Pilate's court (Luke 23:1–7)
1 Then the whole assembly of them arose and brought him before Pilate.
2 They brought charges against him, saying, "We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Messiah, a king."
3 Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He said to him in reply, "You say so."
4 Pilate then addressed the chief priests and the crowds, "I find this man not guilty."
5 But they were adamant and said, "He is inciting the people with his teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to here."
6 On hearing this Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean;
7 and upon learning that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who was in Jerusalem at that time.
Pontius Pilate had been procurator, or Roman governor, of Judea for about five years. His seat of government was at the seacoast town of Caesarea, but he was in Jerusalem because of the large gathering of Jews for the feast of Passover.
Twice Jesus is brought before Pilate in Luke's account, and each time Pilate explicitly declares Jesus innocent of any wrongdoing. Pilate will hand Jesus over to the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, namely Galilee which was not part of Roman Judea. In the Gospel of John (John 18:36-38) Jesus gives more detail about that dialogue taking place between Jesus and Pilate. In John, Jesus seems to confirm the fact of his kingship, although immediately explaining:
36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants (would) be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here."
37 So Pilate said to him, "Then you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
38 Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" When he had said this, he again went out to the Jews and said to them, "I find no guilt in him.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (Homily 25 Nov 2012):
Jesus appears in humiliating circumstances – he stands accused – before the might of Rome. He had been arrested, insulted, mocked, and now his enemies hope to obtain his condemnation to death by crucifixion. They had presented him to Pilate as one who sought political power, as the self-proclaimed King of the Jews. The Roman procurator conducts his enquiry and asks Jesus: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (Jn 18:33). In reply to this question, Jesus clarifies the nature of his kingship and his messiahship itself, which is no worldly power but a love which serves. He states that his kingdom is in no way to be confused with a political reign: “My kingship is not of this world … is not from the world” (v. 36).
Jesus clearly had no political ambitions. After the multiplication of the loaves, the people, enthralled by the miracle, wanted to take him away and make him their king, in order to overthrow the power of Rome and thus establish a new political kingdom which would be considered the long-awaited kingdom of God. But Jesus knows that God’s kingdom is of a completely different kind; it is not built on arms and violence. The multiplication of the loaves itself becomes both the sign that he is the Messiah and a watershed in his activity: henceforth the path to the Cross becomes ever clearer; there, in the supreme act of love, the promised kingdom, the kingdom of God, will shine forth. But the crowd does not understand this; they are disappointed and Jesus retires to the mountain to pray in solitude, to pray with the Father (cf. Jn 6:1-15). In the Passion narrative we see how even the disciples, though they had shared Jesus’ life and listened to his words, were still thinking of a political kingdom, brought about also by force. In Gethsemane, Peter had unsheathed his sword and began to fight, but Jesus stopped him (cf. Jn 18:10-11). He does not wish to be defended by arms, but to accomplish the Father’s will to the end, and to establish his kingdom not by armed conflict, but by the apparent weakness of life-giving love. The kingdom of God is a kingdom utterly different from earthly kingdoms.
That is why, faced with a defenceless, weak and humiliated man, as Jesus was, a man of power like Pilate is taken aback; taken aback because he hears of a kingdom and servants. So he asks an apparently odd question: “So you are a king?” What sort of king can such a man as this be? But Jesus answers in the affirmative: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (18:37). Jesus speaks of kings and kingship, yet he is not referring to power but to truth. Pilate fails to understand: can there be a power not obtained by human means? A power which does not respond to the logic of domination and force? Jesus came to reveal and bring a new kingship, that of God; he came to bear witness to the truth of a God who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8,16), who wants to establish a kingdom of justice, love and peace (cf. Preface). Whoever is open to love hears this testimony and accepts it with faith, to enter the kingdom of God.
The prophet Daniel foretells the power of a mysterious personage set between heaven and earth: “Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (7:13-14). These words present a king who reigns from sea to sea, to the very ends of the earth, possessed of an absolute power which will never be destroyed. This vision of the prophet, a messianic vision, is made clear and brought to fulfilment in Christ: the power of the true Messiah, the power which will never pass away or be destroyed, is not the power of the kingdoms of the earth which rise and fall, but the power of truth and love. In this way we understand how the kingship proclaimed by Jesus in the parables and openly and explicitly revealed before the Roman procurator, is the kingship of truth, the one which gives all things their light and grandeur.
In the Book of Revelation is stated that we too share in Christ’s kingship. In the acclamation addressed “to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood”, the author declares that Christ “has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (1:5-6). Here too it is clear that we are speaking of a kingdom based on a relationship with God, with truth, and not a political kingdom. By his sacrifice, Jesus has opened for us the path to a profound relationship with God: in him we have become true adopted children and thus sharers in his kingship over the world. To be disciples of Jesus, then, means not letting ourselves be allured by the worldly logic of power, but bringing into the world the light of truth and God’s love. The author of the Book of Revelation broadens his gaze to include Jesus’ second coming to judge mankind and to establish forever his divine kingdom, and he reminds us that conversion, as a response to God’s grace, is the condition for the establishment of this kingdom (cf. 1:7). It is a pressing invitation addressed to each and all: to be converted ever anew to the kingdom of God, to the lordship of God, of Truth, in our lives. We invoke the kingdom daily in the prayer of the “Our Father” with the words “Thy kingdom come”; in effect we say to Jesus: Lord, make us yours, live in us, gather together a scattered and suffering humanity, so that in you all may be subjected to the Father of mercy and love.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Jesus’ interrogation before the Sanhedrin had concluded in the way Caiaphas had expected: Jesus was found guilty of blasphemy, for which the penalty was death. But since only the Romans could carry out the death sentence, the case now had to be brought before Pilate and the political dimension of the guilty verdict had to be emphasized. Jesus had declared himself to be the Messiah; hence he had laid claim to the dignity of kingship, albeit in a way peculiarly his own. The claim to Messianic kingship was a political offense, one that had to be punished by Roman justice. With cockcrow, daybreak had arrived. The Roman Governor used to hold court early in the morning.
So Jesus is now led by his accusers to the praetorium and is presented to Pilate as a criminal who deserves to die. It is the “day of preparation” for the Passover feast. The lambs are slaughtered in the afternoon for the evening meal. Hence cultic purity must be preserved; so the priestly accusers may not enter the Gentile praetorium, and they negotiate with the Roman Governor outside the building.
Now we must ask: Who exactly were Jesus’ accusers? Who insisted that he be condemned to death? According to John it was simply “the Jews”. In John’s Gospel this word has a precise and clearly defined meaning: he is referring to the Temple aristocracy. So the circle of accusers who instigate Jesus’ death is precisely indicated in the Fourth Gospel and clearly limited: it is the Temple aristocracy—and not without certain exceptions, as the reference to Nicodemus (7:50-52) shows.
In Mark’s Gospel, the circle of accusers is broadened in the context of the Passover amnesty (Barabbas or Jesus): the “ochlos” enters the scene and opts for the release of Barabbas. “Ochlos” in the first instance simply means a crowd of people, the “masses”. The word frequently has a pejorative connotation, meaning “mob”. this “crowd” is made up of the followers of Barabbas who have been mobilized to secure the amnesty for him: as a rebel against Roman power he could naturally count on a good number of supporters. So the Barabbas party, the “crowd”, was conspicuous, while the followers of Jesus remained hidden out of fear; this meant that the vox populi, on which Roman law was built, was represented one-sidedly. In Mark’s account, then, in addition to “the Jews”, that is to say the dominant priestly circle, the ochlos comes into play, the circle of Barabbas’ supporters, but not the Jewish people as such.
An extension of Mark’s ochlos, with fateful consequences, is found in Matthew’s account (27:25), which speaks of “all the people” and attributes to them the demand for Jesus’ crucifixion. Matthew is certainly not recounting historical fact here: How could the whole people have been present at this moment to clamor for Jesus’ death? It seems obvious that the historical reality is correctly described in John’s account and in Mark’s. The real group of accusers are the current Temple authorities, joined in the context of the Passover amnesty by the “crowd” of Barabbas’ supporters.
Matthew is thinking here of Jesus’ prophecy concerning the end of the Temple: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken. . .” (Mt 23:37-38: cf. Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, the whole of the section entitled “Gerichtsworte”, II, pp. 295-308).
These words—as argued earlier, in the chapter on Jesus’ eschatological discourse—remind us of the inner similarity between the Prophet Jeremiah’s message and that of Jesus. Jeremiah—against the blindness of the then dominant circles—prophesied the destruction of the Temple and Israel’s exile. But he also spoke of a “new covenant”: punishment is not the last word; it leads to healing. In the same way Jesus prophesies the “deserted house” and proceeds to offer the New Covenant “in his blood”: ultimately it is a question of healing, not of destruction and rejection.
When in Matthew’s account the “whole people” say: “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. . . God put [Jesus] forward as an expiation by his blood” (Rom 3:23, 25). Just as Caiaphas’ words about the need for Jesus’ death have to be read in an entirely new light from the perspective of faith, the same applies to Matthew’s reference to blood: read in the light of faith, it means that we all stand in need of the purifying power of love which is his blood.
These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation. Only when understood in terms of the theology of the Last Supper and the Cross, drawn from the whole of the New Testament, does this verse from Matthew’s Gospel take on its correct meaning.
Let us move now from the accusers to the judge: the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. While Flavius Josephus and especially Philo of Alexandria paint a rather negative picture of him, other sources portray him as decisive, pragmatic, and realistic. It is often said that the Gospels presented him in an increasingly positive light out of a politically motivated pro-Roman tendency and that they shifted the blame for Jesus’ death more and more onto the Jews. Yet there were no grounds for any such tendency in the historical circumstances of the evangelists: by the time the Gospels were written, Nero’s persecution had already revealed the cruel side of the Roman State and the great arbitrariness of imperial power. If we may date the Book of Revelation to approximately the same period as John’s Gospel, then it is clear that the Fourth Gospel did not come to be written in a context that could have given rise to a pro-Roman stance.
The image of Pilate in the Gospels presents the Roman Prefect quite realistically as a man who could be brutal when he judged this to be in the interests of public order. Yet he also knew that Rome owed its world dominance not least to its tolerance of foreign divinities and to the capacity of Roman law to build peace. This is how he comes across to us during Jesus’ trial.
The charge that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews was a serious one. Rome had no difficulty in recognizing regional kings like Herod, but they had to be legitimated by Rome and they had to receive from Rome the definition and limitation of their sovereignty. A king without such legitimation was a rebel who threatened the Pax Romana and therefore had to be put to death.
Pilate knew, however, that no rebel uprising had been instigated by Jesus. Everything he had heard must have made Jesus seem to him like a religious fanatic, who may have offended against some Jewish legal and religious rulings, but that was of no concern to him.
In John 18:34-35 it is clearly stated that, on the basis of the information in his possession, Pilate had nothing that would incriminate Jesus. Nothing had come to the knowledge of the Roman authority that could in any way have posed a risk to law and order. The charge came from Jesus’ own people, from the Temple authority. Yet during the interrogation we suddenly arrive at a dramatic moment: Jesus’ confession. To Pilate’s question: “So you are a king?” he answers: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (Jn 18:37). Previously Jesus had said: “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world” (18:36).
This “confession” of Jesus places Pilate in an extraordinary situation: the accused claims kingship and a kingdom (basileía). Yet he underlines the complete otherness of his kingship, and he even makes the particular point that must have been decisive for the Roman judge: No one is fighting for this kingship. If power, indeed military power, is characteristic of kingship and kingdoms, there is no sign of it in Jesus’ case. And neither is there any threat to Roman order. This kingdom is powerless. It has no legions.
In addition to the clear delimitation of his concept of kingdom (no fighting, earthly powerlessness), Jesus had introduced a positive idea, in order to explain the nature and particular character of the power of this kingship: namely, truth. Pilate brought another idea into play as the dialogue proceeded, one that came from his own world and was normally connected with “kingdom”: namely, power—authority (exousía). Dominion demands power; it even defines it. Jesus, however, defines as the essence of his kingship witness to the truth. Is truth a political category? Or has Jesus’ “kingdom” nothing to do with politics? To which order does it belong? If Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic Pilate asks him: “What is truth?” (18:38).
It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?
And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all—criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom?
What is truth? The pragmatist’s question, tossed off with a degree of scepticism, is a very serious question, bound up with the fate of mankind. What, then, is truth? Are we able to recognize it? Can it serve as a criterion for our intellect and will, both in individual choices and in the life of the community?
What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger. “Redemption” in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world’s standards: he has no legions; he is crucified. Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power.
The world is “true” to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth. And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God’s likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility.
“Bearing witness to the truth” means giving priority to God and to his will over against the interests of the world and its powers. God is the criterion of being. In this sense, truth is the real “king” that confers light and greatness upon all things. We may also say that bearing witness to the truth means making creation intelligible and its truth accessible from God’s perspective—the perspective of creative reason—in such a way that it can serve as a criterion and a signpost in this world of ours, in such a way that the great and the mighty are exposed to the power of truth, the common law, the law of truth.
Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world.
At this point, modern man is tempted to say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S. Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful astonishment: “The language of God was revealed” (The Language of God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God. But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered. But the truth about man himself—who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong—this unfortunately cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward “truth” itself—toward the question of our real identity and purpose.
After the interrogation, Pilate knew for certain what in principle he had already known beforehand: this Jesus was no political rebel; his message and his activity posed no threat for the Roman rulers. Whether Jesus had offended against the Torah was of no concern to him as a Roman.
Yet Pilate seems also to have experienced a certain superstitious wariness concerning this remarkable figure. True, Pilate was a sceptic. As a man of his time, though, he did not exclude the possibility that gods or, at any rate, god-like beings could take on human form. John tells us that “the Jews” accused Jesus of making himself the Son of God, and then he adds: “When Pilate heard these words, he was even more afraid” (John 19:8).
I think we must take seriously the idea of Pilate’s fear: Perhaps there really was something divine in this man? Perhaps Pilate would be opposing divine power if he were to condemn him? Perhaps he would have to reckon with the anger of the deity? I think his attitude during the trial can be explained not only on the basis of a certain commitment to see justice done, but also on the basis of such considerations as these.
Jesus’ accusers obviously realize this, and so they now play off one fear against another. Against the superstitious fear of a possible divine presence, they appeal to the entirely practical fear of forfeiting the emperor’s favor, being removed from office, and thus plunging into a downward spiral:
10 So Pilate said to him, "Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?"
11 Jesus answered (him), "You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin."
12 Consequently, Pilate tried to release him; but the Jews cried out, "If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar."
The declaration: “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend” (Jn 19:12) is a threat. In the end, concern for career proves stronger than fear of divine powers.
"You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin."
comments by Francis Martin, president of Father Francis Martin Ministries (FFMM), "commentary on the Gospel of John":
Jesus tells Pilate that his worldly power as a Roman prefect is not absolute but is subject to a higher authority. In his encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II similarly warns about political and social structures that do not recognize their own subordination to the transcendent standards of truth and goodness, which are knowable by human reason (see Catechism 1902,1954-56,1960):
Totalitarianism arises out of a denial of truth in the objective sense.
If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people... . The culture and praxis of totalitarianism also involve a rejection of the Church, The State or the party which claims to be able to lead history towards perfect goodness, and which sets itself above all values, cannot tolerate the affirmation of an objective criterion of good and evil beyond the will of those in power, since such a criterion ... could be used to judge their actions. This explains why totalitarianism attempts to destroy the Church, or at least to reduce her to submission.
Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude that correspond to democratic forms of political life.Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. Yet if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.
Excerpt from John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum [On Capital and Labor)) 44-46. What he described as the potential of democratic societies to degenerate into a kind of totalitarianism when objective truth and goodness are disregarded, Pope Benedict XVI has called the "dictatorship of relativism" See Pope Benedict XVI, The Light of the World; The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times, trans. Michael J. Miller and Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 50-59.
The Church celebrates the supreme lordship of Jesus Christ over all creation on the Feast of Christ the King. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925, after World War I and the rise of atheistic communism in Russia showed the human degradation facilitated by the disregard for God, objective truth, and love in public life. As Pope St. John Paul II observed nearly eighty years later, the history of the twentieth century showed that human beings “attempted to build the city of man without reference to [God]. It ended by actually building that city against man! Christians know that it is not possible to reject or ignore God without demeaning man” The Feast of Christ the King aims to reorient our “farts to the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ so that truth and goodness may reign in the world and provide the foundation for a just society and lasting peace”.
Jesus at Herod's court (Luke 23:7-12)
7 and upon learning that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who was in Jerusalem at that time.
8 Herod was very glad to see Jesus; he had been wanting to see him for a long time, for he had heard about him and had been hoping to see him perform some sign.
9 He questioned him at length, but he gave him no answer.
10 The chief priests and scribes, meanwhile, stood by accusing him harshly.
11 (Even) Herod and his soldiers treated him contemptuously and mocked him, and after clothing him in resplendent garb, he sent him back to Pilate.
12 Herod and Pilate became friends that very day, even though they had been enemies formerly.
The mention of Galilee gives Pilate the opportunity to divert the case to the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, who was also in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast. Herod’s curiosity about Jesus was mentioned earlier (9:9). Jesus does not respond to the request for a sign nor to the ill-motivated questions, as he never does in the Gospels. Herod’s mocking treatment of Jesus ironically heals an enmity with Pilate (Pilate’s recognition of Herod’s authority signified a recognition of him, clearly something Herod desired).
The cooperation of the two is later seen as the fulfillment of prophecy (Ps 2:1–2) and Acts 4:25–28:
25 you said by the holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David, your servant: 'Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples entertain folly?
26 The kings of the earth took their stand and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.'
Even when Jesus is mocked as a bogus prophet by Herod Antipas, the corrupt king and murderer of prophets (9:7-9; 13:31-33) could find no guilt in Jesus.
Within the early Christian community, Jesus’ continued silence (vs 9) was understood in the light of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:7 – “Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth.”
Jesus is back to Pilate's court (Luke 23:13-25)
13 Pilate then summoned the chief priests, the rulers, and the people
14 and said to them, "You brought this man to me and accused him of inciting the people to revolt. I have conducted my investigation in your presence and have not found this man guilty of the charges you have brought against him,
15 nor did Herod, for he sent him back to us. So no capital crime has been committed by him.
16 Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him."
17 "He was obliged to release one prisoner for them at the festival,"
18 But all together they shouted out, "Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us."
19 (Now Barabbas had been imprisoned for a rebellion that had taken place in the city and for murder.)
20 Again Pilate addressed them, still wishing to release Jesus,
21 but they continued their shouting, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
22 Pilate addressed them a third time, "What evil has this man done? I found him guilty of no capital crime. Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him."
23 With loud shouts, however, they persisted in calling for his crucifixion, and their voices prevailed.
24 The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted.
25 So he released the man who had been imprisoned for rebellion and murder, for whom they asked, and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished.
The penalty for Barabbas' crime was death by crucifixion, but according to the four canonical gospels and the non-canonical Gospel of Peter there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed or required Pilate, the praefectus or governor of Judaea, to commute one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim, and the "crowd" (ochlos) were offered a choice of whether to have either Barabbas or Jesus Christ released from Roman custody.
comments by Liam Ferguson (Knights of Columbus Lecturer):
In his book “Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration,” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gives a more profound view as he answers who was Barabbas?
At the culmination of Jesus’ trial, Pilate presents the people with a choice between Jesus and Barabbas. One of the two will be released. But who was Barabbas? It is usually the words of John’s Gospel that come to mind here: “Barabbas was a robber” (Jn 18:40). But the Greek word for “robber” had acquired a specific meaning in the political situation that obtained at the time in Palestine. It had become a synonym for “resistance fighter.” Barabbas had taken part in an uprising (cf. Mk 15:7), and furthermore—in that context—had been accused of murder (cf. Lk 23:19, 25). When Matthew remarks that Barabbas was “a notorious prisoner” (Mt 27:16), this is evidence that he was one of the prominent resistance fighters, in fact probably the actual leader of that particular uprising.
Origen, a Father of the Church, provides us with another
interesting detail. Up until the third century, many manuscripts of the
Gospels referred to the man in question here as “Jesus Barabbas”—“Jesus
son of the father.” Barabbas figures here as a sort of alter ego of
Jesus, who makes the same claim but understands it in a completely
different way. So the choice is between a Messiah who leads an armed
struggle, promises freedom and a kingdom of one’s own, and this
mysterious Jesus who proclaims that losing oneself is the way to life.
Is it any wonder that the crowds prefer Barabbas?
The Lord... declares that the concept of the Messiah has to be understood in terms of the entirety of the message of the Prophets - it means not worldly power, but the Cross, and the radically different community that comes into being through the Cross.
Notice that Christ himself was tempted in the same way. In the desert, Satan tempts Jesus to become the ruler of all the nations of the world—an earthly ruler. But, Jesus knew that his was a heavenly kingdom and that it would be an earth transformed by his Death and Resurrection that he would rule over. Jesus did not surrender to the temptation to become Barabbas.
In Pilate, however, we see a much more common form of worship, the worship of Caesar as represented in either the ruling establishment or in the rewards of being a reliable part of the prevailing political or economic system. Pilate doesn’t want to do wrong, but he doesn’t want to lose the status or position he’s attained. He will kill Jesus rather than lose earthly power and wealth.
And, today, when you hear a Catholic politician say “I’m personally opposed to abortion but I don’t want to impose my religious beliefs on others,” they are in fact imposing their true religion on others—the religion of Caesar and Pilate—and getting the rewards that go with going along with the system. They will kill babies rather than give up earthly power or position.
We are impassioned people. We want so much to see the evil in our world disappear but are quite often incapable of making it happen. The other day, I was watching the news on the row of very big screen TVs that were in front of me. I wanted to make it go away. I wanted, with the wave of my hand, to stop the killing of our children, to stop the evil in the streets, to remove from power those who have so badly abused it. I was, within the confines of my own mind, the earthly messiah wiping it all away with overwhelming power. I was, mentally, following the Way of Barabbas. And, while it seemed like it was a holy anger, it was instead the type of anger that will cause others with less moral restraint to start insurrections that can’t be won.
You see Barabbas had no more chance of evicting the Roman Empire than we do of stopping the excesses and evil of the Western world. They are bigger than we are. Those of you who are willing to resort to violence have given in to the Way of Barabbas.
Those who take the longer road of peace follow Christ. And, in the long run, the result will be more decisive and permanent. So, how can we know if we are following Christ or his lesser double? I would suggest that if you get angry and then work to feed the hungry, you are following the true way. If you are outraged and then give drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked and shelter to the poor, you are starting a real revolution. If you are deeply dismayed and visit the sick and imprisoned and bury the dead, you will change the world. And, if you gently admonish the sinner, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, comfort the sorrowful, bear wrongs patiently, forgive all injuries and pray for the living and the dead you will be a bigger threat to Caesar, or whoever rules the world, than Barabbas ever was.
Brothers, in an ordinary world, in ordinary time, we can do extraordinary things if we are patient and do what Jesus did; if we use the weapons the true Son of God gave us for the ultimate revolt against the evil of this world.
comments by Pope Francis (Via crucis 2013):
From Pilate, the man with power, Jesus ought to have obtained justice. Pilate did indeed have the power to recognize Jesus’ innocence and free him. But the Roman Governor preferred to serve the logic of his personal interests and he yielded to political and social pressures. He condemned an innocent man in order to please the crowd, without satisfying truth. He handed Jesus over to the torment of the Cross, knowing that he was innocent ... and then he washed his hands.
26
As they led him away they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian, who
was coming in from the country; and after laying the cross on him, they
made him carry it behind Jesus.
An important Lucan theme throughout the gospel has been the need for the Christian disciple to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Here this theme comes to the fore with the story of Simon of Cyrene who takes up the cross and follows Jesus and with the large crowd who likewise follow Jesus on the way of the cross.
The Cyrenian or Simon movement, centered in the United Kingdom and Ireland, takes its name from Simon of Cyrene. It has as its guiding principle 'sharing the burden' which it uses to explain its approach to providing services to homeless and other disadvantaged groups in society, often using volunteers
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Those condemned to crucifixion would typically be paraded naked through the streets to the site of execution, forced to carry the horizontal crossbeam and flogged along the way. That Jesus, a carpenter by trade who had probably lifted many a hefty beam, is unable to do so shows how severely weakened the scourging had left him. Roman soldiers claimed the legal right to press Jews into temporary service (see Matt 5:41), so they force the person nearest at hand to carry his cross. Mark identifies the man as Simon, a Jew from Cyrene in northern Africa (in present-day Libya), who may have settled in Jerusalem or traveled there for the Passover. Coming on the scene as a mere passer-by, he is suddenly brought into the center of the action and compelled to do what Jesus had described as the essence of discipleship: to take up the cross and follow him (Mark 8:34). Although Simon did not volunteer for the honor of carrying the Lord's cross, and perhaps even resented his sudden conscription into a death march, Mark gives a hint that this experience may have changed his life. The mention of his two sons, Alexander and Rufus, suggests that they became Christians and were known to the early Church (see Rom 16:13).
comments by Pope Francis (Via crucis 2013):
Jesus’ meeting with Simon of Cyrene took place in silence, providing us with a lesson for our lives: God does not want suffering and he does not accept evil. The same is true of the human being. But suffering, accepted in faith, is transformed into a path of salvation. Then we accept it as Jesus did, and we help to carry it as Simon of Cyrene did.
Simon of Cyrene is a man portrayed by the Evangelists with precise details regarding his name and background, his family and work. His is the photograph of a man caught at a certain time and place, in some way forced to carry a cross not his own. Yet Simon of Cyrene is really each of us. He accepts the burden of the cross of Jesus, just as we ourselves received the sign of the cross at Holy Baptism.
Simon of Cyrene is one of the little ones, the poor, a nameless man from the countryside, someone overlooked by the history books. Perhaps Simon of Cyrene represents all of us, at that moment when we suddenly face a difficulty, a trial, an illness, an unforeseen burden, a heavy cross. Why? Why me? Why now? The Lord calls us to follow him, though we know not where or how.
Even in families, at the most difficult times when momentous decisions must be made, if peace dwells in our hearts, if we heed and understand what God desires for us, then a light shines upon us, helping us to see matters clearly and to carry our cross.
The Cyrenean also brings to mind the faces of all those people who have been close to us at times when a heavy cross befell us or our family. He calls to mind the many volunteers throughout the world who generously devote themselves to comforting and assisting those suffering and in distress. He teaches us humbly to let ourselves be helped at times of need, and to be Cyreneans to others.
[Mark gospel in chapter 15 added the following account:
16 The soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is, the praetorium, and assembled the whole cohort.
17 They clothed him in purple and, weaving a crown of thorns, placed it on him.
18 They began to salute him with, "Hail, King of the Jews!"
19 and kept striking his head with a reed and spitting upon him. They knelt before him in homage.
20 And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, dressed him in his own clothes, and led him out to crucify him.
21 They pressed into service a passer-by, Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
The soldiers probably take their cue from Pilate, who has used the title "king of the Jews" to taunt the Jewish leaders:
9 Pilate answered, "Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" 10 For he knew that it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed him over. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. 12 Pilate again said to them in reply, "Then what [do you want] me to do with [the man you call] the king of the Jews"? (Mark 15 9-12)
and they come up with a grotesque game of their own. In a charade of homage they clothe his naked body with the regalia of royalty, purple and a crown (see Esther 8:15; Sir 40:4; 1 Macc 10:20). Purple was a color of the wealthy because the dye was costly; the soldiers may have used a faded scarlet military cloak or a shabby blanket to serve as "purple:' Spiky branches from a nearby shrub are woven together and shoved onto Jesus' head as an improvised crown. The thorns may have been a caricature of the sun rays emanating from the imperial crown portrayed on coins, signifying divine kingship.
The Suffering Servant is in the background of Mark's account: "I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; My face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. The Lord GOD is my help, therefore I am not disgraced" (Isa 50:6-7), In a final parody of royal homage, the soldiers kneel before him. Viewed with the eyes of faith, the scene is profoundly ironic. Mark's readers know that Jesus is worthy of all homage as the "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Rev 19:16). It is precisely in his suffering and humiliation that he is crowned king.
]
Daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27-31)
27 A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him.
28 Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children,
29 for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.'
30 At that time people will say to the mountains, 'Fall upon us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'
31 for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?"
comments by Monsignor Charles Pope (Archdiocese of Washington):
The First Century context of Jesus’ words is surely rooted in 70 AD and the terrible culmination of a 3 1/2 Year war of the Jewish people with the Romans, (66-70 AD – The War actually culminated with the fall of Masada in 73AD). Jesus had spoken of this terrible war extensively in i the the Mount Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:1 – 25:46; Mark 13:1-37; Luke 21:5-36)
And now, as these woman weep for him, we weeps for them and their children. For indeed, the says are coming, in forty short (biblical) years when they will see a destruction so overwhelming that, as Josephus records, 1.2 million Jews will die. And the terrible and suicidal phrase of asking the mountains to fall on them etc. are a Jewish way of lamenting that death is preferable to the calamity that is upon us!
And so we see the First Century fulfillment of the passage. Indeed, those women who lamented him had little idea about how awful it would get for them and their children, for sin and rebellion, hatred and revenge, would have their way, and boil over like a cauldron. 70 AD would bring a bloodbath like the world had never seen until that time.
It does not take a genius to see that the Lord’s words are true for us in ugly and sickening ways. Our bloodbath is far worse that 70 AD. 55 million are dead from abortion in America alone since 1973. And add to that the 100 Million + who were killed in the last century alone for ideological purposes in two world wars, a cold war, and the pogroms and systematic starvation of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their successors.
Though we like to think ourselves civilized in comparison to previous centuries, our blood bath is far deeper than any age before. True, we murder our millions in less publicly brutal ways. We do not experience hoards of warriors descending from day to day on unsuspecting cities. Our brutality takes place in more hidden ways, out of sight if you will, in concentration camps, abortion “clinics”, killing fields, and remote locations away from cameras.
And the Lord Jesus, looking beyond 70 AD must have seen our times and had them in mind when he said to those women of old that they would see an enemy (Satan): dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.
Yes, Satan has deceived us with deceptions of power, distortions of freedom, and crushing lies of “choice.” 55 million dead in American alone since 1973, our children dashed to the ground.
Yes, said the Lord to those ancient women, in effect, “You think this is bad? The days are actually coming when things will be so bad and so dark that people will celebrate NOT having children, will celebrate barrenness.”
But the Lord does not stop there. He goes on to describe quite well the culture of death so literally lived out in our times: people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’
One may argue that this is just a Jewish way of speaking that indicates despair. Perhaps. But we live it out quite literally in our times, for it is the refrain of the culture of death. And what is the culture of death? It is the mentality that increasingly sees the death or non-existence of human beings as the “solution” to problems.
Yes, Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. (Matt 5:4). And who are those who mourn? They are those who see the awful state of God’s people, that God is not know to them, that they do not glorify God or even know why they were made, they are confused, deceived, and misled. And some, seeing this are mourning and weeping, they are led to prayer and action, to speaking out, and pointing once again to the light, from the dark places of times like these.
Mourn with Jesus, and pray for a miraculous conversion for times like these, times which seem eerily consistent with the dreadful things Jesus prophesied.
Crucifixion (Luke 23:32-35)
32 Now two others, both criminals, were led away with him to be executed.
33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left.
34 [Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."]
35 They divided his garments by casting lots.
Luke 23:34 does not occur in the oldest papyrus manuscript of Luke and in other early Greek manuscripts and ancient versions of wide geographical distribution. This saying of Jesus on the cross is traditionally called "The Word of Forgiveness". It is theologically interpreted as Jesus' prayer for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him: the Roman soldiers, and apparently for all others who were involved in his crucifixion.
Jesus' crucifixion is described in all four Canonical gospels, attested to by other ancient sources, and is firmly established as an historical event confirmed by non-Christian sources.
According to Mark's Gospel, he endured the torment of crucifixion for some six hours from the third hour, at approximately 9 am, until his death at the ninth hour, corresponding to about 3 pm. The soldiers affixed a sign above his head stating "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" in three languages, divided his garments and cast lots for his seamless robe.
According to all four gospels, Jesus was brought to the "Place of a Skull" and crucified with two thieves, with the charge of claiming to be "King of the Jews",and the soldiers divided his clothes before he bowed his head and died.
An early non-Christian reference to the crucifixion of Jesus is likely to be Mara Bar-Serapion's letter to his son, written sometime after AD 73 but before the 3rd century AD. The letter includes no Christian themes and the author is presumed to be a pagan. The letter refers to the retributions that followed the unjust treatment of three wise men: Socrates, Pythagoras, and "the wise king" of the Jews. Some scholars see little doubt that the reference to the execution of the "king of the Jews" is about the crucifixion of Jesus.
In the Antiquities of the Jews (written about 93 AD) Jewish historian Josephus, stated (Ant 18.3) that Jesus was crucified by Pilate, writing that:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, ... He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles ... And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross ...
Calvary as an English name for the place is derived from the Latin word for skull (calvaria), which is used in the Vulgate translation of "place of a skull", the explanation given in all four Gospels of the Aramaic word Gûlgaltâ which was the name of the place where Jesus was crucified. The text does not indicate why it was so designated, but several theories have been put forward. One is that as a place of public execution, Calvary may have been strewn with the skulls of abandoned victims (which would be contrary to Jewish burial traditions, but not Roman). Another is that Calvary is named after a nearby cemetery (which is consistent with both of the proposed modern sites). A third is that the name was derived from the physical contour, which would be more consistent with the singular use of the word, i.e., the place of "a skull". While often referred to as "Mount Calvary", it was more likely a small hill or rocky knoll. The traditional site, inside what is now occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, has been attested since the 4th century.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Then they crucified him and divided his garments by casting lots for them to see what each should take (Mark 15:24)
By custom the execution squad claimed a right to the victim's belongings. Jesus' clothing probably consisted of an under and outer garment, a belt, sandals, and possibly a head covering. Their casting lots for Jesus' garments evokes Ps 22:
A company of evildoers encircle me;
they have pierced my hands and feet
I can count all my bones
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
and for my raiment they cast lots.
(Ps 22:16-18 RSV)
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (2012-02-15 General Audience):
The first prayer that Jesus addresses to the Father is one of intercession: He asks forgiveness for his executioners. With this, Jesus in person carries out what he had taught in the Sermon on the Mount when he said: " But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you " (Lk 6:27) and also promised to those who can forgive, "then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High" (v. 35). Now, from the cross, He not only forgives his executioners, but speaks directly to the Father interceding on their behalf.
This is attitude of Jesus' finds a moving 'imitation' in the story of the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr. Stephen, in fact, coming to an end, "knelt down and cried with a loud voice:" Lord, do not hold this sin against them". That said, he died "(Acts 7.60). It was his last word. The comparison of the prayer for forgiveness of Jesus and that of the martyr is significant. Stephen turns to the Risen Lord and calls for his murder - a gesture clearly defined by the expression "this sin" - is not imputed against those who stone him. Jesus addresses the Father on the cross and not only asks for forgiveness for his executioners, but also offers a reading of what is happening. In his words, in fact, the men who crucify him "know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). He gives that ignorance, "not knowing" as the reason for the request for forgiveness from the Father, for this ignorance leaves the way open to conversion, as is the case in the words that the centurion spoke at Jesus' death: "This man was innocent beyond doubt"(v. 47), he was the Son of God". It is a consolation for all times and for all men that the Lord, both for those who really did not know - the killers - and those who knew and condemned him, gives ignorance as the reason for asking for forgiveness – he sees it as a door that can open us up to repentance.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
The first of Jesus’ words from the Cross, spoken almost at the very moment when the act of crucifixion was being carried out, is a plea for the forgiveness of those who treat him thus: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). What the Lord had preached in the Sermon on the Mount, he now puts into practice. He knows no hatred. He does not call for revenge. He begs forgiveness for those who nail him to the Cross, and he justifies his plea by adding: “They know not what they do”.
This theme of “not knowing” returns in Saint Peter’s sermon in the Acts of the Apostles. He begins by reminding the crowd that had gathered after the healing of the lame man in the portico of Solomon that they had “denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer” to be granted to them (3:14). You “killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (3:15). After this painful reminder, which forms part of his Pentecost sermon and which cut his hearers to the heart (cf. 2:37), he continues: “Now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers” (3:17).
Once again, the theme of “not knowing” appears in one of Saint Paul’s autobiographical reflections. He recalls that he himself “formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted” Jesus; then he continues: “but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim 1:13). In view of his earlier self-assurance as a perfect disciple of the Law who knew and lived by the Scriptures, these are strong words; he who had studied under the best masters and who might reasonably have considered himself a real expert on the Scriptures, has to acknowledge, in retrospect, that he was ignorant. Yet his very ignorance is what saved him and made him fit for conversion and forgiveness. This combination of expert knowledge and deep ignorance certainly causes us to ponder. It reveals the whole problem of knowledge that remains self-sufficient and so does not arrive at Truth itself, which ought to transform man.
In a different way again, we encounter this same combination of knowledge and failure to understand in the story of the wise men from the East. The chief priests and scribes know exactly where the Messiah is to be born. But they do not recognize him. Despite their knowledge, they remain blind (cf. Mt 2:4-6).
Clearly this mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of material expertise and deep incomprehension, occurs in every period of history. For this reason, what Jesus says about ignorance, and the examples that can be found in the various passages from Scripture, is bound to be unsettling for the supposedly learned today. Are we not blind precisely as people with knowledge? Is it not on account of our knowledge that we are incapable of recognizing Truth itself, which tries to reach us through what we know? Do we not recoil from the pain of that heartrending Truth of which Peter spoke in his Pentecost sermon? Ignorance diminishes guilt, and it leaves open the path to conversion. But it does not simply excuse, because at the same time it reveals a deadening of the heart that resists the call of Truth.
All the more, then, it remains a source of comfort for all times and for all people that both in the case of those who genuinely did not know (his executioners) and in the case of those who did know (the people who condemned him), the Lord makes their ignorance the motive for his plea for forgiveness: he sees it as a door that can open us to conversion.
Jesus is mocked (Luke 23:35-38)
35
The people stood by and watched; the rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him
and said, "He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen
one, the Messiah of God."
36 Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him wine
37 they called out, "If you are King of the Jews, save yourself."
38 Above him there was an inscription that read, "This is the King of the Jews."
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Three groups of mockers are mentioned in the Gospel. The first are the passers-by. They remind the Lord of his words about the destruction of the Temple (Mk 15:29-30):
29 Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days,
30 save yourself by coming down from the cross."
By taunting the Lord in this way, the mockers express their contempt for his powerless state; they bring home to him once more how powerless he is. At the same time they try to lead him into temptation, as the devil himself had done: “Save yourself!” Exercise your power! They do not realize that at this very moment the destruction of the Temple is being accomplished and that the new Temple is rising up before them.
At the end of the Passion, as Jesus dies, the veil of the Temple is torn in two—so the Synoptics tell us—from top to bottom (Mt 27:51; Mk 15:38; Lk 23:45). Probably it is the inner of the two Temple veils that is meant here, the one that seals off the Holy of Holies from human access. Only once a year is it permitted for the high priest to pass through the veil, to enter the presence of the Most High, and to utter the Holy Name.
This veil, at the very moment of Jesus’ death, is torn in two from top to bottom. There are two things we learn from this: on the one hand, it becomes apparent that the era of the old Temple and its sacrifices is over. In place of symbols and rituals that point ahead to the future, the reality has now come, the crucified Jesus who reconciles us all with the Father. At the same time, though, the tearing of the Temple veil means that the pathway to God is now open. Previously God’s face had been concealed. Only in a symbolic way could the high priest once a year enter his presence. Now God himself has removed the veil and revealed himself in the crucified Jesus as the one who loves to the point of death. The pathway to God is open.
The second group of mockers consists of members of the Sanhedrin. Matthew mentions all three elements: priests, scribes, and elders. They formulate their mockery using language drawn from the Book of Wisdom, the second chapter of which tells of the just man who stands in the way of the wicked life of the others, who calls himself a son of God and is handed over to suffering (Wis 2:10-20). The members of the Sanhedrin, taking their cue from these words, now say of Jesus, the Crucified One (Mt 27:42-43):
41 Likewise the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him and said,
42 "He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.
43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he wants him. For he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"
Without realizing it, the mockers thereby acknowledge that Jesus is truly the one of whom the Book of Wisdom speaks. His situation of outward helplessness proves him to be the true Son of God (Wis 2:10-20):
12 Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, Reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training.
13 He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the LORD.
14 To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us,
15 Because his life is not like other men's, and different are his ways.
16 He judges us debased; he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure. He calls blest the destiny of the just and boasts that God is his Father.
17 Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him.
18 For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
19 With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience.
20 Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him."
We may add that the author of the Book of Wisdom could have been familiar with Plato’s speculations from his work on statecraft, in which he asks what would become of a perfectly just person in this world, and he comes to the conclusion that such a person would be crucified (The Republic II, 361e—362a). The Book of Wisdom may have taken up this idea from the philosopher and introduced it into the Old Testament, so that it now points directly to Jesus. It is in the mockery that the mystery of Jesus Christ is proved true. Just as he refused to be induced by the devil to throw himself down from the parapet of the Temple (Mt 4:5-7; Lk 4:9-13), so now he refuses to yield to a similar temptation. He knows that God will indeed deliver him, but not in the way these people imagine. The Resurrection will be the moment when God raises him from death and accredits him as Son.
The third group of mockers consists of the two men crucified alongside Jesus, to whom Matthew and Mark refer using the same word—lestes (robber)—that John uses for Barabbas. This clearly shows that they are regarded as resistance fighters, to whom the Romans, in order to criminalize them, simply attach the label “robber”. They are crucified with Jesus because they have been found guilty of the same crime: resistance to Roman power.
The offense attributed to Jesus, though, is of a different kind from that of the two “robbers”, who may have taken part in Barabbas’ uprising. Pilate is well aware that Jesus had nothing like that in mind, and so he adopts a particular formulation of Jesus’ “crime” in the charge that is placed above the Cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (Jn 19:19) (Latin INRI phrase 'Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum'). Up to this point, Jesus had avoided the title Messiah or king, or else he had immediately linked it with his suffering (cf. Mk 8:27-31) in order to prevent false interpretations. Now the title “king” can appear quite openly. In the three great languages of that time, Jesus is publicly proclaimed king.
It is understandable that the members of the Sanhedrin object to this title, in which Pilate clearly wants to express his cynicism toward the Jewish authorities and to take his revenge on them post factum. But this inscription now stands before world history, and it amounts to a proclamation of kingship. Jesus is “exalted”. The Cross is his throne, from which he draws the world to himself. From this place of total self-sacrifice, from this place of truly divine love, he reigns as the true king in his own way—a way that neither Pilate nor the members of the Sanhedrin had been able to comprehend.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
They gave him wine drugged with myrrh, but he did not take it (Mark 15:2l)
Those who gave Jesus wine drugged with myrrh were following a custom, based on Prov 31:6-7, of offering condemned criminals strong drink to lessen their torment. It was common to add myrrh to wine to enhance its fragrance and perhaps also its narcotic effects. But Jesus refuses this offer, in accord with his solemn pledge at the Last Supper: "I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25). He is resolved to endure the passion without any alleviation of pain. The only cup he will drink is the cup of suffering given him by the Father (10:38; 14:36).
It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him (Mark 15:25)
The inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews" (Mark 15:26)
In Roman executions, a placard specifying the crime would be hung around the condemned man's neck or affixed to the cross. In Jesus' case the charge reads simply, The King of the Jews. Pilate intends this phrase ironically, as another jab at the Jewish leaders who had brought the charge against Jesus (vv. 9, 12; see John 19:19-22). At the same time it serves as a warning to other would-be messianic pretenders. But for readers of the Gospel, the phrase is weighted with a profound truth. Jesus is indeed King of the Jews, and he is enthroned on the cross because it is there that he exercises his dominion over sin, Satan, and death. He reigns through the act of love in which he gave up his life, and those who believe in him experience his liberating kingship.
Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads and saying, "aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days (Mark 15:29)
save yourself by coming down from the cross" (Mark 15:30)
Likewise the chief priests, with the scribes, mocked him among themselves and said, "He saved others; he cannot save himself" (Mark 15:31)
Jesus' utter isolation is intensified by the threefold mockery he now endures, a replay of the earlier mockery by the Sanhedrin (14:65) and the Roman soldiers. The scoffers' shaking their heads evokes both the suffering just man of Ps 22:8-9 and the scorn heaped on Jerusalem after the destruction of the first temple: ''All who pass by ... hiss and wag their heads over daughter Jerusalem" (Lam 2:15; see Jer 18:16). Precisely by not coming down from the cross and saving himself Jesus is ushering in the end of the earthly temple and the building of a new temple on the cornerstone of his crucified and risen body.
Second, Jesus is railed at by the religious leaders who had orchestrated his death and who now come to gloat over their success. He saved others refers to Jesus' ministry of healing, which was regularly described with the verb sozo, meaning both "save" and "heal".
But readers of the Gospel recognize a deeper sense to these words: Jesus saves people from eternal death. The scoffers taunt that despite his reputed wonderworking powers he cannot save himself. Yet it is precisely by refusing to "save himself" that Jesus saves others. From the beginning of his public ministry he had irrevocably committed himself to the Father's plan for a suffering Messiah in total solidarity with sinners (1:9; 10:45; 14:36). Indeed Jesus cannot save himself if he is to be obedient to that plan. As he had instructed his disciples, so it is for him: whoever loses his life will save it (Mark 8:35). Only by surrendering to death will he be raised up to life by the Father. Only by giving his body and pouring out of his blood can he renew once and for all the covenant between God and humanity (Mark 14:22-24).
Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe:' Those who were crucified with him also kept abusing him (Mark 15:32).
The religious leaders intensify their derision with a demand for a miraculous sign, just as the Pharisees had done earlier (8:11). It is the final temptation of Jesus' life, the culmination of the testing that began with Satan in the desert (1:13). The temptation is to be a Messiah who gains adherents by stunning displays of power instead of by obediently accepting humiliation and defeat.
The title "King of the Jews" used up to this point has been changed to King of Israel, a broader scope of kingship. "Jews" refers to members of the tribe of Judah, which was essentially the only remaining tribe since the eighth century Be. "Israel" designates all twelve tribes, long scattered among the nations, whom God had promised to restore and regather to himself at the coming of the Messiah (Jer 31:1; Ezek 37:19-22).
Jesus experiences only scorn, rejection, and incomprehension from those he came to save. It is the culmination of the biblical theme of the just man abused and insulted by the wicked, who does not cease to trust God. The scene evokes the psalm: ''All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer; they shake their heads at me: 'You relied on the LORD-let him deliver you; if he loves you, let him rescue you'" (Ps 22:8-9).
Criminal Repentance (Luke 23:39-43)
39 Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us."
40 The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation?
41 And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal."
42 Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
43 He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (2012-02-15 General audience):
The second prayer of Jesus on the cross as told by St. Luke is a word of hope, is His answer to the prayer of one of the two men crucified with Him. The good thief before Jesus returned to himself and repents, he feels himself to be before the Son of God, who reveals the Face of God, and prays: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (v. 42). The Lord's answer to this prayer goes far beyond the supplication, he says: " Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (v. 43). Jesus is aware of entering directly into communion with the Father and of reopening the path for the man to God’s paradise. So through this response gives the firm hope that the goodness of God can touch us even at the last moment of life and that sincere prayer, even after a life of wrong, meets the open arms of the good Father who awaits the return of his son.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Of the two men crucified with Jesus, only one joins in the mockery: the other grasps the mystery of Jesus. He knows and he sees that the nature of Jesus’ “offense” was quite different—that Jesus was nonviolent. And now he sees that this man crucified beside him truly makes the face of God visible, he is truly God’s Son. So he asks him: “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power” (Lk 23:42). What exactly the good thief understood by Jesus’ coming in his kingly power, and what he therefore meant by asking Jesus to remember him, we do not know. But clearly, while on the Cross, he realized that this powerless man was the true king—the one for whom Israel was waiting. Now he wanted to be at this man’s side not only on the Cross, but also in glory.
Jesus’ response goes beyond what is asked of him. Instead of an unspecified future, he speaks of that very day: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43). This too is a mysterious saying, but it shows us one thing for certain: Jesus knew he would enter directly into fellowship with the Father—that the promise of “Paradise” was something he could offer “today”. He knew he was leading mankind back to the Paradise from which it had fallen: into fellowship with God as man’s true salvation.
So in the history of Christian devotion, the good thief has become an image of hope—an image of the consoling certainty that God’s mercy can reach us even in our final moments, that even after a misspent life, the plea for his gracious favor is not made in vain. So, for example, the Dies Irae prays: “Qui . . . latronem exaudisti, mihi quoque spem dedisti” (just as you answered the prayer of the thief, so you have given me hope).
commentary by Pablo T. Gadenz, Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Trenton (NJ) :
Jesus, remember me. These words are brought to mind by a line from the eucharistic hymn Adoro te devote, attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas: “I ask for what the repentant thief asked” (Peto quod petivit latro paenitens). “Jesus, remember me.” What a beautiful short prayer! Each day and throughout the day we can ask Jesus for the many things we need, summing up our prayers of petition by asking Jesus to remember us, according to his mercy, remembering not our sins (Ps 25:7).
And, like the good thief, let us ask at the moment of our death: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
comments by Pope John Paul II (Homily Nov 1998):
“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”. This is the title put on the cross. Shortly before Christ’s death, one of the two condemned men crucified with him said to him: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”. What kingdom? The object of his request was certainly not an earthly kingdom but another one.
The good thief speaks as if he had heard the words exchanged earlier between Pilate and Christ. Indeed, it was before Pilate that Jesus had been accused of wanting to make himself king. Pilate had questioned him about this: “Are you the King of the Jews” (Jn 18:33). Christ had not denied it; he had explained: “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world” (Jn 18:36). Jesus had replied directly to Pilate’s repeated question as to whether he were a king: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (Jn 18:37).
Let's recall the earthly kingdom of Israel with the anointing of David as King. Yes, God had chosen Israel; he sent it not only prophets but even kings, when the Chosen People insisted on having an earthly ruler. Of all the kings who sat upon the throne of Israel, the greatest was David. When the first reading of this celebration speaks of that kingdom, it does so to recall that Jesus of Nazareth was of the line of King David, but also, and above all, to emphasize that the royalty proper to Christ is of a different kind.
The words which Mary heard at the Annunciation are significant: “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:32-33). This kingdom, then, is not only the earthly kingdom of David, which came to an end. It is the Kingdom of Christ, which will never end, the eternal Kingdom, the Kingdom of truth, of love and of eternal life.
The Good Thief crucified with Jesus came in some way to the heart of this truth. Indeed, in a certain sense he became a prophet of this eternal Kingdom when, hanging on the cross, he said: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42). Christ said in reply: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43).
To this Kingdom, which is not of this world, Jesus invited us to look when he taught us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come”. Obedient to his command, the Apostles, the disciples and the missionaries of all times have done their best to extend, through evangelization, the boundaries of this Kingdom. For it is both the gift of the Father (cf. Lk 12:32) and the result of man’s personal response. In the “new creation”, we will be able to enter into the Kingdom of the Father only if we have followed the Lord during our earthly pilgrimage (cf. Mt 19:28).
This, then, is the programme of every Christian: to follow the Lord, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, in order to possess the Kingdom which he has promised and given.
Apostle Paul explains the nature of the kingdom of which Jesus speaks. He writes to the Colossians: we must give thanks to God who “has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:13-14). It is precisely this forgiveness of sins which the good thief inherited on Calvary. He was the first to experience the fact that Christ is King, because he is the Redeemer.
The Apostle then explains what Christ’s kingship is: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:15-17). Thus Christ is King above all as the first-born of all creation.
The Pauline text continues: “He is the head of the body, the Church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (ibid., 1:18-20). With these words the Apostle again confirms and justifies what he had revealed about the essence of Christ’s kingship: Christ is King as the first-born of the dead. In other words, as Redeemer of the world, the risen and crucified Christ is King of the new humanity.
On Calvary Jesus had a rather unusual companion in his passion, a thief. For this unhappy man the way of the cross became, infallibly, the way to paradise (cf. Lk 23:43), the way to truth and life, the way to the kingdom. Today we remember him as the “good thief”. On this solemn occasion when we gather round the altar of Christ to open a Synod concerned with an entire continent and its problems and hopes, we can make the “good thief's” prayer our own:
“Jesus, remember me, remember us, remember the peoples to whom the Pastors gathered here daily give the living and true bread of your Gospel, across immense spaces, by sea and by land. As we pray that your kingdom come, we see that your promise is becoming a reality: after following you, we come to you in your kingdom, drawn by you when you were lifted up on the Cross (cf. Jn 12:32); to you, lifted up over history and its centre, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (cf. Rv 22:13), the Lord of time and the ages
We address you in the words of an ancient hymn:
It is through your sorrowful death, King of eternal glory,
that you obtained eternal life for the nations;
therefore the whole world calls you King of humanity.
Reign over us, Christ the Lord!”.
[Jesus’ cry of abandonment
Both Matthew and Mark recount that at the ninth hour Jesus called out in a loud voice:
Mt 27:46 And about three o'clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
They give the text of Jesus’ cry in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic and then translate it into Greek. This prayer of Jesus has prompted constant questioning and reflection among Christians: How could the Son of God be abandoned by God? What does this exclamation mean?
The community of the faithful, with hindsight recognized Jesus’ cry, misheard and misinterpreted by the bystanders, as the opening verse of Psalm 22, and on that basis they could understand it as a truly Messianic cry. It is no ordinary cry of abandonment. Jesus is praying the great psalm of suffering Israel, and so he is taking upon himself all the tribulation, not just of Israel, but of all those in this world who suffer from God’s concealment. He brings the world’s anguished cry at God’s absence before the heart of God himself. He identifies himself with suffering Israel, with all who suffer under “God’s darkness”; he takes their cry, their anguish, all their helplessness upon himself—and in so doing he transforms it.
This Psalm presents the figure of an innocent man, persecuted and surrounded by adversaries who clamour for his death; and he turns to God with a sorrowful lament which, in the certainty of his faith, opens mysteriously to praise. The anguishing reality of the present and the consoling memory of the past alternate in his prayer in an agonized awareness of his own desperate situation in which, however, he does not want to give up hope. His initial cry is an appeal addressed to a God who appears remote, who does not answer and seems to have abandoned him: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest” (Psalm 22 vv. 3-4).
God is silent and this silence pierces the soul of the person praying, who ceaselessly calls but receives no answer. Day and night succeed one another in an unflagging quest for a word, for help that does not come, God seems so distant, so forgetful, so absent. The prayer asks to be heard, to be answered, it begs for contact, seeks a relationship that can give comfort and salvation. But if God fails to respond, the cry of help is lost in the void and loneliness becomes unbearable.
Yet, in his cry, the praying man of our Psalm calls the Lord “my” God at least three times, in an extreme act of trust and faith. In spite of all appearances, the Psalmist cannot believe that his link with the Lord is totally broken and while he asks the reason for a presumed incomprehensible abandonment, he says that “his” God cannot forsake him.
The initial cry of the Psalm as recorded by the Gospels of Matthew and Mark expresses all the desolation of the Messiah, Son of God, who is facing the drama of death, a reality totally opposed to the Lord of life. Forsaken by almost all his followers, betrayed and denied by the disciples, surrounded by people who insult him, Jesus is under the crushing weight of a mission that was to pass through humiliation and annihilation. This is why he cried out to the Father, and his suffering took up the sorrowful words of the Psalm. Although Jesus’ anguished prayer retains its burden of unspeakable suffering, it unfolds to the certainty of glory. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”, the Risen Christ was to say to the disciples at Emmaus (Lk 24:26). In his passion, in obedience to the Father, the Lord Jesus passes through abandonment and death to reach life and to give it to all believers.
This initial cry of supplication in our Psalm 22[21] is followed in sorrowful contrast by the memory of the past, “In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you did deliver them. To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not disappointed” (Psalm 22 vv. 5-6). The God who appears today to be so remote to the Psalmist, is nonetheless the merciful Lord whom Israel experienced throughout its history. The People to whom the praying person belongs is the object of God’s love and can witness to his fidelity to him. Starting with the Patriarchs, then in Egypt and on the long pilgrimage through the wilderness, in the stay in the promised land in contact with aggressive and hostile peoples, to the night of the exile, the whole of biblical history is a history of a cry for help on the part of the People and of saving answers on the part of God.
God, however, cannot deny himself so here the prayer returns to describing the distressing plight of the praying person, to induce the Lord to have pity on him and to intervene, as he always had done in the past. The Psalmist describes himself as “a worm, and no man”, scorned by men, and despised by the people” (v. 7). He was mocked, people made grimaces at him, (cf. v. 8), and wounded in his faith itself. “He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (v. 9), they said.
Under the jeering blows of irony and contempt, it almost seems as though the persecuted man loses his own human features, like the suffering servant outlined in the Book of Isaiah (cf. 52:14; 53:2b-3). And like the oppressed righteous man in the Book of Wisdom (cf. 2:12-20), like Jesus on Calvary (cf. Mt 27:39-43), the Psalmist saw his own relationship with the Lord called into question in the cruel and sarcastic emphasis of what is causing him to suffer: God’s silence, his apparent absence. And yet God was present with an indisputable tenderness in the life of the person praying. The Psalmist reminds the Lord of this: “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you did keep me safe upon my mother’s breasts. Upon you was I cast from my birth” (vv. 10-11a).
The Lord is the God of life who brings the newborn child into the world and cares for him with a father’s affection. And though the memory of God’s fidelity in the history of the people has first been recalled, the praying person now re-evokes his own personal history of relations with the Lord, going back to the particularly significant moment of the beginning of his life. And here, despite the desolation of the present, the Psalmist recognizes a closeness and a divine love so radical that he can now exclaim, in a confession full of faith and generating hope: “and since my mother bore me you have been my God” (v. 11b).
The lament then becomes a heartfelt plea: “Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help” (v. 12). The only closeness that the Psalmist can perceive and that fills him with fear was that of his enemies. It is therefore necessary for God to make himself close and to help him, because enemies surround the praying man, they encircle him and were like strong bulls, like ravening and roaring lions (cf. vv. 13-14). Anguish alters his perception of the danger, magnifying it. The adversaries seem invincible, they become ferocious, dangerous animals, while the Psalmist is like a small worm, powerless and defenceless.
Yet these images used in the Psalm also serve to describe that when man becomes brutal and attacks his brother, something brutal within him takes the upper hand, he seems to lose any human likeness; violence always has something bestial about it and only God’s saving intervention can restore humanity to human beings.
Now, it seems to the Psalmist, the object of so much ferocious aggression, that he no longer has any way out and death begins to take possession of him: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint… my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws… they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots” (vv. 15, 16, 19). The disintegration of the body of the condemned man is described with the dramatic images that we encounter in the accounts of Christ’s passion, the unbearable parching thirst that torments the dying man that is echoed in Jesus’ request “I thirst” (cf. Jn 19:28), until we reach the definitive act of his tormentors, who, like the soldiers at the foot of the cross divide the clothes of the victim whom they consider already dead (cf. Mt 27:35; Mk 15:24; Lk 23:34; Jn 19:23-24).
Here then, impelling, once again comes the request for help: “But you, O Lord, be not far off! O you my help, hasten to my aid!... Save me” (vv. 20; 22a). This is a cry that opens the Heavens, because it proclaims a faith, a certainty that goes beyond all doubt, all darkness and all desolation. And the lament is transformed, it gives way to praise in the acceptance of salvation: “He has heard... I will tell of your name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you” (vv. 22c-23).
In this way the Psalm opens to thanksgiving, to the great final hymn that sweeps up the whole people, the Lord’s faithful, the liturgical assembly, the generations to come (cf. vv. 24-32). The Lord went to the rescue, he saved the poor man and showed his merciful face. Death and life are interwoven in an inseparable mystery and life triumphs, the God of salvation shows himself to be the undisputed Lord whom all the ends of the earth will praise and before whom all the families of the nations will bow down. It is the victory of faith which can transform death into the gift of life, the abyss of sorrow into a source of hope.
This Psalm has taken us to Golgotha, to the foot of the cross of Jesus, to relive his passion and to share the fruitful joy of the resurrection. Let us therefore allow ourselves to be invaded by the light of the paschal mystery even in God’s apparent absence, even in God’s silence, and, like the disciples of Emmaus, let us learn to discern the true reality beyond appearances, recognizing humiliation itself as the way to exaltation, and the cross as the full manifestation of life in earth. Thus, replacing in God the Father all our trust and hope, in every anxiety we will be able to pray to him with faith, and our cry of help will be transformed into a hymn of praise.
As we have seen, Psalm 22 pervades the whole Passion story and points beyond it. The public humiliation, the mockery and shaking of heads by the scoffers, the pain, the terrible thirst, the piercing of Jesus’ hands and feet, the casting of lots for his garments—the whole Passion is, as it were, anticipated in the psalm. Yet when Jesus utters the opening words of the psalm, the whole of this great prayer is essentially already present—including the certainty of an answer to prayer, to be revealed in the Resurrection, in the gathering of the “great assembly”, and in the poor having their fill (cf. vv. 24-26). The cry of extreme anguish is at the same time the certainty of an answer from God, the certainty of salvation—not only for Jesus himself, but for “many”. The Psalms are deeply personal prayers, formed while wrestling with God, yet at the same time they are uttered in union with all who suffer unjustly, with the whole of Israel, indeed with the whole of struggling humanity, and so these Psalms always span past, present, and future. They are prayed in the presence of suffering, and yet they already contain within themselves the gift of an answer to prayer, the gift of transformation.
On the basis of their belief in Christ, the Church Fathers took up and developed this fundamental theme, which modern scholarship calls “corporate personality”: in the Psalms, so Augustine tells us, Christ prays both as head and as body (cf., for example, En. in Ps. 60:1-2; 61:4; 85:1, 5). He prays as “head”, as the one who unites us all into a single common subject and incorporates us all into himself. And he prays as “body”, that is to say, all of our struggles, our voices, our anguish, and our hope are present in his praying. We ourselves are the ones praying this psalm, but now in a new way, in fellowship with Christ. And in him, past, present, and future are always united. Jesus’ suffering is a Messianic Passion. It is suffering in fellowship with us and for us, in a solidarity—born of love—that already includes redemption, the victory of love.
comments by Pope John Paul II (General Audience Nov 30, 1988):
According to the Synoptics, Jesus on the cross cried out aloud twice (cf. Mt 27:46, 50; Mk 15: 34, 37); but only Luke tells us what he said when he cried out the second time (cf. 23:46). The first cry expresses the depth and intensity of Jesus' suffering, his interior participation, his spirit of oblation, and perhaps also his prophetic-messianic understanding of his drama in the terms of a biblical psalm. Certainly the first cry manifests Jesus' feelings of desolation and abandonment with the first words of Psalm 22: "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Mk 15:34; cf. Mt 27:46).
Mark quotes the words in Aramaic. One may suppose that the cry appeared so characteristic that the witnesses who heard it, when later recounting the drama of Calvary, deemed it opportune to repeat the very words of Jesus in Aramaic. It was the language spoken by him and by the majority of his contemporary Israelites. They could have been relayed to Mark by Peter, as happened in the case of the word "Abba" (cf. Mk 14:36) in the prayer of Gethsemane.
The fact that Jesus, in his first cry, used the initial words of Psalm 22 is significant for various reasons. Jesus was accustomed to pray following the sacred texts of his people. There must have remained in his mind many of those words and phrases which particularly impressed him, because they expressed better man's need and anguish before God. In a certain way they alluded to the condition of the one who would have taken upon himself all our iniquity (cf. Is 53:11).
Therefore on Calvary it came natural to Jesus to make use of the psalmist's question to God when he felt completely worn out by suffering. But on Jesus' lips the "why" addressed to God was also more effective in expressing a pained bewilderment at that suffering which had no merely human explanation, but which was a mystery of which the Father alone possessed the key. Therefore, though arising from the memory of the Psalm read or recited in the synagogue, the question contained a theological significance in regard to the sacrifice whereby Christ, in full solidarity with sinful humanity, had to experience in himself abandonment by God. Under the influence of this tremendous interior experience, the dying Jesus found the energy to utter that cry!
In that experience, in that cry, in that "why" addressed to heaven, Jesus also established a new manner of solidarity with us who are so often moved to raise our eyes and words to heaven to express our complaint and even desperation.
In hearing Jesus crying out his "why," we learn indeed that those who suffer can utter this same cry, but with those same dispositions of filial trust and abandonment of which Jesus is the teacher and model. In the "why" of Jesus there is no feeling or resentment leading to rebellion or desperation. There is no semblance of a reproach to the Father, but the expression of the experience of weakness, of solitude, of abandonment to himself, made by Jesus in our place. Jesus thus became the first of the "smitten and afflicted," the first of the abandoned, the first of the desamparados (as the Spanish call them). At the same time, however, he tells us that the benign eye of Providence watches over all these poor children of Eve.
If Jesus felt abandoned by the Father, he knew however that that was not really so. He himself said, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30). Speaking of his future passion he said, "I am not alone, for the Father is with me" (Jn 16:32). Jesus had the clear vision of God and the certainty of his union with the Father dominant in his mind. But in the sphere bordering on the senses, and therefore more subject to the impressions, emotions and influences of the internal and external experiences of pain, Jesus' human soul was reduced to a wasteland. He no longer felt the presence of the Father, but he underwent the tragic experience of the most complete desolation.
Here one can sketch a summary of Jesus' psychological situation in relationship to God. The external events seemed to manifest the absence of the Father who permitted the crucifixion of his Son, though having at his disposal "legions of angels" (cf. Mt 26:53), without intervening to prevent his condemnation to death and execution. In Gethsemane Simon Peter had drawn a sword in Jesus' defense, but was immediately blocked by Jesus himself (cf. Jn 18:10 f.). In the praetorium Pilate had repeatedly tried wily maneuvers to save him (cf. Jn 18:31, 38 f.; 19:4-6, 12-15); but the Father was silent. That silence of God weighed on the dying Jesus as the heaviest pain of all, so much so that his enemies interpreted that silence as a sign of his reprobation: "He trusted in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, 'I am the Son of God'" (Mt 27:43).
In the sphere of feelings and affection this sense of the absence and abandonment by God was the most acute pain for the soul of Jesus who drew his strength and joy from union with the Father. This pain rendered all the other sufferings more intense. That lack of interior consolation was Jesus' greatest agony.
However, Jesus knew that by this ultimate phase of his sacrifice, reaching the intimate core of his being, he completed the work of reparation which was the purpose of his sacrifice for the expiation of sins. If sin is separation from God, Jesus had to experience in the crisis of his union with the Father a suffering proportionate to that separation.
On the other hand in quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, which he perhaps continued to recite mentally during the passion, Jesus did not forget the conclusion which becomes a hymn of liberation and an announcement of salvation granted to all by God. The experience of abandonment is therefore a passing pain which gives way to personal liberation and universal salvation. In Jesus' afflicted soul this perspective certainly nourished hope, all the more so since he had always presented his death as a passage to the resurrection as his true glorification. From this thought his soul took strength and joy in the knowledge that at the very height of the drama of the cross, the hour of victory was at hand.
A little later, however, perhaps under the influence of Psalm 22, which again came to the surface in his memory, Jesus uttered the words, "I thirst" (Jn 19:28).
It is easy to understand that these words of Jesus refer to physical thirst, to the great agony which is part of the pain of crucifixion, as the experts in these matters tells us. One may also add that in manifesting his thirst Jesus gave proof of humility, by expressing an elementary need, as anyone would have done. Also in this Jesus expressed his solidarity with all those, living or dying, healthy or sick, great or small, who are in need and ask at least for a cup of water (cf. Mt 10:42). For us it is good to think that any help given to one who is dying, is given to Jesus crucified!
However, we cannot ignore the evangelist's remark that Jesus uttered the words, "I thirst," "to fulfill the Scripture" (Jn 19:28). These words of Jesus have another dimension beyond the physico-psychological. Once again the reference is to Psalm 22: "My throat is dried up like baked clay, my tongue cleaves to my jaws; to the dust of death you have brought me down" (v. 16). Also in Psalm 69:22 we read: "In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."
The Psalmist's words treat of physical thirst, but on the lips of Jesus they enter into the messianic perspective of the suffering of the cross. In his thirst the dying Christ sought a drink quite different from water or vinegar, as when he asked the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar: "Give me to drink" (Jn 4:7). Physical thirst on that occasion was the symbol and the path to another thirst, that of the conversion of the Samaritan woman. On the cross, Jesus thirsted for a new humanity which should arise from his sacrifice in fulfillment of the Scriptures. For this reason the evangelist links Jesus' "cry of thirst" to the Scriptures. The thirst of the cross, on the lips of the dying Christ, is the ultimate expression of that desire of baptism to be received and of fire to be kindled on the earth, which had been manifested by him during his life. "I came to cast fire upon the earth and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Lk 12:49-50). Now that desire is about to be fulfilled. With those words Jesus confirmed the ardent love with which he desired to receive that supreme "baptism" to open to all of us the fountain of water which really quenches the thirst and saves (cf. Jn 4:13-14).
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Jesus' cry of abandonment is the climax of his progressive isolation throughout the passion narrative. He has been deserted by his friends, taunted by his enemies, insulted even by those crucified with him. He has been successively "handed over" by a disciple, by his own people, by humanity (represented by Pilate and the crowd), and now by God himself. It is the inexorable outcome of his stepping into the place of sinners at his baptism and his resolve to "drink the cup" of divine wrath. But there is a profound paradox in his cry. "My God" is the language of the covenant ("I will be your God, and you will be my people"), expressing the perfect human attitude of trust in God. Yet the agonized question, "Why have you abandoned me?" expresses the anguish felt by those accursed by God, who no longer belong to the covenant. Jesus experiences the full force of the alienation from God caused by sin, yet precisely there, in that extremity of forsakenness, he confesses his filial confidence in the Father. It is the antithesis of his scoffers' taunt, "save yourself;' for it is a decision to await salvation from God alone and not procure his own. The cross has become the place of God's
hidden triumph, where the covenant broken by humanity is reforged by the suffering Son of Man.
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The hours of darkness (Luke 23:44-47)
44 It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon
45 because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle.
46 Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit"; and when he had said this he breathed his last.
47 The centurion who witnessed what had happened glorified God and said, "This man was innocent beyond doubt."
The Cathecism teaches us that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of "the righteous one, my Servant" as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin.
Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God's suffering Servant (Luke 22:35-37). After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles.
Man's sins, following on original sin, are punishable by death. By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God".
For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous.". By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who "makes himself an offering for sin", when "he bore the sin of many", and who "shall make many to be accounted righteous", for "he shall bear their iniquities". Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.
He descended into hell:
The Apostles' Creed confesses in the same article Christ's descent into hell and his Resurrection from the dead on the third day, because in his Passover it was precisely out of the depths of death that he made life spring forth.
Jesus "descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens." (Eph 4:9-10)
By the expression "He descended into hell", the Apostles' Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil "who has the power of death" (Heb 2:14).
Our Lord offered the perfect sacrifice for all sin by dying on the cross, the redemptive act that touches all people of every time– past, present and future. He was then buried. During that time, He descended among the dead: His soul, separated from His body, joined the holy souls awaiting the Savior in the Land of the Dead.
The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection. This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ's descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there. Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. This hell was for both the good and the bad, the just and the unjust. It was the nether world, a region of darkness. In the later writings of the Old Testament, a clear distinction was made between where the good resided in hell versus where the bad were, the two being separated by an impassable abyss.
His descent among the dead brought to completion the proclamation of the Gospel and liberated those holy souls who had long awaited their Redeemer. The Gates of Heaven were now open, and these holy souls entered everlasting happiness enjoying the beatific vision.
Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." Jesus, "the Author of life", by dying destroyed "him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage."(Heb 2:14-15). Henceforth the risen Christ holds "the keys of Death and Hades", so that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Rev 1:18).
The Catechism highlights the importance of this event: “This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption”.
comments by Edward Sri, professor of theology and Scripture:
In Matthew 27:50-53 we find a further mysterious apocalyptic account:
50 But Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit.
51 And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split,
52 tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
53 And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
Several miraculous signs at Jesus’ death hint at the vindication of the crucified Messiah. The first involves the tearing of the veil of the sanctuary, probably the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the outer holy place. Matthew notes that the veil was torn from top to bottom, highlighting that this was God's action. At the moment Jesus dies, God tears the temple veil, signifying judgment on the temple and the Jewish leaders responsible for his death. God’s tearing down the curtain and leaving the innermost sanctuary exposed foreshadows the temple’s destruction in AD 70, which Jesus foretold in Matt 24. This divine act may also signify the opening of access to God’s presence for all people and the end of the sacrificial system, now replaced by Jesus’ death.
The sudden earthquake is a second apocalyptic event at Christ’s death. Earthquakes were associated with God’s activity in the world, especially his coming in judgment (Judg 5:4; 2 Sam 22:7-10; Ps 68:8-9; Joel 2:10).
The most mysterious apocalyptic occurrence is the opening of tombs (see Isa 26:19; Ezek 37:12-13) and many saints being raised, which for Matthew highlights how Jesus’ death makes the resurrection of others possible. The “many saints” refers to the righteous Jews who had fallen asleep, a metaphor for death (Dan 12:2). Matthew reports that they were raised from the dead and entered the holy city of Jerusalem, appearing to many. Matthew leaves many questions unanswered in his account of this extraordinary event: the identity of the saints, what kind of bodies they possessed, the duration of their stay in Jerusalem, what happened to them after their appearance. A few points of theological significance can be noted. First, Matthew notes they came out of their tombs after Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus, “the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18) and “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20), is the basis for their resurrection as well as ours. Matthew, however, mentions this extraordinary event in the context of the crucifixion scene in order to make the theological point that Jesus’ death imparts life to others.
Some scholars think these details are merely fictional means by which Matthew indicates the significance of Jesus’ death. Yet however mysterious this account may be, it is not the kind of story one would have invented, since there is no record of anyone in first-century Judaism expecting the Old Testament prophecies about resurrection to be fulfilled quite like this. For the Jews, resurrection involved not the rising of one or many, but the general resurrection of all God’s faithful people (see, e.g., Ezek 37; Dan 12:2). Matthew, therefore, would have had no reason to insert into his Gospel this surprising account about some faithful Jews being raised unless witnesses in Jerusalem actually reported the event (Matthew 27:53).
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (2012-02-15 General audience):
Some aspects of this narrative are different than the picture offered in Mark and Matthew. The three hours of darkness are not described in Mark, while Matthew they are connected with a different set of apocalyptic events, such as the earthquake, the opening of graves, the dead raised to life (cf. Mt 27.51-53). In Luke, the hours of darkness are caused by the eclipse of the sun, but at that moment is the veil of the temple is also torn. In this way Luke's account has two signs, in some way parallel, in heaven and in the temple. The sky loses its light, the land sinks, while in the temple, the place of God's presence, tears the veil that protects the shrine. The death of Jesus is explicitly characterized as a cosmic and liturgical event, in particular, it marks the beginning of a new worship in a temple not built by men, because it is the very Body of Jesus dead and risen, that brings together the people and they are joined in the Sacrament of his Body and his Blood.
The prayer of Jesus in this moment of suffering - "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" - is a loud cry of extreme and total trust in God. This prayer express the full awareness of not being abandoned. The opening invocation - "Father" - recalls his first declaration as a twelve year old boy. Then he remained for three days in the temple of Jerusalem, the veil of which is now torn. And when his parents had expressed their concern, he replied: " Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house "(Luke 2.49). From beginning to end, what completely determines the Jesus’s sentiments, his words, his actions, is His unique relationship with the Father. On the cross He also fully lives, in love, his filial relationship with God, which animates his prayer.
The words spoken by Jesus, after the invocation "Father," are taken from the expression of Psalm 31: "Into your hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. 31.6). These words, however, are not a simple quote, but rather show a firm decision: Jesus "delivers” himself to the Father in an act of total abandonment. These words are a prayer of 'custody', full of confidence in the love of God. The prayer of Jesus before his death is tragic as it is for every man, but at the same time, it is pervaded by the deep calm that comes from trust in the Father and the will abandon himself totally to Him. In Gethsemane, when he entered the final fight and intense prayer and was about to be "delivered into the hands of men" (Lk 9.44), his sweat became "like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:44). But his heart was fully obedient to the will of the Father, and "an angel from heaven" had come to comfort him (cf. Lk 22.42 to 43). Now, in his last moments, Jesus addresses the Father saying into which hands he really surrenders his whole life. Even before leaving for the journey to Jerusalem, Jesus had insisted with his disciples, " Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men." (Lk 9.44). Now, that life is about to leave him, he seals his final decision in prayer: Jesus allowed himself to be delivered "into the hands of men", but it is into the hands of the Father that He raises his spirit, so - as stated by the Evangelist John - it is finished, the supreme act of love is brought to an end, to the limit and beyond the limit.
The words of Jesus on the cross in the last moments of his earthly life offer challenging indications to our prayers, but also open them to a quiet confidence and a firm hope. Jesus by asking the Father to forgive those who are crucifying him, invites us to the difficult act of praying for those who do us wrong, who have damaged us, knowing always how to forgive, so the light of God may illuminate their hearts, inviting us, that is, to live in our prayers, the same attitude of mercy and love that God has towards us: "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our those who trespass against us," we say every day in the "Our Father." At the same time, Jesus in the final moment of death, by placing himself entirely in the hands of God the Father, communicates to us the certainty that, no matter how hard the trial, difficult the problem, heavy the suffering, we never fall from the hands of God, those hands that created us, support us and accompany us on the journey of life, because guided by an infinite and faithful love.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Jesus has taken upon himself and borne to the cross everyone of our sins. When he rose from the dead, sin and Satan were crushed. We are no longer under the reign of sin (Rom 5:21; 6:11)! In this way the cross, a gruesome instrument of death, has become the tree of life.
The cross is not only the means by which God reconciled humanity to himself two thousand years ago but also the means by which God works powerfully in our lives even now.
"it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20 RSV). We do not have to do this on our own, since God has given us the Holy Spirit to reveal the love he poured out on the cross and to kindle the fire of that love within us. For the eyes of faith, the cross-the whole paschal mystery of Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection-has also become the source of a living power.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
According to the account of the evangelists, Jesus died, praying, at the ninth hour, that is to say, around 3:00 P.M. Luke gives his final prayer as a line from Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46; Ps 31:5). In John’s account, Jesus’ last words are: “It is finished!” (19:30). In the Greek text, this word (tetélestai) points back to the very beginning of the Passion narrative, to the episode of the washing of the feet, which the evangelist introduces by observing that Jesus loved his own “to the end (télos)” (13:1). This “end”, this ne plus ultra of loving, is now attained in the moment of death. He has truly gone right to the end, to the very limit and even beyond that limit. He has accomplished the utter fullness of love—he has given himself.
The Synoptic Gospels explicitly portray Jesus’ death on the Cross as a cosmic and liturgical event: the sun is darkened, the veil of the Temple is torn in two, the earth quakes, the dead rise again.
Even more important than the cosmic sign is an act of faith: the Roman centurion—the commander of the execution squad—in his consternation over all that he sees taking place, acknowledges Jesus as God’s Son: “Truly, this man was the Son of God” (Mk 15:39). At the foot of the Cross, the Church of the Gentiles comes into being. Through the Cross, the Lord gathers people together to form the new community of the worldwide Church. Through the suffering Son, they recognize the true God.
While the Romans, as a deterrent, deliberately left victims of crucifixion hanging on the cross after they had died, Jewish law required them to be taken down on the same day (cf. Deut 21:22-23). Hence the execution squad had to hasten the victims’ death by breaking their legs. This applied also in the case of the crucifixion on Golgotha. The legs of the two “thieves” are broken. But then the soldiers see that Jesus is already dead. So they do not break his legs. Instead, one of them pierces Jesus’ right side—his heart—and “at once there came out blood and water” (Jn 19:34). It is the hour when the paschal lambs are being slaughtered. It was laid down that no bone of these lambs was to be broken (cf. Ex 12:46). Jesus appears here as the true Paschal Lamb, pure and whole.
So in this passage we may detect a tacit reference to the very beginning of Jesus’ story—to the hour when John the Baptist said: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). Those words, which were inevitably obscure at the time as a mysterious prophecy of things to come, are now a reality. Jesus is the Lamb chosen by God himself. On the Cross he takes upon himself the sins of the world, and he wipes them away.
Yet at the same time, there are echoes of Psalm 34, which says: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken” (vv. 19-20). The Lord, the just man, has suffered much, he has suffered everything, and yet God has kept guard over him: no bone of his has been broken.
Blood and water flowed from the pierced heart of Jesus. True to Zechariah’s prophecy, the Church in every century has looked upon this pierced heart and recognized therein the source of the blessings that are symbolized in blood and water. The prophecy prompts a search for a deeper understanding of what really happened there (John 19:32-36):
32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs,
34 but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.
35 An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may (come to) believe.
36 For this happened so that the scripture passage might be fulfilled: "Not a bone of it will be broken."
An initial step toward this understanding can be found in the First Letter of Saint John, which emphatically takes up the theme of the blood and water flowing from Jesus’ side: “This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree” (5:6-8).
What does the author mean by this insistence that Jesus came not with water only but also with blood? We may assume that he is alluding to a tendency to place all the emphasis on Jesus’ baptism while setting the Cross aside. And this probably also meant that only the word, the doctrine, the message was held to be important, but not “the flesh”, the living body of Christ that bled on the Cross; it probably meant an attempt to create a Christianity of thoughts and ideas, divorced from the reality of the flesh—sacrifice and sacrament.
In this double outpouring of blood and water, the Fathers saw an image of the two fundamental sacraments—Eucharist and Baptism—which spring forth from the Lord’s pierced side, from his heart. This is the new outpouring that creates the Church and renews mankind. Moreover, the opened side of the Lord asleep on the Cross prompted the Fathers to point to the creation of Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, and so in this outpouring of the sacraments they also recognized the birth of the Church: the creation of the new woman from the side of the new Adam.
The entombment of Christ by Joseph of Arimathea (Luke 23:48-56)
48 When all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts;
49 but all his acquaintances stood at a distance, including the women who had followed him from Galilee and saw these events.
50 Now there was a virtuous and righteous man named Joseph who, though he was a member of the council,
51 had not consented to their plan of action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea and was awaiting the kingdom of God.
52 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
53 After he had taken the body down, he wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb in which no one had yet been buried.
54 It was the day of preparation, and the sabbath was about to begin.
55 The women who had come from Galilee with him followed behind, and when they had seen the tomb and the way in which his body was laid in it,
56 they returned and prepared spices and perfumed oils. Then they rested on the sabbath according to the commandment.
Christians interpret Joseph of Arimathea's role as fulfilling Isaiah's prediction that the grave of the "Suffering Servant" would be with a rich man (Isaiah 53:9), assuming that Isaiah meant Messiah. The prophecy in Isaiah chapter 53, is known as the "Man of Sorrows" passage:
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
As soon as he heard the news of Jesus' death, he "went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus". Pilate, reassured by a centurion that the death had taken place, allowed Joseph's request. Joseph immediately purchased fine linen (Mark 15:46) and proceeded to take the body of Jesus down from the cross. There, assisted by Nicodemus (a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin who according to the Gospel of John showed favour to Jesus), Joseph took the body and wrapped it in the fine linen and applied myrrh and aloes Nicodemus had brought (John 19:39). This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. Jesus' body then was conveyed to the place that had been prepared for Joseph's own body, a man-made cave hewn from rock in the garden of his house nearby. This was done speedily, "for the Sabbath was drawing on".
The gospel of Mark identifies three of the women among "also many other women who had come up with him" to Jerusalem: Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus had delivered from severe demonic possession (16:9; Luke 8:2), was from the village of Magdala on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses was probably a relative of Jesus' mother (see Mark 6:3), perhaps the wife of Clop as (John 19:25). Salome may be the woman Matthew identifies as mother of the sons of Zebedee (Matt 27:56). Mark concludes with a surprising comment implying that Jesus had as many women disciples as men. Their presence in his entourage is a sign of the dignity and esteem that Jesus accorded to women (see John 4:27).
First-century Jews typically buried their dead in family tombs dug out of the limestone hillsides or the ground. According to custom, the corpse would be placed on a shelf in an outer chamber of the tomb for about a year, until the flesh decomposed, The bones would then be collected and placed in an ossuary or bone box in an inner recess. Jesus' tomb, according to ancient tradition, was at a site less than two hundred feet from Golgotha, dug into the hillside just outside the western wall of the city. In the fourth century, when Christianity became legal, the Emperor Constantine built a magnificent basilica at the site, removing most of the hillside surrounding the tomb. Today the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the traditional sites of both the crucifixion and the resurrection, is the holy place most venerated by Christians of both East and West
Joseph of Arimathea is introduced as a distinguished member of the council (presumably the Sanhedrin). Mark does not indicate that he is a disciple of Jesus (but see Matt 27:57); he is simply a devout Jew longing for the fulfillment of God's promises. Normally the Romans would leave a crucified body to decay or be devoured by scavenging animals, so that the disgrace of execution would continue even after death. Thus it took courage for Joseph to approach Pilate requesting the body: he risked both the ire of the Sanhedrin who had condemned Jesus (Mark 14:64) and the danger of being associated with an enemy of the state. Joseph's deed of mercy is in the tradition of Jewish piety exemplified by Tobit, who also buried the dead at risk to himself (Tob 1:18-19; 2:8).
"Pilate is amazed that he was already dead" (Mark 15:44) , since victims often hung on a cross for days before expiring. Jesus' death after only six hours is an indication of the severity of the scourging and maltreatment he had already received (Mark 15:15-21). Pilate verifies the death by summoning the centurion who had witnessed it (Mark 15:39), the most truthful witness to Jesus in the Gospel so far. On the centurion's assurance he hands over the body (literally, corpse) to Joseph.
Only Mark notes that Joseph bought a cloth of linen, the fabric of the wealthy, in which to wrap the body. Joseph must have been a man of some means, who perhaps owned the nearby tomb (see Matt 27:60). The burial is apparently too hasty to allow for the customary anointing with spiced oils-but a woman had already lovingly done so just a few days before, in unconscious anticipation of Jesus' death. The burial again evokes the Suffering Servant, who was assigned a grave "with a rich man" (Isa 53:9 RSV). The stone rolled against the entrance to the tomb is for the sake of protecting the body from scavenging animals; it also emphasizes the finality of death.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Up to this point in the Gospels, we have encountered such people mainly among simple folk: Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna, and also the disciples, none of whom, while they came from a variety of cultural backgrounds and movements in Israel, actually belonged to the leading circles.
Now—after Jesus’ death—we meet two highly regarded representatives of the educated class of Israel who had not yet dared to profess their discipleship, but who nevertheless were blessed with the kind of simple heart that makes man capable of the truth (cf. Mt 10: 25-26).
Whereas the Romans would leave the corpses of crucifixion victims to the vultures, the Jews were anxious that they should be buried, and suitable places were assigned for this purpose by the authorities. Joseph’s request was therefore in keeping with normal Jewish practice. Mark says that Pilate was surprised to learn that Jesus was already dead and that he immediately inquired of the centurion whether it was true. Once Jesus’ death had been confirmed, he handed over Jesus’ body to Joseph.
Regarding the burial itself, the evangelists supply a number of important pieces of information. First, they emphasize that Joseph arranged for the Lord’s body to be laid in a new tomb that belonged to him, a tomb in which no one had yet been buried (Mt 27:60; Lk 23:53; Jn 19:41). Here we see a mark of respect for this dead person. Just as on “Palm Sunday” Jesus availed himself of a donkey on which no one had yet ridden (Mk 11:2), so now he is laid to rest in a new tomb.
Equally important is the indication that Joseph bought a linen cloth in which he wrapped the corpse. Whereas the Synoptics speak simply of a linen sheet in the singular, John uses the plural “linen cloths” (cf. 19:40) in keeping with Jewish burial customs—the Resurrection account will return to this matter in greater detail. The question of matching this description to the Turin Shroud need not detain us here; in any case, the shape of that relic can in principle be harmonized with both accounts.
Finally, John tells us that Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, “about a hundred pounds’ weight”. He continues: “They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews” (Jn 19:39-40). The quantity of balm is extraordinary and exceeds all normal proportions: this is a royal burial. If Jesus was manifested to us as high priest by the casting of lots for his robe, so now he is revealed to us as king by the manner of his burial: just when it seems that everything is finished, his glory mysteriously shines through.
The Synoptic Gospels tell us that some women observed the burial (Mt 27:61; Mk 15:47), and Luke reports that they were the ones “who had come with him from Galilee” (23:55). He adds: “then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments” (23:56). After the Sabbath rest, on the morning of the first day of the week, they would come to anoint the body of Jesus and thus to carry out the definitive burial. Anointing is an attempt to hold death at bay, to preserve the corpse from decomposition. And yet it is a vain effort: anointing can only maintain the dead person in death; it cannot restore him to life.
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| Mihály Munkácsy - Christ before Pilates (1881) |
2 They brought charges against him, saying, "We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Messiah, a king."
3 Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He said to him in reply, "You say so."
4 Pilate then addressed the chief priests and the crowds, "I find this man not guilty."
5 But they were adamant and said, "He is inciting the people with his teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to here."
6 On hearing this Pilate asked if the man was a Galilean;
7 and upon learning that he was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod who was in Jerusalem at that time.
Pontius Pilate had been procurator, or Roman governor, of Judea for about five years. His seat of government was at the seacoast town of Caesarea, but he was in Jerusalem because of the large gathering of Jews for the feast of Passover.
Twice Jesus is brought before Pilate in Luke's account, and each time Pilate explicitly declares Jesus innocent of any wrongdoing. Pilate will hand Jesus over to the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, namely Galilee which was not part of Roman Judea. In the Gospel of John (John 18:36-38) Jesus gives more detail about that dialogue taking place between Jesus and Pilate. In John, Jesus seems to confirm the fact of his kingship, although immediately explaining:
36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants (would) be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here."
37 So Pilate said to him, "Then you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
38 Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" When he had said this, he again went out to the Jews and said to them, "I find no guilt in him.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (Homily 25 Nov 2012):
Jesus appears in humiliating circumstances – he stands accused – before the might of Rome. He had been arrested, insulted, mocked, and now his enemies hope to obtain his condemnation to death by crucifixion. They had presented him to Pilate as one who sought political power, as the self-proclaimed King of the Jews. The Roman procurator conducts his enquiry and asks Jesus: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (Jn 18:33). In reply to this question, Jesus clarifies the nature of his kingship and his messiahship itself, which is no worldly power but a love which serves. He states that his kingdom is in no way to be confused with a political reign: “My kingship is not of this world … is not from the world” (v. 36).
Jesus clearly had no political ambitions. After the multiplication of the loaves, the people, enthralled by the miracle, wanted to take him away and make him their king, in order to overthrow the power of Rome and thus establish a new political kingdom which would be considered the long-awaited kingdom of God. But Jesus knows that God’s kingdom is of a completely different kind; it is not built on arms and violence. The multiplication of the loaves itself becomes both the sign that he is the Messiah and a watershed in his activity: henceforth the path to the Cross becomes ever clearer; there, in the supreme act of love, the promised kingdom, the kingdom of God, will shine forth. But the crowd does not understand this; they are disappointed and Jesus retires to the mountain to pray in solitude, to pray with the Father (cf. Jn 6:1-15). In the Passion narrative we see how even the disciples, though they had shared Jesus’ life and listened to his words, were still thinking of a political kingdom, brought about also by force. In Gethsemane, Peter had unsheathed his sword and began to fight, but Jesus stopped him (cf. Jn 18:10-11). He does not wish to be defended by arms, but to accomplish the Father’s will to the end, and to establish his kingdom not by armed conflict, but by the apparent weakness of life-giving love. The kingdom of God is a kingdom utterly different from earthly kingdoms.
That is why, faced with a defenceless, weak and humiliated man, as Jesus was, a man of power like Pilate is taken aback; taken aback because he hears of a kingdom and servants. So he asks an apparently odd question: “So you are a king?” What sort of king can such a man as this be? But Jesus answers in the affirmative: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (18:37). Jesus speaks of kings and kingship, yet he is not referring to power but to truth. Pilate fails to understand: can there be a power not obtained by human means? A power which does not respond to the logic of domination and force? Jesus came to reveal and bring a new kingship, that of God; he came to bear witness to the truth of a God who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8,16), who wants to establish a kingdom of justice, love and peace (cf. Preface). Whoever is open to love hears this testimony and accepts it with faith, to enter the kingdom of God.
The prophet Daniel foretells the power of a mysterious personage set between heaven and earth: “Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (7:13-14). These words present a king who reigns from sea to sea, to the very ends of the earth, possessed of an absolute power which will never be destroyed. This vision of the prophet, a messianic vision, is made clear and brought to fulfilment in Christ: the power of the true Messiah, the power which will never pass away or be destroyed, is not the power of the kingdoms of the earth which rise and fall, but the power of truth and love. In this way we understand how the kingship proclaimed by Jesus in the parables and openly and explicitly revealed before the Roman procurator, is the kingship of truth, the one which gives all things their light and grandeur.
In the Book of Revelation is stated that we too share in Christ’s kingship. In the acclamation addressed “to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood”, the author declares that Christ “has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (1:5-6). Here too it is clear that we are speaking of a kingdom based on a relationship with God, with truth, and not a political kingdom. By his sacrifice, Jesus has opened for us the path to a profound relationship with God: in him we have become true adopted children and thus sharers in his kingship over the world. To be disciples of Jesus, then, means not letting ourselves be allured by the worldly logic of power, but bringing into the world the light of truth and God’s love. The author of the Book of Revelation broadens his gaze to include Jesus’ second coming to judge mankind and to establish forever his divine kingdom, and he reminds us that conversion, as a response to God’s grace, is the condition for the establishment of this kingdom (cf. 1:7). It is a pressing invitation addressed to each and all: to be converted ever anew to the kingdom of God, to the lordship of God, of Truth, in our lives. We invoke the kingdom daily in the prayer of the “Our Father” with the words “Thy kingdom come”; in effect we say to Jesus: Lord, make us yours, live in us, gather together a scattered and suffering humanity, so that in you all may be subjected to the Father of mercy and love.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Jesus’ interrogation before the Sanhedrin had concluded in the way Caiaphas had expected: Jesus was found guilty of blasphemy, for which the penalty was death. But since only the Romans could carry out the death sentence, the case now had to be brought before Pilate and the political dimension of the guilty verdict had to be emphasized. Jesus had declared himself to be the Messiah; hence he had laid claim to the dignity of kingship, albeit in a way peculiarly his own. The claim to Messianic kingship was a political offense, one that had to be punished by Roman justice. With cockcrow, daybreak had arrived. The Roman Governor used to hold court early in the morning.
So Jesus is now led by his accusers to the praetorium and is presented to Pilate as a criminal who deserves to die. It is the “day of preparation” for the Passover feast. The lambs are slaughtered in the afternoon for the evening meal. Hence cultic purity must be preserved; so the priestly accusers may not enter the Gentile praetorium, and they negotiate with the Roman Governor outside the building.
Now we must ask: Who exactly were Jesus’ accusers? Who insisted that he be condemned to death? According to John it was simply “the Jews”. In John’s Gospel this word has a precise and clearly defined meaning: he is referring to the Temple aristocracy. So the circle of accusers who instigate Jesus’ death is precisely indicated in the Fourth Gospel and clearly limited: it is the Temple aristocracy—and not without certain exceptions, as the reference to Nicodemus (7:50-52) shows.
In Mark’s Gospel, the circle of accusers is broadened in the context of the Passover amnesty (Barabbas or Jesus): the “ochlos” enters the scene and opts for the release of Barabbas. “Ochlos” in the first instance simply means a crowd of people, the “masses”. The word frequently has a pejorative connotation, meaning “mob”. this “crowd” is made up of the followers of Barabbas who have been mobilized to secure the amnesty for him: as a rebel against Roman power he could naturally count on a good number of supporters. So the Barabbas party, the “crowd”, was conspicuous, while the followers of Jesus remained hidden out of fear; this meant that the vox populi, on which Roman law was built, was represented one-sidedly. In Mark’s account, then, in addition to “the Jews”, that is to say the dominant priestly circle, the ochlos comes into play, the circle of Barabbas’ supporters, but not the Jewish people as such.
An extension of Mark’s ochlos, with fateful consequences, is found in Matthew’s account (27:25), which speaks of “all the people” and attributes to them the demand for Jesus’ crucifixion. Matthew is certainly not recounting historical fact here: How could the whole people have been present at this moment to clamor for Jesus’ death? It seems obvious that the historical reality is correctly described in John’s account and in Mark’s. The real group of accusers are the current Temple authorities, joined in the context of the Passover amnesty by the “crowd” of Barabbas’ supporters.
Matthew is thinking here of Jesus’ prophecy concerning the end of the Temple: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken. . .” (Mt 23:37-38: cf. Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, the whole of the section entitled “Gerichtsworte”, II, pp. 295-308).
These words—as argued earlier, in the chapter on Jesus’ eschatological discourse—remind us of the inner similarity between the Prophet Jeremiah’s message and that of Jesus. Jeremiah—against the blindness of the then dominant circles—prophesied the destruction of the Temple and Israel’s exile. But he also spoke of a “new covenant”: punishment is not the last word; it leads to healing. In the same way Jesus prophesies the “deserted house” and proceeds to offer the New Covenant “in his blood”: ultimately it is a question of healing, not of destruction and rejection.
When in Matthew’s account the “whole people” say: “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. . . God put [Jesus] forward as an expiation by his blood” (Rom 3:23, 25). Just as Caiaphas’ words about the need for Jesus’ death have to be read in an entirely new light from the perspective of faith, the same applies to Matthew’s reference to blood: read in the light of faith, it means that we all stand in need of the purifying power of love which is his blood.
These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation. Only when understood in terms of the theology of the Last Supper and the Cross, drawn from the whole of the New Testament, does this verse from Matthew’s Gospel take on its correct meaning.
Let us move now from the accusers to the judge: the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. While Flavius Josephus and especially Philo of Alexandria paint a rather negative picture of him, other sources portray him as decisive, pragmatic, and realistic. It is often said that the Gospels presented him in an increasingly positive light out of a politically motivated pro-Roman tendency and that they shifted the blame for Jesus’ death more and more onto the Jews. Yet there were no grounds for any such tendency in the historical circumstances of the evangelists: by the time the Gospels were written, Nero’s persecution had already revealed the cruel side of the Roman State and the great arbitrariness of imperial power. If we may date the Book of Revelation to approximately the same period as John’s Gospel, then it is clear that the Fourth Gospel did not come to be written in a context that could have given rise to a pro-Roman stance.
The image of Pilate in the Gospels presents the Roman Prefect quite realistically as a man who could be brutal when he judged this to be in the interests of public order. Yet he also knew that Rome owed its world dominance not least to its tolerance of foreign divinities and to the capacity of Roman law to build peace. This is how he comes across to us during Jesus’ trial.
The charge that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews was a serious one. Rome had no difficulty in recognizing regional kings like Herod, but they had to be legitimated by Rome and they had to receive from Rome the definition and limitation of their sovereignty. A king without such legitimation was a rebel who threatened the Pax Romana and therefore had to be put to death.
Pilate knew, however, that no rebel uprising had been instigated by Jesus. Everything he had heard must have made Jesus seem to him like a religious fanatic, who may have offended against some Jewish legal and religious rulings, but that was of no concern to him.
In John 18:34-35 it is clearly stated that, on the basis of the information in his possession, Pilate had nothing that would incriminate Jesus. Nothing had come to the knowledge of the Roman authority that could in any way have posed a risk to law and order. The charge came from Jesus’ own people, from the Temple authority. Yet during the interrogation we suddenly arrive at a dramatic moment: Jesus’ confession. To Pilate’s question: “So you are a king?” he answers: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (Jn 18:37). Previously Jesus had said: “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world” (18:36).
This “confession” of Jesus places Pilate in an extraordinary situation: the accused claims kingship and a kingdom (basileía). Yet he underlines the complete otherness of his kingship, and he even makes the particular point that must have been decisive for the Roman judge: No one is fighting for this kingship. If power, indeed military power, is characteristic of kingship and kingdoms, there is no sign of it in Jesus’ case. And neither is there any threat to Roman order. This kingdom is powerless. It has no legions.
In addition to the clear delimitation of his concept of kingdom (no fighting, earthly powerlessness), Jesus had introduced a positive idea, in order to explain the nature and particular character of the power of this kingship: namely, truth. Pilate brought another idea into play as the dialogue proceeded, one that came from his own world and was normally connected with “kingdom”: namely, power—authority (exousía). Dominion demands power; it even defines it. Jesus, however, defines as the essence of his kingship witness to the truth. Is truth a political category? Or has Jesus’ “kingdom” nothing to do with politics? To which order does it belong? If Jesus bases his concept of kingship and kingdom on truth as the fundamental category, then it is entirely understandable that the pragmatic Pilate asks him: “What is truth?” (18:38).
It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?
And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all—criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom?
What is truth? The pragmatist’s question, tossed off with a degree of scepticism, is a very serious question, bound up with the fate of mankind. What, then, is truth? Are we able to recognize it? Can it serve as a criterion for our intellect and will, both in individual choices and in the life of the community?
What is truth? Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes. Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing. Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger. “Redemption” in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable. And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable. He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history. Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world’s standards: he has no legions; he is crucified. Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power.
The world is “true” to the extent that it reflects God: the creative logic, the eternal reason that brought it to birth. And it becomes more and more true the closer it draws to God. Man becomes true, he becomes himself, when he grows in God’s likeness. Then he attains to his proper nature. God is the reality that gives being and intelligibility.
“Bearing witness to the truth” means giving priority to God and to his will over against the interests of the world and its powers. God is the criterion of being. In this sense, truth is the real “king” that confers light and greatness upon all things. We may also say that bearing witness to the truth means making creation intelligible and its truth accessible from God’s perspective—the perspective of creative reason—in such a way that it can serve as a criterion and a signpost in this world of ours, in such a way that the great and the mighty are exposed to the power of truth, the common law, the law of truth.
Let us say plainly: the unredeemed state of the world consists precisely in the failure to understand the meaning of creation, in the failure to recognize truth; as a result, the rule of pragmatism is imposed, by which the strong arm of the powerful becomes the god of this world.
At this point, modern man is tempted to say: Creation has become intelligible to us through science. Indeed, Francis S. Collins, for example, who led the Human Genome Project, says with joyful astonishment: “The language of God was revealed” (The Language of God, p. 122). Indeed, in the magnificent mathematics of creation, which today we can read in the human genetic code, we recognize the language of God. But unfortunately not the whole language. The functional truth about man has been discovered. But the truth about man himself—who he is, where he comes from, what he should do, what is right, what is wrong—this unfortunately cannot be read in the same way. Hand in hand with growing knowledge of functional truth there seems to be an increasing blindness toward “truth” itself—toward the question of our real identity and purpose.
After the interrogation, Pilate knew for certain what in principle he had already known beforehand: this Jesus was no political rebel; his message and his activity posed no threat for the Roman rulers. Whether Jesus had offended against the Torah was of no concern to him as a Roman.
Yet Pilate seems also to have experienced a certain superstitious wariness concerning this remarkable figure. True, Pilate was a sceptic. As a man of his time, though, he did not exclude the possibility that gods or, at any rate, god-like beings could take on human form. John tells us that “the Jews” accused Jesus of making himself the Son of God, and then he adds: “When Pilate heard these words, he was even more afraid” (John 19:8).
I think we must take seriously the idea of Pilate’s fear: Perhaps there really was something divine in this man? Perhaps Pilate would be opposing divine power if he were to condemn him? Perhaps he would have to reckon with the anger of the deity? I think his attitude during the trial can be explained not only on the basis of a certain commitment to see justice done, but also on the basis of such considerations as these.
Jesus’ accusers obviously realize this, and so they now play off one fear against another. Against the superstitious fear of a possible divine presence, they appeal to the entirely practical fear of forfeiting the emperor’s favor, being removed from office, and thus plunging into a downward spiral:
10 So Pilate said to him, "Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?"
11 Jesus answered (him), "You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin."
12 Consequently, Pilate tried to release him; but the Jews cried out, "If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar."
The declaration: “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend” (Jn 19:12) is a threat. In the end, concern for career proves stronger than fear of divine powers.
"You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin."
comments by Francis Martin, president of Father Francis Martin Ministries (FFMM), "commentary on the Gospel of John":
Jesus tells Pilate that his worldly power as a Roman prefect is not absolute but is subject to a higher authority. In his encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II similarly warns about political and social structures that do not recognize their own subordination to the transcendent standards of truth and goodness, which are knowable by human reason (see Catechism 1902,1954-56,1960):
Totalitarianism arises out of a denial of truth in the objective sense.
If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people... . The culture and praxis of totalitarianism also involve a rejection of the Church, The State or the party which claims to be able to lead history towards perfect goodness, and which sets itself above all values, cannot tolerate the affirmation of an objective criterion of good and evil beyond the will of those in power, since such a criterion ... could be used to judge their actions. This explains why totalitarianism attempts to destroy the Church, or at least to reduce her to submission.
Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude that correspond to democratic forms of political life.Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. Yet if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.
Excerpt from John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum [On Capital and Labor)) 44-46. What he described as the potential of democratic societies to degenerate into a kind of totalitarianism when objective truth and goodness are disregarded, Pope Benedict XVI has called the "dictatorship of relativism" See Pope Benedict XVI, The Light of the World; The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times, trans. Michael J. Miller and Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 50-59.
The Church celebrates the supreme lordship of Jesus Christ over all creation on the Feast of Christ the King. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast in 1925, after World War I and the rise of atheistic communism in Russia showed the human degradation facilitated by the disregard for God, objective truth, and love in public life. As Pope St. John Paul II observed nearly eighty years later, the history of the twentieth century showed that human beings “attempted to build the city of man without reference to [God]. It ended by actually building that city against man! Christians know that it is not possible to reject or ignore God without demeaning man” The Feast of Christ the King aims to reorient our “farts to the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ so that truth and goodness may reign in the world and provide the foundation for a just society and lasting peace”.
Jesus at Herod's court (Luke 23:7-12)
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| Duccio di Buoninsegna - Jesus at Herod's Court (1310) |
8 Herod was very glad to see Jesus; he had been wanting to see him for a long time, for he had heard about him and had been hoping to see him perform some sign.
9 He questioned him at length, but he gave him no answer.
10 The chief priests and scribes, meanwhile, stood by accusing him harshly.
11 (Even) Herod and his soldiers treated him contemptuously and mocked him, and after clothing him in resplendent garb, he sent him back to Pilate.
12 Herod and Pilate became friends that very day, even though they had been enemies formerly.
The mention of Galilee gives Pilate the opportunity to divert the case to the tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, who was also in Jerusalem for the Jewish feast. Herod’s curiosity about Jesus was mentioned earlier (9:9). Jesus does not respond to the request for a sign nor to the ill-motivated questions, as he never does in the Gospels. Herod’s mocking treatment of Jesus ironically heals an enmity with Pilate (Pilate’s recognition of Herod’s authority signified a recognition of him, clearly something Herod desired).
The cooperation of the two is later seen as the fulfillment of prophecy (Ps 2:1–2) and Acts 4:25–28:
25 you said by the holy Spirit through the mouth of our father David, your servant: 'Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples entertain folly?
26 The kings of the earth took their stand and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.'
Even when Jesus is mocked as a bogus prophet by Herod Antipas, the corrupt king and murderer of prophets (9:7-9; 13:31-33) could find no guilt in Jesus.
Within the early Christian community, Jesus’ continued silence (vs 9) was understood in the light of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:7 – “Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth.”
Jesus is back to Pilate's court (Luke 23:13-25)
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| Antonio Ciseri - Ecce Homo/Behold the Man (1871) |
14 and said to them, "You brought this man to me and accused him of inciting the people to revolt. I have conducted my investigation in your presence and have not found this man guilty of the charges you have brought against him,
15 nor did Herod, for he sent him back to us. So no capital crime has been committed by him.
16 Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him."
17 "He was obliged to release one prisoner for them at the festival,"
18 But all together they shouted out, "Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us."
19 (Now Barabbas had been imprisoned for a rebellion that had taken place in the city and for murder.)
20 Again Pilate addressed them, still wishing to release Jesus,
21 but they continued their shouting, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
22 Pilate addressed them a third time, "What evil has this man done? I found him guilty of no capital crime. Therefore I shall have him flogged and then release him."
23 With loud shouts, however, they persisted in calling for his crucifixion, and their voices prevailed.
24 The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted.
25 So he released the man who had been imprisoned for rebellion and murder, for whom they asked, and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished.
The penalty for Barabbas' crime was death by crucifixion, but according to the four canonical gospels and the non-canonical Gospel of Peter there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed or required Pilate, the praefectus or governor of Judaea, to commute one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim, and the "crowd" (ochlos) were offered a choice of whether to have either Barabbas or Jesus Christ released from Roman custody.
comments by Liam Ferguson (Knights of Columbus Lecturer):
In his book “Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration,” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI gives a more profound view as he answers who was Barabbas?
At the culmination of Jesus’ trial, Pilate presents the people with a choice between Jesus and Barabbas. One of the two will be released. But who was Barabbas? It is usually the words of John’s Gospel that come to mind here: “Barabbas was a robber” (Jn 18:40). But the Greek word for “robber” had acquired a specific meaning in the political situation that obtained at the time in Palestine. It had become a synonym for “resistance fighter.” Barabbas had taken part in an uprising (cf. Mk 15:7), and furthermore—in that context—had been accused of murder (cf. Lk 23:19, 25). When Matthew remarks that Barabbas was “a notorious prisoner” (Mt 27:16), this is evidence that he was one of the prominent resistance fighters, in fact probably the actual leader of that particular uprising.
In other words, Barabbas was a messianic figure. The
choice of Jesus versus Barabbas is not accidental; two messiah figures,
two forms of messianic belief stand in opposition. This becomes even
clearer when we consider that the name Bar-Abbas means “son of the
father.” This is a typically messianic appellation, the cultic name of a
prominent leader of the messianic movement. The last great Jewish
messianic war was fought in the year 132 by Bar-Kokhba, “son of the
star.” The form of the name is the same, and it stands for the same
intention.
The Lord... declares that the concept of the Messiah has to be understood in terms of the entirety of the message of the Prophets - it means not worldly power, but the Cross, and the radically different community that comes into being through the Cross.
Notice that Christ himself was tempted in the same way. In the desert, Satan tempts Jesus to become the ruler of all the nations of the world—an earthly ruler. But, Jesus knew that his was a heavenly kingdom and that it would be an earth transformed by his Death and Resurrection that he would rule over. Jesus did not surrender to the temptation to become Barabbas.
In Pilate, however, we see a much more common form of worship, the worship of Caesar as represented in either the ruling establishment or in the rewards of being a reliable part of the prevailing political or economic system. Pilate doesn’t want to do wrong, but he doesn’t want to lose the status or position he’s attained. He will kill Jesus rather than lose earthly power and wealth.
And, today, when you hear a Catholic politician say “I’m personally opposed to abortion but I don’t want to impose my religious beliefs on others,” they are in fact imposing their true religion on others—the religion of Caesar and Pilate—and getting the rewards that go with going along with the system. They will kill babies rather than give up earthly power or position.
We are impassioned people. We want so much to see the evil in our world disappear but are quite often incapable of making it happen. The other day, I was watching the news on the row of very big screen TVs that were in front of me. I wanted to make it go away. I wanted, with the wave of my hand, to stop the killing of our children, to stop the evil in the streets, to remove from power those who have so badly abused it. I was, within the confines of my own mind, the earthly messiah wiping it all away with overwhelming power. I was, mentally, following the Way of Barabbas. And, while it seemed like it was a holy anger, it was instead the type of anger that will cause others with less moral restraint to start insurrections that can’t be won.
You see Barabbas had no more chance of evicting the Roman Empire than we do of stopping the excesses and evil of the Western world. They are bigger than we are. Those of you who are willing to resort to violence have given in to the Way of Barabbas.
Those who take the longer road of peace follow Christ. And, in the long run, the result will be more decisive and permanent. So, how can we know if we are following Christ or his lesser double? I would suggest that if you get angry and then work to feed the hungry, you are following the true way. If you are outraged and then give drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked and shelter to the poor, you are starting a real revolution. If you are deeply dismayed and visit the sick and imprisoned and bury the dead, you will change the world. And, if you gently admonish the sinner, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, comfort the sorrowful, bear wrongs patiently, forgive all injuries and pray for the living and the dead you will be a bigger threat to Caesar, or whoever rules the world, than Barabbas ever was.
Brothers, in an ordinary world, in ordinary time, we can do extraordinary things if we are patient and do what Jesus did; if we use the weapons the true Son of God gave us for the ultimate revolt against the evil of this world.
comments by Pope Francis (Via crucis 2013):
From Pilate, the man with power, Jesus ought to have obtained justice. Pilate did indeed have the power to recognize Jesus’ innocence and free him. But the Roman Governor preferred to serve the logic of his personal interests and he yielded to political and social pressures. He condemned an innocent man in order to please the crowd, without satisfying truth. He handed Jesus over to the torment of the Cross, knowing that he was innocent ... and then he washed his hands.
In today’s world, there are many "Pilates" who
keep their hands on the levers of power and make use of them in order to
serve the strongest. There are many who are weak and cowardly before the
spectre of power, and mortgage their authority to the service of injustice,
trampling upon man’s dignity and his right to life.
Let's
pray the Lord Jesus, do not allow us to be among those who act
unjustly, do not allow the strong to take pleasure in evil, injustice
and tyranny, do not allow injustice to condemn the innocent to despair
and death. Confirm them in hope and illumine the consciences of those
with authority in this world, that they may govern with justice.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Before the final verdict there is a further dramatic and painful interlude in three acts:
The first act sees Pilate presenting Jesus as a candidate for the Passover amnesty and seeking in this way to release him. In doing so, he puts himself in a fatal situation. Anyone put forward as a candidate for the amnesty is in principle already condemned. Otherwise, the amnesty would make no sense. If the crowd has the right of acclamation, then according to their response, the one they do not choose is to be regarded as condemned. In this sense, the proposed release on the basis of the amnesty already tacitly implies condemnation.
John refers to Barabbas simply as a robber (18:40). In the political context of the time, though, the Greek word that John uses had also acquired the meaning of terrorist or freedom fighter. It is clear from Mark’s account that this is the intended meaning: “And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas” (15:7).
Barabbas (“Son of the Father”) is a kind of Messianic figure. Two interpretations of Messianic hope are juxtaposed here in the offer of the Passover amnesty. In terms of Roman law, it is a case of two criminals convicted of the same offense—two rebels against the Pax Romana. It is clear that Pilate prefers the nonviolent “fanatic” that he sees in Jesus. Yet the crowd and the Temple authorities have different categories. If the Temple aristocracy felt constrained to declare: “We have no king but Caesar” (Jn 19:15), this only appears to be a renunciation of Israel’s Messianic hope: “We do not want this king” is what they mean. They would like to see a different solution to the problem. Again and again, mankind will be faced with this same choice: to say yes to the God who works only through the power of truth and love, or to build on something tangible and concrete—on violence.
The second act is succinctly summarized by John as follows: “Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him” (19:1). In Roman criminal law, scourging was the punishment that accompanied the death sentence (Hengel and Schwemer, Jesus und das Judentum, p. 609). In John’s Gospel, however, it is presented as an act during the interrogation, a measure that the Prefect was empowered to take on the basis of his responsibility for law enforcement. It was an extremely barbaric punishment; the victim was “struck by several torturers for as long as it took for them to grow tired, and for the flesh of the criminal to hang down in bleeding shreds” (Blinzler, Der Prozess Jesu, p. 321). Rudolf Pesch notes in this regard: “The fact that Simon of Cyrene has to carry the cross-beam for Jesus and that Jesus dies so quickly may well be attributable to the torture of scourging, during which other criminals sometimes would already have died” (Markusevangelium II, p. 467).
The third act is the crowning with thorns. The soldiers are playing cruel games with Jesus. They know that he claims to be a king. But now he is in their hands; now it pleases them to humiliate him, to display their power over him, and perhaps to offload vicariously onto him their anger against their rulers. Him whose whole body is torn and wounded, they vest, as a caricature, with the tokens of imperial majesty: the purple robe, the crown plaited from thorns, and the reed scepter. They pay homage to him: “Hail, King of the Jews”; their homage consists of blows to his head, through which they once more express their utter contempt for him (Mt 27:28-30; Mk 15:17-19; Jn 19:2-3).
Thus caricatured, Jesus is led to Pilate, and Pilate presents him to the crowd—to all mankind: “Ecce homo”, “Here is the man!” (Jn 19:5). The Roman judge is no doubt distressed at the sight of the wounded and derided figure of this mysterious defendant. He is counting on the compassion of those who see him.
“Ecce homo”—the expression spontaneously takes on a depth of meaning that reaches far beyond this moment in history. In Jesus, it is man himself that is manifested. In him is displayed the suffering of all who are subjected to violence, all the downtrodden. His suffering mirrors the inhumanity of worldly power, which so ruthlessly crushes the powerless. In him is reflected what we call “sin”: this is what happens when man turns his back upon God and takes control over the world into his own hands.
There is another side to all this, though: Jesus’ innermost dignity cannot be taken from him. The hidden God remains present within him. Even the man subjected to violence and vilification remains the image of God. Ever since Jesus submitted to violence, it has been the wounded, the victims of violence, who have been the image of the God who chose to suffer for us. So Jesus in the throes of his Passion is an image of hope: God is on the side of those who suffer.
Finally, Pilate takes his place on the judgment seat. Once again he says: “Here is your King!” (Jn 19:14). Then he pronounces the death sentence.
Indeed the great “Truth” of which Jesus had spoken was inaccessible to Pilate. Yet the concrete truth of this particular case he knew very well. He knew that this Jesus was not a political criminal and that the kingship he claimed did not represent any political danger—that he ought therefore to be acquitted.
As Prefect, Pilate represented Roman law, on which the Pax Romana rested—the peace of the empire that spanned the world. This peace was secured, on the one hand, through Rome’s military might. But military force alone does not generate peace. Peace depends on justice. Rome’s real strength lay in its legal system, the juridical order on which men could rely. Pilate—let us repeat—knew the truth of this case, and hence he knew what justice demanded of him.
Yet ultimately it was the pragmatic concept of law that won the day with him: more important than the truth of this case, he probably reasoned, is the peace-building role of law, and in this way he doubtless justified his action to himself. Releasing this innocent man could not only cause him personal damage—and such fear was certainly a decisive factor behind his action—it could also give rise to further disturbances and unrest, which had to be avoided at all costs, especially at the time of the Passover.
In this case peace counted for more than justice in Pilate’s eyes. Not only the great, inaccessible Truth but also the concrete truth of Jesus’ case had to recede into the background: in this way he believed he was fulfilling the real purpose of the law—its peace-building function. Perhaps this was how he eased his conscience. For the time being, all seemed to be going well. Jerusalem remained calm. At a later date, though, it would become clear that peace, in the final analysis, cannot be established at the expense of truth.
Simon of Cyrene (Luke 23:26)comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Before the final verdict there is a further dramatic and painful interlude in three acts:
The first act sees Pilate presenting Jesus as a candidate for the Passover amnesty and seeking in this way to release him. In doing so, he puts himself in a fatal situation. Anyone put forward as a candidate for the amnesty is in principle already condemned. Otherwise, the amnesty would make no sense. If the crowd has the right of acclamation, then according to their response, the one they do not choose is to be regarded as condemned. In this sense, the proposed release on the basis of the amnesty already tacitly implies condemnation.
John refers to Barabbas simply as a robber (18:40). In the political context of the time, though, the Greek word that John uses had also acquired the meaning of terrorist or freedom fighter. It is clear from Mark’s account that this is the intended meaning: “And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas” (15:7).
Barabbas (“Son of the Father”) is a kind of Messianic figure. Two interpretations of Messianic hope are juxtaposed here in the offer of the Passover amnesty. In terms of Roman law, it is a case of two criminals convicted of the same offense—two rebels against the Pax Romana. It is clear that Pilate prefers the nonviolent “fanatic” that he sees in Jesus. Yet the crowd and the Temple authorities have different categories. If the Temple aristocracy felt constrained to declare: “We have no king but Caesar” (Jn 19:15), this only appears to be a renunciation of Israel’s Messianic hope: “We do not want this king” is what they mean. They would like to see a different solution to the problem. Again and again, mankind will be faced with this same choice: to say yes to the God who works only through the power of truth and love, or to build on something tangible and concrete—on violence.
The second act is succinctly summarized by John as follows: “Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him” (19:1). In Roman criminal law, scourging was the punishment that accompanied the death sentence (Hengel and Schwemer, Jesus und das Judentum, p. 609). In John’s Gospel, however, it is presented as an act during the interrogation, a measure that the Prefect was empowered to take on the basis of his responsibility for law enforcement. It was an extremely barbaric punishment; the victim was “struck by several torturers for as long as it took for them to grow tired, and for the flesh of the criminal to hang down in bleeding shreds” (Blinzler, Der Prozess Jesu, p. 321). Rudolf Pesch notes in this regard: “The fact that Simon of Cyrene has to carry the cross-beam for Jesus and that Jesus dies so quickly may well be attributable to the torture of scourging, during which other criminals sometimes would already have died” (Markusevangelium II, p. 467).
The third act is the crowning with thorns. The soldiers are playing cruel games with Jesus. They know that he claims to be a king. But now he is in their hands; now it pleases them to humiliate him, to display their power over him, and perhaps to offload vicariously onto him their anger against their rulers. Him whose whole body is torn and wounded, they vest, as a caricature, with the tokens of imperial majesty: the purple robe, the crown plaited from thorns, and the reed scepter. They pay homage to him: “Hail, King of the Jews”; their homage consists of blows to his head, through which they once more express their utter contempt for him (Mt 27:28-30; Mk 15:17-19; Jn 19:2-3).
Thus caricatured, Jesus is led to Pilate, and Pilate presents him to the crowd—to all mankind: “Ecce homo”, “Here is the man!” (Jn 19:5). The Roman judge is no doubt distressed at the sight of the wounded and derided figure of this mysterious defendant. He is counting on the compassion of those who see him.
“Ecce homo”—the expression spontaneously takes on a depth of meaning that reaches far beyond this moment in history. In Jesus, it is man himself that is manifested. In him is displayed the suffering of all who are subjected to violence, all the downtrodden. His suffering mirrors the inhumanity of worldly power, which so ruthlessly crushes the powerless. In him is reflected what we call “sin”: this is what happens when man turns his back upon God and takes control over the world into his own hands.
There is another side to all this, though: Jesus’ innermost dignity cannot be taken from him. The hidden God remains present within him. Even the man subjected to violence and vilification remains the image of God. Ever since Jesus submitted to violence, it has been the wounded, the victims of violence, who have been the image of the God who chose to suffer for us. So Jesus in the throes of his Passion is an image of hope: God is on the side of those who suffer.
Finally, Pilate takes his place on the judgment seat. Once again he says: “Here is your King!” (Jn 19:14). Then he pronounces the death sentence.
Indeed the great “Truth” of which Jesus had spoken was inaccessible to Pilate. Yet the concrete truth of this particular case he knew very well. He knew that this Jesus was not a political criminal and that the kingship he claimed did not represent any political danger—that he ought therefore to be acquitted.
As Prefect, Pilate represented Roman law, on which the Pax Romana rested—the peace of the empire that spanned the world. This peace was secured, on the one hand, through Rome’s military might. But military force alone does not generate peace. Peace depends on justice. Rome’s real strength lay in its legal system, the juridical order on which men could rely. Pilate—let us repeat—knew the truth of this case, and hence he knew what justice demanded of him.
Yet ultimately it was the pragmatic concept of law that won the day with him: more important than the truth of this case, he probably reasoned, is the peace-building role of law, and in this way he doubtless justified his action to himself. Releasing this innocent man could not only cause him personal damage—and such fear was certainly a decisive factor behind his action—it could also give rise to further disturbances and unrest, which had to be avoided at all costs, especially at the time of the Passover.
In this case peace counted for more than justice in Pilate’s eyes. Not only the great, inaccessible Truth but also the concrete truth of Jesus’ case had to recede into the background: in this way he believed he was fulfilling the real purpose of the law—its peace-building function. Perhaps this was how he eased his conscience. For the time being, all seemed to be going well. Jerusalem remained calm. At a later date, though, it would become clear that peace, in the final analysis, cannot be established at the expense of truth.
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| Tiziano - Christ with the cross (1565) |
An important Lucan theme throughout the gospel has been the need for the Christian disciple to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Here this theme comes to the fore with the story of Simon of Cyrene who takes up the cross and follows Jesus and with the large crowd who likewise follow Jesus on the way of the cross.
The Cyrenian or Simon movement, centered in the United Kingdom and Ireland, takes its name from Simon of Cyrene. It has as its guiding principle 'sharing the burden' which it uses to explain its approach to providing services to homeless and other disadvantaged groups in society, often using volunteers
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Those condemned to crucifixion would typically be paraded naked through the streets to the site of execution, forced to carry the horizontal crossbeam and flogged along the way. That Jesus, a carpenter by trade who had probably lifted many a hefty beam, is unable to do so shows how severely weakened the scourging had left him. Roman soldiers claimed the legal right to press Jews into temporary service (see Matt 5:41), so they force the person nearest at hand to carry his cross. Mark identifies the man as Simon, a Jew from Cyrene in northern Africa (in present-day Libya), who may have settled in Jerusalem or traveled there for the Passover. Coming on the scene as a mere passer-by, he is suddenly brought into the center of the action and compelled to do what Jesus had described as the essence of discipleship: to take up the cross and follow him (Mark 8:34). Although Simon did not volunteer for the honor of carrying the Lord's cross, and perhaps even resented his sudden conscription into a death march, Mark gives a hint that this experience may have changed his life. The mention of his two sons, Alexander and Rufus, suggests that they became Christians and were known to the early Church (see Rom 16:13).
comments by Pope Francis (Via crucis 2013):
Jesus’ meeting with Simon of Cyrene took place in silence, providing us with a lesson for our lives: God does not want suffering and he does not accept evil. The same is true of the human being. But suffering, accepted in faith, is transformed into a path of salvation. Then we accept it as Jesus did, and we help to carry it as Simon of Cyrene did.
Simon of Cyrene is a man portrayed by the Evangelists with precise details regarding his name and background, his family and work. His is the photograph of a man caught at a certain time and place, in some way forced to carry a cross not his own. Yet Simon of Cyrene is really each of us. He accepts the burden of the cross of Jesus, just as we ourselves received the sign of the cross at Holy Baptism.
Simon of Cyrene is one of the little ones, the poor, a nameless man from the countryside, someone overlooked by the history books. Perhaps Simon of Cyrene represents all of us, at that moment when we suddenly face a difficulty, a trial, an illness, an unforeseen burden, a heavy cross. Why? Why me? Why now? The Lord calls us to follow him, though we know not where or how.
Even in families, at the most difficult times when momentous decisions must be made, if peace dwells in our hearts, if we heed and understand what God desires for us, then a light shines upon us, helping us to see matters clearly and to carry our cross.
The Cyrenean also brings to mind the faces of all those people who have been close to us at times when a heavy cross befell us or our family. He calls to mind the many volunteers throughout the world who generously devote themselves to comforting and assisting those suffering and in distress. He teaches us humbly to let ourselves be helped at times of need, and to be Cyreneans to others.
[Mark gospel in chapter 15 added the following account:
16 The soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is, the praetorium, and assembled the whole cohort.
17 They clothed him in purple and, weaving a crown of thorns, placed it on him.
18 They began to salute him with, "Hail, King of the Jews!"
19 and kept striking his head with a reed and spitting upon him. They knelt before him in homage.
20 And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, dressed him in his own clothes, and led him out to crucify him.
21 They pressed into service a passer-by, Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
The soldiers probably take their cue from Pilate, who has used the title "king of the Jews" to taunt the Jewish leaders:
9 Pilate answered, "Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" 10 For he knew that it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed him over. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. 12 Pilate again said to them in reply, "Then what [do you want] me to do with [the man you call] the king of the Jews"? (Mark 15 9-12)
and they come up with a grotesque game of their own. In a charade of homage they clothe his naked body with the regalia of royalty, purple and a crown (see Esther 8:15; Sir 40:4; 1 Macc 10:20). Purple was a color of the wealthy because the dye was costly; the soldiers may have used a faded scarlet military cloak or a shabby blanket to serve as "purple:' Spiky branches from a nearby shrub are woven together and shoved onto Jesus' head as an improvised crown. The thorns may have been a caricature of the sun rays emanating from the imperial crown portrayed on coins, signifying divine kingship.
The Suffering Servant is in the background of Mark's account: "I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; My face I did not shield from buffets and spitting. The Lord GOD is my help, therefore I am not disgraced" (Isa 50:6-7), In a final parody of royal homage, the soldiers kneel before him. Viewed with the eyes of faith, the scene is profoundly ironic. Mark's readers know that Jesus is worthy of all homage as the "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Rev 19:16). It is precisely in his suffering and humiliation that he is crowned king.
]
Daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23:27-31)
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| Theophile Marie Francois Lybaert - Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem (1887) |
28 Jesus turned to them and said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children,
29 for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.'
30 At that time people will say to the mountains, 'Fall upon us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'
31 for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?"
comments by Monsignor Charles Pope (Archdiocese of Washington):
The First Century context of Jesus’ words is surely rooted in 70 AD and the terrible culmination of a 3 1/2 Year war of the Jewish people with the Romans, (66-70 AD – The War actually culminated with the fall of Masada in 73AD). Jesus had spoken of this terrible war extensively in i the the Mount Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:1 – 25:46; Mark 13:1-37; Luke 21:5-36)
And now, as these woman weep for him, we weeps for them and their children. For indeed, the says are coming, in forty short (biblical) years when they will see a destruction so overwhelming that, as Josephus records, 1.2 million Jews will die. And the terrible and suicidal phrase of asking the mountains to fall on them etc. are a Jewish way of lamenting that death is preferable to the calamity that is upon us!
And so we see the First Century fulfillment of the passage. Indeed, those women who lamented him had little idea about how awful it would get for them and their children, for sin and rebellion, hatred and revenge, would have their way, and boil over like a cauldron. 70 AD would bring a bloodbath like the world had never seen until that time.
It does not take a genius to see that the Lord’s words are true for us in ugly and sickening ways. Our bloodbath is far worse that 70 AD. 55 million are dead from abortion in America alone since 1973. And add to that the 100 Million + who were killed in the last century alone for ideological purposes in two world wars, a cold war, and the pogroms and systematic starvation of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their successors.
Though we like to think ourselves civilized in comparison to previous centuries, our blood bath is far deeper than any age before. True, we murder our millions in less publicly brutal ways. We do not experience hoards of warriors descending from day to day on unsuspecting cities. Our brutality takes place in more hidden ways, out of sight if you will, in concentration camps, abortion “clinics”, killing fields, and remote locations away from cameras.
And the Lord Jesus, looking beyond 70 AD must have seen our times and had them in mind when he said to those women of old that they would see an enemy (Satan): dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.
Yes, Satan has deceived us with deceptions of power, distortions of freedom, and crushing lies of “choice.” 55 million dead in American alone since 1973, our children dashed to the ground.
Yes, said the Lord to those ancient women, in effect, “You think this is bad? The days are actually coming when things will be so bad and so dark that people will celebrate NOT having children, will celebrate barrenness.”
But the Lord does not stop there. He goes on to describe quite well the culture of death so literally lived out in our times: people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’
One may argue that this is just a Jewish way of speaking that indicates despair. Perhaps. But we live it out quite literally in our times, for it is the refrain of the culture of death. And what is the culture of death? It is the mentality that increasingly sees the death or non-existence of human beings as the “solution” to problems.
Yes, Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. (Matt 5:4). And who are those who mourn? They are those who see the awful state of God’s people, that God is not know to them, that they do not glorify God or even know why they were made, they are confused, deceived, and misled. And some, seeing this are mourning and weeping, they are led to prayer and action, to speaking out, and pointing once again to the light, from the dark places of times like these.
Mourn with Jesus, and pray for a miraculous conversion for times like these, times which seem eerily consistent with the dreadful things Jesus prophesied.
Crucifixion (Luke 23:32-35)
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| Diego Velázquez - Christ Crucified (1632) |
33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left.
34 [Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."]
35 They divided his garments by casting lots.
Luke 23:34 does not occur in the oldest papyrus manuscript of Luke and in other early Greek manuscripts and ancient versions of wide geographical distribution. This saying of Jesus on the cross is traditionally called "The Word of Forgiveness". It is theologically interpreted as Jesus' prayer for forgiveness for those who were crucifying him: the Roman soldiers, and apparently for all others who were involved in his crucifixion.
Jesus' crucifixion is described in all four Canonical gospels, attested to by other ancient sources, and is firmly established as an historical event confirmed by non-Christian sources.
According to Mark's Gospel, he endured the torment of crucifixion for some six hours from the third hour, at approximately 9 am, until his death at the ninth hour, corresponding to about 3 pm. The soldiers affixed a sign above his head stating "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" in three languages, divided his garments and cast lots for his seamless robe.
According to all four gospels, Jesus was brought to the "Place of a Skull" and crucified with two thieves, with the charge of claiming to be "King of the Jews",and the soldiers divided his clothes before he bowed his head and died.
An early non-Christian reference to the crucifixion of Jesus is likely to be Mara Bar-Serapion's letter to his son, written sometime after AD 73 but before the 3rd century AD. The letter includes no Christian themes and the author is presumed to be a pagan. The letter refers to the retributions that followed the unjust treatment of three wise men: Socrates, Pythagoras, and "the wise king" of the Jews. Some scholars see little doubt that the reference to the execution of the "king of the Jews" is about the crucifixion of Jesus.
In the Antiquities of the Jews (written about 93 AD) Jewish historian Josephus, stated (Ant 18.3) that Jesus was crucified by Pilate, writing that:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, ... He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles ... And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross ...
Calvary as an English name for the place is derived from the Latin word for skull (calvaria), which is used in the Vulgate translation of "place of a skull", the explanation given in all four Gospels of the Aramaic word Gûlgaltâ which was the name of the place where Jesus was crucified. The text does not indicate why it was so designated, but several theories have been put forward. One is that as a place of public execution, Calvary may have been strewn with the skulls of abandoned victims (which would be contrary to Jewish burial traditions, but not Roman). Another is that Calvary is named after a nearby cemetery (which is consistent with both of the proposed modern sites). A third is that the name was derived from the physical contour, which would be more consistent with the singular use of the word, i.e., the place of "a skull". While often referred to as "Mount Calvary", it was more likely a small hill or rocky knoll. The traditional site, inside what is now occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, has been attested since the 4th century.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Then they crucified him and divided his garments by casting lots for them to see what each should take (Mark 15:24)
By custom the execution squad claimed a right to the victim's belongings. Jesus' clothing probably consisted of an under and outer garment, a belt, sandals, and possibly a head covering. Their casting lots for Jesus' garments evokes Ps 22:
A company of evildoers encircle me;
they have pierced my hands and feet
I can count all my bones
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
and for my raiment they cast lots.
(Ps 22:16-18 RSV)
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (2012-02-15 General Audience):
The first prayer that Jesus addresses to the Father is one of intercession: He asks forgiveness for his executioners. With this, Jesus in person carries out what he had taught in the Sermon on the Mount when he said: " But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you " (Lk 6:27) and also promised to those who can forgive, "then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High" (v. 35). Now, from the cross, He not only forgives his executioners, but speaks directly to the Father interceding on their behalf.
This is attitude of Jesus' finds a moving 'imitation' in the story of the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr. Stephen, in fact, coming to an end, "knelt down and cried with a loud voice:" Lord, do not hold this sin against them". That said, he died "(Acts 7.60). It was his last word. The comparison of the prayer for forgiveness of Jesus and that of the martyr is significant. Stephen turns to the Risen Lord and calls for his murder - a gesture clearly defined by the expression "this sin" - is not imputed against those who stone him. Jesus addresses the Father on the cross and not only asks for forgiveness for his executioners, but also offers a reading of what is happening. In his words, in fact, the men who crucify him "know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). He gives that ignorance, "not knowing" as the reason for the request for forgiveness from the Father, for this ignorance leaves the way open to conversion, as is the case in the words that the centurion spoke at Jesus' death: "This man was innocent beyond doubt"(v. 47), he was the Son of God". It is a consolation for all times and for all men that the Lord, both for those who really did not know - the killers - and those who knew and condemned him, gives ignorance as the reason for asking for forgiveness – he sees it as a door that can open us up to repentance.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
The first of Jesus’ words from the Cross, spoken almost at the very moment when the act of crucifixion was being carried out, is a plea for the forgiveness of those who treat him thus: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). What the Lord had preached in the Sermon on the Mount, he now puts into practice. He knows no hatred. He does not call for revenge. He begs forgiveness for those who nail him to the Cross, and he justifies his plea by adding: “They know not what they do”.
This theme of “not knowing” returns in Saint Peter’s sermon in the Acts of the Apostles. He begins by reminding the crowd that had gathered after the healing of the lame man in the portico of Solomon that they had “denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer” to be granted to them (3:14). You “killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (3:15). After this painful reminder, which forms part of his Pentecost sermon and which cut his hearers to the heart (cf. 2:37), he continues: “Now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers” (3:17).
Once again, the theme of “not knowing” appears in one of Saint Paul’s autobiographical reflections. He recalls that he himself “formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted” Jesus; then he continues: “but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim 1:13). In view of his earlier self-assurance as a perfect disciple of the Law who knew and lived by the Scriptures, these are strong words; he who had studied under the best masters and who might reasonably have considered himself a real expert on the Scriptures, has to acknowledge, in retrospect, that he was ignorant. Yet his very ignorance is what saved him and made him fit for conversion and forgiveness. This combination of expert knowledge and deep ignorance certainly causes us to ponder. It reveals the whole problem of knowledge that remains self-sufficient and so does not arrive at Truth itself, which ought to transform man.
In a different way again, we encounter this same combination of knowledge and failure to understand in the story of the wise men from the East. The chief priests and scribes know exactly where the Messiah is to be born. But they do not recognize him. Despite their knowledge, they remain blind (cf. Mt 2:4-6).
Clearly this mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of material expertise and deep incomprehension, occurs in every period of history. For this reason, what Jesus says about ignorance, and the examples that can be found in the various passages from Scripture, is bound to be unsettling for the supposedly learned today. Are we not blind precisely as people with knowledge? Is it not on account of our knowledge that we are incapable of recognizing Truth itself, which tries to reach us through what we know? Do we not recoil from the pain of that heartrending Truth of which Peter spoke in his Pentecost sermon? Ignorance diminishes guilt, and it leaves open the path to conversion. But it does not simply excuse, because at the same time it reveals a deadening of the heart that resists the call of Truth.
All the more, then, it remains a source of comfort for all times and for all people that both in the case of those who genuinely did not know (his executioners) and in the case of those who did know (the people who condemned him), the Lord makes their ignorance the motive for his plea for forgiveness: he sees it as a door that can open us to conversion.
Jesus is mocked (Luke 23:35-38)
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| Carl Heinrich Bloch - Christ on the Cross (1870) |
36 Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him wine
37 they called out, "If you are King of the Jews, save yourself."
38 Above him there was an inscription that read, "This is the King of the Jews."
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Three groups of mockers are mentioned in the Gospel. The first are the passers-by. They remind the Lord of his words about the destruction of the Temple (Mk 15:29-30):
29 Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days,
30 save yourself by coming down from the cross."
By taunting the Lord in this way, the mockers express their contempt for his powerless state; they bring home to him once more how powerless he is. At the same time they try to lead him into temptation, as the devil himself had done: “Save yourself!” Exercise your power! They do not realize that at this very moment the destruction of the Temple is being accomplished and that the new Temple is rising up before them.
At the end of the Passion, as Jesus dies, the veil of the Temple is torn in two—so the Synoptics tell us—from top to bottom (Mt 27:51; Mk 15:38; Lk 23:45). Probably it is the inner of the two Temple veils that is meant here, the one that seals off the Holy of Holies from human access. Only once a year is it permitted for the high priest to pass through the veil, to enter the presence of the Most High, and to utter the Holy Name.
This veil, at the very moment of Jesus’ death, is torn in two from top to bottom. There are two things we learn from this: on the one hand, it becomes apparent that the era of the old Temple and its sacrifices is over. In place of symbols and rituals that point ahead to the future, the reality has now come, the crucified Jesus who reconciles us all with the Father. At the same time, though, the tearing of the Temple veil means that the pathway to God is now open. Previously God’s face had been concealed. Only in a symbolic way could the high priest once a year enter his presence. Now God himself has removed the veil and revealed himself in the crucified Jesus as the one who loves to the point of death. The pathway to God is open.
The second group of mockers consists of members of the Sanhedrin. Matthew mentions all three elements: priests, scribes, and elders. They formulate their mockery using language drawn from the Book of Wisdom, the second chapter of which tells of the just man who stands in the way of the wicked life of the others, who calls himself a son of God and is handed over to suffering (Wis 2:10-20). The members of the Sanhedrin, taking their cue from these words, now say of Jesus, the Crucified One (Mt 27:42-43):
41 Likewise the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him and said,
42 "He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.
43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he wants him. For he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"
Without realizing it, the mockers thereby acknowledge that Jesus is truly the one of whom the Book of Wisdom speaks. His situation of outward helplessness proves him to be the true Son of God (Wis 2:10-20):
12 Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, Reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training.
13 He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the LORD.
14 To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us,
15 Because his life is not like other men's, and different are his ways.
16 He judges us debased; he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure. He calls blest the destiny of the just and boasts that God is his Father.
17 Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him.
18 For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes.
19 With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience.
20 Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him."
We may add that the author of the Book of Wisdom could have been familiar with Plato’s speculations from his work on statecraft, in which he asks what would become of a perfectly just person in this world, and he comes to the conclusion that such a person would be crucified (The Republic II, 361e—362a). The Book of Wisdom may have taken up this idea from the philosopher and introduced it into the Old Testament, so that it now points directly to Jesus. It is in the mockery that the mystery of Jesus Christ is proved true. Just as he refused to be induced by the devil to throw himself down from the parapet of the Temple (Mt 4:5-7; Lk 4:9-13), so now he refuses to yield to a similar temptation. He knows that God will indeed deliver him, but not in the way these people imagine. The Resurrection will be the moment when God raises him from death and accredits him as Son.
The third group of mockers consists of the two men crucified alongside Jesus, to whom Matthew and Mark refer using the same word—lestes (robber)—that John uses for Barabbas. This clearly shows that they are regarded as resistance fighters, to whom the Romans, in order to criminalize them, simply attach the label “robber”. They are crucified with Jesus because they have been found guilty of the same crime: resistance to Roman power.
The offense attributed to Jesus, though, is of a different kind from that of the two “robbers”, who may have taken part in Barabbas’ uprising. Pilate is well aware that Jesus had nothing like that in mind, and so he adopts a particular formulation of Jesus’ “crime” in the charge that is placed above the Cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (Jn 19:19) (Latin INRI phrase 'Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum'). Up to this point, Jesus had avoided the title Messiah or king, or else he had immediately linked it with his suffering (cf. Mk 8:27-31) in order to prevent false interpretations. Now the title “king” can appear quite openly. In the three great languages of that time, Jesus is publicly proclaimed king.
It is understandable that the members of the Sanhedrin object to this title, in which Pilate clearly wants to express his cynicism toward the Jewish authorities and to take his revenge on them post factum. But this inscription now stands before world history, and it amounts to a proclamation of kingship. Jesus is “exalted”. The Cross is his throne, from which he draws the world to himself. From this place of total self-sacrifice, from this place of truly divine love, he reigns as the true king in his own way—a way that neither Pilate nor the members of the Sanhedrin had been able to comprehend.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
They gave him wine drugged with myrrh, but he did not take it (Mark 15:2l)
Those who gave Jesus wine drugged with myrrh were following a custom, based on Prov 31:6-7, of offering condemned criminals strong drink to lessen their torment. It was common to add myrrh to wine to enhance its fragrance and perhaps also its narcotic effects. But Jesus refuses this offer, in accord with his solemn pledge at the Last Supper: "I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25). He is resolved to endure the passion without any alleviation of pain. The only cup he will drink is the cup of suffering given him by the Father (10:38; 14:36).
It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him (Mark 15:25)
The inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews" (Mark 15:26)
In Roman executions, a placard specifying the crime would be hung around the condemned man's neck or affixed to the cross. In Jesus' case the charge reads simply, The King of the Jews. Pilate intends this phrase ironically, as another jab at the Jewish leaders who had brought the charge against Jesus (vv. 9, 12; see John 19:19-22). At the same time it serves as a warning to other would-be messianic pretenders. But for readers of the Gospel, the phrase is weighted with a profound truth. Jesus is indeed King of the Jews, and he is enthroned on the cross because it is there that he exercises his dominion over sin, Satan, and death. He reigns through the act of love in which he gave up his life, and those who believe in him experience his liberating kingship.
Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads and saying, "aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days (Mark 15:29)
save yourself by coming down from the cross" (Mark 15:30)
Likewise the chief priests, with the scribes, mocked him among themselves and said, "He saved others; he cannot save himself" (Mark 15:31)
Jesus' utter isolation is intensified by the threefold mockery he now endures, a replay of the earlier mockery by the Sanhedrin (14:65) and the Roman soldiers. The scoffers' shaking their heads evokes both the suffering just man of Ps 22:8-9 and the scorn heaped on Jerusalem after the destruction of the first temple: ''All who pass by ... hiss and wag their heads over daughter Jerusalem" (Lam 2:15; see Jer 18:16). Precisely by not coming down from the cross and saving himself Jesus is ushering in the end of the earthly temple and the building of a new temple on the cornerstone of his crucified and risen body.
Second, Jesus is railed at by the religious leaders who had orchestrated his death and who now come to gloat over their success. He saved others refers to Jesus' ministry of healing, which was regularly described with the verb sozo, meaning both "save" and "heal".
But readers of the Gospel recognize a deeper sense to these words: Jesus saves people from eternal death. The scoffers taunt that despite his reputed wonderworking powers he cannot save himself. Yet it is precisely by refusing to "save himself" that Jesus saves others. From the beginning of his public ministry he had irrevocably committed himself to the Father's plan for a suffering Messiah in total solidarity with sinners (1:9; 10:45; 14:36). Indeed Jesus cannot save himself if he is to be obedient to that plan. As he had instructed his disciples, so it is for him: whoever loses his life will save it (Mark 8:35). Only by surrendering to death will he be raised up to life by the Father. Only by giving his body and pouring out of his blood can he renew once and for all the covenant between God and humanity (Mark 14:22-24).
Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe:' Those who were crucified with him also kept abusing him (Mark 15:32).
The religious leaders intensify their derision with a demand for a miraculous sign, just as the Pharisees had done earlier (8:11). It is the final temptation of Jesus' life, the culmination of the testing that began with Satan in the desert (1:13). The temptation is to be a Messiah who gains adherents by stunning displays of power instead of by obediently accepting humiliation and defeat.
The title "King of the Jews" used up to this point has been changed to King of Israel, a broader scope of kingship. "Jews" refers to members of the tribe of Judah, which was essentially the only remaining tribe since the eighth century Be. "Israel" designates all twelve tribes, long scattered among the nations, whom God had promised to restore and regather to himself at the coming of the Messiah (Jer 31:1; Ezek 37:19-22).
Jesus experiences only scorn, rejection, and incomprehension from those he came to save. It is the culmination of the biblical theme of the just man abused and insulted by the wicked, who does not cease to trust God. The scene evokes the psalm: ''All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer; they shake their heads at me: 'You relied on the LORD-let him deliver you; if he loves you, let him rescue you'" (Ps 22:8-9).
Criminal Repentance (Luke 23:39-43)
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| Titian - Christ and the Good Thief (1566) |
40 The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation?
41 And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal."
42 Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
43 He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (2012-02-15 General audience):
The second prayer of Jesus on the cross as told by St. Luke is a word of hope, is His answer to the prayer of one of the two men crucified with Him. The good thief before Jesus returned to himself and repents, he feels himself to be before the Son of God, who reveals the Face of God, and prays: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (v. 42). The Lord's answer to this prayer goes far beyond the supplication, he says: " Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (v. 43). Jesus is aware of entering directly into communion with the Father and of reopening the path for the man to God’s paradise. So through this response gives the firm hope that the goodness of God can touch us even at the last moment of life and that sincere prayer, even after a life of wrong, meets the open arms of the good Father who awaits the return of his son.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Of the two men crucified with Jesus, only one joins in the mockery: the other grasps the mystery of Jesus. He knows and he sees that the nature of Jesus’ “offense” was quite different—that Jesus was nonviolent. And now he sees that this man crucified beside him truly makes the face of God visible, he is truly God’s Son. So he asks him: “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power” (Lk 23:42). What exactly the good thief understood by Jesus’ coming in his kingly power, and what he therefore meant by asking Jesus to remember him, we do not know. But clearly, while on the Cross, he realized that this powerless man was the true king—the one for whom Israel was waiting. Now he wanted to be at this man’s side not only on the Cross, but also in glory.
Jesus’ response goes beyond what is asked of him. Instead of an unspecified future, he speaks of that very day: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43). This too is a mysterious saying, but it shows us one thing for certain: Jesus knew he would enter directly into fellowship with the Father—that the promise of “Paradise” was something he could offer “today”. He knew he was leading mankind back to the Paradise from which it had fallen: into fellowship with God as man’s true salvation.
So in the history of Christian devotion, the good thief has become an image of hope—an image of the consoling certainty that God’s mercy can reach us even in our final moments, that even after a misspent life, the plea for his gracious favor is not made in vain. So, for example, the Dies Irae prays: “Qui . . . latronem exaudisti, mihi quoque spem dedisti” (just as you answered the prayer of the thief, so you have given me hope).
commentary by Pablo T. Gadenz, Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Trenton (NJ) :
Jesus, remember me. These words are brought to mind by a line from the eucharistic hymn Adoro te devote, attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas: “I ask for what the repentant thief asked” (Peto quod petivit latro paenitens). “Jesus, remember me.” What a beautiful short prayer! Each day and throughout the day we can ask Jesus for the many things we need, summing up our prayers of petition by asking Jesus to remember us, according to his mercy, remembering not our sins (Ps 25:7).
And, like the good thief, let us ask at the moment of our death: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
comments by Pope John Paul II (Homily Nov 1998):
“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”. This is the title put on the cross. Shortly before Christ’s death, one of the two condemned men crucified with him said to him: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”. What kingdom? The object of his request was certainly not an earthly kingdom but another one.
The good thief speaks as if he had heard the words exchanged earlier between Pilate and Christ. Indeed, it was before Pilate that Jesus had been accused of wanting to make himself king. Pilate had questioned him about this: “Are you the King of the Jews” (Jn 18:33). Christ had not denied it; he had explained: “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world” (Jn 18:36). Jesus had replied directly to Pilate’s repeated question as to whether he were a king: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (Jn 18:37).
Let's recall the earthly kingdom of Israel with the anointing of David as King. Yes, God had chosen Israel; he sent it not only prophets but even kings, when the Chosen People insisted on having an earthly ruler. Of all the kings who sat upon the throne of Israel, the greatest was David. When the first reading of this celebration speaks of that kingdom, it does so to recall that Jesus of Nazareth was of the line of King David, but also, and above all, to emphasize that the royalty proper to Christ is of a different kind.
The words which Mary heard at the Annunciation are significant: “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:32-33). This kingdom, then, is not only the earthly kingdom of David, which came to an end. It is the Kingdom of Christ, which will never end, the eternal Kingdom, the Kingdom of truth, of love and of eternal life.
The Good Thief crucified with Jesus came in some way to the heart of this truth. Indeed, in a certain sense he became a prophet of this eternal Kingdom when, hanging on the cross, he said: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42). Christ said in reply: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43).
To this Kingdom, which is not of this world, Jesus invited us to look when he taught us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come”. Obedient to his command, the Apostles, the disciples and the missionaries of all times have done their best to extend, through evangelization, the boundaries of this Kingdom. For it is both the gift of the Father (cf. Lk 12:32) and the result of man’s personal response. In the “new creation”, we will be able to enter into the Kingdom of the Father only if we have followed the Lord during our earthly pilgrimage (cf. Mt 19:28).
This, then, is the programme of every Christian: to follow the Lord, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, in order to possess the Kingdom which he has promised and given.
Apostle Paul explains the nature of the kingdom of which Jesus speaks. He writes to the Colossians: we must give thanks to God who “has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:13-14). It is precisely this forgiveness of sins which the good thief inherited on Calvary. He was the first to experience the fact that Christ is King, because he is the Redeemer.
The Apostle then explains what Christ’s kingship is: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col 1:15-17). Thus Christ is King above all as the first-born of all creation.
The Pauline text continues: “He is the head of the body, the Church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (ibid., 1:18-20). With these words the Apostle again confirms and justifies what he had revealed about the essence of Christ’s kingship: Christ is King as the first-born of the dead. In other words, as Redeemer of the world, the risen and crucified Christ is King of the new humanity.
On Calvary Jesus had a rather unusual companion in his passion, a thief. For this unhappy man the way of the cross became, infallibly, the way to paradise (cf. Lk 23:43), the way to truth and life, the way to the kingdom. Today we remember him as the “good thief”. On this solemn occasion when we gather round the altar of Christ to open a Synod concerned with an entire continent and its problems and hopes, we can make the “good thief's” prayer our own:
“Jesus, remember me, remember us, remember the peoples to whom the Pastors gathered here daily give the living and true bread of your Gospel, across immense spaces, by sea and by land. As we pray that your kingdom come, we see that your promise is becoming a reality: after following you, we come to you in your kingdom, drawn by you when you were lifted up on the Cross (cf. Jn 12:32); to you, lifted up over history and its centre, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end (cf. Rv 22:13), the Lord of time and the ages
We address you in the words of an ancient hymn:
It is through your sorrowful death, King of eternal glory,
that you obtained eternal life for the nations;
therefore the whole world calls you King of humanity.
Reign over us, Christ the Lord!”.
[Jesus’ cry of abandonment
Both Matthew and Mark recount that at the ninth hour Jesus called out in a loud voice:
Mt 27:46 And about three o'clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
They give the text of Jesus’ cry in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic and then translate it into Greek. This prayer of Jesus has prompted constant questioning and reflection among Christians: How could the Son of God be abandoned by God? What does this exclamation mean?
The community of the faithful, with hindsight recognized Jesus’ cry, misheard and misinterpreted by the bystanders, as the opening verse of Psalm 22, and on that basis they could understand it as a truly Messianic cry. It is no ordinary cry of abandonment. Jesus is praying the great psalm of suffering Israel, and so he is taking upon himself all the tribulation, not just of Israel, but of all those in this world who suffer from God’s concealment. He brings the world’s anguished cry at God’s absence before the heart of God himself. He identifies himself with suffering Israel, with all who suffer under “God’s darkness”; he takes their cry, their anguish, all their helplessness upon himself—and in so doing he transforms it.
This Psalm presents the figure of an innocent man, persecuted and surrounded by adversaries who clamour for his death; and he turns to God with a sorrowful lament which, in the certainty of his faith, opens mysteriously to praise. The anguishing reality of the present and the consoling memory of the past alternate in his prayer in an agonized awareness of his own desperate situation in which, however, he does not want to give up hope. His initial cry is an appeal addressed to a God who appears remote, who does not answer and seems to have abandoned him: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest” (Psalm 22 vv. 3-4).
God is silent and this silence pierces the soul of the person praying, who ceaselessly calls but receives no answer. Day and night succeed one another in an unflagging quest for a word, for help that does not come, God seems so distant, so forgetful, so absent. The prayer asks to be heard, to be answered, it begs for contact, seeks a relationship that can give comfort and salvation. But if God fails to respond, the cry of help is lost in the void and loneliness becomes unbearable.
Yet, in his cry, the praying man of our Psalm calls the Lord “my” God at least three times, in an extreme act of trust and faith. In spite of all appearances, the Psalmist cannot believe that his link with the Lord is totally broken and while he asks the reason for a presumed incomprehensible abandonment, he says that “his” God cannot forsake him.
The initial cry of the Psalm as recorded by the Gospels of Matthew and Mark expresses all the desolation of the Messiah, Son of God, who is facing the drama of death, a reality totally opposed to the Lord of life. Forsaken by almost all his followers, betrayed and denied by the disciples, surrounded by people who insult him, Jesus is under the crushing weight of a mission that was to pass through humiliation and annihilation. This is why he cried out to the Father, and his suffering took up the sorrowful words of the Psalm. Although Jesus’ anguished prayer retains its burden of unspeakable suffering, it unfolds to the certainty of glory. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”, the Risen Christ was to say to the disciples at Emmaus (Lk 24:26). In his passion, in obedience to the Father, the Lord Jesus passes through abandonment and death to reach life and to give it to all believers.
This initial cry of supplication in our Psalm 22[21] is followed in sorrowful contrast by the memory of the past, “In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you did deliver them. To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not disappointed” (Psalm 22 vv. 5-6). The God who appears today to be so remote to the Psalmist, is nonetheless the merciful Lord whom Israel experienced throughout its history. The People to whom the praying person belongs is the object of God’s love and can witness to his fidelity to him. Starting with the Patriarchs, then in Egypt and on the long pilgrimage through the wilderness, in the stay in the promised land in contact with aggressive and hostile peoples, to the night of the exile, the whole of biblical history is a history of a cry for help on the part of the People and of saving answers on the part of God.
God, however, cannot deny himself so here the prayer returns to describing the distressing plight of the praying person, to induce the Lord to have pity on him and to intervene, as he always had done in the past. The Psalmist describes himself as “a worm, and no man”, scorned by men, and despised by the people” (v. 7). He was mocked, people made grimaces at him, (cf. v. 8), and wounded in his faith itself. “He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (v. 9), they said.
Under the jeering blows of irony and contempt, it almost seems as though the persecuted man loses his own human features, like the suffering servant outlined in the Book of Isaiah (cf. 52:14; 53:2b-3). And like the oppressed righteous man in the Book of Wisdom (cf. 2:12-20), like Jesus on Calvary (cf. Mt 27:39-43), the Psalmist saw his own relationship with the Lord called into question in the cruel and sarcastic emphasis of what is causing him to suffer: God’s silence, his apparent absence. And yet God was present with an indisputable tenderness in the life of the person praying. The Psalmist reminds the Lord of this: “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you did keep me safe upon my mother’s breasts. Upon you was I cast from my birth” (vv. 10-11a).
The Lord is the God of life who brings the newborn child into the world and cares for him with a father’s affection. And though the memory of God’s fidelity in the history of the people has first been recalled, the praying person now re-evokes his own personal history of relations with the Lord, going back to the particularly significant moment of the beginning of his life. And here, despite the desolation of the present, the Psalmist recognizes a closeness and a divine love so radical that he can now exclaim, in a confession full of faith and generating hope: “and since my mother bore me you have been my God” (v. 11b).
The lament then becomes a heartfelt plea: “Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help” (v. 12). The only closeness that the Psalmist can perceive and that fills him with fear was that of his enemies. It is therefore necessary for God to make himself close and to help him, because enemies surround the praying man, they encircle him and were like strong bulls, like ravening and roaring lions (cf. vv. 13-14). Anguish alters his perception of the danger, magnifying it. The adversaries seem invincible, they become ferocious, dangerous animals, while the Psalmist is like a small worm, powerless and defenceless.
Yet these images used in the Psalm also serve to describe that when man becomes brutal and attacks his brother, something brutal within him takes the upper hand, he seems to lose any human likeness; violence always has something bestial about it and only God’s saving intervention can restore humanity to human beings.
Now, it seems to the Psalmist, the object of so much ferocious aggression, that he no longer has any way out and death begins to take possession of him: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint… my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws… they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots” (vv. 15, 16, 19). The disintegration of the body of the condemned man is described with the dramatic images that we encounter in the accounts of Christ’s passion, the unbearable parching thirst that torments the dying man that is echoed in Jesus’ request “I thirst” (cf. Jn 19:28), until we reach the definitive act of his tormentors, who, like the soldiers at the foot of the cross divide the clothes of the victim whom they consider already dead (cf. Mt 27:35; Mk 15:24; Lk 23:34; Jn 19:23-24).
Here then, impelling, once again comes the request for help: “But you, O Lord, be not far off! O you my help, hasten to my aid!... Save me” (vv. 20; 22a). This is a cry that opens the Heavens, because it proclaims a faith, a certainty that goes beyond all doubt, all darkness and all desolation. And the lament is transformed, it gives way to praise in the acceptance of salvation: “He has heard... I will tell of your name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you” (vv. 22c-23).
In this way the Psalm opens to thanksgiving, to the great final hymn that sweeps up the whole people, the Lord’s faithful, the liturgical assembly, the generations to come (cf. vv. 24-32). The Lord went to the rescue, he saved the poor man and showed his merciful face. Death and life are interwoven in an inseparable mystery and life triumphs, the God of salvation shows himself to be the undisputed Lord whom all the ends of the earth will praise and before whom all the families of the nations will bow down. It is the victory of faith which can transform death into the gift of life, the abyss of sorrow into a source of hope.
This Psalm has taken us to Golgotha, to the foot of the cross of Jesus, to relive his passion and to share the fruitful joy of the resurrection. Let us therefore allow ourselves to be invaded by the light of the paschal mystery even in God’s apparent absence, even in God’s silence, and, like the disciples of Emmaus, let us learn to discern the true reality beyond appearances, recognizing humiliation itself as the way to exaltation, and the cross as the full manifestation of life in earth. Thus, replacing in God the Father all our trust and hope, in every anxiety we will be able to pray to him with faith, and our cry of help will be transformed into a hymn of praise.
As we have seen, Psalm 22 pervades the whole Passion story and points beyond it. The public humiliation, the mockery and shaking of heads by the scoffers, the pain, the terrible thirst, the piercing of Jesus’ hands and feet, the casting of lots for his garments—the whole Passion is, as it were, anticipated in the psalm. Yet when Jesus utters the opening words of the psalm, the whole of this great prayer is essentially already present—including the certainty of an answer to prayer, to be revealed in the Resurrection, in the gathering of the “great assembly”, and in the poor having their fill (cf. vv. 24-26). The cry of extreme anguish is at the same time the certainty of an answer from God, the certainty of salvation—not only for Jesus himself, but for “many”. The Psalms are deeply personal prayers, formed while wrestling with God, yet at the same time they are uttered in union with all who suffer unjustly, with the whole of Israel, indeed with the whole of struggling humanity, and so these Psalms always span past, present, and future. They are prayed in the presence of suffering, and yet they already contain within themselves the gift of an answer to prayer, the gift of transformation.
On the basis of their belief in Christ, the Church Fathers took up and developed this fundamental theme, which modern scholarship calls “corporate personality”: in the Psalms, so Augustine tells us, Christ prays both as head and as body (cf., for example, En. in Ps. 60:1-2; 61:4; 85:1, 5). He prays as “head”, as the one who unites us all into a single common subject and incorporates us all into himself. And he prays as “body”, that is to say, all of our struggles, our voices, our anguish, and our hope are present in his praying. We ourselves are the ones praying this psalm, but now in a new way, in fellowship with Christ. And in him, past, present, and future are always united. Jesus’ suffering is a Messianic Passion. It is suffering in fellowship with us and for us, in a solidarity—born of love—that already includes redemption, the victory of love.
comments by Pope John Paul II (General Audience Nov 30, 1988):
According to the Synoptics, Jesus on the cross cried out aloud twice (cf. Mt 27:46, 50; Mk 15: 34, 37); but only Luke tells us what he said when he cried out the second time (cf. 23:46). The first cry expresses the depth and intensity of Jesus' suffering, his interior participation, his spirit of oblation, and perhaps also his prophetic-messianic understanding of his drama in the terms of a biblical psalm. Certainly the first cry manifests Jesus' feelings of desolation and abandonment with the first words of Psalm 22: "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Mk 15:34; cf. Mt 27:46).
Mark quotes the words in Aramaic. One may suppose that the cry appeared so characteristic that the witnesses who heard it, when later recounting the drama of Calvary, deemed it opportune to repeat the very words of Jesus in Aramaic. It was the language spoken by him and by the majority of his contemporary Israelites. They could have been relayed to Mark by Peter, as happened in the case of the word "Abba" (cf. Mk 14:36) in the prayer of Gethsemane.
The fact that Jesus, in his first cry, used the initial words of Psalm 22 is significant for various reasons. Jesus was accustomed to pray following the sacred texts of his people. There must have remained in his mind many of those words and phrases which particularly impressed him, because they expressed better man's need and anguish before God. In a certain way they alluded to the condition of the one who would have taken upon himself all our iniquity (cf. Is 53:11).
Therefore on Calvary it came natural to Jesus to make use of the psalmist's question to God when he felt completely worn out by suffering. But on Jesus' lips the "why" addressed to God was also more effective in expressing a pained bewilderment at that suffering which had no merely human explanation, but which was a mystery of which the Father alone possessed the key. Therefore, though arising from the memory of the Psalm read or recited in the synagogue, the question contained a theological significance in regard to the sacrifice whereby Christ, in full solidarity with sinful humanity, had to experience in himself abandonment by God. Under the influence of this tremendous interior experience, the dying Jesus found the energy to utter that cry!
In that experience, in that cry, in that "why" addressed to heaven, Jesus also established a new manner of solidarity with us who are so often moved to raise our eyes and words to heaven to express our complaint and even desperation.
In hearing Jesus crying out his "why," we learn indeed that those who suffer can utter this same cry, but with those same dispositions of filial trust and abandonment of which Jesus is the teacher and model. In the "why" of Jesus there is no feeling or resentment leading to rebellion or desperation. There is no semblance of a reproach to the Father, but the expression of the experience of weakness, of solitude, of abandonment to himself, made by Jesus in our place. Jesus thus became the first of the "smitten and afflicted," the first of the abandoned, the first of the desamparados (as the Spanish call them). At the same time, however, he tells us that the benign eye of Providence watches over all these poor children of Eve.
If Jesus felt abandoned by the Father, he knew however that that was not really so. He himself said, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30). Speaking of his future passion he said, "I am not alone, for the Father is with me" (Jn 16:32). Jesus had the clear vision of God and the certainty of his union with the Father dominant in his mind. But in the sphere bordering on the senses, and therefore more subject to the impressions, emotions and influences of the internal and external experiences of pain, Jesus' human soul was reduced to a wasteland. He no longer felt the presence of the Father, but he underwent the tragic experience of the most complete desolation.
Here one can sketch a summary of Jesus' psychological situation in relationship to God. The external events seemed to manifest the absence of the Father who permitted the crucifixion of his Son, though having at his disposal "legions of angels" (cf. Mt 26:53), without intervening to prevent his condemnation to death and execution. In Gethsemane Simon Peter had drawn a sword in Jesus' defense, but was immediately blocked by Jesus himself (cf. Jn 18:10 f.). In the praetorium Pilate had repeatedly tried wily maneuvers to save him (cf. Jn 18:31, 38 f.; 19:4-6, 12-15); but the Father was silent. That silence of God weighed on the dying Jesus as the heaviest pain of all, so much so that his enemies interpreted that silence as a sign of his reprobation: "He trusted in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, 'I am the Son of God'" (Mt 27:43).
In the sphere of feelings and affection this sense of the absence and abandonment by God was the most acute pain for the soul of Jesus who drew his strength and joy from union with the Father. This pain rendered all the other sufferings more intense. That lack of interior consolation was Jesus' greatest agony.
However, Jesus knew that by this ultimate phase of his sacrifice, reaching the intimate core of his being, he completed the work of reparation which was the purpose of his sacrifice for the expiation of sins. If sin is separation from God, Jesus had to experience in the crisis of his union with the Father a suffering proportionate to that separation.
On the other hand in quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, which he perhaps continued to recite mentally during the passion, Jesus did not forget the conclusion which becomes a hymn of liberation and an announcement of salvation granted to all by God. The experience of abandonment is therefore a passing pain which gives way to personal liberation and universal salvation. In Jesus' afflicted soul this perspective certainly nourished hope, all the more so since he had always presented his death as a passage to the resurrection as his true glorification. From this thought his soul took strength and joy in the knowledge that at the very height of the drama of the cross, the hour of victory was at hand.
A little later, however, perhaps under the influence of Psalm 22, which again came to the surface in his memory, Jesus uttered the words, "I thirst" (Jn 19:28).
It is easy to understand that these words of Jesus refer to physical thirst, to the great agony which is part of the pain of crucifixion, as the experts in these matters tells us. One may also add that in manifesting his thirst Jesus gave proof of humility, by expressing an elementary need, as anyone would have done. Also in this Jesus expressed his solidarity with all those, living or dying, healthy or sick, great or small, who are in need and ask at least for a cup of water (cf. Mt 10:42). For us it is good to think that any help given to one who is dying, is given to Jesus crucified!
However, we cannot ignore the evangelist's remark that Jesus uttered the words, "I thirst," "to fulfill the Scripture" (Jn 19:28). These words of Jesus have another dimension beyond the physico-psychological. Once again the reference is to Psalm 22: "My throat is dried up like baked clay, my tongue cleaves to my jaws; to the dust of death you have brought me down" (v. 16). Also in Psalm 69:22 we read: "In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."
The Psalmist's words treat of physical thirst, but on the lips of Jesus they enter into the messianic perspective of the suffering of the cross. In his thirst the dying Christ sought a drink quite different from water or vinegar, as when he asked the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar: "Give me to drink" (Jn 4:7). Physical thirst on that occasion was the symbol and the path to another thirst, that of the conversion of the Samaritan woman. On the cross, Jesus thirsted for a new humanity which should arise from his sacrifice in fulfillment of the Scriptures. For this reason the evangelist links Jesus' "cry of thirst" to the Scriptures. The thirst of the cross, on the lips of the dying Christ, is the ultimate expression of that desire of baptism to be received and of fire to be kindled on the earth, which had been manifested by him during his life. "I came to cast fire upon the earth and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Lk 12:49-50). Now that desire is about to be fulfilled. With those words Jesus confirmed the ardent love with which he desired to receive that supreme "baptism" to open to all of us the fountain of water which really quenches the thirst and saves (cf. Jn 4:13-14).
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Jesus' cry of abandonment is the climax of his progressive isolation throughout the passion narrative. He has been deserted by his friends, taunted by his enemies, insulted even by those crucified with him. He has been successively "handed over" by a disciple, by his own people, by humanity (represented by Pilate and the crowd), and now by God himself. It is the inexorable outcome of his stepping into the place of sinners at his baptism and his resolve to "drink the cup" of divine wrath. But there is a profound paradox in his cry. "My God" is the language of the covenant ("I will be your God, and you will be my people"), expressing the perfect human attitude of trust in God. Yet the agonized question, "Why have you abandoned me?" expresses the anguish felt by those accursed by God, who no longer belong to the covenant. Jesus experiences the full force of the alienation from God caused by sin, yet precisely there, in that extremity of forsakenness, he confesses his filial confidence in the Father. It is the antithesis of his scoffers' taunt, "save yourself;' for it is a decision to await salvation from God alone and not procure his own. The cross has become the place of God's
hidden triumph, where the covenant broken by humanity is reforged by the suffering Son of Man.
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The hours of darkness (Luke 23:44-47)
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| José Jiménez Aranda - Consumatum est (1888) |
45 because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle.
46 Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit"; and when he had said this he breathed his last.
47 The centurion who witnessed what had happened glorified God and said, "This man was innocent beyond doubt."
The Cathecism teaches us that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of "the righteous one, my Servant" as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin.
Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God's suffering Servant (Luke 22:35-37). After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles.
Man's sins, following on original sin, are punishable by death. By sending his own Son in the form of a slave, in the form of a fallen humanity, on account of sin, God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God".
For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous.". By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who "makes himself an offering for sin", when "he bore the sin of many", and who "shall make many to be accounted righteous", for "he shall bear their iniquities". Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.
He descended into hell:
The Apostles' Creed confesses in the same article Christ's descent into hell and his Resurrection from the dead on the third day, because in his Passover it was precisely out of the depths of death that he made life spring forth.
Jesus "descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens." (Eph 4:9-10)
By the expression "He descended into hell", the Apostles' Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil "who has the power of death" (Heb 2:14).
Our Lord offered the perfect sacrifice for all sin by dying on the cross, the redemptive act that touches all people of every time– past, present and future. He was then buried. During that time, He descended among the dead: His soul, separated from His body, joined the holy souls awaiting the Savior in the Land of the Dead.
The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection. This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ's descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there. Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. This hell was for both the good and the bad, the just and the unjust. It was the nether world, a region of darkness. In the later writings of the Old Testament, a clear distinction was made between where the good resided in hell versus where the bad were, the two being separated by an impassable abyss.
His descent among the dead brought to completion the proclamation of the Gospel and liberated those holy souls who had long awaited their Redeemer. The Gates of Heaven were now open, and these holy souls entered everlasting happiness enjoying the beatific vision.
Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." Jesus, "the Author of life", by dying destroyed "him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage."(Heb 2:14-15). Henceforth the risen Christ holds "the keys of Death and Hades", so that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Rev 1:18).
The Catechism highlights the importance of this event: “This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption”.
comments by Edward Sri, professor of theology and Scripture:
In Matthew 27:50-53 we find a further mysterious apocalyptic account:
50 But Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit.
51 And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split,
52 tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
53 And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
Several miraculous signs at Jesus’ death hint at the vindication of the crucified Messiah. The first involves the tearing of the veil of the sanctuary, probably the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the outer holy place. Matthew notes that the veil was torn from top to bottom, highlighting that this was God's action. At the moment Jesus dies, God tears the temple veil, signifying judgment on the temple and the Jewish leaders responsible for his death. God’s tearing down the curtain and leaving the innermost sanctuary exposed foreshadows the temple’s destruction in AD 70, which Jesus foretold in Matt 24. This divine act may also signify the opening of access to God’s presence for all people and the end of the sacrificial system, now replaced by Jesus’ death.
The sudden earthquake is a second apocalyptic event at Christ’s death. Earthquakes were associated with God’s activity in the world, especially his coming in judgment (Judg 5:4; 2 Sam 22:7-10; Ps 68:8-9; Joel 2:10).
The most mysterious apocalyptic occurrence is the opening of tombs (see Isa 26:19; Ezek 37:12-13) and many saints being raised, which for Matthew highlights how Jesus’ death makes the resurrection of others possible. The “many saints” refers to the righteous Jews who had fallen asleep, a metaphor for death (Dan 12:2). Matthew reports that they were raised from the dead and entered the holy city of Jerusalem, appearing to many. Matthew leaves many questions unanswered in his account of this extraordinary event: the identity of the saints, what kind of bodies they possessed, the duration of their stay in Jerusalem, what happened to them after their appearance. A few points of theological significance can be noted. First, Matthew notes they came out of their tombs after Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus, “the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18) and “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20), is the basis for their resurrection as well as ours. Matthew, however, mentions this extraordinary event in the context of the crucifixion scene in order to make the theological point that Jesus’ death imparts life to others.
Some scholars think these details are merely fictional means by which Matthew indicates the significance of Jesus’ death. Yet however mysterious this account may be, it is not the kind of story one would have invented, since there is no record of anyone in first-century Judaism expecting the Old Testament prophecies about resurrection to be fulfilled quite like this. For the Jews, resurrection involved not the rising of one or many, but the general resurrection of all God’s faithful people (see, e.g., Ezek 37; Dan 12:2). Matthew, therefore, would have had no reason to insert into his Gospel this surprising account about some faithful Jews being raised unless witnesses in Jerusalem actually reported the event (Matthew 27:53).
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (2012-02-15 General audience):
Some aspects of this narrative are different than the picture offered in Mark and Matthew. The three hours of darkness are not described in Mark, while Matthew they are connected with a different set of apocalyptic events, such as the earthquake, the opening of graves, the dead raised to life (cf. Mt 27.51-53). In Luke, the hours of darkness are caused by the eclipse of the sun, but at that moment is the veil of the temple is also torn. In this way Luke's account has two signs, in some way parallel, in heaven and in the temple. The sky loses its light, the land sinks, while in the temple, the place of God's presence, tears the veil that protects the shrine. The death of Jesus is explicitly characterized as a cosmic and liturgical event, in particular, it marks the beginning of a new worship in a temple not built by men, because it is the very Body of Jesus dead and risen, that brings together the people and they are joined in the Sacrament of his Body and his Blood.
The prayer of Jesus in this moment of suffering - "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" - is a loud cry of extreme and total trust in God. This prayer express the full awareness of not being abandoned. The opening invocation - "Father" - recalls his first declaration as a twelve year old boy. Then he remained for three days in the temple of Jerusalem, the veil of which is now torn. And when his parents had expressed their concern, he replied: " Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house "(Luke 2.49). From beginning to end, what completely determines the Jesus’s sentiments, his words, his actions, is His unique relationship with the Father. On the cross He also fully lives, in love, his filial relationship with God, which animates his prayer.
The words spoken by Jesus, after the invocation "Father," are taken from the expression of Psalm 31: "Into your hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. 31.6). These words, however, are not a simple quote, but rather show a firm decision: Jesus "delivers” himself to the Father in an act of total abandonment. These words are a prayer of 'custody', full of confidence in the love of God. The prayer of Jesus before his death is tragic as it is for every man, but at the same time, it is pervaded by the deep calm that comes from trust in the Father and the will abandon himself totally to Him. In Gethsemane, when he entered the final fight and intense prayer and was about to be "delivered into the hands of men" (Lk 9.44), his sweat became "like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:44). But his heart was fully obedient to the will of the Father, and "an angel from heaven" had come to comfort him (cf. Lk 22.42 to 43). Now, in his last moments, Jesus addresses the Father saying into which hands he really surrenders his whole life. Even before leaving for the journey to Jerusalem, Jesus had insisted with his disciples, " Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men." (Lk 9.44). Now, that life is about to leave him, he seals his final decision in prayer: Jesus allowed himself to be delivered "into the hands of men", but it is into the hands of the Father that He raises his spirit, so - as stated by the Evangelist John - it is finished, the supreme act of love is brought to an end, to the limit and beyond the limit.
The words of Jesus on the cross in the last moments of his earthly life offer challenging indications to our prayers, but also open them to a quiet confidence and a firm hope. Jesus by asking the Father to forgive those who are crucifying him, invites us to the difficult act of praying for those who do us wrong, who have damaged us, knowing always how to forgive, so the light of God may illuminate their hearts, inviting us, that is, to live in our prayers, the same attitude of mercy and love that God has towards us: "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our those who trespass against us," we say every day in the "Our Father." At the same time, Jesus in the final moment of death, by placing himself entirely in the hands of God the Father, communicates to us the certainty that, no matter how hard the trial, difficult the problem, heavy the suffering, we never fall from the hands of God, those hands that created us, support us and accompany us on the journey of life, because guided by an infinite and faithful love.
comments by Dr. Mary Healy, professor of Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit:
Jesus has taken upon himself and borne to the cross everyone of our sins. When he rose from the dead, sin and Satan were crushed. We are no longer under the reign of sin (Rom 5:21; 6:11)! In this way the cross, a gruesome instrument of death, has become the tree of life.
The cross is not only the means by which God reconciled humanity to himself two thousand years ago but also the means by which God works powerfully in our lives even now.
"it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20 RSV). We do not have to do this on our own, since God has given us the Holy Spirit to reveal the love he poured out on the cross and to kindle the fire of that love within us. For the eyes of faith, the cross-the whole paschal mystery of Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection-has also become the source of a living power.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
According to the account of the evangelists, Jesus died, praying, at the ninth hour, that is to say, around 3:00 P.M. Luke gives his final prayer as a line from Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46; Ps 31:5). In John’s account, Jesus’ last words are: “It is finished!” (19:30). In the Greek text, this word (tetélestai) points back to the very beginning of the Passion narrative, to the episode of the washing of the feet, which the evangelist introduces by observing that Jesus loved his own “to the end (télos)” (13:1). This “end”, this ne plus ultra of loving, is now attained in the moment of death. He has truly gone right to the end, to the very limit and even beyond that limit. He has accomplished the utter fullness of love—he has given himself.
The Synoptic Gospels explicitly portray Jesus’ death on the Cross as a cosmic and liturgical event: the sun is darkened, the veil of the Temple is torn in two, the earth quakes, the dead rise again.
Even more important than the cosmic sign is an act of faith: the Roman centurion—the commander of the execution squad—in his consternation over all that he sees taking place, acknowledges Jesus as God’s Son: “Truly, this man was the Son of God” (Mk 15:39). At the foot of the Cross, the Church of the Gentiles comes into being. Through the Cross, the Lord gathers people together to form the new community of the worldwide Church. Through the suffering Son, they recognize the true God.
While the Romans, as a deterrent, deliberately left victims of crucifixion hanging on the cross after they had died, Jewish law required them to be taken down on the same day (cf. Deut 21:22-23). Hence the execution squad had to hasten the victims’ death by breaking their legs. This applied also in the case of the crucifixion on Golgotha. The legs of the two “thieves” are broken. But then the soldiers see that Jesus is already dead. So they do not break his legs. Instead, one of them pierces Jesus’ right side—his heart—and “at once there came out blood and water” (Jn 19:34). It is the hour when the paschal lambs are being slaughtered. It was laid down that no bone of these lambs was to be broken (cf. Ex 12:46). Jesus appears here as the true Paschal Lamb, pure and whole.
So in this passage we may detect a tacit reference to the very beginning of Jesus’ story—to the hour when John the Baptist said: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). Those words, which were inevitably obscure at the time as a mysterious prophecy of things to come, are now a reality. Jesus is the Lamb chosen by God himself. On the Cross he takes upon himself the sins of the world, and he wipes them away.
Yet at the same time, there are echoes of Psalm 34, which says: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken” (vv. 19-20). The Lord, the just man, has suffered much, he has suffered everything, and yet God has kept guard over him: no bone of his has been broken.
Blood and water flowed from the pierced heart of Jesus. True to Zechariah’s prophecy, the Church in every century has looked upon this pierced heart and recognized therein the source of the blessings that are symbolized in blood and water. The prophecy prompts a search for a deeper understanding of what really happened there (John 19:32-36):
32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs,
34 but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.
35 An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may (come to) believe.
36 For this happened so that the scripture passage might be fulfilled: "Not a bone of it will be broken."
An initial step toward this understanding can be found in the First Letter of Saint John, which emphatically takes up the theme of the blood and water flowing from Jesus’ side: “This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree” (5:6-8).
What does the author mean by this insistence that Jesus came not with water only but also with blood? We may assume that he is alluding to a tendency to place all the emphasis on Jesus’ baptism while setting the Cross aside. And this probably also meant that only the word, the doctrine, the message was held to be important, but not “the flesh”, the living body of Christ that bled on the Cross; it probably meant an attempt to create a Christianity of thoughts and ideas, divorced from the reality of the flesh—sacrifice and sacrament.
In this double outpouring of blood and water, the Fathers saw an image of the two fundamental sacraments—Eucharist and Baptism—which spring forth from the Lord’s pierced side, from his heart. This is the new outpouring that creates the Church and renews mankind. Moreover, the opened side of the Lord asleep on the Cross prompted the Fathers to point to the creation of Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, and so in this outpouring of the sacraments they also recognized the birth of the Church: the creation of the new woman from the side of the new Adam.
The entombment of Christ by Joseph of Arimathea (Luke 23:48-56)
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| Domingo Valdivieso - The descent from the Cross (1864) |
49 but all his acquaintances stood at a distance, including the women who had followed him from Galilee and saw these events.
50 Now there was a virtuous and righteous man named Joseph who, though he was a member of the council,
51 had not consented to their plan of action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea and was awaiting the kingdom of God.
52 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
53 After he had taken the body down, he wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb in which no one had yet been buried.
54 It was the day of preparation, and the sabbath was about to begin.
55 The women who had come from Galilee with him followed behind, and when they had seen the tomb and the way in which his body was laid in it,
56 they returned and prepared spices and perfumed oils. Then they rested on the sabbath according to the commandment.
Christians interpret Joseph of Arimathea's role as fulfilling Isaiah's prediction that the grave of the "Suffering Servant" would be with a rich man (Isaiah 53:9), assuming that Isaiah meant Messiah. The prophecy in Isaiah chapter 53, is known as the "Man of Sorrows" passage:
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
As soon as he heard the news of Jesus' death, he "went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus". Pilate, reassured by a centurion that the death had taken place, allowed Joseph's request. Joseph immediately purchased fine linen (Mark 15:46) and proceeded to take the body of Jesus down from the cross. There, assisted by Nicodemus (a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin who according to the Gospel of John showed favour to Jesus), Joseph took the body and wrapped it in the fine linen and applied myrrh and aloes Nicodemus had brought (John 19:39). This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. Jesus' body then was conveyed to the place that had been prepared for Joseph's own body, a man-made cave hewn from rock in the garden of his house nearby. This was done speedily, "for the Sabbath was drawing on".
The gospel of Mark identifies three of the women among "also many other women who had come up with him" to Jerusalem: Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus had delivered from severe demonic possession (16:9; Luke 8:2), was from the village of Magdala on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses was probably a relative of Jesus' mother (see Mark 6:3), perhaps the wife of Clop as (John 19:25). Salome may be the woman Matthew identifies as mother of the sons of Zebedee (Matt 27:56). Mark concludes with a surprising comment implying that Jesus had as many women disciples as men. Their presence in his entourage is a sign of the dignity and esteem that Jesus accorded to women (see John 4:27).
First-century Jews typically buried their dead in family tombs dug out of the limestone hillsides or the ground. According to custom, the corpse would be placed on a shelf in an outer chamber of the tomb for about a year, until the flesh decomposed, The bones would then be collected and placed in an ossuary or bone box in an inner recess. Jesus' tomb, according to ancient tradition, was at a site less than two hundred feet from Golgotha, dug into the hillside just outside the western wall of the city. In the fourth century, when Christianity became legal, the Emperor Constantine built a magnificent basilica at the site, removing most of the hillside surrounding the tomb. Today the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the traditional sites of both the crucifixion and the resurrection, is the holy place most venerated by Christians of both East and West
Joseph of Arimathea is introduced as a distinguished member of the council (presumably the Sanhedrin). Mark does not indicate that he is a disciple of Jesus (but see Matt 27:57); he is simply a devout Jew longing for the fulfillment of God's promises. Normally the Romans would leave a crucified body to decay or be devoured by scavenging animals, so that the disgrace of execution would continue even after death. Thus it took courage for Joseph to approach Pilate requesting the body: he risked both the ire of the Sanhedrin who had condemned Jesus (Mark 14:64) and the danger of being associated with an enemy of the state. Joseph's deed of mercy is in the tradition of Jewish piety exemplified by Tobit, who also buried the dead at risk to himself (Tob 1:18-19; 2:8).
"Pilate is amazed that he was already dead" (Mark 15:44) , since victims often hung on a cross for days before expiring. Jesus' death after only six hours is an indication of the severity of the scourging and maltreatment he had already received (Mark 15:15-21). Pilate verifies the death by summoning the centurion who had witnessed it (Mark 15:39), the most truthful witness to Jesus in the Gospel so far. On the centurion's assurance he hands over the body (literally, corpse) to Joseph.
Only Mark notes that Joseph bought a cloth of linen, the fabric of the wealthy, in which to wrap the body. Joseph must have been a man of some means, who perhaps owned the nearby tomb (see Matt 27:60). The burial is apparently too hasty to allow for the customary anointing with spiced oils-but a woman had already lovingly done so just a few days before, in unconscious anticipation of Jesus' death. The burial again evokes the Suffering Servant, who was assigned a grave "with a rich man" (Isa 53:9 RSV). The stone rolled against the entrance to the tomb is for the sake of protecting the body from scavenging animals; it also emphasizes the finality of death.
comments by Pope Benedict XVI (JN):
Up to this point in the Gospels, we have encountered such people mainly among simple folk: Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna, and also the disciples, none of whom, while they came from a variety of cultural backgrounds and movements in Israel, actually belonged to the leading circles.
Now—after Jesus’ death—we meet two highly regarded representatives of the educated class of Israel who had not yet dared to profess their discipleship, but who nevertheless were blessed with the kind of simple heart that makes man capable of the truth (cf. Mt 10: 25-26).
Whereas the Romans would leave the corpses of crucifixion victims to the vultures, the Jews were anxious that they should be buried, and suitable places were assigned for this purpose by the authorities. Joseph’s request was therefore in keeping with normal Jewish practice. Mark says that Pilate was surprised to learn that Jesus was already dead and that he immediately inquired of the centurion whether it was true. Once Jesus’ death had been confirmed, he handed over Jesus’ body to Joseph.
Regarding the burial itself, the evangelists supply a number of important pieces of information. First, they emphasize that Joseph arranged for the Lord’s body to be laid in a new tomb that belonged to him, a tomb in which no one had yet been buried (Mt 27:60; Lk 23:53; Jn 19:41). Here we see a mark of respect for this dead person. Just as on “Palm Sunday” Jesus availed himself of a donkey on which no one had yet ridden (Mk 11:2), so now he is laid to rest in a new tomb.
Equally important is the indication that Joseph bought a linen cloth in which he wrapped the corpse. Whereas the Synoptics speak simply of a linen sheet in the singular, John uses the plural “linen cloths” (cf. 19:40) in keeping with Jewish burial customs—the Resurrection account will return to this matter in greater detail. The question of matching this description to the Turin Shroud need not detain us here; in any case, the shape of that relic can in principle be harmonized with both accounts.
Finally, John tells us that Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, “about a hundred pounds’ weight”. He continues: “They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews” (Jn 19:39-40). The quantity of balm is extraordinary and exceeds all normal proportions: this is a royal burial. If Jesus was manifested to us as high priest by the casting of lots for his robe, so now he is revealed to us as king by the manner of his burial: just when it seems that everything is finished, his glory mysteriously shines through.
The Synoptic Gospels tell us that some women observed the burial (Mt 27:61; Mk 15:47), and Luke reports that they were the ones “who had come with him from Galilee” (23:55). He adds: “then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments” (23:56). After the Sabbath rest, on the morning of the first day of the week, they would come to anoint the body of Jesus and thus to carry out the definitive burial. Anointing is an attempt to hold death at bay, to preserve the corpse from decomposition. And yet it is a vain effort: anointing can only maintain the dead person in death; it cannot restore him to life.
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