The Passionless Passion
Those little rat bastards screwed up the Passion play! For ages, between fifteen and twenty years now, the highlight of Palm Sunday Mass at Holy Redeemer has been a brilliant staging of the Passion by the youth group. The kids act out the Passion, dressed in black and wearing mimeface, while another youth group member in normal church clothes narrates. The play begins and ends with a description of Christ and the Apostles' entry into Jerusalem, "What a week it was to be for Jesus...," and a single line of a song, beautiful and melancholy, repeated again and again, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." The triumphant entrance into David's City, the Last Supper, the betrayal, the release of Barrabas, Pilate washing his hands, the crown of thorns, the march to Calvary, the Crucifixion... it's majestic. My heart aches when the narrator intones, "What a week it was to be for Jesus..." after the actor playing the Christ has been carried out of the church on his fellows' shoulders.

This year, the youth group cut out most of what was beautiful and powerful in the Passion, beginning with Christ already in Pilate's custody and presenting a greatly abbreviated version of events from there. The best parts of the entire performance, the one-two combination of "What a week it was to be for Jesus" and "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," were entirely omitted. Normally, the Passion brings tears to my eyes; this year, I oscillated between boredom and fury. This isn't just my habitual resistance to chance, either, the changes took much of the impact out of what had been a brilliant Passion play. Little twerps.

Anway, today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of the holiest week of the year; so, here's a photo gallery coutesy of our friends at the British Broadcasting Corporation.