Taking up the cross

Jordana Hochman turned a corner on her way to an Adams Morgan bar Friday evening and saw a robed man carrying a cross in front of thousands of people holding candles and singing hymns. She was startled until she remembered it was Good Friday.

The Shrine of the Sacred Heart, a 102-year-old Catholic parish in Columbia Heights, held its 19th annual Passion play Friday night to commemorate the suffering of Jesus, and an hourlong candlelight procession followed the performance.

The elaborate, two-hour play, which was influenced by the recently released film “The Passion of the Christ,” drew about 3,000 spectators and participants, and was one of several performed Friday around the region. Children stared wide-eyed while old women wiped tears from their eyes as they watched the Crucifixion scene.

“They feel quite uniquely united to the suffering Christ, and they want to accompany Him,” said the Rev. Stephen Carter, Sacred Heart’s pastor.

Miss Hochman, 25, stood watching the procession, which was followed by banners bearing Jesus’ seven statements while on the cross. Groups of people singing hymns in English, French Creole, Vietnamese and Spanish followed the banners.

Two platforms with life-size representations of Jesus and Mary were carried by men and women.

“It looks beautiful,” said Miss Hochman, who explained that she found meaning in Good Friday even though she is Jewish. “Good doesn’t mean happy. It might mean holy, necessary, or important to endure. And that has meaning for me.”

The play and procession cast a somber mood over the neighborhood for a few hours, drawing hundreds of onlookers into the streets, including partygoers and bar patrons from the Raven Grill and Haydee Restaurant.

The play itself was serious and intense. The audience was asked not to applaud, but to remain meditative.

The influence of Mel Gibson’s movie was evident. Stirring music, the soundtrack from “The Passion of the Christ,” played throughout. The Roman soldier who whipped Jesus did his job so energetically that he glistened with sweat and breathed heavily.

“They are really into the Passion,” says the play’s director, Sonia Aquino.

Sacred Heart first began performing Passion plays about 19 years ago in the church as part of its Good Friday liturgy. Four years after the first performance, Francisco Semiao, then a 19-year-old parishioner, wanted to make the play more theatrical.

He moved the performance to Sacred Heart’s cavernous basement and inserted a realistic scourging scene that included a whip dipped in fake blood. The scourging scene had consisted of Jesus being taken off stage while whipping sounds were made.

“When I took it over I said, ’No, we’re going to make people realize what Jesus went through.’ That alone was a bit of a shock, not to the extent of Mel Gibson’s movie, obviously,” says Mr. Semiao, who is now a public health adviser with the D.C. government.

Twelve years ago, Mrs. Aquino, 33, wife to youth director Carlos Aquino, took over as the play’s director.

“I do it because it’s a way of evangelization, to spread the word of God. There are many people who come to church once a year. This is a good opportunity to spread the word of God, not only to people who see the play, but also to the people who are participating,” Mrs. Aquino says.

“Many people have come to the church because they have seen the play and felt the love of God. I feel happy doing this,” she says.

Marvin Villatoro, 24, portrayed the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who had Jesus arrested and handed over to the Romans for crucifixion, according to the Gospels.

Mr. Villatoro, a powerfully built construction worker who lives in the District, says he had invited many of his friends to come and watch. “Not too many people understand that Jesus pays for me and you. That’s why I do this,” he says.

Williams Guevara, 23, who portrayed Jesus, says, “Some people go to the street and talk about Jesus. This is my evangelism.”

’Closer to God’

The intent of Sacred Heart’s Passion play may be to draw its audience to faith, but those involved in the production say a work of redemption occurs among the cast.

The main characters are chosen based on their “walk with God,” says Mr. Aquino, 32. “The whole year we are looking for the characters. We pick whoever we feel has been closer to God,” he says.

The play has a strong spiritual and redemptive effect on those involved, says Mr. Semiao, 34, who portrayed Jesus eight years ago.

“For the person playing Jesus, it’s an honor, a cleansing. After I played Jesus, it changed my life. It made me look at life differently. It was a calling to get me closer to God,” he says.

This year’s Jesus, Mr. Guevara, is a young man who works in heating and air conditioning and lives in Silver Spring with the Aquinos. He came to the United States four years ago from El Salvador and has played Jesus in three of Sacred Heart’s past four productions.

“It’s a big responsibility,” Mr. Guevara says. “I have to follow in the path of Christ.”

Mrs. Aquino says Mr. Guevara is ideal for the part because he memorizes lines easily and has a lean body that other actors can easily hoist on a cross.

But “the most important thing is the way he behaves,” she says. “He’s a good example for the community, for the youth.”

Community service

Sacred Heart’s Passion Play also serves an outlet for young people in Columbia Heights. With an 80 percent Salvadoran congregation with an average weekly attendance of about 2,500, Sacred Heart sits at Park Road and Pine Street, about 30 yards east of 16th Street NW. It is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, in a city with a steadily rising Hispanic population.

The percentage of Hispanics in the District has doubled since 1990, from 5 percent to almost 10 percent. The 2002 census statistics recorded 51,068 Hispanics among the District’s 535,632 residents.

Columbia Heights has been plagued for years by gang violence, but Sacred Heart’s youth group offers a positive alternative, the group’s leaders and members says. Many in the Passion play’s more than 75-member cast are teenagers and young adults.

“We all know that youth have a lot of talent, and they need to express those talents,” Mr. Aquino says. “Doing a play or being a part of a choir, it means a lot to them. It helps them to concentrate on something, instead of being out on the streets and doing bad things.”

Mrs. Aquino agrees. “We keep them busy, believe me.”

Bebe Portillo, 25, who portrays Martha, teaches confirmation class on Sundays. A larger group of young people, many whom are not in the youth group, also attend.

“I can tell some of them are in gangs,” says Miss Portillo, a University of Maryland graduate who lives in Silver Spring. She attends Sacred Heart because her mother brought her there as a child.

Fabio Campos, 16, could play the part of a street thug, with his customary baggy pants, headband and sculpted, peach-fuzz sideburns. But he was excited about participating in the Passion play for the second year in a row, this year as a member of a crowd.

Fabio has friends in gangs, but does not want to spend time on the streets himself, and he has invited his friends to watch the Sacred Heart performance.

“It’s better to go to church than be in the street,” Fabio says.

A dramatic history

Passion plays — dramatic presentations of the suffering, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ — are usually based on the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and were first performed around 1150 in European churches. Passion plays are still performed in Europe today, but are more theatrical and secular.

The German town of Oberammergau has performed its Passion play nearly every 10 years since 1634, a year after the townspeople had vowed to stage the event if God would spare them from the plague.

According to legend, not another villager died of the plague after the town prayed to be spared, and Oberammergau’s first Passion play was performed on a stage set up over the plague victims’ graves.

In 2000, Oberammergau’s six-hour performance presented a cast of 2,200, ran for almost six months, attracted about 500,000 spectators and grossed $30 million.

That amount is what actor-director Mel Gibson spent to finance his film version of the Passion, which opened on Ash Wednesday and has become the 10th-highest-grossing film of all time.

“The Passion of the Christ,” which has been criticized for its graphic violence, reached $330 million in U.S. ticket sales last weekend and is expected to pass the $500 million mark worldwide this weekend.

Many Latin Americans have a strong Roman Catholic tradition that links them with Passion plays. Holy Week (or “Semana Santa” in Spanish), with its Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday observances, is one of Latin America’s biggest cultural festivals. Passion plays and religious processions are traditionally performed on Good Friday.

Easter Sunday “is the uniform holiday for all [South American] countries,” says Mr. Aquino, Sacred Heart’s youth director. “Every country has their own little festivities. But this is the biggest.”

Avoiding anti-Semitism

After attending a performance of the Passion at Oberammergau in 1934, Adolf Hitler said it was “vital” that the tradition be continued because “never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the time of the Romans.”

Throughout history, Passion plays have been used to provoke and justify the persecution of Jews for killing Christ. However, the content of the plays alone has not been the main cause of anti-Semitism.

“It has as much to do with the way the play is framed by the local clergy as it does with the content of the play,” says Rabbi Jack Moline of the Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria.

“That’s always been the problem with the Passion plays, not that they represent what is written in Scripture, but that they are contextualized in different ways by different religious leaders.”

Mr. Aquino says Sacred Heart’s leaders were sensitive to concerns about anti-Semitism.

“Our pastors have always encouraged us not to portray anything bad about other people, but instead to reflect what Jesus suffered,” he says. “I never heard a comment of, ’It was Jews who killed Jesus,’ from my own people or the people participating in the play.

“We always explain that Jesus chose to die for us. It was His option, and we’re only there to remind people about it, not to judge anyone. In fact, we are Judeo-Christians, we believe in the same God they believe in,” Mr. Aquino says.