“Anima Christi” – 5
(1. Soul of Christ, sanctify me.)
(3. Blood of Christ, inebriate me.)
(4. Water from the side of Christ, wash me.)
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Passion of Christ, strengthen me. 
Passio Christi, conforta me.
Jesus, may your crucifixion, emblem not only of self-giving, but also of weakness and helplessness, strengthen me. May your weakness give me strength.
We would normally turn to someone we thought was strong to give us strength, wouldn’t we? But Jesus on the cross is helpless.
Father Michael J. Buckley, SJ, in “A Letter to the Ordinands” (published in The Berkeley Jesuit in Spring 1972), poses a strange question concerning those feeling called to the priesthood. He asks, “Is this man weak enough to be a priest?”
What do I mean by weakness? Not the experience or sin, though it may contextualize sin, but the experience of a peculiar liability to suffering. A profound sense of inability, both to do and protect even after great effort, to author, perform, effect what we have wanted or with the success we would have wanted, an inability to secure one’s own future, to protect oneself, to live with clarity and assurance or to ward off shame and suffering.
Father Buckley goes on to compare Jesus and Socrates – Socrates who gave a profound speech, “found no cause for fear; drank the poison and died.”
Jesus—how much the contrary. Jesus was almost hysterical with terror and fear; looked for comfort from friends and an escape from death and found neither; finally got control over himself and accepted his death in silence and lonely isolation.
…Socrates never expressed sorrow and pain at the betrayal of friends. He was possessed and integral, never over-extended, convinced that the just man could never suffer genuine hurt. And for this reason, Socrates—one of the greatest men who has ever existed, a paradigm of what humanity can achieve within the individual— Socrates was a philosopher. And for these same reasons, Jesus of Nazareth was a priest, ambiguous, suffering, mysterious and salvific.
But is it only the ordained priest who is called to enter into the salvific weakness of Christ? No, because Jesus calls us all to take up our cross and follow him (see Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23). And here it is that we find power – here in the very depths of weakness and helplessness.
Saint Paul hears Jesus say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” And Paul realizes that he doesn’t have to rely on some illusory personal strength: “for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9,10).
The Latin word used here, conforta, comes from late, Medieval Latin, not classical Latin, and it is also the root of our English word “comfort.” So sometimes this petition is translated, “Passion of Christ, comfort me.”
How we need comfort! Our peace can be so easily disturbed: for minor things – or for major, earthshaking, heartrending things that we cannot change or influence.
So we pray:
Passion of Christ, comfort me,
passion of Christ, encourage me.
O Christ, comfort me in your own moment of comfortlessness,
when you cried out,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
O Jesus,
in your powerful weakness, strengthen me.
in your comfortless consolation, console me.
in your efficacious failure, recreate me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
Passio Christi, conforta me.
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“Southern Cross with Spanish Moss” photograph by Rose Hoover, rc
The Anima Christi is a favorite prayer. And “salvific weakness” is a phrase I’ve been trying to think of for ever. What beautiful musings.