The Passion of Our Christ

Preparing for Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, Holy Week and Pascha at the Sts. Mitrophan and Alopen Cathedral in the Missionary Diocese of East and Southeast Asia

A Passion Sunday Sermon in Our Western Rite Lenten Tradition

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

I will say these things to you now, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters, as we stand today upon the threshold of the Great and Holy Week, Passion Sunday places before us not merely the historical suffering of Christ, but the theological meaning of His suffering. The Western Rite, with great spiritual instinct, gives us these final two weeks of Lent as a deepening descent into the mystery of the Cross. The Church now begins to veil her images, quiet her Alleluias, and lead her children into the shadow of Calvary so that they may learn again the cost of redemption. The mystery begins to hide itself, so that the full force of the revelation of Our Lord as Pascha will dawn in our hearts and minds...

As our Collect prays, we ask that God would “mercifully look upon His people; that by His great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul.”

For Passiontide teaches us this central truth:

Christianity is not merely the religion of the Incarnation.
It is the religion of the Incarnation moving toward the Cross. Christ not only embraces our body and nature, but embraces our pain and suffering, and comes to site with us “in the potshards.”

As St. Ephraim the Syrian wrote: “He put on a body that He might suffer. He suffered that He might heal. He died that He might give life.” O, profound mystery!

Gideon and the Pattern of the Cross

The Old Testament reading gives us Gideon, a most unlikely warrior, defeating an army not by strength but by obedience and divine strategy.

Three hundred men.
Clay jars.
Hidden lamps.
Trumpets of proclamation.

St. Aphrahat, the great Persian Sage, saw in such events the hidden pattern of Christ: “God conquers not by the strength of armies, but by the weakness through which His power is revealed.”

The jars must be broken for the light to shine. And here the Fathers saw the mystery:

The jar is the humanity of Christ.
The light is His divinity.
The breaking is the Passion.

St. Maximos the Confessor explains this paradox: “The Word reveals His power through voluntary weakness, overturning the logic of fallen strength.” Christ conquers not by destroying His enemies, but by allowing Himself to be destroyed. And this is the great scandal. Not that Christ died. But how He chose to die.

Christ the True High Priest

Hebrews brings us into the sanctuary of this mystery: Christ is both priest and sacrifice. Not the blood of bulls. Not the blood of goats. But His own Blood. St. John of Damascus writes: “The sacrifice is the same as the priest, and the priest is the same as the sacrifice, for He offers Himself to Himself for our sake.”

Here is the absolute uniqueness of Christianity. Every other religion offers sacrifices to God. Only Christianity reveals God offering Himself for man. I was just talking about this ministry with one of our catechumens, preparing for baptism in May, and he was saying that this is the core of the mystery for him – not a sacrifice for us to appease and buy-off God, but a sacrifice whereby God bridges the gap that we created between us and Him, and unites us to Himself.

St. Isaac the Syrian describes it with piercing beauty: “Love could not bear to see humanity perish. Therefore Love stretched itself upon the Cross.” And here we understand Passion Sunday. It is not merely remembering suffering. It is contemplating divine love under the form of suffering.

The I AM Who Suffers

The Gospel confronts us with Christ’s terrifying declaration:

“Before Abraham was, I AM.”

This is not poetry. This is a claim to the Divine Name itself. The same Name spoken to Moses from the burning bush. The same Name that made Israel tremble. And this is what makes the Passion so staggering: The One who will be crucified on Friday is the same One who spoke creation into existence.

St. Gregory Nazianzen says: “He who hangs the earth upon the waters hangs upon the Cross.” And St. Ephraim adds: “The Maker of all was made a spectacle. The Judge stood judged. The Life tasted death.” This is why they pick up stones. Because either Christ is blaspheming...

—or He is God.

There is no middle ground. As C. S. Lewis famously summarized: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.”

Passion Sunday forces the decision. Not whether Christ suffered. But who it was that suffered.

The Western Genius of Passiontide

The Western tradition developed Passiontide not as mere liturgical decoration, but as spiritual pedagogy. Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, our holy confessing father, preached: “We are now entering the days of the Passion, wherein the Church would have us dwell not lightly upon Christ’s death, but seriously upon the cause of it, which is sin.” And the Holy Martyr Archbishop Laud reminds us: “The Cross is not only Christ’s burden. It is the Christian’s pattern.”

The purpose of Passiontide is not emotional sorrow. It is moral awakening. The Desert Fathers understood this well. Abba Isaac said: “He who remembers the Passion of Christ cannot love sin.” And Abba Poemen taught: “Teach your heart to stand at Golgotha, and pride will die there.”

Passion Sunday therefore asks us: Have we truly stood at the Cross? Or have we only admired it from a distance?

The Passion as the Revelation of Divine Character

Modern people often ask: Why the Cross? Why suffering? Why the gore and blood? St. Narsai answers: “Because sin is not a mistake. It is a wound. And wounds require healing, not explanation.” And healing requires cost. Dostoevsky captured this instinct when he wrote: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

The Cross is love in action. Not sentimental love. Costly love. Sacrificial love. Terrible love. Holy love.

This is why Bishop Brent, the founder of our Church in the Philippines, which now proudly proclaims Western Orthodoxy in our English Patrimony, has a prayer that is so fitting: That Christ “stretched out His arms of love on the hard wood of the Cross that everyone might come within the reach of His saving embrace.”

Notice: The Cross is not merely an instrument of death. It is the posture of divine embrace.

Preparing to Walk Holy Week

Now the Church prepares us:

Palm Sunday - the King rejected
Maundy Thursday - the Priest betrayed
Good Friday - the Lamb sacrificed
Holy Saturday - the God who descends into death
Pascha - the Victor who destroys death

St. John Chrysostom says: “Let no one fear death, for the death of the Savior has set us free.” But we cannot reach Pascha without passing through Passion.

George Herbert captures this movement in that sacred poem I read you two weeks ago:

“Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack,
Drew nearer to me sweetly questioning.”

Christ does not wait for us to be worthy. He goes to the Cross knowing we are not. Let that sink in!

The Personal Meaning of Passion Sunday

So what does Passion Sunday ask of us? Not merely admiration, but complete and absolute participation. St. Basil the Great says: “The Christian is one who has learned to die before he dies.” We will learn to die to pride. To die to anger. To die to self-will. To die to fear. Because the Passion is not only something Christ endured, and it is something He offers to us as a gift – so that we may enter in!

It is truly something we enter. As St. Maximos teaches: “The one who understands the Cross understands all things.”

A Poetic Reflection

T. S. Eliot, in language very fitting for Passiontide, wrote in Four Quartets 2-IV:

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire,

Wherein, if we do well, we shall

Die of the absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires

Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

A Final Meditation

The Passion of Christ is not merely the story of suffering. It is the revelation that God Himself has entered the tragedy of human existence in order to redeem it from within. The One who said “Before Abraham was, I AM” is the same One who will soon cry “It is finished.” He brings us the “eternal now” in the arms of the Cross. And when the Cross stands empty on Easter morning, we will know that love is stronger than death, and that Christ makes all things new!

Let us pray….

COLLECT

O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst willingly endure the Passion for the salvation of the world, grant unto us grace to contemplate Thy holy sufferings with humble hearts; that being cleansed by Thy precious Blood and strengthened by Thy Cross, we may faithfully follow Thee through the trials of this life and at length attain the joy of Thy glorious Resurrection; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.