Thought for the Week – The Passion of Jesus

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We are in Holy Week, the week of the Lord’s Passion.
Passion comes from the Latin word passio, meaning passive, non-activity, absorbing something rather than doing anything.  The Passion of Jesus is about what was being done to him.
Jesus public life falls into two parts – three years of active ministry – teaching and preaching healing and performing miracles, eating with sinners and debating with church authorities. He was a busy man with sometimes barely time to eat and at moments his family thought he had gone mad…
Following this period of intense activity comes his passion and death where he no longer does things but is having things done to him. He is arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, led to the high priest and taken to Pilate…he is beaten, humiliated stripped of his clothes and nailed to a cross and dies. He is the one to whom things are being done.
Strange that we are saved by his passion rather than by his active ministry of preaching and doing miracles…
We all have our holy week – we have our own Jerusalem to enter where ever that might be and we all experience our passion – give way to things being done to us. This is a deep challenge for those of us who feel we should be organising our own salvation – the cross teaches us that we achieve as much in our passivities as in our activities …maybe more…
When we are no longer in charge – when we are beaten down by whatever, humiliated and suffering  we are undergoing our own passion and like Jesus we have in that the opportunity to give our love and ourselves to others.
Murroe Website EditorThought for the Week – The Passion of Jesus