Paschal Mystery

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The Paschal Mystery in Jesus of Nazareth
The Paschal Mystery in the Catholic religion is the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Passion is the suffering of Jesus on the cross for the forgiveness of mankind’s sins. The death is when he died because he was crucified on the cross. The resurrection in the Paschal Mystery is the central point of our faith and when Jesus rose from the death before he proceeded to ascend into heaven. The Paschal Mystery is not only in the past, it is current and in the present. This is possible because by Jesus dying on the cross for all of humankind’s sins he transcends all time and makes it present. The religious message of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus is that God’s inherent goodness and love for us overcomes all evil. This message is apparent in Jesus of Nazareth because the forgiveness and love is demonstrated by Jesus.
The Passion of the Paschal Mystery is shown in Jesus of Nazareth as the extreme suffering that Jesus endured. In the film the passion happened because Judas betrayed Jesus. Because of the betrayal, he was taken to the Sanhedrin and charged with blasphemy. When in front of the Sanhedrin he could not deny that he was indeed the son of God; the Messiah. They could not sentence him without the Roman’s permission so he was tried under Pontius Pilot but not condemned to death. Instead he was sentenced to flogging; being whipped 39 times. In the movie, Jesus is shown tied to a post and whipped until he was in a very weak state. Subsequent to the whipping the soldiers placed a crown of thorns on Jesus’ head by their own choice. This amount of suffering was not satisfying enough for those who wanted to see Jesus dead so Pontius Pilot gave the public a cho...

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The Paschal Mystery of Christ; the passion, death and resurrection and the religious message of these is shown in Jesus of Nazareth. The passion is Jesus withstanding torture to show the unconditional love he has for each and every one of us. With his death, Christ liberates all humans for their wrong doings and forgives them. The most importance is put on the Resurrection of Jesus because by rising he is opens the pathway for new and eternal life for us. The Movie accurately portrays these three parts of the mystery and the religious message. It shows that the meaning of the Paschal Mystery is new life through death; finding light through darkness. It allows us to go beyond death and find new meaning with in that, instead of seeing it as a end to life, with faith we know it is only the beginning to an entirely new life with God. It allows hope to conquer evil.

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