Jesus crucified; readings and meditations on the passion and death of our Redeemer

Front matter

Class Book

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Introduction

Our Savior's Foreknowledge and Prophecies of His Passion.*

Jesus was always conscious of the fate that awaited Him. And although He had many joys, holding interior communion with the source of all bliss, the unveiled deity itself, with whose very nature He was united in the person of the divine Word, yet He was His whole life long essentially a Redeemer. Whatever occupied His thoughts, His preoccupation of mind was our redemption. And if His happiness was very great, especially in His

* The great dogma of the Atonement is thus expressed in the cate* chism of the Council of Trent, on the fourth article of the Apostles' Creed: "In His passion and death, the Son of God, our Savior, purposed the atonement and obliteration of the sins of all ages, by offering for them to His Father a full and superabundant satisfaction. And what adds to the sublimity of this atonement, Christ not only suffered for sinners, but sinners were also the authors and ministers of all the torments which He endured. . . . The passion of our Lord was our deliverance from sin; for, says St. John, 'He hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood' (Apoc. i. 5); and the Apostle says: 'He hath quickened you together with Him, forgiving you all offences, blotting out the handwriting of the decree which was against us, which was contrary to us, and the same He took out of the way, fastening it to the cross' (Col. ii. 13). In the next place, it has rescued us from the tyranny of the devil, for our Lord Himself says: 'Now is the judgment of the world; now shall the princes of the world be cast out; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself (John xii. 31). He has also discharged the penalty due to our sins. And as no more grateful and acceptable sacrifice could have been offered to God, it has reconciled us to the Father (II. Cor. v. 19), appeased His wrath and propitiated His justice. Finally, by taking away our sins it has opened heaven to us, which was closed by the common sin of mankind. 'Having, therefore, brethren, a confidence in the entering into the sanctuary by the blood of Christ' (Heb. x. 19)."

earlier years, in the company of Mary and Joseph and many an Israelite without guile, yet from the moment of His conception till His last sigh upon the cross, the prevailing sentiment of His life was His identity with our fallen race and every member of it for all the purposes of atonement. He was always conscious that "Him (Christ) for us He (God) hath made sin, that we might be made the justice of God in Him" (II. Cor. v. 21).

His foreknowledge of His passion began with Jesus' life. And it must have been communicated to His mother also from the beginning. We may well believe that at the Annunciation, Mary was told rf her Son's passion and death, and this was made yet plainer at the Presentation in the temple, when Simeon said to her: "This Child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be contradicted; and thine own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed'' (Luke ii. 34, 35). She was thus, after her Son, the first depository of the prophecy of Calvary, as she was to be the foremost associate of its sorrows.

The interior life of Jesus from His first moments was thus tinged with the gloom of Calvary. And His external devotions must have been from earliest childhood shaped and directed by the same over-mastering sense of His office as our advocate with His Father, and our substitute in bearing the penalty of our sins. To this was joined His thoughts and plans about the teaching of the truth of God, and the foundation of His Church to perpetuate that teaching and distribute the favors won for men by His death on the cross. Teacher of men and their Redeemer He was, and must always have felt Himself to be.

Hence His favorite prayers were the pleadings of an affectionate heart for the pardon of His guilty brethren. His devotional reading was for the most part about Himself in the ancient types and prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures; how could it be otherwise, since these sad pages were pictures of His own destiny as our representative before His Father's judgment seat? With what feelings Jesus must have read the words of Isaias : "He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before His shearers" (Isaias liii. 7). The spirit of sacrifice in the heart of Jesus gave to those words a painful fascination. And all of that marvelous chapter was both an oracle of woe and a source of light and strength to His soul, forearming Him with a fortitude impossible for us to comprehend. Read the twenty-first Psalm, and feel its awful power of sadness, and then imagine, if you can, what Jesus felt as day after day He read this plain forecast of His betrayal, nailing to the cross, torment of thirst, insults of enemies, and at last death. And read the seventy-eighth and eighty-seventh Psalms, and as their awful tones stir your heart, think how Jesus must have read them, every word of their plaintive messages being addressed to Himself and treating of the last and greatest events of His own career.

We can also imagine His interest in the ancient types of His person and office. He saw Himself foreshadowed by Abel, the innocent victim of his own brother's hate (Gen. iv. 8) ; by guileless Isaac offered by his own father to prove his fidelity to God (Gen. xxii. 6) ; most vividly foretold by the lamb of the Passover, whose blood, sprinkled on the doorposts of the Israelites in Egypt to warn away the destroying angel, was the emblem of His own blood poured out for the world's salvation at the gate of Jerusalem, and sprinkled upon every elect soul (Exod. xii. 5) ; of the brazen serpent, lifted up in the desert to cure a stricken people of both the guilt of their sin and its penalty (Num. xxi. 8).

There can be no manner of doubt but that He was ever offering His Father painfully earnest prayers of repentance for our sins. It is in this sense that Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with affliction (Isaias liii. 3). All that we mean by contrition for sin, compunction of heart, shame for misdeeds, Jesus felt continually; grief for sin was His set and established state of mind. Sorrow for our offences, deep and continuous, was habitual with Him, as was His realization that He was one of us and the leader of us all, involved with us in all that is meant by sin and iniquity except personal guilt — the shame, the agony of remorse, the sting of conscious ingratitude, the dread of eternal loss.

Be it remembered, too, that while His knowledge of our sinfulness was absolute, at the same time His sensitiveness to the injury done His Father was perfect. We know that His love for us, both as a ruined race and as individual culprits, was the highest endowment of His human nature, next to that of His love for His Father; and that these two sentiments were ever in conflict in His soul, and ever resulted in a painful victory of pity over justice.

Another thought of much importance in understanding our Redeemer's mind, is that His sweetest consolation must have been His forecast that the repentant sinner's hope of pardon and its final possession was to be entirely dependent on His own bitter sufferings and death. Thus, the anticipation of His sufferings, if it saddened our Savior, also inspired Him with zeal for His atonement. Knowing beforehand all the terrible details of His fate, He accepted them willingly, and even longed for them. "I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized/' He said, "and how am I straightened until it be accomplished?" (Luke xii. 50). Such was the significance of His baptism by John, which Jesus sought at the very outset of His public life. He took His place humbly among His precursor's penitents, confessing we know not what summary of the sins of mankind as if they were all His own, and making no distinction between Himself and the great multitude of sinners gathered by John's call to repentance.

After Jesus had begun to preach He almost immediately foretold, at least obscurely, His crucifixion. At His first visit to Jerusalem He said to Nicodemus — destined to take Jesus' corpse down from His cross : "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting" (John iii. 15).

At His transfiguration He discoursed with Moses and Elias "of His decease that He should accomplish in Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 31). Doubtless the topic of this unearthly conference was made known by Him to the three disciples who were with Him on Mount Tabor. They could by no means understand why, in the midst of His glory, He should discourse with these exalted personages about His death. The day was yet distant when they would exclaim with St. Paul : "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal. vi. 14). They were yet to appreciate that it was precisely by His death that He was to w r in His cause and theirs, as well as show the extent of God's love for men. His affectionate heart would dwell on the very details of His death in company with these holy men of old, whom He had called from their rest in Limbo to counsel with Him about God's purposes in sending His Son on earth. Stripes, thorns, spittings, nails, and the awful pangs of death were the object of His most ardent desires, and therefore the choice subject of His discourse with those grand old heroes of the ancient religion of God, and that even amid the heavenly splendors of His transfiguration. They would fully understand Him and would say : "It is good for us to be here"; but in a different spirit from Peter, knowing as they did that the sufferings of Christ about which they had discoursed with Him were to be the sovereign remedy for man's fatal malady, and the perfect manifestation of the divine love for sinners. Little did the disciples realize all this ; little do Christians generally understand the relation of suffering to glory.

Towards the close of our Lord's second year among His disciples He began to impress upon them w r ith much earnestness that His time with them was short, and that He would end His life by falling into the hands of His enemies and being executed as a criminal. And doubtless the increasing sadness of His manner tallied with the more frequent mention of His passion. The actual instrument of His death was suggested by His first mention of the cross, which was in connection with the virtue of self-denial: "He that taketh not up his cross and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me" (Luke ix. 37).

At the very time when Jesus was the object of almost universal popular worship, He repeatedly cast a damper on His disciples' spirits by showing them what would happen at His final visit to Jerusalem. As in the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew (21-23) : "Jesus began to show to His disciples, that He must go to Jerusalem, and to suffer many things from the ancients and scribes and chief priests, and to be put to death, and the third day rise again." Against this dreadful doom Peter boldly protested ; "Lord," said he, "be it far from Thee, this shall not be unto Thee." And Jesus rebuked him, and through him all the other disciples, who doubtless shared his feelings of repugnance : "Go behind Me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto Me, because thou savorest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men."

Meanwhile He was careful to affirm His entire liberty of choice in His passion and death. He did so long before He died, and by deeds as well as by words, holding His enemies off from Him in various ways plainly supernatural, and sometimes strikingly miraculous; because, as He said to His disciples, His time was not yet come. His freedom was the all necessary condition of His merit, which was to win for us His Father's love. Hence He said to the Jews: "Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself; and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of My Father" (John x. 17, 18). Sometimes His prophecy was given under a figure, as : "I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep" (John x. 11). Or by a parable, as that of the wicked husbandman killing the son and heir of the lord of the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 39).

He multiplied these saddening forecasts during His last journey to Jerusalem. On the very eve, it would seem, of His triumphal entry into the city, at a banquet which might almost be called a public one, His head and feet were anointed by Mary Magdalen. He distinctly affirmed that this solemn act of homage was done for His approaching burial, and He repeated and insisted on that prophecy (Mark xiv. 3-9).

A little later, and after He had ended a long discourse to a great multitude of His followers, He said in private to His more intimate disciples : "You know that after two days shall be the pasch, and the Son of Man shall be delivered up to be crucified ,, (Matt. xxvi. 2). This was but reminding them of what He had said not long before, the most detailed forecast of His end: "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be betrayed to the chief priests, and to the scribes and ancients, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles, and they shall mock Him, and spit on Him, and scourge Him, and kill Him: and the third day He shall rise again" (Mark x. 33, 34). St. Luke tells us (xviii. 34) that this amazed the Apostles ; and if it distressed them, what deepening shadows must have been gathering about His own soul. They were slow and dull men, but at last they began to realize His awful purpose. He was going to leave behind Him His miraculous powers, and, all helpless and alone, to deliver Himself up to the fierce hate of His enemies. But the disciples were now afraid to protest, or even to question Him; His severe admonition to Peter was not forgotten.

It is true that He often coupled with the prophecy of His death that of His resurrection. But if this aroused their imaginations it did not relieve their distress. And what did He mean by the words "I shall rise again"? They knew what it meant to be killed ; they were shocked by His plain statement that at His next visit to Jerusalem the chief priests would seize Him and kill Him. But "rise again"? What did that mean? And of what use would that be if He and they had been already vanquished and ruined? What would His poor ghost be able to do against His triumphant enemies?

As to the other parties to the impending tragedy, it is certain that a year before our Redeemer's death, the leading Pharisees and Sadducees had made up their minds to kill Him; and this was just about the time He began more plainly to foretell His fate. The formal decision, as we may call it, to destroy Him was taken after the raising of Lazarus from the grave. The chief priests and the leading Pharisees called a council, at which it was quickly agreed that Jesus must by some means and in some way be put to death. "From that day therefore they devised to put Him to death" (John xi. 46-54).

But their devisings all failed. Jesus taught daily in the temple, and in spite of a network of spies and emissaries, He traversed the public streets mornings and evenings, openly and with entire impunity. This was because He was to fix His own times and moments, and also because one of His own disciples was to be the personal instrument of His destruction. Meanwhile His forebodings afflicted His spirit deeply. "Now is My soul troubled," said He. "And what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this cause I came unto this hour" (John xii. 2j). This is the twilight of the gloom io Introduction.

that overshadowed Him in the Garden of Olives. But besides being hindered by the self-bestowed immunity of Jesus, the conspirators were embarrassed by other causes. "Many of the chief men (of the Pharisees) also believed in Him" (John xii. 42), and doubtless the chief plotters feared that they would offer some resistance. The masses of the people, too, were enthusiastic friends of Jesus (Matt. xxvi. 5) ; they had yet to be corrupted and bullied into acquiescence in His destruction.

The plotters were, in fact, at a standstill in their schemes, when Judas, the infamous wretch who had been nourished in the very bosom of his divine Master, gave them their opportunity for arresting Him, and for doing it safely and secretly. Thus the arrest of Jesus was planned by a traitorous Apostle and carried out under his direction. "Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests, and said to them : 'What will you give me, and I will deliver Him unto you V But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver. And from thenceforth he sought opportunity to betray Him" (Matt, xxvi. 14-16).

We now come to the Last Supper. It was the celebration of the paschal solemnity by the eating of the lamb of the Passover, the ancient type of our Redeemer and of His being slain for the salvation of mankind. But the Last Supper is especially memorable on account of the institution of the Blessed Eucharist, by means of which Jesus was to perpetuate to all time and distribute to all men the benefits of the atonement to be consummated on the morrow. He had ardently longed for this hour of affectionate leave-taking, and of imparting to us His own self in the sacrifice of the Mass and Holy Communion. As He sat down with His Apostles, He said to them : "With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you, before I suffer" (Luke xxii. 15).

As the end was now at hand, Jesus was wholly absorbed in love for His disciples, the sorrowful love of a Redeemer. St. John says that "Jesus, knowing that His hour was come, that He should pass out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who are in the world, He loved them to the end" (John xiii. 1). His washing of His disciples' feet then took place. It was a farewell ceremony, invented by His affection, because He knew "that He goeth to God" (John xiii. 3). His efforts to save Judas from treason and suicide followed. It is one of the most touching episodes in all this heart-moving history — an effort futile as to Jesus, but, as an example of divine patience, very efficacious to save multitudes of other sinners.

His long discourse to His disciples was now begun, being a summary of His most spiritual teachings, and ending with His sublime prayer to His Father for His Church and its pastors. He interrupted these utterances by foretelling the rout and dispersion of the Apostles and Peter's denial of Him that night, as well as by His mysterious instruction about the two swords, all plainly prophetic of His impending fate — plainly prophetic to us who know the whole history so well, and whose minds have been formed to His faith by the knowledge of what afterwards happened; not so to His Apostles. "Lord," said St. Thomas, "we know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way?" (John xiv. 5). Their hearts were saddened by His words, but their minds were none the less mystified. It was midway in His discourse that He instituted the Blessed Eucharist, the anticipation in a marvelous form of His death the following day, as well as its everlasting memorial. 'The Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat; this is My body, which shall be delivered for you; this do for the commemoration of Me. In like manner also the chalice, after He had supped, saying : This chalice is the new testament in My blood, which shall be shed for you ; this do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of Me. For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord, until He come" (I. Cor. xi. 23-26; Luke xxii. 17-20). Thus He made the greatest act of our religion the memorial of the greatest act of His life, namely, His death. He had appropriately reserved its institution to "the same night in which He was betrayed."

• Thus passed the earlier hours of that memorable night, the eve of His crucifixion. He had devoted the time to His Apostles alone. He had washed their feet most humbly. He had celebrated the paschal banquet with them, as a Hebrew father amongst his dearest children. He had instituted the great Sacrament of our Altars. He had made a desperate effort to save Judas. He had sternly warned Peter of his denial of Him; and even as He did so, He lodged a seed of hope in that Apostle's bosom against the almost inevitable temptation to despair, foretelling him that he would be converted from his momentary defection. He had taught them, during His discourse, very explicitly, the most essential principle of their religious life, the indwelling of the divine spirit in the Christian Church and Christian soul. He had recalled to their minds all His fundamental teachings. And His affectionate heart had fired His every word with love, so that among all the sacred writings there are none to compare with these chapters — xiii.-xvii. — of St. John.

At last His hour was come, He must go forth to His death. He lifted up His voice and solemnly intoned a Psalm. They all joined in the plaintive chant, and sang the inspired words their religion and their race with deep emotion. Then He led them out into the night, all resplendent with the beams of the paschal moon. But its brightness mocked their souls, which were oppressed with gloom, as they followed their beloved Master to the Mount of Olives. Who can tell the feelings of His heart? But to study His feelings and to narrate His sufferings is the task now before us.

Chapter I

Then one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray Him, said: Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and having the purse, carried the things that were put therein. Jesus therefore said: Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of My burial. For the poor you have always with you; but Me you have not always. And Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, one of the Twelve. And he went and discoursed with the chief priests and the magistrates how he might betray Him to them. And he said to them : What will you give me, and I will deliver Him to you. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him thirty pieces of silver. And he promised. And from henceforth he sought opportunity to betray Him, in the absence of the multitude (Matt. xxvi. 14-16; Mark xiv. 10-11; Luke xxii. 3-6; John xii. 4-8).

And when supper was done (the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him) . . . Jesus began to wash the feet of his disciples. . . . He

Note. — The passages of Scripture at the heads of chapters are the descriptions of the events under consideration given by the Evangelists. Their different accounts are in each case blended together into one, omitting only verbal repetitions. A few texts from other parts of Scripture are occasionally added. Taken altogether, these headings form the complete inspired history of the passion.

said to them: ... He that eateth bread with Me shall lift up his heel against me. . . . When Jesus had said these things He was troubled in spirit. And he said: Amen, I say to you, that one of you is about to betray Me. Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table, one ot the Twelve, who dippeth with Me his hand in the dish, he shall betray Me. The Son of Man indeed goeth, as it is written ot Him ; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man shall be betrayed. It were better for him, if that man had not been born.

And Judas that betrayed Him, answering, said: Is it I, Rabbi? He saith to him: Thou hast said it. Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter, therefore, beckoned to him and said to him : Who is it of whom He speaketh? He, therefore, leaning on the breast of Jesus, saith to Him: Lord, who is it? Jesus answered: He it is to whom I shall reach bread dipped. And when he had dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the morsel, Satan entered into him. And Jesus said to him: That which thou dost, do quickly. Now no man at the table knew to what purpose He said this unto him. For some thought, because Judas had the purse, that Jesus had said to him : Buy those things which we have need of for the festival-day; or that he should give something to the poor. He, therefore, having received the morsel, went out immediately. And it was night. When he therefore was gone out, Jesus said: Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. . . . Father, those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scripture may be fulfiled (Matt. xxvi. 21-25; Mark xiv. 18-21; Luke xxi. 21-23; John xiii. 21-31).

The fall of Judas was first indicated by his contempt for the penitent Magdalen. He despised her act of love in anointing the feet of Jesus with costly spices. Why is this waste? he protested. Why did she not give the price of the ointment to me for the use of the poor ; and this he said "because he was a thief." It is therefore cer-

1 6 The Agony hi the Garden^

tain that he had already gravely transgressed by stealing the offerings of his Master's benefactors, committed to him for the daily wants of the little company and for distribution to the poor.

So it has come to this : in the work of our salvation Jesus must mourn over an Apostle who stole money from Him and his brother Apostles, and then robbed the poor ; and fin-ally traded away his Master's very life for money.

We thus know what devil it was that entered into Judas, made all welcome and at home — the demon of avarice. How strange that love of money should gain mastery in the household of Jesus, who was without scrip or purse, roof or home, and a divine model of disinterestedness; and as He practised, so He constantly preached, contempt for all worldly possessions. In spite of this, and in the immediate companionship of the poor Man of Nazareth, Judas first gradually and insensibly, then deliberately and steadfastly, loved money. At last he loved it well enough to sell his Master for it.

The hatred of the chief priests and the covetousness of Judas were well mated. Said the one party : "If you give me money, I will give you Jesus." "Done," said the other, "and glad of the bargain. 'And they were glad.' • Well might they be. Here was one of His most intimate friends offering to sell Jesus for money, and for no great sum at that — to sell His very kisses. Their hopes were at once restored, they now had their dreaded enemy almost entrapped. And, besides, such an offer as that of Judas could mean — so they must have thought — no less than a general defection among the disciples of the Nazarene. And the price demanded, how trifling it seemed to those men. Later on they will publicly give up their very race and nation to idolatrous Caesar to compass the death of Jesus ; now they have only to pay thirty pieces of silver to get Him in their power.