“EARLY in the morning of this day, Jesus sets out for Jerusalem, leaving Mary His Mother, and the two sisters Martha and Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus, at Bethania. The Mother of sorrows trembles at seeing her Son thus expose Himself to danger, for His enemies are bent upon His destruction; but it is not death, it is triumph, that Jesus is to receive today in Jerusalem. (more…)
FROM the 1977 British TV series, Jesus of Nazareth, noted for the outstanding performance of actor Robert Powell, who played Jesus. The series can be seen in full here.
From Fr. Edward Leen’s book, Why the Cross? :
On the morning of the Sunday in the last week of His mortal life, Jesus entered Jerusalem amidst the enthusiastic acclamations of a multitude composed of citizens and strangers. His malignant enemies saw their snarling protests drowned in the tumult of rejoicing. They felt themselves to be like straws tossed helplessly on the swelling tide of popular favour on which the Nazarene was borne triumphantly. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves : ‘Do you see that we prevail nothing? Behold the whole world is gone after him.’ And yet, five days later, Jesus was hurried through the streets of the city of His triumph amidst the execrations of the multitude and the silent dismay of His friends. Such a sudden reversal in the fortunes of the prophet of Nazareth baffles human reason. Some explanation might be furnished by the ordinary laws of mob psychology, but the explanation is far from satisfying and, to a mind approaching the problem without prejudice, appears wholly inadequate.
[…]
Much has been made of the supposed devotedness of great numbers of the simple country people to the cause of the Saviour. The entry into Jerusalem is pointed to as the occasion on which this enthusiastic devotion overbore all opposition and had a free course. The mood of the populace is supposed to have undergone a complete change in the course of a few days, owing to the machinations and the skilful propaganda of the priests. It is undeniable that the Nazarene had some sincere and devoted followers, but they must have been comparatively few in numbers. They did not constitute the great throng that went out at the city gates, on the morning of Sunday, to welcome Him with loud acclamations and the waving of palms. (more…)
“COULD we live if God should us our real selves? We have need to be immortal before our hour of judgement comes.”
— Fr. Frederick William Faber, At the Foot of the Cross
EUROPEANS can be so arrogant in their holier-than-thou postmodernism, it’s hard sometimes to feel they deserve anything less than the destruction of their homelands.
See Koen Dejonghe’s version of the Stabat Mater for a case in point. Perhaps he himself is not truly European, I don’t know. I suspect he is not, but his audience is.
Stupid, ugly blasphemy — in a way only liberal, materialistic Europeans can delight in.
STABAT MATER
At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last.
Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
All His bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword has passed.
O, how sad and sore distressed
Was that mother highly blessed,
Of the sole begotten One!
Christ above in torment hangs.
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying glorious Son.
STABAT MATER
At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last.
Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
All His bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword has passed.
O, how sad and sore distressed
Was that mother highly blessed,
Of the sole begotten One!
Christ above in torment hangs.
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying glorious Son.
STABAT MATER.
At the Cross her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last.
Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
All His bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword has passed.
O, how sad and sore distressed
Was that mother highly blessed,
Of the sole begotten One!
Christ above in torment hangs.
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying glorious Son.
“THE house of sorrow is always a house of love. This is what takes place in us regarding Mary’s dolors. One of the thousand ends of the Incarnation was God’s condescending to meet and gratify the weakness of humanity, forever falling into idolatry because it was so hard to be always looking upwards, always gazing fixedly into inaccessible furnaces of light. So are Mary’s dolors to her grandeurs. The new strength of faith and devotion, which we have gained in contemplating her celestial splendors, furnishes us with new capabilities of loving; and all our loves, the new and the old as well, rally round her in her agony at the foot of the Cross of Jesus. Love for her grows quickest there. It is our birthplace. We became her children there. She suffered all that because of us. Sinlessness is not common to our Mother and to us. But sorrow is. It is the one thing we share, the one common thing betwixt us. We will sit with her therefore, and sorrow with her, and grow more full of love, not forgetting her grandeurs,— Oh surely never! — but pressing to our hearts with fondest predilection the memory of her exceeding martyrdom.”
— Fr. Frederick William Faber, The Foot of the Cross, p. 85
“WHEN God imposes a cross upon a just person, he may be sure that it is a blessing to him. It may be painful at times, but the pain purifies, enriches, and sanctifies the sufferer. Heaven requires purity of soul, and the cross purifies. Jesus says ‘He that taketh not up his cross and followith Me is not worthy of Me.‘ (Math. x. — 38) Let us then carry our crosses, ever obeying the will of our divine Redeemer.”
— Rev. B.J. Raycroft, A.M., Sermons on the Stations of the Cross, Imp. 1901
“AS we see but one side of the moon, so we see but one side of God: and what can we know of what we do not see? There is no end to the variety of the disclosures of His goodness, the inventions of His compassion, and the strangeness of His yearning over His own creatures. He has striven to fix our gaze upon these, but we will not have it so. We are busiest with what He wishes us to think least of. And we neglect to ponder all those numberless signs of our Heavenly Father’s love, which are personal things between Him and ourselves; positive and sensible touches of His unutterable affection.”
— Fr. Frederick Faber, All for Jesus, or the Easy Ways of Divine Love
The Boy Martyr of Norwich
Far in the thickest wood the fair lad lies
A rosy radiance plays around his head
Tall trees rise black upon the midnight skies
Save where a silver beam reveals the dead.
Magnificat he sang at evensong
And then when music hushed and lamps were low
Alone he homeward went nor dreamed of wrong
And in the still moonlight with footsteps slow
From a dark entry sprang a Jewish horde
Like fiends around the gentle boy they stood
And, as in ages dim they slew his Lord,
Nailed to a cross his white limbs stained with blood.
But God’s sweet Mother grants him strength to bear
That fadeless diadem which martyrs wear.
—- Frederick Rolfe (1899)
THIS modern poem about St. William of Norwich commemorates a twelfth-century, English saint whose feast day is today.
According to Rev. Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints:
“He suffered in the twelfth year of his age . . . a little before Easter, in 1137, the Jews of that city seized and gagged him: then they bound, mocked and crucified him, in derision of Christ: they also pierced his left side.”
Let me invoke the Catholic practice of praying for the intercession of the saint of the day with a prayer of my own:
“THE Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high and low, will become so perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper until she will seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the other Apostles to have expired.”
— St. Nicholas of Flüe, d. 1487
“IT IS clear that the Gospel is the gradual revelation of the Cross as the key to the riddle of existence. The Cross, not stoically submitted to as an instrument of torture, but bravely accepted as an instrument of healing, destroys the obstacles that lie between man and his happiness. Salvation, in its finality, consists in the destruction of these obstacles. To be happy is to see God.”
— Fr. Edward Leen, “Why the Cross?“
“THIS is a great day, not only to man, but even to God Himself; for it is the anniversary of the most solemn event that time has ever witnessed. On this day, the Divine Word, by which the Father created the world, was made flesh in the womb of a Virgin, and dwelt among us (St. John. i. 14). We must spend it in joy. Whilst we adore the Son of God who humbled himself by thus becoming Man, let us give thanks to the Father, who so loved the world, as to give his Only Begotten Son (3 Ibid. iii. 16.); let us give thanks to the Holy Ghost, Whose almighty power achieves the great mystery. We are in the very midst of Lent, and yet the ineffable joys of Christmas are upon us: our Emmanuel is conceived on this day, and, nine months hence, will be born in Bethlehem, and the Angels will invite us to come and honour the sweet Babe.”
— Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Feast of the Annunciation
Garbiel’s Message
The angel Gabriel from heaven came
His wings as drifted snow his eyes as flame
“All hail” said he “thou lowly maiden Mary,
Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!
“For known a blessed mother thou shalt be,
All generations laud and honor thee,
Thy Son shall be Emanuel, by seers foretold
Most highly favored lady,” Gloria! (more…)
IN Ancient Rome, crucifixion was a punishment generally reserved for slaves, pirates, and those guilty of serious treason or military desertion.
Only rarely was a Roman citizen crucified, and Cicero strongly declaimed against any such thing. Crucifixion was the ultimate humiliation — and thus unworthy of a Roman. In his book, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World, John Granger Cook assembled references to crucifixion in ancient archives. He shows, against criticism of new skeptics, that it was an approved practice by Roman authorities, possibly having been copied from Carthaginians. (It is still used in some parts of the world, more than 15 centuries after Constantine banned the practice in the West.)
To be exposed to the elements, usually naked and affixed by nails or ropes to a cross- or T-shaped post, after being beaten severely, all conducted in a public place in view of anyone who cared to look — here was a death sentence that came with a powerful message: The government is almighty and is prepared to dehumanize anyone who rises against it. The same spirit animated the institution of mass slavery, the gladiatorial games and mass slaughters committed by Romans in conquered territories.
Death often came slowly for the crucified. (That’s why Pontius Pilate expressed surprise when Jesus succumbed in three hours.) Crucifixion was not just execution; it was drawn-out torture.
Though Pilate was reluctant to execute Jesus — seven times he tried to persuade his accusers against it — the quintessentially Roman practice claimed Him and for all time, the manner in which Jesus was crucified is a testament to God’s implacable enmity to the state that rules without Him and that treats the lowly as worthless animals.
Though secondary to the message of redemption, it has perhaps especial meaning for our times.