A: Passion Sunday (5 Apr 2020) - COM-PASSION SUNDAY (Mt 21:1–11; 26:14–27:66)

In the liturgical calendar, today is the start of the weeklong commemoration of the Passion of the Christ with the so-called Passion Sunday. The word “passion” (from the Latin: patior or passus sum) hints the idea of Jesus’ terrible sufferings: betrayed and deserted by his disciples, arrested and tried by the religious leaders, sentenced to death by the incitement of the crowd, and physically experienced the most gruesome form of death in the hands of Roman officials. While there is also a Greek work that relates to the idea of suffering, paschō, which means “to suffer” or “to endure” (cf. Mt 27:19), it is not used to describe the situation relevant to Jesus’ last days. More properly, the word “pascha” is more widely utilized, which in our biblical narrative today refers to the Passover festival (cf. Mt 26:17, 18, 19).

The Passover is “an annual Israelite festival commemorating Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the Passover , celebrated on the 14th of the month of Nisan, and continuing into the early hours of the 15th;” the “pascha,” specifically, refers to the “Passover lamb” or “the lamb sacrificed for observance of the Passover” (cf. BDAG). This celebration is held annually in the confines of a Jewish home where all the family members gather together for the so-called Seder meal (cf. Exodus 13:3–16). In particular, this meal is an occasion of recollection of the night before the Israelites were liberated from their slavery in Egypt. Accordingly, they would dine in accordance to how the ancient Israelites did it before—eating bitter herbs, dry unleavened bread, and vegetables/eggs dipped in saltwater—in order to share in their suffering. This is accompanied by related gestures and formulas that recreate the actual night of the Israelites’ deliverance. By and large, this event is a communal gathering, a communal assurance that everyone supports each other amidst all the suffering that came and would come to all of them.

As of today, there are 1.1 million cases of COVID-19 infections globally, out of which 61,663 died. The number grows exponentially each minute, causing severe anxiety to all of us as this scenario dramatically changes our lives. Most of us remain quarantined at our homes, practically helpless as the solution we are hoping is still out of sight. We grieve each day as we hear of news of hundreds of deaths, including those of frontliner-heroes who died while helping others to live. Yet, the greater problem nowadays is the daily sustenance of the poor who are in need of food, shelter, and medical assistance in the midst of the lockdown measures imposed in most communities to contain the outbreak and to flatten the curve of the rise of COVID-19 cases. We can only watch from a distance as the world suffers each day. When will this ever end?

Last March 27, Pope Francis addressed the whole world in an extraordinary Urbi et Orbi message reflecting on Mk 4:35–41. He recognized here the disciples’ fear of drowning into the sea, and their feeble faith in the Lord who was actually with them in the boat that was battered by the windstorm. He related this biblical context to our common experience in this pandemic, while exhorting us to have faith in the Lord: “Faith begins when we realize we are in need of salvation… He brings serenity into our storms, because with God life never dies.” Yet, this fear can be overcome because we are together, we have each other and we have Jesus inside our very boat. Thus, we need to share this hope to one another by “taking care to sow not panic but a shared responsibility… praying, offering and interceding for the good of all.”

As we begin to commemorate the Passion of the Christ in a time when we truly feel his pain on account of our unprecedented universal suffering, I propose that we communally witness to it not only by pondering spiritually on the word “passion” but by broadening it to “com-passion” by suffering and being a source of consolation, hope, and assistance to one another.

- Rex Fortes, CM