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The Passion Tradition
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11705 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1987 |
4,637 Words |
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Tom Pniewski
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The events of Passiontide - the final week of Christ's life on earth - have inspired some of the greatest artworks of the Western world. Especially notable are the Passions of J.S. Bach and Handel's Messiah, which hold places of honor beside Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Pieta as outstanding fusions of belief and art.
The Passion tradition was more than a thousand years old when Bach came to it. From the earliest days of Christianity, the events of Passion week, central to the church's establishment and existence, had been marked in special ways.
Early Christian commemorations of the Passion grew out of the liturgy, which specified readings from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John at Mass during Holy Week - the part of the church year stretching from Palm Sunday, marking Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, through Easter, his Resurrection. Included are the events of Holy Thursday (the Last Supper and institution of the Eucharist) and Good Friday (the Crucifixion and Burial). This tradition of readings developed through the second and third centuries: Easter, celebrated at the time of the Jewish Passover, became a major feast earlier than did Christmas, which for many years had no fixed date and began to be observed seriously about the fourth century. In the Eastern Church and in the Holy Land itself, ceremonies marking Christ's suffering and death tended to be more commemorative and solemn in nature, while in the Western Church they took on an educational function, possibly because the Western congregations were made up of converts unfamiliar with the Holy Land.
Christianity was legalized under Constantine, and in A.D. 392, under Theodosius I, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Church services moved from catacombs and private homes to large basilicas, the liturgy was elaborated, and ceremonies were brought under a centralized administration in Rome. Readings of the Passion were prescribed for Holy Week, and by the fifth century, the pattern that persists to this day had been established. The Passion from the Gospel of St. Matthew was read on Palm Sunday, St. John on Good Friday: St. Mark's Passion was eventually assigned to Tuesday, and St. Luke's to Wednesday.
The Gospel Texts
These Gospel accounts of the Passion differ markedly in their description of the events and in their division of the story into sections. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (called the Synoptics because of their common viewpoint) are remarkably consistent in their language and chronology, with only minor variations. In all three, the events of Holy Week take up two chapters, the first slightly longer than the second.
These two chapters form a dramatically balanced pair. Although the individual Gospels differ in some details (such as the description of the crowd or the inclusion of certain characters), there is great uniformity. The two halves complement each other emotionally; the first is more meditative and devotional, with its description of the Last Supper, the Eucharist, and Christ's praying in the Garden. The second half embraces the dramatic public events, from the trials to the Crucifixion, including the events of greatest physical anguish.
The Gospel of St John differs from the other three. His two
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