Today, on Passion Sunday, its reasonable to reflect on why we call Jesus’ suffering and death the “passion” of the Christ, when the word today is used to mean intense emotion for something or someone.

Both meanings come from the Latin root ‘pati’, meaning to endure or undergo hardship. In ancient times this word was used for the physical sufferings of the martyrs and of Christ. By the middle ages it included affliction of an emotional kind, which, with physical affliction, was seen as ‘being done to you’. Hence the word ‘passive’ as opposed to active. Emotions and passions often well up within oneself without being actively chosen by the will. Later, the word ‘com’passion evolved as emotionally sharing the passion or burden of another; i.e. sympathy.

So, as Simon of Cyrene illustrated, one has ‘compassion’ for another when he helps him carry his daily cross. Uniting these crosses with THE cross that redeemed the world shares in the redemptive work of Christ (Col 1:24).