There and Back Again

Disposition: Sleepy
Listening: One Chord Song (Keith Urban)
Reading: The Intelligencer
Watching: Dirty Pretty Things
Obsessing: Eduardo Noriega
Pondering: For God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

I spent most of the morning of Good Friday in tears. I guess the cinema was created to be a dark place for two things; one is so you could cry over a movie in the dark.

A lot of movies make me teary-eyed but Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus Christ, made my eyes more than just teary. It made me cry buckets. Throughout the movie - from the opening scene at the Garden of Gethsemane to Mary praying, “flesh of my flesh… heart of my heart - my son, let me die with you,” all the way to Jesus’ ascension - I had a lump the size of a baseball lodged in my throat. I was squirming in my seat as I watched the zealous scourging of Jesus, sniffling and forcibly pushing back tears as he carried the weight of the cross and the sins of world on his shoulders and just plain devastated and sobbing when he was brutally nailed to the cross.

Growing up Catholic — attending an Augustinian Recollect high school and an SVD university — I know the story of Jesus too well and have seen movies about his life many times. But it just broke my heart to see it again in such graphic violence and at a time when there is so much unrest, so much fighting going on, and so much evil in the world. Every whip, every fall reminded of my sins and reminded me of God’s love.

I’m now hardly as devout as I used to be. I have, once in awhile, questioned my religion, the church, and the bible but some teachings I still hold true to my heart. This movie reminded me of those teachings and those beliefs.