James Carroll in the Boston Globe

But an afternoon’s meditation at the place where Christians have remembered the death of Jesus for 1,600 years raises the question of whether we have more broadly misused that memory. This shrine memorializing Golgotha is, in fact, a kind of side chapel in a much larger church that gives overwhelming emphasis to the memory of Jesus being raised from the dead. One sees that in the fact that the church is called the Holy Sepulcher by Latin Christians, indicating the tomb, not the execution place, and even more in the fact that Eastern Orthodox Christians call it the Church of the Resurrection. A celebration of the joy of resurrection trumps the grief of crucifixion in every way here.

And before the world shifts from a massive, reflexive, jerking of knees, read the whole piece and refect. The last paragraph is pretty hokey, but honestly, there is much truth in what Carroll says here, in terms of the role of the Passion in the totality of Christian spirituality, particularly in Early Christianity.

Perhaps, too that was because these Christians were at constant risk of undergoing their own Passion. It was a reality that surrounded and threatened them. They lived it, in other words, intensely. We don’t. So we need to be reminded more vividly…