This year my spiritual read for deeper reflection on the Passion has been from the mystic Luisa Piccareta, a book called The Hours of the Passion Of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In it she goes hour by hour through the Passion we just heard. It is 116 pages, I started it last year, got about half way through, picked it up again this year, and it has been really good for reflection, but really striking, even painful to read and pray with.
I just don’t know if we can truly comprehend what it meant for Jesus to enter into His Passion for love of us. This book describes in excruciating detail all of the suffering that He went through, but there are other good resources too, I think of movies like Mel Gibson’s account of the Passion, a word that in Latin means Suffering, passio.
In 1914 Luisa Picarreta wrote, “I believe that if whoever meditates on [the Hours of the Passion] is a sinner, he will convert; if he is imperfect, he will become perfect; if he is holy, he will become holier; if he is tempted, he will find victory; if suffering, he will find strength, medicine, and comfort in these Hours; if weak and poor, he will find a spiritual food and a mirror in which to look at himself continually and so become beautiful and similar to Jesus, our model.”
That’s what I want, so I need to meditate on the Passion of Jesus more. We need to meditate on His Passion more. Not just on Holy Thursday into Good Friday, more like every week.
A more recent English definition for the word Passion is a “strong and barely controllable emotion.” I believe this is accurate too. The Passion of Jesus is Love for us. Pure Love.
Quite often we hear the phrase “take up your cross and follow me” and by reflecting deeply on what Jesus went through, for Love of us and for the forgiveness of our sins, that would help us immensely in our daily battle to carry our own crosses, to bear our own sufferings.
As we come forward to venerate the cross today, we should remember that Love which allowed Jesus to suffer so intensely for us, and may that Love allow us to be truly thankful today and every day of the year, allowing us to grow to “become beautiful and similar to Jesus, our model.”