I would like to share with readers some reflections which came to me after reading the many comments, most of them very correct and thought-provoking, on Mel Gibson's masterpiece The Passion of the Christ.

While I fully agree with those who have remarked that the unnecessarily prolonged atrocities inflicted on Christ were quite unrealistic (not even the staunchest man could have survived for so long), it is a pity that the hint to Christ's resurrection was so brief.

A more accurate theological reflection would have brought out more clearly the fact that, had Jesus not risen from the dead, his sufferings as well as his death on the cross would have remained quite ineffective as far as our redemption is concerned.

By rising from the dead, Jesus has conquered death and given meaning and purpose to our own sufferings, assuring us that our own death is not the end of the line but the "end of the beginning", to use Winston Churchill's comment in regard to the last phase of World War II.