I have never forgotten what my novice master told me when I was leaving the Jesuit novitiate and going on to regency to teach high school: "Remember St. Ignatius's dictum: always go in their door and bring them out yours." Although I am now a university professor, the phrase was with me this past Lenten season in which the main topic of conversation was Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Fellow Jesuits, faculty, students, friends, family-all of us-went through ritual conversation on the film and the media commentary over it. Dozens of articles on the film in the secular and religious press all had a bit of new information to share, a different critical perspective to give, and they helped articulate the strengths and weaknesses of the film as a theological and an artistic work.

The topic was so hot that Loyola University Chicago held an excellent panel discussion made up of faculty and graduate students, well attended by Loyola students and some of the university's neighbors. A biblical scholar critiqued the historical and biblical accuracy of the film; a Jewish professor responded to the charge of anti-Semitism in it; one doctoral student in theology, an evangelical Christian minister, praised the movie (albeit with reservations); another doctoral student in theology, a Catholic lay woman, was very disturbed by it.

But during the question-and-answer period, most students in the audience voiced strong, positive reactions to the film that were often at odds with the panelists' critical tone. The panel's conclusions were sound to me-the movie is not biblically accurate, it at least raises the question of anti-Semitism, it overindulges in violence-but why were the panelists' remarks not in sync with the experience of most of the students?

As I continued the discussion in class, it became obvious that my students also had concerns about the film that were very different from those of the panelists. They couldn't understand why the criticism about the film has had little to do with their experience of what one student called "a sacred event" in their lives. They didn't want to hear what was wrong with the film but challenged me to find words for what was so right about it.

"The film was like . . . we were in God's time. It seemed like time had stopped," wrote one of author Mark Bosco's students, who responded to actor James Caviezel and director Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ in a spiritual way, sweeping aside what they viewed as the drier analysis of film critics, historians, and theologians.

Generation Y

Is there something about the experience of Generation Y, those born after 1981, that causes them to see this film differently? Was there a way for me, at age 39, to go in their cultural door and come out my own?

This led to a project. I asked students to consider questions about the film, from the portrayal of Mary, Jesus, Judas, and Satan, to their reading of any anti-Semitism in the film. About 40 students (mostly Catholic, all but one Christian), each from three undergraduate English and theology classes, were quick to write papers, send e-mails, and hold conversations with me on questions including: Was it a spiritual experience for you? What do you make of the violence? and (for a class that had been discussing theological aesthetics) How do you make sense of the aesthetics of the film? Their responses offer a way to contextualize how Generation Y at our colleges think about the film.

For most of these students, The Passion was a spiritual experience. All but a few noted how deeply moved they were in watching it. "I doubt that seeing it will make converts," wrote one, "but the sheer in-your-face force has the power to renew one's faith."

Another added, "It didn't teach me much about Jesus-I already knew the story-but it did succeed in making me present to the story in ways that I might never have been." And one wrote, "Although I am a Muslim student and do not view Christ in the same light as Christians, I was deeply moved by the violence that befell Christ."

The sense that the film was analogous to liturgical experience is strong in many of their responses. Their description of watching it seems more akin to the power of ritual than narrative or biblical history lesson. Most Catholic film critics and theologians have commented on how closely the film adheres to medieval passion plays or the Stations of the Cross. A young woman made this connection: "My youth group in high school put on performances of the Stations of the Cross in our parish. I often noticed that the older members of the church were moved and touched more by the story we were acting than the younger members of the parish... [so] I think it was watching the violence in The Passion that helped me get deeper into the story in a way that I never had before."

This sense of the film as a kind of "liturgical" time was highlighted by a young man who had made Kairos retreats at his Jesuit high school years before. He noted that "the film was like in Kairos, like we were in God's time. It seemed like time had stopped. When the film ended I had no idea that over two hours had passed." Another, a senior, noted how strange if felt to go from "all those silly movie previews to the slow realization that this [movie] is not going to be entertainment at all, but a journey with Christ." Their words echo a majority of the student responses.

Violence

Most interesting to me were the student's take on the violence in the film. A young man noted, "The scourging scene was very draining to watch and I was unable to stomach some parts of it, and I am a guy used to watching gory, violent movies. It borders on the sadistic because most movie violence doesn't deal with a completely defenseless person being beaten half to death."

Shock value

A young woman goes further, claiming, "I have been desensitized to some degree by the amount of violence I've been shown throughout my life. Movie violence has progressively increased to thrill and heighten the shock value in order to keep our appetites satisfied."

Why then, she asks, is this film's violence different? "If The Passion were completely fiction, I wouldn't care much about the violence. I would have compared the 39 lashes to the decapitations in Kill Bill and the gruesome murders in Pulp Fiction. But the impact of this violence is different -- Christ was scourged, Christ was brutalized."

Still another woman, a sophomore, commented, "It was the most violent and disturbing film I have ever seen . . . it was extremely hard to watch at some parts, as if it was asking me to suffer through the violence with Jesus and with his mother." Finally, a senior adds a reflective note, stating, "I identified so completely with Jesus that I could practically feel his suffering as I watched the film. [Until now] I never thought about what was at stake when it was said that Jesus underwent this passion for my sake, for humanity's sake."

Some students found solace in the accessibility of Christ's mother in the film.

Gibson's use of violence seems to be at the heart of the film's engrossing effect for these students because his use of such violence moves them. Most students responded that the violence in the film deconstructed the virtual reality of movie and television violence, leaving them unprepared for the focused, violent confrontations in this film. One junior noted that "having grown up with a kind of cleaned-up version of the Passion of Jesus during my Catholic grade school and high school education, it was at first hard to watch something this realistic. At the same time, it made me realize how brutal Christ's scourging and crucifixion were."

Another reflects, "It blew me away. I couldn't even shed a tear I was so much in shock. I could only cry after I left the movie. What I was seeing in front of me was too real, pointing to an event that I sometimes overlook when I think of myself as a Catholic who follows Christ. It was like hyper-reality, between knowing [the film] had special effects to make it more realistic and the fact that this is what really happened to Jesus."

One of the most interesting and thoughtful responses on how the violence worked in the film came from a sophomore who dubbed Gibson's vision as an "aesthetic of brutal realism." He noted, "The violence tears away all other emotions you might get out of violence in our culture. It is focused on one person and there is no way it can be entertaining. If it starts out as a thrill, it quickly moves to shock, and you're left with only a terrible sense of sadness, of loss. The only thing left for you to do is to stay watching, to bear witness."

Bloodied tragedy

This statement rings true for most of the students who have come to expect the equation of violence to be part of their cultural zeitgeist. Violence thrills, shocks, and entertains, but usually from the safe, ironic stance of print, film, or video game. Gibson's The Passion is a bloodied tragedy never before compellingly realized on film. There is no distance and little space for an ironic gaze in this production; instead, the viewer is asked to stand and watch.

Oddly enough, a few students thought that Gibson's treatment of Mary became for them the ultimate hermeneutical lens of the film: "Mary was the one character that you could stand with," one student asserted. "Without Gibson panning to [Mary] it would have been hard to keep watching," added a young man. And a senior commented, "Mary helped to put a personality to Jesus more than any other character in the film. We enter from her position. She is there from the beginning until the end of Jesus' life.

Whatever the cinematic merits, historical accuracy, or theological vision of the film, it has made students think. Indeed, that seems to be the only consensus among all of the respondents: "It really challenged my conceptions about re-demp-tion through suffering." "I have never thought about this be-fore." "It made me think about my faith." "It made me think about what I have always taken for granted."

Cultural phenomenon

Gibson's film has done what many others have aspired to: it has become a cultural phenomenon, asking them to think about Good Friday in a whole new way. For a post-Vatican II generation not used to the Stations of the Cross or singing the words of the Stabat Mater or sitting through long sermons on Christ's passion during Lent, this film compels them to "keep watch" as it imaginatively refashions what previous generations of Catholics have taken for granted. The Passion of the Christ might just be a new expression of devotion for a new generation.

	Mark Bosch, SJ, just finished his first year of teaching at Loyola University Chicago and is in Rome this summer teaching a course on Catholic writers.
A version of this story also appeared in an issue of Commonweal magazine: www.commonwealmagazine.org/2004/may72004/5704ar.htm