The undying tragedy of the world

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PAGE FOEEWOED . . V

CHAPTEB

I Judas and Disloyalty ...... 1

Chapter I Judas And Disloyalty

"What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you?" Matt. XXVI, 15.

"And he that betrayed him, gave them a sign, saying: Whomsoever I shall kiss, that is he." Matt. XXVI, 48.

' « Hail Rabbi. And he kissed him. ' ' Matt. XXVI, 49.

"It were better for him, if that man had not been born." Matt. XXVI, 24.

The special attention which Mother Church pays to the Passion of our Blessed Lord is a well known fact. She begins her religious functions with the sacred sign of the cross marking her brow and signing the foreheads of her children. She blesses the objects that are set aside for holy purposes by tracing above them the same hallowed symbol. She crowns the spires of her temples of worship with this august standard of her King and Spouse. And the cross is the epitome of the Passion.

Yet,- whilst with its salutary warning against evil and its heavenly call to goodness of life the Passion always lives in her heart; whilst in her grateful memory it throbs with the endless thrill of appreciative love ; during the holy season of Lent she broods over it, as a beloved broods over the memory of her battle-scarred lover. She counts each wound, she lingers over each bruise received in her behalf; for they are the marks of her Bridegroom's heroism, the tokens of His fidelity and unselfishness. During this hallowed time of penance and prayer the Church summons her children to tread with her more frequently and more lovingly than at other times the sad Way of the Cross; she closes this period with the veiling of statues and crucifixes; and she relives the days of monstrous hate and immeasurable love, as Holy Week's lamentations precede the Easter alleluias. Until lately it was her wont to celebrate during Lent different feasts of the Passion and of the instruments of her Spouse's sufferings; and, even though some of these feasts have been superseded in her liturgy, the spirit of her loving remembrance remains, and she wishes the whole of Lent to be an extended Holy Week for all who love the Christ.

In a certain sense, she wishes the whole year and one's whole life to be a prolonged Lent, in so far as the memory of the Passion should never fade from the heart's grateful recollection. Her daily Mass is the unfailing memorial of the sacrifice of Calvary; her unflagging lesson is the sermon of the cross. She knows and proclaims this truth : " Surely if there had been anything better and more useful to the salvation of man than suffering, Christ would certainly have shown it by word and example." 1

The record of the Passion of our Blessed Lord is not only the story of His sufferings of redeeming love ; it is also the symbol of the Undying Tragedy of the World, the type of the struggle of the forces of evil against good and God. Christ fought all the powers of sin and hell, and He conquered in His " triumph of failure." But the evil that was killed on Calvary when He won His stupendous victory has its unholy

i Imitation of Christ, Bk. II, c. 12.

4 THE UNDYING TBAGEDY

resurrection in the heart of every man and woman who treads the paths of this life. Unto the crack of doom the struggle will go on, with the power of wickedness weakened, but never absolutely vanquished until the day of God's supreme triumph in His General Judgment. Then God will conquer irresistibly and the adverse forces will be crushed unto everlasting. But meanwhile, into the lives of each of us there rush the fierce onsets of the struggle for our souls, which are the prize, as they are the battleground, of this terrible contest between Satan and Christ; in our lives there is again enacted upon a smaller stage the same tragedy whose closing scene was the cloudwrapped, darkened, bloody plateau of Golgotha.

Therefore, the purpose of the present work is to consider the old, old story of Christ's sacrifice of atoning love, and at the same time to look at the types of evil which played their part in the terrible events whose culmination was Calvary and which still battle on in the ever-renewed drama of mankind. And the hope and the prayer which should be in our hearts is this, that, as Christ conquered in His gigantic struggle, as God will definitely triumph at the end of this earthly span, so too we, each and all, may win in the fray that we face as we go through life.

Down at the bottom of all true nobility and solid greatness is fidelity: the tap-root of uprightness and heroic endeavor is loyalty, which cleaves to the norm of goodness and obeys the mandate of God. On the other hand, down at the bottom of all wickedness is unfaithfulness: the poisoned and poisonous source of even the most monstrous moral defections is disloyalty. Hence, in studying the forces of evil in the struggle against good and God let us begin with the consideration of this disloyalty.

Where is its type in the sorrow-flooded Passion of the Master? Alas! the whole Passion is the story of horrible disloyalty ranged against Christ's magnificent loyalty. Nowhere is loyalty to be found save in His blessed Mother, who followed Him unto the end and stood beneath the cross as He bowed His head in death ; nowhere save in the lovechastened, converted sinner of Magdala, who was found worthy of a place beside

Christ's stainless Mother; nowhere save in the few like John and the devoted women and those who from afar off saw what was done on the dread hill of execution. All others were blackened with the tainted vileness of disloyalty.

The Apostles were disloyal: for, though the Master had given them permission to depart, leaving Him to tread the wine-press of sorrow alone, still they were faithless to their boast that they were " ready to go to prison and to death" 1 with Him. Peter, who was to be the foundation-stone of Christ's everlasting Church, was faithless: for, that same night which had blessed him with the heaven-like joy of his First Holy Communion and had hallowed him with the elevation to a share in the very priesthood of Christ, witnessed his cowardly denial of his Master and his cursing and swearing that he "knew not the man," 2 whom he had once gloriously confessed to be "the Christ, the Son of the living God." 3 The tribunals of the Jews and Gentiles were faithless to their bounden

iLuke XXII, 33; Matt. XXVI, 35.

2 Cf. Matt. XXVI, 72. 3 Matt. XVI, 16.

duty to render justice to men. The judges were disloyal to the fundamental requirements of their high office. The rulers were untrue to the very thing for which they held the reins of government and' swayed the sceptre of power. The people were recreant to the trust of heaven and to the very purpose that had made them the chosen race of God.

Truly, disloyalty seems to be the very atmosphere of the Passion. Yet within the darkness that is almost without a gleam of brightness, there is a deeper blackness; amid the forms of evil that crawl and crouch and spring upon the Christ to crush Him to His doom, foremost and most hideous is the figure of him who stands before the world as the embodiment of unworthiness and the personification of disloyalty — Judas, the Apostle who betrayed his Master, Judas the traitor.

Judas Iscariot was the son of Simon. He was the only one of the Apostles who was, like Christ Himself, a Judean; for the rest were Galileans. The Iscariot, "the man of Kerioth," must have had many noble qualities and many splendid capabilities for true greatness; for the Master had chosen him to be one of His Apostles. For Judas there was to be the glory of preparing the people for the fuller teaching of the Christ ; nay, he must have made preliminary missionary tours, when the envoys of the Master preached the coming of the Kingdom of God and returned exulting that even the demons were subject to them in the name of Jesus. His was the wondrous privilege to enjoy close intimacy with the God-Man during the days of the public ministry, to hear His teachings and to behold His miracles. His was to be the destiny of the others of the Twelve; and that was to spread the glad tidings of salvation, to "preach the gospel to every creature/' * to witness to Jesus "in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the uttermost part of the earth," 2 to give testimony unto the heroism of blood to Him who died for men, and in the regeneration, when the Son of man would come in great power and majesty, "to sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." 3

i Mark XVI, 15. 2 Acta I, 8. 3 Matt. XIX, 28.

G-lorious was the destiny; propitious, the beginning. But gradually Judas fell away from what was worthy and noble. Little by little his devotedness gave place to disloyal perfidy, which ran its course from pilfering to criticism of the God-Man, to murmurings against his Master, and finally to the unspeakable treason which has branded the one-time Apostle with the mark of shame and infamy. How had the mighty fallen!

When Judas sold his Master to hating foes, had he lost faith in the Christ, or had he deceived himself with the illusive hope that Christ might, when taken, pass through the hands of His enemies as on a former occasion ? Who shall say 1 But, it is hard to see how his faith was firm : a significant passage in the gospel according to St. John gives us reason at least to question that. A year before the cataclysm of blood the Master had promised to men, that, for the life of the world, He would give His flesh to eat and His blood to drink. Some, even of the disciples, had drawn Christ's reproach upon themselves because of the unbelief in their hard hearts: "There are some of you who believe not"; "for," says

St. John, "Jesus knew from the beginning who were they that did not believe, and who he was that would betray him." 1 And when, after the departure of those disciples who "went back and walked no more with him," Jesus had asked the Apostles whether they too would go the way of the faithless ones, and when Peter had answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we have believed and have known that thou art the Christ, the Son of God"; then "Jesus answered them: Have I not chosen you twelve: and one of you is a devil?" A devil! "Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon : for this same was about to betray him, whereas he was one of the twelve." 2

From that day the cancer of evil was eating more deeply into Judas' soul. Shortly before the end of the ministry of mercy he murmured at Mary's wasteful extravagance, as she anointed the Master's feet with precious ointment: "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?" 3 "Now this he said,"

i John VI, 65. a John XII, 5.

comments St. John, "not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and having the purse carried the things that were put therein. ' ' * And Satan put it into his heart to sell his Master. 2 Untempted by the priests, but urged on by the great adversary, of his own accord "he went and discoursed with the chief priests and the magistrates, how he might betray him to them. And they were glad and covenanted to give him money. And he promised. And he sought opportunity to betray him." 3 Thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave, was the gain which he preferred to his rejected Lord ! Possibly the money was only a partial inducement to his treason ; for the sum was wretchedly paltry. But he may have visioned other golden streams, which would flow to him in compensation for his zeal in the cause of the priests; he may have hoped to stand well with the triumphant popular party; he may have looked for further emolument in the days of his own growing importance. Thirty

Uohn XII, 6.

2 Cf . John XIII, 2.

s Luke XXII, 3-6.

pieces of silver ! For him the die was cast.

After this nothing could stop him in his mad, unchecked rush to destruction. In the Supper Room Christ had bowed before him in humble love and loving lowliness and had washed his feet: the Lord had not driven him with burning scorn from the Pasch which He had desired to eat with His own. Near to that Master Judas had reclined during the ceremonial supper; and then, when he had received the morsel of bread which pointed out the traitor to "the disciple whom Jesus loved," 1 "Satan entered into him . . . and he went out immediately. And it was night." 2 Yes, it was the night of black disloyalty to the best of friends, the most loving of benefactors, the most gracious Master, the most long-suffering God. Disloyalty was hurrying on to the climax of its perfidy.

Now, from darkness let us turn to light. As Judas symbolizes disloyalty, so Christ is the type of fidelity. His whole life up to the hour in the Cenacle has been one unbroken chain of acts of loyalty to His work,

i John XIII, 23; cf. XXI, 7. 2 John XIII, 27, 30.

to His brethren, and to His heavenly- Father. All this, however, we may pass by, to gaze in wondering awe at His loyalty as it gleams forth from now to the ending of His agony in the garden.

The few moments of peace and love in the midst of His own are past. There in the Supper Eoom He has made good His promise, spoken a year before at Capharnaum, whereby He pledged Himself to give His flesh for the life of the world. The first Holy Mass has been said ; the first Holy Communion has been given to men; and close to the hearts of the chosen Apostles beats the great Sacred Heart of Jesus, throbbing with the love that will redeem the world. A hymn of thanksgiving is said; and then He turns His back on love and joy, and goes forth to hatred and sorrow.

Out into the cool March night the Master passes with the eleven — out into the darkness, where all the powers of sin and hell are waiting in ambush for the conflict against God's anointed. From the elevation of Mount Sion down towards the valley He takes His way. And as He walks along, He begins to be faint of heart. The moon

14 THE UNDYING TEAGEDY

shines down from the depths of the blue Judean sky; but it seems so cold: the stars twinkle in the fathomless stretches; but they seem so far away and so chill. A heavy weight is pressing down upon His heart, is shattering His strength and crushing His courage; for, He begins to be afraid. 1

Afraid! It is very strange, this fear of Christ's. He had always been the strong one. He had always spoken words of encouragement to His followers. He had commanded nature in its wildest moods, and His word had calmed the storm. He had so often withstood, all alone, the ruthless opponents of His cause and had challenged them with fearless intrepidity. He had passed through the midst of His foes and left them helpless in their fury, which would have stoned Him to death or cast Him down from the height of a precipice. He had uttered a word, and the demons had fled in terror from the bodies of the possessed. Why, but a few short moments ago He had uttered words that sounded like a call to battle: "Have confidence: I have over-

iCf. Mark XIV, 33.

come the world." 1 Yet now, as He goes forth to meet the foe, He begins to lose courage and to be afraid !

We must never forget that the Blessed Christ is man as well as God. Yes, God He is, and we adore with hearts bowed down; He is "God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, consubstantial with the Father. ' ' 2 But true man too He is, with a human body and a human soul, with a human heart and human feelings, with human longings and human sympathies. And in His growing terror He will allow His divinity to influence His humanity only in such wise as to support it to bear more than a mere man could endure. His love for us has urged Him to become "tempted in all things such as we are without sin"; 3 and now He drinks of the chalice of our weakness.

Oh, the pathos of that fear of Christ! Have we ever stood near one who was drawing near to the gates of the beyond and heard the weak, faltering voice tremble

iJohn XVI, 33. 2 Nicene Creed. a Heb. IV, 15.

forth the acknowledgment of the fear which sometimes comes even to the good, "I am afraid"? Christ's fear is deeper and sharper than such dread, and is more pathetic in its appeal. But back of the pathos there burns the steady flame of His undying loyalty to His mission and to His Father, there gleams the splendor of His more than martyr heroism. What though He is afraid ? What though terror is rending His very heart-strings? What though His strength dissolves like water before the fierce anguish of His apprehension? Still, He does not falter : He goes on to where His Father calls Him to His work of atonement.

Unhesitating, though afraid, He goes out through the eastern gate of the city, down the slope that drops away to the brook Cedron with the heights frowning above. And back there in Jerusalem Judas is busy with the enemies of the Christ ; he is gathering the cohorts of evil ; he is hurrying to the consummation of his perfidy, hot with the frenzied haste that whips him on, disloyal to the Master who is faithful unto death.

Across the Cedron the sorrowful Master

DISLOYALTY 17i

marches on (it is like the charge of a forlorn hope against overwhelming odds) — on until He comes to the little garden of Gethseinani, where He has often gone to pray. He leaves eight of the Apostles near the entrance; and taking with Him Peter and James and John, the three always so close to Him in other days, He advances about a stone's throw into the garden. Here (so a tradition has it) He stands before a low grotto about thirty feet square and from twelve to fourteen feet high. "My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here and watch with me," * are the words which tell of a suffering that would have killed Him but for the support of His divinity. "Stay you here and watch with me"; for, in this overpowering hour of His distress, help He must have, even the help of men — of those chosen three who have looked upon the unveiled splendor of the Only Begotten of God in the transcendent glory of the Transfiguration. They will be able to gaze upon His trembling weakness and to bear the shock. His growing fear is writing its story on the drawn features of His wan face, which as the pale moonbeams fall upon it looks like the face of the dead.

The door of the grotto looms black against the starry skies, and the olive trees about it look like grim sentinels of disaster. Blackness and dread! But with unfaltering loyalty to what is willed in heaven He sends to the three Apostles a last look, giving and begging love, and He enters the opening of the grotto. From the murky depths of the cave demon forms seem to mock Him; demon hands, to stretch forth to grasp Him ; demon hate, to hurl undying enmity against His quivering heart. His fear increases; His anguish deepens; and in utter misery He throws Himself full length upon the rocky floor of the cave, wrestling with the sorrow that is all but killing Him. Relief He must have. So, He turns His fearhaunted eyes heavenward and raises His trembling hands aloft to His Father.

"My Father," He pleads, "My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. ' ' 1 He had longed for this chalice, filled full with the blood-red sorrow of His atonement; He had yearned for it with a desire that was like an unquenchable thirst, so that He was straitened and in pain until He should hold it fast to His lips and drain it to its last bitter drops. Yet now? "Let it pass from me." And if He had stopped there in His prayer, it would have passed; but His tremendous loyalty would have been less complete, His martyr example would have been less compelling, His victory would have been less entire. But He does not stop there; He goes on: "Nevertheless not as I will; but as thou wilt"; 1 ". . . not my will, but thine be done." 2

Yet the Father's face is turned away. Christ sees only anger in His Father's heart ; and the Son of God grovels on the ground in agony, whilst the horrible tidal wave of sin rushes in upon Him. Sin encompasses the Holy One of God — the sins of all mankind ! The vileness that rose heavenward and provoked God's just wrath to let loose the waters of the deluge, the nameless horrors of Sodom and Gomorrha, the unspeakable outrages of pagan Greece and Eome, of the

i Matt. XXVT, 39. 2 Luke XXII, 42.

Babylons of the past and of the days to come — sin upon sin, wave after wave of loathsomeness wrap Him round and enfold Him. And— God help us!— we are not guiltless of all this. We stood over Him and heaped our transgressions upon the seething waters of defilement: we pushed Him down deeper into the black flood, as His sinless soul groaned forth the words, "I have come into the depth of the sea, and a tempest hath overwhelmed me." *

The sins of all mankind are upon Him; for, "the Lord hath laid down upon him the iniquities of us all. ' ' 2 They are upon Him- — oh, ineffable horror! — as if He had been guilty of them all ; as if His trembling hands were red with all the murders from the killing of Abel to the last deed of violence done before the end of days ; as if His quivering lips, which are straining forth His cry of loyal acceptance of His chalice of pain, were defiled with all the blasphemies and obscenities and revilings that have broken the harmony of creation ; as if His all but bursting heart were buried beneath all the injustice

i Ps. LXVIII, 3. 2 Isaias LIII, 6.

and impiety and pride and impurity that have made a charnel house of God's fair world. No wonder He grovels there in agony, stricken by God as if He were the personification of evil and the incarnation of sin. No wonder the drawn lines about His temples and haggard lips deepen and quiver. No wonder the first pink blushing of blood mantles his brow and tinges His cheeks and darkens His palsied hands.

With a sigh of anguish He rises and goes out to His Apostles, only to find them sleeping. But across the torrent of Cedron, back there in the city of David, sleep is not master of His oncoming enemies. Judas does not sleep ; the priests do not sleep ; the hangerson of the palace do not sleep. They are marshalling their forces; they are ordering their plans ; they are ready to take the road out from the darkened city, when the hour shall have come that shall sound the first note of their hating triumph.

"Could you not watch one hour with me?" 1 This tenderly pathetic appeal is Christ's only reproof for the fickle weakness of the Apostles. But His next words sound the trumpet call of victorious loyalty for all men as they face the ways of life: " Watch ye and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." 1 By the heroic loyalty of the weakened Christ, may we learn the lesson! May we make honest efforts to avoid wrong-doing, and may we send up unceasing appeals to God for His help, so as to stand true to Him in all the attacks of foes from without and of weakness from within !

Back again the Savior goes to the grotto, tottering toward the second martyrdom of His gigantic fidelity. Once more He prays, " saying the same words." 2 And the apprehension of all that lies before Him ere tomorrow's sun shall have sunk behind the western hills rushes upon Him with its combined horror of infamy and pain. Must He be betrayed by one of His own % And must He be dragged in disgraceful bonds through the streets of the city which but five days before had rung with the glad hosannas that welcomed the Son of David to the city of

i Matt. XXVI, 41. 2 Mark XIV, 39.

David? And must He be condemned of blasphemy by the highest religious authority in the land? And must He be put even lower than a brigand murderer ? And must He be scourged and crowned with thorns and rejected by His people ? And must He be sentenced to death and bear His cross and be nailed to the gibbet and die upon the tree of shame? Oh, Father, must this be? "My Father, if this chalice may not pass away, but I must drink it, thy will be done." *

And down Sion's slope there move the dark forms of many marchers. The muffled murmur of many voices is breaking upon the still air. The flashing of lanterns and the gleam of swords in the flare of torches slash the darkness of night. And in the midst of the leaders is Judas, coming on to the accomplishment of his fell purpose.

For the third time, after another visit to His sleeping Apostles, back to the grotto the weary Master drags His fainting steps, to pray again to the Father whose face is turned away. The unbearable load of sin, which nevertheless He must carry, the crazing thought of the uncounted woes before Htm— all this must have made His sad thoughts turn to those for whom He suffers. Men! What have so many of them ever done from the day when they were placed upon this earth, but outrage the divine love that yearned over them? Is it worth while to endure a very orgy of torture for such as these? How many of them in the days to come will but damn themselves the deeper into hell because He died for them! Is it worth while? And His great heart answers, Yes, it is worth while: it is worth while to do the will of the Father; it is worth while to save the least of the children of men ; it is worth while to be loyal to the end.

So fierce is the effort of His strong resistance to feeble, faltering nature, that the blood is forced from the pores of His body, soaks the garments that He wears, and reddens the rocky floor of the grotto where He prays. "And being in an agony he prayed the longer, and his sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground. ' ' *

In the midst of His sorrow He is consoled

i Luke XXII, 43, 44.

by the ministration of one of the angelic spirits; and being comforted, He rises up. Past is His hour of almighty weakness, endured for us that His weakness by touching our weakness may make us stronger than ourselves. Henceforth He will meet without flinching all that lies ahead before the angry sunset of tomorrow. "Rise," He says to His Apostles, as He wakes them from their shaming slumber, "Rise, let us go: behold he is at hand who will betray me." 1

And nearer and nearer up the incline of Mount Olivet there comes the roar of an approaching mob; lights flash amidst the trees that clothe the hillside; soldiers and servants and priests and officers stop at the entrance of the garden to put some order into the confusion of their ranks. The words of command are rehearsed ; for there must be no mistake as the decisive moment draws near. The sign which will make assurance doubly sure is whispered into the ears of the leaders of the mob by him who skulks in their midst — by the "thief," the "devil," Judas Iscariot. The Christ moves onward with His followers, as Judas steps forward to complete his deed of evil ; and the Master and the recreant Apostle stand face to face.