Passion of Christ through Paterson streets carries messages that resonate in today's world

Minutes before the performance as the lead role in the passion play outside the St. John’s Cathedral in Paterson, Yuri Rosenthal’s father took a tender moment with the actor and made a sign of the cross on his forehead. Both his parents had come all the way from Peru to see his performance.

Playing the role of Jesus is not only a source of pride for his devoutly Catholic family, Rosenthal said. It is also a way of coping with his own cross to bear – his mother’s lung cancer diagnosis.

“My mother is sick,” said Rosenthal, who was in character wearing brown caftan with his shoulder-length hair parted down the middle. “She’s a religious person and she’s visiting me for the Holy Week before she begins chemo.”

This was Rosenthal’s third time performing as Jesus. Drawing on his own sadness helps him portray Christ in his final moments alive. But the purpose of the performance is not to show his suffering, he said, but his resilience.

“Sometimes people just need a little push when they’re fighting something in their life,” he said.

Rosenthal joined more than 100 parishioners from the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist to perform what is known as the Passion of Christ, a series of dramatic moments leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion at the hands of the Roman Empire. The play then transitions into a procession through the streets called the Via Crucis – meaning way of the cross. It culminated with a Good Friday Mass called the Liturgy of the Passion.

Bishop Kevin Sweeney said the theme of resilience was the inspiration for his sermon later that day and the help Jesus had from disciples along the way. “God is with us on this journey,” Sweeney said. “He helps us get up when we fall.”

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In the same way Rosenthal dedicated his performance to his ailing mother, Sweeney asked the audience at the top of the performance to think about someone in their life who might need help.

“Who’s the person you’re going to walk for?” he said.

This annual Good Friday tradition has come a long way since it was first held in the church’s gymnasium 14 years ago. Now it is the largest religious event in Paterson, with thousands of devotees and onlookers carrying palms tied in the shape of crosses.

The play can be graphic at times – there is no watering down the public flogging of Jesus, who shimmers in a coat of fake blood, and the cutting off of a Roman soldier’s ear.

Geno Sylva, rector at the church, said the depiction of these events are intended to elicit a “visceral” reaction. He remembers the blowback that Mel Gibson got when his film “The Passion of Christ” came out in 2004.

“A lot of the critics said it was too graphic – but it can never be graphic enough,” Sylva said. “The agony, the tragedy, the horror that Jesus endured."

Another major character in the play was Judas, performed by Miguel Sinabria, a former disciple who betrays Jesus by telling the Romans of his whereabouts and is rewarded with a bounty.

Later, Judas, dressed in all black with a hood covering his face, is overcome with guilt. The sound of his agonizing moans – it is written in the Book of Matthew that he later killed himself – is one of the final scenes the audience is left with.

The play takes place in what is now Israel and Palestine. It difficult to discuss a depiction of human suffering – and the price of being on the wrong side of history – without acknowledging the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Bishop Sweeney said that although Good Friday is one of the high holidays for Christians, the teachings of Easter are nondenominational.

“The night before Jesus died he said ‘My peace I leave you,’” Sweeney said. “We have to find a way to live together in peace.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Passion of Christ in Paterson NJ draws a crowd on Good Friday