J. Mostaert "Christ Crowned With Thorns"
The kerygma, or proclamation, of the Passion is always made up of two factors even in the shortest texts: the fact, he “suffered” and “died” and the motivation of the fact, “for our sake,” “for our sins.” He was put to death, the Apostle says, “for our trespasses” (Romans 4:25); he died for “the ungodly,” he died “for our sake” (Romans 5:6,8). The Passion will inevitably remain extraneous to us until we go into it through the very narrow door of the “for our sake” because only he who acknowledges that the Passion is his fault truly knows the Passion. Everything else is a digression.
If Christ died “for me” and “for my sins,” this means that “I” killed Jesus of Nazareth, that “my” sins crushed him. That is what Peter strongly proclaimed on the day of Pentecost to the three thousand people listening to him: “You killed Jesus of Nazareth!,” “You denied the holy and righteous one!” (cf. Acts 2:23; 3:14). St. Peter must have known that the three thousand and others he was addressing these words to were not all actually present on Calvary hammering in the nails, neither were they all there before Pilate asking him to crucify Jesus. Yet he repeated these tremendous words three times and those listening, inspired by the Holy Spirit, acknowledged that what Peter said was true because we read that “they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).
This throws new light on what we have meditated on so far. My sin was also present at Gethsemane and it weighed on the heart of Jesus; in the praetorium there was also the abuse I made of my freedom which kept Jesus bound; on the cross Jesus was expiating also my atheism. Jesus knew this, at least he knew it as God, and perhaps at that moment, someone was placing this fact before his eyes in the desperate effort to stop him and make him desist.
It is written that at the end every temptation in the desert, the devil departed Romans Jesus until an opportune time (cf. Luke 4:12) and we know that, for the evangelist, this “opportune time” is the time of the Passion, the “hour of darkness” as Jesus himself calls it when he was being arrested (cf. Luke 22:53). “The ruler of this world is coming,” Jesus said as he left the Upper room to go forward towards his Passion (cf. John14:30 ff.). In the wilderness the tempter showed him all the kingdoms of the earth, here he is showing him all generations throughout history, including ours, and he shouts within to his heart: “Look at them, look at those you are suffering for! See what they will do with all your suffering! They will go on sinning as before and will not give it much thought. It’s all in vain!” And, unfortunately, it is certain that I am also one of that crowd that gives little thought to what happened. I can even remain unmoved as I write these things about the Passion, whereas it should only be written about in fears. The faith-filled words and melody of a Negro spiritual re-echo in my ears:
“Were you there, were you there when they crucified my Lord?,” and in my inner self I have to answer each time: Yes, I was there when they crucified the Lord! “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble”, the rest of the song says.
An earthquake must take place in the life of every man; he should feel in his heart something of what took place in nature as a warning, at the moment of the death of Jesus when the curtain of the temple was torn in two, the stones broke and the tombs opened. It is necessary once and for all that a holy fear of God should shatter our proud hearts, which are so sure of themselves in spite of everything. All the holy people who were assembled at the Passion are examples of this and encourage us to do just this; the good thief crying out “Remember me!,” the centurion praising God, the multitudes beating their breasts (cf. Luke 23:39 ff.).
St. Peter too had a similar experience and if he was able to shout out those tremendous words to the multitudes it was because he had first shouted them to himself: “You have denied the Author of Life!” At a certain point in the story of the Passion we read: “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62). The look that Jesus gave Peter pierced right through him and changed him.
Think of two prisoners in a concentration camp. Imagine you are one of them and you have tried to escape knowing that the punishment for this would be death. A companion is blamed in your presence but he doesn’t inform on you; he is tortured in your presence and he still doesn’t say anything. Finally, while they are taking him to the place of execution, he turns and silently looks at you for a split second without a shadow of reproach. When you manage to get back home, could you ever be the same person again? Would you ever be able to forget that look? Such was the look Peter received from Jesus. How often, on hearing the Passion of Christ being spoken of, or speaking of it myself, or on looking at that image of Jesus in the praetorian mentioned earlier (see above), have I repeated to myself the well-known verse of Dante Alighieri: “What do you weep at, if you do not weep at this?”
The mistake is that we unconsciously think of the Passion as something that happened two thousand years ago and which belongs to the past. How can we be moved and weep over something that took place two thousand years ago? Suffering touches us when we see it, not when we remember it. We can only contemplate Christ’s suffering as contemporaries and we have it from reliable sources that “Christ’s Passion is prolonged to the end of time” and that “Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world.” Scripture itself says that those who sin “crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt” (Hebrews 6:6).
All of this is not just simply a way of talking, it corresponds to the truth. In spirit Jesus is also now in Gethsemane, in the praetorium, on the cross and not just in his mystical body, that is in the suffering, the imprisoned or those who have been killed, but also inexplicably in his very person. This is true not in spite of the resurrection but because of the resurrection which made Jesus crucified “alive for all time.” The Revelation presents the Lamb in heaven “standing,” that is resurrected and living, but “as though he had been slain” (cf. Rev 5:6).
Thanks to his Spirit which he gave us, we have become contemporaries of Christ; his Passion is taking place “today” (hodie) as the liturgy tells us. (Sister Kathleen at St. Luke’s, my RCIA teacher, once related a story that when she sees a fellow religious friend and some tragedy has occurred in the news, the other woman always says “It’s happening again.” I thought of her immediately when I read this.)
When we contemplate the Passion we are in a similar situation to a son whose father had been condemned, deported far away and subjected to every sort of ill-treatment through his son’s fault. One day, unexpectedly, he sees his father reappear before him in silence, the signs of all his sufferings visible on his body. It’s true that it is all over now, his father is back home and suffering no longer has any hold over him. But that does not mean that the son will be able to remain unmoved at the sight of his father. Rather, he will burst into bitter tears and throw himself at his father’s feet now that he can finally see with his own eyes what he has done.
In St. John’s Gospel we read: “They shall look on him whom they have pierced” (John19:37), and the prophecy he is quoting goes on to say: “They shall mourn as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn” (Zechariah 12:10). Has this prophesy ever been realized in my life or is it still awaiting fulfillment? Have I ever looked at the One I pierced?
It is time that “being baptized in Christ’s death” be realized in our lives. It is time that something of the old self be discarded and buried forever in Christ’s Passion. The old self with its carnal desires must be “crucified with Christ.” A stronger idea has now taken over, scaring the old man to death and persuading him to forsake all his “fixed ideas” and vanities.
St. Paul gives an account of this experience when he says: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians: 19-20). It is no longer I who live, that is, my “self” no longer lives. Was it perhaps that Paul no longer felt the impulses and temptations of the old self? Was he already in possession of the eschatological peace and free from all struggles? This was not the case because he himself confesses his interior battle between the laws of the flesh and that of the Spirit (cf. Romans 7:14 ff.), But something irreversible had happened which made it possible for him to say that his “self” no longer lived. Now the case of “self” is a lost one. St. Paul freely accepted to lose his “self,” and if his “self” lives and makes itself felt at times, it is however subjugated. What counts for God here is the will, because the will is what is at issue. This is what we must do too if we want to be “crucified with Christ.”
The fruit of the meditation on the Passion is, therefore, to kill the old self and give birth to the new self, which lives according to God. This is what the baptismal burial symbolizes. St. Basil wrote that “rebirth is the beginning of a new life but to begin a new life, the old one must first come to an end. Just as in a double race in a stadium where the runners are allowed a rest before taking up the race again on the opposite track, so it would seem that in changing life, a death must come between the two lives to end what had gone before and start the new life.”
After passing through this new understanding of our Baptism, we see the death of Christ in a completely new light, transformed from being an accusation and a reason for fear and sadness into a reason for joy and confidence. St. Paul exclaims:
“There is, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Condemnation has ended its course in him and given way to benevolence and pardon.
The cross now appears as a “boast” and as a “glory,” which in St. Paul’s language means a confident jubilation together with a heartfelt gratitude to which man raises himself in faith and expresses in praise and thanksgiving: “But far be it for me to glory except in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14). How can we glory in something that is not ours? The reason is that now the Passion has become “ours.” The “for me” which first meant “through my fault” now, after a humble acknowledgement of fault and confession, means “in my favor”. It is written that for our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is the righteousness St. Paul was talking about when he said, “the righteousness of God has been manifested” (Romans 3:21). This is what made and continues to make that “bold stroke” possible. When, in fact, on our part we add faith to Christ’s Passion, we truly become the righteous of God, the holy and the beloved. God becomes for us what he had foretold, “The Lord-Our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6).
Now we can fearlessly open ourselves to that joyful and spiritual dimension in which the cross no longer appears as foolishness and scandal” but, on the contrary, as “God’s power and God’s wisdom.” We can make it the reason of our unshakable certainty, the supreme proof of God’s love for us, the endless theme of our preaching and we can say with the Apostle: “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
