GET REAL WITH THE PASSION WEEK, PLEASE!

Valson Thampu

Jesus rejected sentimentality outright from the domain of the spiritual. To the women of Jerusalem who came weeping after Him, after His indictment, He said- “Women of Jerusalem, weep not for me; weep for yourself and for your children!” Sentimentality is a snare because it involves a falsification of sentiments. Untruth creeps in the hearts of the sentimental. Jesus is the Truth. Imagine honouring the Truth with the liturgy of untruth!

‘Passion’ is a word with its roots deep in ‘suffering.’ The suffering of Jesus, since His resurrection, is not confined to a week. We ensure that it is spread uniformly throughout the year, year after year. So, in honesty, we should be observing Passion Year. But that’s a bit too hard on us, no? So, let it go.

I cannot separate the suffering of Jesus from the sufferings of everyone who is persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Foremost in my mind is the instance of Socrates (born 468 B.C). The parallels between the two are uncannily elaborate. Here we shall consider only a few.

Like Jesus, Socrates was falsely accused by the officialdom: the charge sheet against him, as in the case of Jesus, was politico-religious. Socrates was accused of infidelity to Athenian gods. (In Athens worship was out-and-out political; for these were city gods). He was also indicted for corrupting the youth of Athens. Socrates, like Jesus after Him, showed no fear of death; or the worst that man could do to Him. But unlike Jesus, Socrates attempts a defence of his innocence before his judges. Jesus, in contrast knew, that the verdict pre-existed the mock-trial and that it was futile, therefore, to try and defend himself.

Both Socrates and Jesus faced their deaths with incredible equanimity. The friends of Socrates-Crito, in particular made a desperate effort to persuade Socrates, on the eve of his execution, to allow them to smuggle him out of the jail to safety. He refused to compromise his principles or treat with disrespect the laws of the city, even though the laws had been misused against him to perpetrate injustice.

The main difference between Jesus and Socrates in their last days is that Socrates remained elaborately articulate to the end, whereas Jesus withdrew into the mystery of silence, except for the few words he spoke from the Cross.

Plato’s Phaedon is a moving and detailed account of the philosophical dialogue that Socrates had with his close friends, Cebes and Phaedon. This blows the top of my mind, really. The astonishing clarity and vigour of mind with which Socrates discusses the tortuous metaphysical issue of the immortality of the soul borders on the divine. This is not the occasion for me to summarize his extremely fascinating views and arguments on this matter about which even the Old Testament is tantalizingly vague. I would, not withstanding the limitations of space, offer the following minimalist observations.

1. Socrates was able to face the last days of his life, under the terrifying shadow of death, with sterling equanimity because of his clarity of thought and decisiveness of conviction regarding the immortality of the human soul. We often affirm with our lips that Jesus has conquered the terror of death for us. But we rarely connect this to the affirmation and assurance He has given us regarding life beyond death. Without this assurance, we shall crumble before the terror of death. No man, by himself, is strong enough to stand firm even for a moment before this Ultimate Terror.

2. Socrates makes it clear that our inability to trust in the immortality of the soul is on account of the tyranny of the body over the soul. The sensual man, in other words, will remain enchained to metaphysical skepticism and, consequently, to the terror of death. It is in vain that he pretends to be otherwise. There is an insight in this that all human beings, especially Christians, need to heed. Those who lead a sensual life are, ipso facto, unbelievers in the eternal and the immortal. (You have to be an agnostic before you can be an Epicurean!). They anchor their lives exclusively in this world. They may preach immortality of the soul, but do so only for the consumption of others, or as opium for the masses. Hope concerning eternal life is not, per se, the opium of the people. It becomes so in the mouths of those who lead a sensual life under cover of the religious and the pietistic.

3. The truth of a man’s life becomes evident in the last moments of his life. The way one dies, not less than the way one lives, is a frontier of authentic witness. It was by seeing how Jesus died on the Cross that the Roman Centurion exclaims, “Truly, He was the Son of God!” (Mt.27:54). Socrates’ soul was filled with divine thoughts of unimaginable clarity. Gandhi died with “Hey Ram” on his lips. Jesus died entrusting His soul to His Father. This is not a matter of stylizing one’s death, but of being free to be authentic till the last.

4. Here are the very last words that Socrates uttered. “Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius. See that it is paid and do not neglect it.” I need to say a word about its heart rending context. The jailer prepares the poison Hemlock for Socrates to drink. He drinks it voluntarily. Walks about in the cell for a while. He begins to feel his feet growing numb, as he was told they would. He lies down, being so instructed. The cold sweeps into his heart. He knows the time has come. It is then that he says the very last words “Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius…”

Of course, there is no comparison, in this respect, between Socrates and Jesus. Jesus owed nothing to anybody. He gave, and gave, and gave… Since he owed nothing to anybody, they took the last shred of clothes from Him. The symbolic meaning is clear and simple: the world owes everything to Him… And He would hold nothing back from it; no, not even His sacredly naked body…

Socrates’ cock continues to crow through the corridors of history. From the Greek philosopher to Nirav Modi, it is a long journey. And a shattering one. If the Greek culture produced one who, at the point of death, remembered an item of indebtedness to be recompensed, the smarties of our time open their mouths wide enough to swallow the whole globe if they can. They are the go-getters who are, despite dissonant, hypocritical public posturing by their political masters, admired and facilitated. They enjoy unlimited, unwavering support from those who matter.

Socrates and Jesus who came to enrich our species and gave all they had to that cause will be charge-sheeted and judicially murdered. This political reality is at the centre of the Passion Week. And it’s no good to shut our eyes against it.

It is not good, by the way, for anyone, under any pretext, to steal chickens. Nor does it sound smart for anymore to pretend or profess that it is for the profit of the Kingdom of God that chickens are thus stolen. Jesus said, “In those days I will tell them, ‘I know you not. Depart from me, you who evil doers!”

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