Ordinary life and the Passion of Christ

Polish painter Jerzy Duda Gracz depiction of Christ before Pilate. 

The striking paintings of a Polish Catholic convert 

depict the Stations of the Cross, Jerzy Duda Gracz (1941-2004)

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I think contemporary renditions of the Passion of Christ are important for us to understand the suffering of Christ - caught as he was between the politicians and spiritual leaders of his day - as well as the common, ordinary people whose allegiance and fidelity was as fickle and disparate as our own.

The agony, the arrest, the trial, the scourging, the condemnation, the death and burial - took place amidst much chaos, much clamor - people mocking, scorning, as they rallied to follow the events with a sort of lynch-party mentality - imagine a Bosch painting - revealing the ugly side of humanity.  The lies and hypocrisies exposed, the lusts and indecency out in the open.  

Yet Jesus walked in peace through the midst of them.

I think it is the same for Jesus, and ourselves, today.  The fighting - the competition between politics and religion and our social calendars and agenda; the betrayal of trust, the hypocrisy, the in-fighting, the name calling, vanity and greed, placing our trust in all that is not God, the lying ...

So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area. - John 8:59

We encounter Christ rejected, in the sin that wears a thousand faces.

How could we possibly have the heart to mock these people or to hate them, this multitude of sinners with whom we rub shoulders?

The solitude of God in fraternal charity; it is Christ serving Christ, Christ in the one who is serving and Christ in the one being served. - Madeleine Delbrel

He walked in peace through the midst of them.