Passion is not a superficial thing. Passion is deeply felt, and is something we are deeply engaged in and committed to. Those things, those people, that we are passionate about are things and people that we connect with with more emotion and focus than anything or anyone else.
The Merriam Webster online dictionary has several definitions for "passion". A key one is "intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction"--so it's not just emotional (and not rational), but it's convictions; it involves principles that we affirm that focus, guide, or as the definition says, "drive" our lives.
The centurion at the cross sees Jesus in agony, yet with unwavering focus, focus of concern for the people around him. All of the people around him. His love for them is striking, as he forgives, and welcomes, and empathizes, even as it would be entirely understandable to be completely self-absorbed and overwhelmed with the pain and exhaustion he's going through. Christian tradition has called this part of Jesus' life "The Passion Story". From the compassion and servant-like actions towards his (mainly clueless) disciples at the Last Supper, to the sweating blood agony of his prayer in Gethsemane, to the mock trial and torture and whipping and mocking before the most painful form of execution, death on a cross, Jesus keeps his convictions and unrelenting focus on others--and we know in the aftermath of his death and resurrection that "others" are who it was all for. Jesus' passion was a conviction--intense, driving, focused--that somehow this tortured path was how God was going to reconcile the world to God's self, and demonstrate the depths and heights of love's non-aggressive, non-dominating, unrelenting power. He understatedly pursued that, but there can be no questioning how passionate he was about it.
When we consider the depths of this kind of passion, we can't help but consider our own passions--and perhaps consider if our own passions are too shallow. Do we get all engaged and focused and driven about superficial things? Do we find that even when we do what we enjoy, what we're passionate about, it isn't ultimately satisfying? Is our focus too narrow; our imagination too limited? Can we recognize in the passion of Jesus an opportunity to reconsider if our own passions are too self-satisfying and not enough in line with the kind of concern for others that Jesus lived out, and died for?
Frederick Buechner writes about "vocation"--the work that we are called to by God, and affirms that "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." God made us to be passionate, to have "deep gladness"--but calls us to engage that passion to connect with "the world's deep hunger". To the degree that God equips us, our passions should reflect those same priorities as the Passion of Jesus.
GOSPEL Matthew 6:19-21; 22:35-40
19 ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
GOSPEL John 13:34-35
34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’
NEW TESTAMENT 1 John 3:11, 16-18
11 For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17 How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.