Palm Sunday marks the day Jesus entered Jerusalem and the beginning of the week of his passion, which, in the context of this article, refers to his suffering and death on the cross.
But if you did not know that and you were to look up the word passion in a modern dictionary (for instance, my computer’s built-in New Oxford American Dictionary), you would likely find these as the top three definitions: (1) “strong and barely controllable emotion”; (2) “an intense desire or enthusiasm for something”; (3) “intense sexual love.” These are the kinds of things we associate with the word passion in our society.
But in good old dictionaries, like older versions of the Oxford English Dictionary (which has been considered the “definitive historical dictionary” of the English language), you will find passion primarily defined according to its original meaning: “suffering,” from the Latin word passio. This consensus goes back to at least the second century when Tertullian wrote in Latin of the passionibus Christi.
To truly grasp passion’s original meaning is to understand that a Lenten reading of John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (KJV)—may center not on the powerful feeling of love that moves God but on the suffering that Jesus was willing to endure because of that love.
We have slowly lost this sense of the word, and, alas, modern dictionaries document modern usage. But the shift is disconcerting. Could it be that there is little we still care enough about to suffer for in our modern contexts of comfort? Or could it be that our notion of suffering is as anemic as our concept of passion?
Even amid the recent pandemic, Pew Research found that more than 70 percent of US adults generally agreed that “suffering is mostly a consequence of people’s own actions.” Passion, on the other hand, is mostly connected to enjoyment in our culture, which is evident in how modern corporations market everything from coffee to cars to careers.
The Latin passio is also related to another English word, passive, which once carried the same primary definition: to suffer. And while we don’t usually associate passivity with pain, the idea is that a passive person suffers as well—but as “the object, [not] the subject, of action” (quoting from the Oxford English definition.) In other words, the passive person suffers as a result of inactivity. The irony is that resorting to inaction in order to avoid suffering relinquishes our agency when we do inevitably face it.
How different is the passion of Jesus, who willingly set himself on a path of suffering, in obedience to God and motivated by a profound love for humankind. In Jesus, we see not only the full depth of God’s passion for us and the suffering that was an essential part of it (John 3:16; Eph. 5:2) but also the full depth of perfect human passion for God: obedience that led all the way to death. “For the joy set before him he endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2).
During Lent, we look at the example of Jesus in his journey of sacrificial suffering—which inevitably presents us with at least two choices: to actively embrace the obedient life that follows the way of the cross or to passively let life happen to us, whether good or bad.
Praying in the Shadow of Gethsemane
Of course, this framework risks being simplistic, as there aren’t only these two kinds of suffering in the world. Even Jesus rejected simplistic explanations for our trials and troubles, as he did when his students wanted to know who had sinned to make a man blind (John 9:2–3). I also don’t mean this to be a test of a person’s spiritual heroism, like the movies that lionize the soldier who runs toward trouble.
Rather, I think of it as a reminder that we will all face suffering in this life, whether chosen or not. But when we decide to take up our cross and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23), we have the opportunity to suffer in partnership with him and his mission.
Scripture makes it clear that Jesus actively set himself on his path knowing it would lead to suffering (Luke 9:51; Matt. 16:21). Even in times when Jesus refused action in a way that seemed passive—like staying silent before his accusers or opting not to fight when an army came to arrest him—he remained steadfast in his determination to fulfill God’s will, even to the point of refusing to fight back or to call upon angels for protection.
Likewise, we may choose to refuse action in ways that seem passive but are intentional decisions made with full awareness of their cost. Ultimately, our choices are a matter of conscience before God and cannot be measured by their outcomes or visible metrics. Yet I believe that a conscience sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s guidance can recognize forks in the road where we might either choose passionate action or settle for passive inaction.
To live passionately, in the truest sense of the word, is to follow the way of our Lord and accept the cost, whatever it may be. As we consider the joy set before us and follow Jesus obediently, we should expect to suffer—not least in the death of worldly habits and the cost of hard choices that come into conflict with the world’s value systems.
In many cases, we can see the path of suffering we are called to as well as its cost: to speak a difficult truth in love to a neighbor who needs to hear it, to stay with someone in an uncomfortable moment of felt need, to choose a long-term good over a cheap and easy comfort, or to sacrifice extra resources to serve the needs of others.
Of course, none of these actions rises even remotely to the level of Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice; unlike many brothers and sisters around the world, my Western neighbors and I are not likely to face a sentence of death for our faith. But still, so many of us (myself included) resist even the relatively low costs of being a disciple in our contexts.
What Christ Accomplished Before ‘It Is Finished’
In my day job as a psychotherapist, I have to understand the brain science behind behavior. But a simple psychological perspective does not account for our God-given spiritual authority to make choices based on something other than happiness. In Psychology Today, Mike Brooks contrasts the evolutionary value of suffering, which “motivates us to move away from things which can cause us harm,” with our innate preference for “pleasure and happiness,” which “help us move toward things that are good for us.”
In other words, as humans, we naturally devote a lot of resources to avoiding suffering and try to put off pain for as long as possible. But in doing so, we miss out on profound opportunities to express our agency and our authority as Jesus did by choosing the way of sacrificial suffering.
Our innate wiring toward happiness should never overrule our desire to follow Jesus, who, near the end of his week of passion, collapsed in anguished prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane—asking God to take away his cup of suffering—yet ultimately chose to let God’s will overrule his own out of love for us, his friends (Mark 14:36; John 15:13).
Two paths: one chosen, active, intentional; another passive, unchosen, subjecting us to the action of external forces. In the end, both ways are marked by suffering. And while it may be true that the passionate person suffers more than the passive one, the passionate person’s pain is filled with a sense of purpose from God.
The worst thing about passive suffering is we can never say, “I knew the cost of my choice and accepted it.” Instead, we are more likely to say, “What did I do to deserve this?”—to which the answer may well be “Nothing.”
To take up our cross and follow Jesus, we accept God’s direction and choose to walk a difficult path. This is a path that promises suffering, but it also promises hope (1 Pet. 5:10)—not only because we do not walk this path alone but also because Easter always follows Lent.
David Maddalena is a writer and licensed psychotherapist in California. He previously served for 20 years within Christian communities in both lay and ordained pastoral roles.
