Last year at this time, the most widely attended movie was not a conventional thriller, but a profoundly religious movie, The Passion of the Christ. It was also a very controversial film. I won’t go far into the reasons. Some of them had to do with personal taste, some with fears of religious prejudice, and some - I suspect - from professional jealousy within the Hollywood movie-making business.
But with all of the controversy, there were some definite gains for the Christian community. For one thing, religion became a serious topic of conversation. The movie made it possible for many people to discuss their religious feelings, people who otherwise would have been embarrassed to do so. Some of these discussions may have been ill-informed and some may have brought forth unpleasant feelings, yet on the whole it was a great gain for matters of faith to have been brought into the public square of open discussion.
Why “Passion Sunday”?
And another thing happened for great numbers of faithful churchgoers. For the first time, they understood why we refer to the Sunday before Easter as “Passion Sunday.” Many of us, you see, are inclined to think of this Sunday simply as “Palm Sunday.” In a sense, there’s nothing wrong with that, because it is the Sunday on which Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But in the liturgical calendar, this Sunday is officially known as “Passion Sunday,” because it is the Sunday leading us into the week of our Lord’s suffering - or Passion - the week of his
