You’re Not That Passionate
Once, during an internship in Holy Week, I felt compelled to give a brief “fiverino” on the word passion. I had grown increasingly frustrated with its careless use. People spoke freely of being “passionate” about food, sports, careers, or hobbies, while seemingly unaware that this same word names what our Lord endured on that Friday we dare to call Good.
In truth, the confusion should not be why the Passion belongs to Christ, but why such an august word is used for anything less.
In modern speech, passion has been stripped of its cost. It has become shorthand for enthusiasm, intensity, or personal interest. To say “I’m passionate about this” usually means “this excites me,” “this fulfills me,” or “this makes me feel alive.” But none of these require suffering. None demand endurance. None ask us to remain faithful when feeling evaporates.
The Church, however, is precise with her language. She speaks not of Christ’s enthusiasm, but of His Passion, because passion, rightly understood, is love that consents to suffer rather than abandon what is good.
Christ does not wander accidentally into suffering. He walks toward it knowingly. “The Son of Man must suffer many things,” He says plainly (Lk 9:22). In Gethsemane, He does not pretend the cost is small. He sweats blood. He recoils. And yet He remains. “Not my will, but yours be done” (Lk 22:42).
This is not emotional excess. It is disciplined fidelity under pressure.
Fulton Sheen once observed, “There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly believe the Catholic Church to be.” The same could be said of the Cross. Few reject it outright; many simply misunderstand it. They imagine it as an unfortunate tragedy or a symbolic gesture, rather than what it truly is: the full revelation of what love costs in a fallen world.
Good Friday unsettles us precisely because it strips away our illusions. If this is what love looks like when fully revealed, then much of what we call passion is little more than self-indulgence. We love until it becomes inconvenient. We commit until commitment begins to hurt. We follow until the road narrows.
Scripture is unsparing on this point. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23). The cross is not an accessory. It is the measure. Passion is not proved in intensity of feeling, but in willingness to endure.
St. Augustine understood this well. Commenting on Christ’s suffering, he writes, “The Passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the hope of glory and a lesson of patience.” A lesson, because it must be learned. Hope, because without endurance, love collapses under its own weight.
This is why the Passion cannot be reduced to spectacle or sentiment. It is not meant to entertain. It is meant to form. The Church proclaims the Passion in full every year not so that we admire Christ’s suffering from a safe distance, but so that we learn the shape love takes when it is no longer protected.
True passion is quiet. It does not announce itself. It does not require applause. Passion reveals itself in staying—staying in prayer when it grows dry, staying in a vocation when it becomes heavy, staying faithful to truth when compromise would be easier. Passion is measured not by how strongly one feels, but by how firmly one remains.
This is why the saints are so unsettling. They are rarely dramatic, but they are relentless. St. Gregory the Great noted that “the proof of love is in the works.” The saints did not chase intensity; they endured fidelity. Their lives were marked not by constant inspiration, but by cheerful perseverance, attention to detail, and obedience in small things long after novelty had died.
Fulton Sheen once put it starkly: “The cross is not an accident; it is a necessity.” Not because God delights in suffering, but because love, when it confronts sin, must either flee or endure. Christ endures. He does not save us by overpowering us, but by outlasting us.
Even after the Resurrection, the wounds remain. Glory does not erase the Passion; it confirms it. The risen Christ is still the wounded Christ, because love remembers what it cost. As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, Christ retained His wounds “for the perpetual memory of His Passion.”
So no — you’re probably not that passionate.
Not yet.
But this is not an insult. It is an invitation.
Passion is not something we discover in ourselves; it is something we are formed into. It is learned through suffering accepted in love. The Cross does not ask us to seek pain, but it does demand that we stop confusing excitement with devotion.
To speak of passion honestly, we must first learn to stand silently at the foot of the Cross and let it redefine the word for us. Only then can we begin to understand what it means to love as Christ loved — not briefly, not conditionally, but to the end.
