscular and full of light that the cross appears insignificant behind Him. He seems so able to flex those muscles, break that cross into splinters, and stand there, glaring at the scribes and priests who had dared Him to do this. He certainly would show them who’s the “tough guy” ! Yet, He does not. He keeps His head down and chooses to die for us. Why?   

 When I was an 11-year-old kid in Cuba I would ask myself this question. I lived in a rural town where there was so much pressure for a boy to be a “tough guy”. When I would go out  to play with my friends in other parts of town there was always a possibility that I could end up in a fight with one of the local “poor” kids, ready to insult you, or even with some of my own friends who derived pleasure from confrontation. I hated this. You either had to absorb the insult or fight. I did both. This is the way it was.

The message of violence was all around too. One time an adult separated me from another boy during a fight and said, “Stop this. The only tough guy around here is Fidel (Castro)!”  We had just come out of a bloody revolution. On the TV news we could see footage of the day’s firing squad executions of condemned members of the fallen Batista regime. Some times I would go to bed with the mental image of a person’s brains splattering on the wall behind him as the bullets hit him. Some kids found this funny. I thought it was terrifying.      

We were not total savages. The people of our town were polite and serviceable. There was safety and law and order. I could play of days with my many friends without a fight, cooperating, sharing, respecting each other. There was good in my world. That’s the way I liked it.   

 Maybe that’s why I was attracted to this series of Mexican comic books titled “Exemplary Lives.” They were beautifully illustrated. Each month, the life of a different Catholic saint was portrayed: St. Francis of Assissi, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Christopher, St. Vicente de Porres (beloved by all Latin Americans!). I was touched by the stories of martyrs like St. Felicity (she had my mother’s name!) or St. Sebastian, a soldier who had given up violence. They were all so nice to other people, so gentle. What they also had in common was their love for this Jesus, for whom they were ready to die.    

 As a kid in Venezuela and Cuba, I saw images of Jesus all over the place. Everybody knew the Our Father. I was baptized in a Presbyterian Church, but my family was not religious. We never prayed (maybe my mother, a little), and never went to any religious services. God was not important to us. But those religious comic books kind of got my attention. One day, at the candy-stand, a newly arrived, thicker, more expensive one was put on the stand: “Jesús de Nazaret”. You could say that I first met my Lord Jesus Christ in a comic book!    

 As a child, I believed in the supernatural. I was terrified of ghosts, vampires, and curses by the local voodoo priests. They say I got the “evil eye” at least twice, when I was a baby. So when I read in fascination about these miracles of Jesus, I thought, “Yeah, this could be true, but that was back then, not now in our modern world!”   

  What also caught my attention was this message of Jesus, about loving your enemies, not hurting other people, even taking their abuse, their hate, and still loving them.  As a kid, I already knew that adults said a lot and often did not live up to it, so what most impressed me about Jesus was that he was true to his teaching. His Passion showed this. They insulted him and whipped him. They hung him up on a cross to die, and he took it. He did not fight back. He even asked God to forgive them! He was supposed to be powerful enough to control storms, multiply food, and bring back the dead, and yet, he did not come down from that cross to show his enemies his great power and just beat the heck out of them. He was truly gentle and kind, and yet tough enough to handle all that pain like a man! He became my hero.   

 I don’t remember considering the ideas of his resurrection and his salvation of all of us from eternal death. I was a little too afraid of death at the time, I guess, to think about these things. The lesson that I got from this story was that you could hate violence and confrontation and still be a “man”. It was not a weakness to love others and even forgive the ones who hated you. Maybe peace on earth was possible.    

 These thoughts lingered in my mind for a while. I even borrowed a New Testament from my sweet, Methodist aunt, but it was too confusing and hard to read. Slowly, the powerful feelings that I had about Jesus became lessened, but not my admiration for him. I thought he was a pretty cool guy. And he was always reaching out to people, so maybe some day he would reach out to me. He was supposed to still be alive and all powerful. Unfortunately, it took me almost 50 years to finally meet Him in Spirit and in Truth. I suppose another lesson from this is to not give up on anyone. Jesus can come and “get you” anytime.   

 Thank you Beloved Lord, for not giving up on me!
Orlando Hernández