Why My Generation Should Revisit ‘The Passion of the Christ’

I am old enough to be Miss McCallan's grandfather and I have to admit that I still haven't Gibson's film, though it is on my bucket list.

From Aleteia

By Clare McCallan

The film is back to remind us what passion and purpose really are.

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was originally released in 2004, when I was only 10 years old. Because of its R rating, I wouldn’t watch the film until I was a senior in high school. Now, 22 years after its initial release, The Passion of The Christ is set for a week-long theatrical re-release, September 10-17. What the film has meant to me throughout three landmarks in my life – ages 10, 17, and now 32 -- serves as a spiritual cartography not just for me, but for my generation as well.

When the film was first released, I had no personal context or even capacity for its significance. Everything I knew about it was borrowed from my parents and our parish priest. I knew the film had moved them and I knew its success was shocking and exciting for our community. It was clear to me that if I wanted to watch it, I’d be allowed to, with my parents’ supervision. But I held off as long as I could, knowing it would be a difficult, painful watch.

Fast forward seven years and I’m 17, finally watching The Passion of the Christ at a youth group retreat, for the first time. While I still may not have had the context to understand the weight of Christ’s suffering -- His Passion – I now had the capacity to receive it. Like many of the other teens on the retreat, I wept at the violence and loss in front of me.

Immersed in tragedy

Millennials, my generation, have experienced a unique loss of innocence over our lifetime, amplified dramatically by our constant access to every worldwide tragedy via our smartphones. I was 5 when the Columbine shooting happened, 7 when the planes struck the twin towers, 18 when the Boston bombers attacked my hometown, 26 when the world shut down due to COVID-19. I saw scenes from each of those events, on a screen, essentially in real time.

Perhaps my generation’s characteristic avoidance of suffering -- or even just discomfort -- stems from how much of it we were immersed in during our formative years. Yet the narrative of suffering we’ve been fed by media has always struck a minor chord: a nihilistic, black-keyed sort of melody whose refrain sings of senseless violence and meaningless loss.

But The Passion of the Christ -- the great portrayal of suffering that frames the last 22 years of my life -- offers a different tune: one that swells into the crescendo of Heaven’s victory over hell. It tells of passion with a purpose.

The opposite of our passion

Millennials and Gen-Z don’t just share a distaste for all things uncomfortable. We’ve also bastardized the word “passion.” In our vernacular, we use it to describe all the most pleasurable parts of loving. But at its etymological root, the word means the exact opposite. Derived from the Latin word passio, “passion” in its purest form means to suffer or endure. This gives new depth to the oft-used phrase “I am passionate about ...” We use it so casually, as if it were simply another way to express “I care a lot,” “I enjoy,” “I love.” Used correctly, though, what it should mean is “I am willing to suffer for ..." "I am willing to endure great loss and pain for ...”

The greatest passion in human history was the greatest gift of suffering and self: Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross, for us.

The reminder we need

There were glimpses of Him -- of His Passion -- in the onslaught of tragic, violent media that pockmarked millennial maturation. There were countless men and women, during the cataclysms I listed earlier, who emulated Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

But now, over two decades after the initial release of The Passion, we have the opportunity to see Christ and His sacrifice clearly again on the big screen. Together, we can return to the source, back to the great moment of heroism of which all passion thereafter is the legacy.

Perhaps the Passion re-release, along with its subsequent two-part sequel The Resurrection of the Christ, comes at the time when my generation and our world as a whole need it most. Daily, our tiny screens inundate us with every way a soul and a body can suffer. Daily, we are told that the world is just getting worse, and that there really isn’t much we can do about it besides blame each other. Daily, we are told to take pleasure in our “passions” wherever we can.

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is back to remind us what true passion and true purpose really are, and that in the end, Heaven will always triumph because of the sacrifice -- the suffering and endurance -- of the Man who loves us most.