The Nonviolent Love of Jesus for both friends and enemies is historically at the heart of His passion and death, it must therefore be communicated as being ineradicably at the heart of the Eucharist…The passion narrative is about the Lamb of God, who goes to His death rejecting violence, loving enemies, returning good for evil, praying for His persecutors-yet conquers and reigns eternal…The sacrifice of Christ is not about salvation through mere physiological pain. It is
about salvation through the Nonviolent Suffering Love of Jesus toward all and for all, even lethal enemies. It is about revealing the true nature of Divine love, the true and authentic Face of God. As the United States Catholic Bishops teach in their Pastoral, The Challenge of Peace (1983):
In all of his suffering, as in all of his life and ministry, Jesus refused to defend himself with force or with violence. He endured violence and cruelty so that Gods love might be fully manifest and the world might be reconciled to the One from whom it had become estranged.
