with the open sky as witness, what He thought of them, what God thought
of them, the definite truth about them. The day before, with His whip,
He had condemned the animal-sellers and money-changers. Now He was
dealing with the merchants of the Word, with the usurers of the Law,
with the swindlers of Truth. The condemnation of that day did not
exterminate them: with every generation such men spring up again,
innumerable, with new names; but their faces are stamped forever with
this condemnation wherever they are born and command.
THE DESCENDANTS OF CAIN
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Their sins could be
reduced to one, but that is the most poisonous, the least pardonable of
all sins: the sin against the Spirit, the sin against Truth, the
betrayal of Truth and Spirit, the laying waste of the only pure wealth
which the world possesses. Thieves steal perishable goods, assassins
kill the corruptible body, prostitutes sully flesh destined to
corruption; but the hypocrites, the Pharisees sully the Word of the
absolute, steal the promises of eternity, assassinate the soul.
Everything in them is pretense: their dress and their talk, their
teaching and their practice. What they say is contradicted by what they
do. Their inner life does not correspond to what they choose to show.
Secret swinishness gives the lie to their every claim. They are
hypocrites because they cover themselves with fringed mantles and with
wide phylacteries, to be seen in public places, and love to be called
“Master,” and all the time they have hidden the keys of knowledge and
have shut the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, and neither go in
themselves nor suffer others to enter. Hypocrites because they make long
prayers in public and devour the houses of widows, and take advantage of
the weak and the desolate. Hypocrites because they wash and clean the
outside of the platter and the cup, and inside they are full of rapine
and extortion. Hypocrites because they give their attention to minutiæ
of rites and purifications and have no care for greater things: they
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Hypocrites because they observe
the smallest commandments and do not obey the only one which is of
value: they pay punctually the tithe of mint and anise and cummin and
rue, but they have not justice, mercy and faith in their hearts.
Hypocrites because they build monuments to the prophets and garnish the
sepulchers of righteous men of old times, but persecute the righteous
men of to-day, and are preparing to kill the prophets. “Ye serpents, ye
generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
Wherefore, behold I sent unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes:
and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye
scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That
upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the
blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias,
whom ye slew between the temple, and the altar.”
They have accepted the inheritance of Cain. They are the descendants of
Cain. They kill brothers, execute saints, crucify prophets. And, like
Cain, God has stamped upon their faces a Sign—the mysterious sign of
immortality. They cannot be killed because theirs are the hands which
must kill. The fugitive fratricide was saved by this sign among early
men, and the murderous Pharisees will be saved through all the centuries
because God needs them for the high works of His justice which seems
foolishness and madness to the eyes of little-minded men. An eternal
decree, not revealed to most men, decrees death and the most atrocious
death to all who would be like God. But the simple man could never
assassinate a saint, nor even a sinner, a miraculous chrysalis of
potential sanctity. And the saint would no longer be a saint if he took
the life of another saint, the only brother given him by the Father. So
the indestructible race of the Pharisees was created for all centuries
and for all peoples, men who are never simple like children and who
never know the way of salvation, those who are not visibly sinners, but
who are from head to foot the incarnation of the ugliest sin, those who
wish to appear saints and who hate real saints. God has made them
fitting instruments of an appalling and necessary massacre, to play the
part of executioners of perfect men. Faithful to this command,
invulnerable as inhabitants of Hell, marked like Cain, immortal as
hypocrisy and cruelty, they have survived all the empires and all the
overthrows of empire. With different faces, with different garments,
with different rules and pretexts, they have covered the face of the
earth, stubborn and prolific, up to the present day. And when they have
not been able to kill with nails and with fire, with axes and with
knives, they have used tongue and pen with the utmost success.
Jesus, while He spoke to them in the great open courtyard crowded with
witnesses, knew that He spoke to His Judges, and to those who would be,
through intermediate persons, the real authors of His death. By speaking
out on this day, He justified His later silence before Caiaphas and
Pilate. He had condemned them and they would condemn Him; He had judged
them first and had nothing more to add when they wished to judge Him.
Images of death came to His lips as He described them to themselves:
vipers and tombs, treacherous black vipers, which as soon as you
approach them pour into your blood all the poison hidden in their fangs.
Whited sepulchers, fair without but within full of dead men’s bones and
all uncleanness.
The Pharisees who stood before Jesus, and all those who have
legitimately descended from them, are glad to hide themselves in the
shadow of the dead, to prepare their venom. Cold as a snake’s skin, as
the stone of a tomb, neither the heat of the sun, nor the warmth of
love, nor the fires of Hell can ever warm them. They know all the words
save one, the word of Life.
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves
which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of
them.” The only one aware of this was Jesus—and it was because of this
that He was not to remain more than two days in the sepulcher which they
were preparing for Him.
ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER
The Thirteen went down from the Temple to make their daily ascent to the
Mount of Olives. One of the Disciples (who could it have been?—perhaps
John, son of Salome, still rather childish and naïvely full of wonder at
what he saw? Or Judas Iscariot, with his respect for wealth?) said to
Jesus, “Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!”
The Master turned to look at the high walls faced with marble which the
ostentatious calculation of Herod had built up on the hill and said,
“Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone
upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
The admiring exclamation suddenly died. No one dared answer, but
perplexed and surprised, each of them continued to turn over in his mind
these words. Hard words for the ears of those carnal-minded Jews, for
the narrow hearts of those ambitious provincials. He whom they loved had
said in these last days many other hard words, hard to hear, hard to
understand, hard to believe. But they did not remember any other words
so hard as these. They knew that He was the Christ and that He was to
suffer and die, but they hoped that He would rise again at once in the
glorious victory of the new David, to give abundance to all Israel and
to award the greatest prizes and power to them, faithful to Him in the
dangerous wanderings of His poor days. But if the world was to be
commanded by Judea, Judea was to be commanded by Jerusalem, and the
seats of command were to be in the Temple of the great King. It was
occupied to-day by the faithless Sadducees, the hypocritical Pharisees,
the traitorous Scribes, but Christ was to drive them away to give their
places to His apostles. How then could the Temple be destroyed, splendid
memorial of the kingdom in the past; hoped-for rock of the new Kingdom?
This talk of stones was harder than a stone for Simon called the Rock
and for his companions. Had not John the Baptist said that God could
change the stones of the Jordan into sons of Abraham? Had not Satan said
that the Son of God could change the stones of the desert to loaves of
wheat bread? Had not Jesus Himself said while He was passing the walls
of Jerusalem that those very stones, in place of men, would have shouted
out greetings and sung hymns? And was it not He who had made the stones
fall from the hands of His enemies, the stones which they had taken up
to kill Him? And had He not made them fall from those who accused the
adulteress?
But the Disciples could not understand this talk about the stones of the
Temple. They could not and they would not understand that those great
massive stones, quarried out patiently from the mountains, drawn from
afar by oxen, squared and prepared by chisels and mallets, put one upon
another by masters of the art to make the most marvelous Temple of the
universe; that these stones, warm and brilliant in the sun, should be
torn apart once more and pulverized into ruins.
They had scarcely arrived at the Mount of Olives, and Christ had only
had time to sit down opposite to the Temple, when their curiosity burst
out:
“Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when
all these things shall be fulfilled?”
The answer was the discourse on the Last Things, the second Sermon on
the Mount. At the beginning of His work, He had explained how the soul
must be transformed to found the Kingdom; now at death’s door He taught
what the punishment of the stubborn would be and in what manner He would
come again.
This discourse, less understood than the other, and even more forgotten,
is not, as it is generally believed, the answer to one question only.
The Disciples had put two questions, “When shall these things be?” That
is, the ruin of the Temple; and “What shall be the signs of Thy coming?”
There are two answers to these two questions. Jesus first describes the
events which will precede the destruction of Jerusalem, and then He
describes the signs of His second appearance. The prophetic discourse,
although it is read all in one piece in the Gospels, had two parts. The
prophecies are two, quite distinct from each other; the first was
fulfilled before the end of Jesus’ generation, about forty years after
His death. The second has not yet been fulfilled, but perhaps before the
passing of our own generation the first signs will be seen.
SHEEP AND GOATS
Jesus knew the weakness of the Disciples, weakness of the spirit, and
perhaps also of the flesh, and He puts them on their guard against two
great perils: fraud and martyrdom.
“Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name,
saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. Then if any man shall say
unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For false
Christs and false prophets shall rise and shall shew signs and wonders,
to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. Go not after them, nor
follow them.”
But although they are to flee from the frauds of the false Messiahs,
they cannot escape the persecutions of the enemies of the real Christ.
“Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and
ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. But take heed to
yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the
synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and
kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. . . . Now the brother
shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and the
children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be
put to death. . . . And then shall many be offended, and shall betray
one another, and shall hate one another . . . and because iniquity shall
abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure to the
end, the same shall be saved.”
Then shall begin the signs of the imminent punishment, “And when ye
shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be ye not troubled: for such
things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall
rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be
earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles:
these are the beginnings of sorrow.”
These are the preliminary warnings: the order of the world shall be
disturbed, the world, peaceful at the time when Christ pronounced these
words, shall see man set against man, nation against nation, and the
earth itself soaked with blood shall rise against men; shall tremble
under their steps; shall cast down their houses; shall vomit out ashes,
as if it cast out from the mouth of its mountains all its dead, and
shall deny to the fratricides the food which ripens to gold every summer
in the fields.
Then when all this shall have come to pass, the punishment will come
upon those people who would not be born again in Christ, who did not
accept the Gospel; on the city which nailed its Lord upon Golgotha and
persecuted His witnesses.
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that
the desolation thereof is nigh. But when ye shall see the abomination of
desolation, spoken of by Daniel, the prophet, standing where it ought
not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judea
flee to the mountains: and let him that is on the housetop not go down
into the house, neither enter therein, to take anything out of his
house: And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take
up his garment. But woe to them that are with child, and to them who
give suck in those days! And pray ye that your flight be not in winter.
For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
beginning of creation which God created unto this time, neither shall
be. There shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this
people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led
away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of
the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
This is the end of the first prophecy. Jerusalem shall be taken and
destroyed and of the Temple, defiled by the abomination of desolation,
there shall remain not one stone upon another.
But Jesus has not said all, until now has not spoken of His second
coming.
“Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the
Gentiles be fulfilled.” What are these “tempi dei Gentili, tempora
nationum”? The words of the Greek texts express it with greater
precision than the other languages: they are the times adapted to,
fitting, and awaiting the Gentiles, that is, those in which the non-Jews
shall be converted to the Gospel, announced to the Jews before all
others. Therefore that real end shall not come until the Gospel has been
carried into all nations, until the Gentiles, the faithless ones, tread
down the city of Jerusalem. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be
preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall
the end come.”
The second coming of Christ from Heaven, the Parusia, will be the end of
this world and the beginning of the true world, the eternal kingdom. The
end of Judea was announced by signs human and terrestrial; this other
end will be preceded by signs divine and celestial. “The sun shall be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light. And the stars of heaven
shall fall. And upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the
sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for
looking after these things which are coming on the earth: for the powers
of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of
man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and
they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power
and great glory.”
For the end of Jerusalem only, the little earth was troubled; but for
this universal ending, Heaven itself is convulsed. In the great sudden
blackness only the roaring of water will be heard, and screams of
terror. It is the Day of the Lord, the day of God’s wrath described in
their times by Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Joel. “The day of the Lord
is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. A day
of darkness and of gloominess! The land is as the garden of Eden before
them, and behind them a desolate wilderness. The people shall be much
pained: all faces shall gather blackness. Therefore shall all hands be
faint and every man’s heart shall melt. And they shall be afraid: pangs
and sorrow shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman
that travaileth; they shall be amazed one at another. Behold the day of
the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land
desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the
stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their
light: the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their
host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a
falling fig from the fig tree.”
This is the day of the Father, day of blackness in the Heavens and of
terror on earth. But the day of the Son follows immediately after.
He does not appear this time hidden in a stable, but on high in Heaven,
no longer poor and wretched, but in power and splendor of glory. “And he
shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall
gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to
the other.” And when the celestial trumpets shall have awakened all
those sleeping in the tombs, the irrevocable division shall be made.
“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels
with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
“And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from, the goats:
“And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his
left.
“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed
of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world:
“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave
me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
“Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in
prison, and ye came unto me.
“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an
hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
“When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed
thee?
“Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you,
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
ye have done it unto me.
“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye
gave me no drink:
“I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not:
sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
“Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an
hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison,
and did not minister unto thee?
“Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as
ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous
into life eternal.”
Jesus, even in His glory as judge of the last Day, does not forget the
poor and unhappy whom He loved so greatly during His life on earth. He
wishes to appear as one of those “least” who hold out their hands at the
doors and on whom the “great” look down. On earth, in the time of
Tiberius, He was the man who was hungering for bread and love, thirsting
for water and martyrdom, who was like a stranger in His own country, not
recognized by His own brothers, who stripped Himself to clothe those
shaking with cold, who was sick with sorrow and suffering and no one
comforted Him, who was imprisoned in the base prison of human flesh, in
the narrow prison of earthly life. He was divinely hungering for souls,
thirsting for faith, He was the stranger come from the ineffable
fatherland, defenseless before whips and insults, the Man sick with the
holy madness of love. But on that great Day of final Judgment, He will
not be thinking of Himself, as He did not think of Himself when He was a
man among men.
The code of this dividing of good from evil men will be based on one
idea only: Compassion—Charity. During all the time which lies between
His first and second coming He has gone on living under the appearance
of the poor and the pilgrims, of the sick and persecuted, of wanderers
and slaves. And on the Last Day He pays His debts. Mercy shown to those
“least” was shown to Him, and He will reward that mercy in the name of
all. Only those who did not receive Him when He appeared in the
innumerable bodies of the poverty-stricken will be condemned to eternal
punishment, because when they drove away the unfortunate they drove away
God. When they refused bread, water and a garment to the poor man, they
condemned the Son of God to cold, thirst and hunger. The Father had no
need of your help, for all is His and He loves you even during the
moments when you curse Him. But you must love the Father in the persons
of His children. And those who did not quench the thirst of the thirsty
will themselves thirst for all eternity; those who did not warm the
naked man will suffer in fire for all eternity; those who did not
comfort the prisoner will be prisoners of Hell forever; those who did
not receive the stranger will never be received in Heaven, and those who
did not help the fever-stricken patient will shiver in the spasms of
everlasting fever.
The Great Poor Man in the day of His glory will, as justice dictates,
reward every one with His infinite riches. He who has given a little
life to the poor will have life forever; he who has left the poor in
pain will himself be in pain forever. And then the bare sky will be
peopled with other more powerful suns, with stars flaming more brightly
in the heavens and there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth, and the
Chosen will live not as we live now, like beasts, but in the likeness of
angels.
WORDS WHICH SHALL NOT PASS AWAY
But when shall these things come to pass? These are the signs, this is
the manner in which it shall happen. But the time? Shall we be still
here, we who are now under the light of the sun? Or shall the
grandchildren of our grandchildren see these events while we are dust
and ashes under the earth?
Up to the very last, the Twelve understand as little as twelve stones.
They have the truth before them and they do not see it: they have the
Light in their midst and the Light does not reach them. If only they had
been among stones like diamonds which send back, divided into reflected
rays, the light which strikes them. But these twelve men are rough
stones, scarcely dug out of the darkness of the quarry, dull stones,
opaque stones, stones which the sun can warm but not kindle, stones
which are lighted from without but do not reflect the splendor. They
have not yet understood that Jesus is not a common diviner, a student of
the Chaldeans and of the Etruscans, and that He has nothing to do with
the presumptuous pretensions of astrology. They have not understood that
a definitely dated prophecy would not work on men to create a conversion
which needs perpetual vigilance. Perhaps they have not even understood
that the Apocalyptic sayings revealed on the Mount of Olives form a
double prophecy which refers to two events, different and distant from
each other. Perhaps these provincial fishermen, for whom a lake was the
sea and Judea was the universe, confused the end of the Hebrew people
with the end of the human race, the punishment of Jerusalem with the
second coming of Christ.
But the discourse of Jesus, although it is presented as one unit in the
synoptic Gospels, shows us two distinct prophecies.