Hurting the innocent

Paige is still in the hospital with Molly, so I just watched a violent movie I knew she wouldn't see: "The Passion of the Christ." Though I wrote about it here several times last year — or more specifically, I wrote about the hysterical reaction to it — I hadn't seen it until tonight.

I was surprised at how much the movie didn't surprise me, probably because I had already read so much about it. It was so transparently grounded in the Faith that I experienced it more as a simple visual representation of Jesus' suffering and death than as an art object. There was no effort to convince, or even to teach. If you didn't know who Jesus was, or what he did prior to Holy Thursday, "The Passion" will not tell you because those things lie outside its scope. The images are so stark and the plot so barren of any narrative tricks that the subtitles were almost superfluous.

It's too much to hope, but perhaps other filmmakers will take up related projects. They needn't be believers; Robert Bolt wrote "A Man for All Seasons" and "The Mission" and he was not a praticing Christian, though he was sympathetic to those who are. Gibson did excellent work in fleshing out the characters of Pilate and his wife, and clever artists could take other biblical characters (Barabbas, Thomas, Paul) and turn them into protagonists of other movies.

It did surprise me that "The Passion" didn't make me pity Jesus' suffering as much as I thought I would, but perhaps that is a good thing. It seems to me that pity is a very dangerous emotion, capable of belittling its object. Pity puts the focus on the one who pities, not the one who has suffered misfortune. I felt the same way when I saw my fellow Marines injured. I helped them to my utmost, but I wouldn't have expected anyone to feel sorry for me if I had been wounded. We were Marines — we were supposed to suffer. It would have been ignoble to consider one's own suffering as more important than someone else's.

Similarly, I have never been disturbed by movies with scenes of battlefield violence, but I find it extremely difficult to watch the innocent and helpless suffer. I don't know how I made it through "Schindler's List," vowing never to watch it a second time. That is why, more than Jesus, it was Mary's pain that grieved me deeply. God is impassible and immutable; my personal sins cannot injure him in his divine nature. But seeing my sins contribute to a mother having to watch her son tortured to death is horrifying. I understand why God suffered for our salvation, but her? Why her? At least Joseph died a quiet death before the Crucifixion.

The answer, as "The Passion" explicitly shows, is that God wanted Our Lady to help guide and nurture the infant Church, just as she held baby Jesus to her breast after his birth. Yet we are all still culpable for piercing her sinless heart with the results of our sins, something I first contemplated when I wept in front of the "Pietá" in St. Peter's, long before I took the Faith seriously.

We try to ignore it, but the effects of our misdeeds careen around the world, affecting people who aren't directly involved. Happily, the converse is also true: our good deeds spill out and cascade through others' lives. I pray that for myself, and for all of us, the latter deeds outweigh the former.