The compassion of the Christ

Aloys Budi Purnomo, Semarang

Last year there were many debates about Mel Gibson's controversial film, The Passion of the Christ. Millions of people across the globe were extremely impressed by the film. It was very violent. The suffering of Jesus as shown in the film was almost too much to bear. I forced myself to keep my eyes on the screen as the Roman soldiers' steel-hooked whips ripped into the flesh of a writhing Jesus, handcuffed to a marble block. They left Him after perhaps half an hour of nonstop scourging, a mess of slashes oozing scarlet blood and yellow pus; chunks of his skin spattered on the white granite floor and on the faces of his drunken and mad torturers. All this before He was sentenced to death.

A dying Jesus, hair matted with blood and one eye fully shut as a result of the beatings, was then covered with a red haircloth that dug into the fresh wounds, a crown of spiked thorns forced onto his bloodied head and taken before Pilate and the crowd for the famous "Crucify him!" scene.

Jesus was so completely tortured and if one didn't know the story, one would expect Him to die right there and then. The crucifixion, one might think, would almost be a relief.

That was the film based on historical facts of the crucifixion. From the perspective of the Christian faith, in that historical event, Jesus of His own will decided to give His life in solidarity with those who were under the power of death. But what was the main message of the crucifixion? Compassion! The passion of the crucified Jesus was compassion for those who suffer for the sake of mankind.

Man, from generation to generation, has asked the same questions: Why do we suffer? Why must we suffer? How can God allow it?

And surely, the passion of the crucified Jesus is the answer! It is the answer, because it is a clear path to compassion. The passion of the crucified Jesus belongs not only to the Christians, but is part of the struggles and hopes of humankind. The passion of the crucified Jesus is the manifestation of compassion for the poor, the hungry and the oppressed.

Indeed, the passion and compassion, then, should become the cornerstone of our commitment to develop solidarity with other people in our daily life. A journey from passion to compassion is the great challenge of our society.

The more deeply we consider the passion of the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed, the more we will experience the compassionate love of God and love for others, whatever their faith and religion may be. This is what Jesus shows us in that historical moment of the crucifixion.

Compassion, first of all, is a strong feeling of sympathy for people who are suffering and a desire to help them. It would become social compassion if people work hand in hand to show compassion for one another.

Social compassion is the articulation of the encounter with the Divine as experienced by the poor, the hungry and the oppressed in their struggle to affirm their human dignity and claim their true identity as sons and daughters of God.

Freedom exercised within a communion of life, which is marked by social compassion. Freedom, as explained by St. Thomas Aquinas, should be divided between "freedom from" and "freedom for".

The first one refers to freedom from sin, from selfishness, from injustice, from need. All of these are conditions that call for social compassion.

The second one states the purpose of the freedom acquired, freedom for love, for communion; the attainment of love and communion is the final stage in social compassion.

Social compassion should touch every dimension of life. It is a truly social action that allows God's act of compassion to penetrate all levels of human existence. It is precisely in the context of the struggle of the poor, the hungry and the oppressed that the power of the passion of the crucified Jesus becomes visible and has a special relationship with social compassion.

In the context of this socio-political event, social compassion makes it not impossible to turn it into a political movement but it is much larger than just a struggle for political and economic rights. It is a struggle against all the forces of death and social injustice wherever they are manifest and a struggle for life in the fullest sense. And this is our task to build a just civil society for a future Indonesia.

The writer is a diocesan priest of the Archdiocese of Semarang.