Handling a passion is like handling an explosive: you can either create a catastrophe or move mountains, build roads, remove obstacles and change lives.
Reflecting on the theme of passion during a Motus Christi held in New York on November 11, Fr. Luis Casasús invites us to consider the role passions play in our lives: what they reveal about us, how they shape our decisions, and whether we direct them toward ourselves or allow them to become a path toward Christ and others.
Take a look at this reflection that Fr. Luis has shared with us. At the end, he proposes some questions. What do you think? Send us your comments.
Listen and read the reflection he shared with us!
Talking about what is a passion is always important, for the spiritual life, for the emotional life and for the education of young people.
We will address two points in our reflection:
- What is a passion.
- What should I do with my passion, the passion of my life?
To conclude, I would like to propose three issues for our personal reflection and prayer.
- What is a passion. A passion is not something we invent or create. The word «passion» means to suffer, to endure something, just as a patient suffers from an illness. Or, it’s like the joy we feel when we hear a great joke, a funny story or really good news. In the first case, it is not easy to get rid of the illness and suffering and, in the second example, it is not easy to suppress the joy or even the laughter that the pleasant story they are telling us brings.
This makes us think that a passion can come from many sources, some within us and some without.
For example, if one of you feel a passion for sailing, it could be that you were born by the sea, or that your family has a small boat, or that a friend has infected you, or that a person has discovered that you have unique qualities for that sport.
A passion can be purely intellectual, like a person who is fascinated by history or studying many languages. It can also be physical, like a sport. Or an art, like practicing music, dance or painting.
But what is special about a passion is that it goes beyond a hobby, or an activity that I enjoy doing. A passion becomes the center of my life, of all my actions.
I had a friend who was passionate about the mountains. When we were together, before two minutes had passed he was already talking about his next climb or about some new material he had found to secure himself on the rock. It was impossible for the group of friends to talk about studies, or the news, or a book. That young man had a girlfriend who didn’t know much about climbing, until she decided to accompany my friend on his adventures… and she broke her leg. Because of the girl’s sacrifice, my friend immediately decided to marry her. The mountain was his criterion, his treasure, his yardstick. It was the window through which he observed people.
Of course, there are passions that can be completely destructive, because they become obsessions that are states in which our relationship with others is damaged. Something like this happened to my beloved friend the mountaineer, with whom it was difficult to exchange feelings or information.
But a well-directed passion has the opposite effect, it brings us together with others. A simple example is when several friends get together to practice basketball, because during the game emotions, joys and sorrows are shared. Still today, several of my best friends are my schoolmates from the basketball team at the time. A sensitive teacher knew how to take advantage of our passion to unite and educate us.
Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing… where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger; which he knows he was meant and made to do.
Christ was also moved by the passions, when he realized that they could be useful for the mission he had. For example, the Gospel says that when he stated that the multitudes were as sheep without a shepherd, He was moved with compassion. He knew well that a passion can trigger a response and so he allowed himself to be driven by a truly passionate compassion.
In reality, although Jesus did many things during the time He was in this world, He said that his food was to do his Father’s will. That was the essential, what drove him and everything else was secondary. In Him, what we said before is fulfilled, that passions can effectively unite us to others.
The obvious way of reading the four Gospels is to see them as ‘lives’ of Jesus that conclude with accounts of his death. But the length of the Passion narratives is out of all proportion to the rest of the text. Clearly, what took place in that week was given huge emphasis; so much so that the Passion narratives are the culmination of everything that has gone before. We could say that a ‘Gospel’ consists of a passion narrative with an extended introduction. And, of course, Christ’s Passion is linked to his Resurrection.
Christ came into the world to fulfill a passion of our heavenly Father. And he did so passionately. His death was not something secret and silent, but a torture visible to all, at the top of Golgotha, a hill in Jerusalem, and where all who passed by saw him and could not remain indifferent. Some laughed at him, others were moved and changed their lives, but all could feel the fire of the Spirit, which led him along the roads of his country to the cross.
His Passion was truly contagious and its effects reach each one of us today.
From what we have spoken so far, we see that passions can be powerful, for better or for worse. Therefore, in the life of prayer we are asked to make an effort that our Father Founder calls «fasting from the passions,» that is, to always try to use them, above all to offer them to God and never to be slaves of them, letting them distract us or push us to be self-seeking.
Handling a passion is like handling an explosive: you can either create a catastrophe or move mountains, build roads, remove obstacles and change lives.
- What should I do with my passion, the passion of my life? First, I must discover my passion, the way God expects me to fruitfully use the time, talents, health and intelligence he has given me.
Our Father Founder, who was born into a Catholic family, opened his eyes and heart to realize that God expected him to live a passion, which grew in his soul since his childhood: to help young people and also intellectuals, who due to many historical events, were moving away from the faith.
There were many things he was passionate about: study, nature, teaching, poetry… but he found what God had placed in his heart like a small flame waiting to be awakened.
Of course, we have to experiment. We have to put into action what our heart tells us can be the center of our life. If a young person is sensitive to the sick, she may consider studying nursing or medicine, but what she learns from books is not enough. She needs contact with patients, with the difficulties and satisfactions of helping sick people.
Those passions change over time. We need something that will serve us forever, because we cannot easily change our passions, like the one that changes its shirt. That passion a young person usually has for a profession or an activity, even if it is very powerful, cannot fill his life.
I remember a Nobel Prize winner, a true genius of Physics, who, when he was old and could no longer publish or do research, told a friend that he was just waiting to die, because he didn’t know what he could do in life.
Christ is the only one who knows our strength, our hidden energy, everything that is waiting in our heart to live a passion that does not end. We must necessarily listen to him, because no one else can give us words of eternal life, as the apostles said, who did not have a great intellectual preparation but did have sensitivity and experience of life.
In the first apostles, who left their nets and their boat, we see the strength of the passion. They did not need to understand many things; they put into practice what they had understood of the works and words of Jesus and that became a priority, so they left their nets, their boat and their friends.
What about us?
As Pope Francis recalled these days, we need to begin to serve, to realize that our passion is the same as Christ’s. It is the same with us: The Spirit was telling Him what the next step was: now go to the Temple to talk to the doctors, now go to the desert, now perform a miracle, now listen in silence.
It’s not enough to say, «Yes, serving has to be my passion.” You have to experience it. To discover our passion is not an opinion or an intellectual belief. We must be like children and begin to live it, to carry out the acts of service that I can do right now, on this day. The symptom of not being passionate is to say to myself: I will start tomorrow.
I remember once standing next to a person who was dying. He was not very old, but I was very impressed when he said that he did not remember doing many bad deeds or harming his fellow man, but at that moment he realized how much of his life’s energy had gone unused, how much compassion was frozen forever. It was too late. He had not heard the passion to serve, the compassion, that spoke to him clearly through the lives of others. He had extinguished the flame of his greatest passions.
A passion is something that burns us, excites us and produces a fervor, an inner fire that puts us into action. When Jesus overturned the tables of the money-changers and the merchants in the Temple, the Gospel says that the disciples remembered the Psalm that says: The zeal for your house will consume me. “Zeal” is intense ardor in reference to any object.
From Revelation 3:15–16, it is clear that He prefers us either hot or cold. When we are hot, we are on fire for Him, and that’s His ultimate for us. If we are cold, He does not like it because we have no part in Him, but at least He knows where we stand! Being lukewarm, on the other hand, is totally unacceptable, because It is unacceptable because it draws us away from the way of being of Christ and our heavenly Father, who are persons, divine persons, with true emotions, as described in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Was there no divine emotion involved when God sent forth His only begotten Son into the world?
Furthermore, Jesus himself tells us that we have the capacity, right now, to produce joy in heaven when we are converted from our sins.
A final thought on how to live and cultivate our passion for service. The Swiss psychologist, Paul Tournier said: “There are two things one cannot do alone, be married and be a Christian.” We need to confirm every day through a community that our efforts are in the direction of that passion that God gives us.
Let’s try to take advantage of the passion that the Holy Spirit puts in our hearts. First of all, because it frees us from other passions that are useless or negative, but above all because it allows us to discover all the fire that He sets in us, as He did with the apostles at Pentecost or with St. Paul when he pushed him to follow Jesus, whom his selfish passions had led him to persecute.
Points for personal reflection.
- What are the activities or ideas that you are passionate about in this world? Have you thought about how you can use them for the good of others and for the glory of God?
- Now is a good time to remember the moments when you have served others. In what way did you feel joy? What is the difference with the joy we feel in achieving a success that is basically individual?
- What is Christ doing in our hearts with one of the passions that all human beings have: compassion?
Fr. Luis Casasús Latorre, Motus Christi November 11, 2025
What do you think? Send us your comments.
