outspread beams like giants with outstretched arms, stood out against
the great sweep of the sweet spring sky. They threw no shadow, but they
were outlined by brilliant reflections from the sun. The beauty of the
world on that day in that hour was so great that tortures were
unthinkable; could they not, those wooden branches, blossom out with
field flowers, and be wreathed with garlands of tender green, hiding the
scaffold with verdure, in the shade of which reconciled and friendly
brothers might sit down?
But the Priests, the Scribes, the Pharisees, those who gloated over
suffering and over revenge, who had come there to satisfy their morbid
appetites with the spectacle of three deaths, were stamping with
impatience, and jeeringly hastening on the Romans.
The Centurion gave an order. Two soldiers approached Jesus and with
rapid, rough gestures removed all His clothes. The criminal condemned to
crucifixion must be entirely naked.
As soon as He was stripped, they passed two ropes under His armpits, and
hoisted Him up on the cross. Half-way up on the upright was a rough
wooden peg like a seat where the body was to find a precarious and
painful support. Another soldier leaned the ladder against one of the
arms of the cross, climbed up on it, hammer in hand, seized the hand
which had cured lepers and caressed little children’s hair, spread it
out on the wood and drove a nail into the middle of the palm. The nails
were long, and with a wide head so that they could be easily hammered.
The soldier struck a vigorous blow, which pierced the flesh at once, and
then another and a third so that the nail would hold firmly and so that
only the head would remain outside. A little blood spurted out from the
pierced hand upon the hammering hand, but the diligent workman paid no
attention to it, and continued to hammer away vigorously until his work
was properly done. Then he came down the ladder and did the same to the
other hand.
All the spectators had fallen silent, hoping to hear screams from the
condemned man. But Jesus was silent before His executioners as He had
been silent before His judges.
Now they turned their attention to the feet. This was work which could
be done standing on the ground, for the Roman crosses were set so low
that, if the bodies of the executed criminals were left on them too
long, prowling dogs and jackals could tear out their bowels and eat
them.
The soldier who was nailing Christ on the cross now lifted up His knees
so that the soles of His feet should be flat against the wood, and
taking the measure so that the iron nail should be long enough to go
through the instep, he pierced the first foot, and drove the nail home.
He did the same to the other foot, and at the end glanced up, still with
his hammer in his hand, to see if he had finished his work, and if
anything was lacking. He remembered the scroll which they had taken from
Jesus’ neck and flung down on the ground. He picked it up, climbed again
up the ladder, and with two nails fastened it on the upright of the
cross, above the thorn-crowned head.
Then he came down the ladder for the last time, threw away his hammer,
and looked to see if his companions had finished their work. The
thieves, too, were now in place and all three crosses had their
flesh-offerings. The soldiers could rest and divide the garments which
henceforth the men up there on the crosses needed no more. This was the
perquisite of the executioners and came to them by law. Four soldiers
had a right to Jesus’ clothes and they divided them into four parts.
This left the tunic, which was without seam, woven all in one piece. It
would be a sin to cut it, for after that it would be of no use to any
one; but one of them, an old gambler, took out his dice, threw them, and
the tunic was awarded by luck. From now on the only possession of the
King of the Jews was the thorns of His crown which, as a greater insult,
they had left on His head.
All was finished: the drops of blood fell slowly from His hands on the
ground and the blood from His feet reddened the cross. From now on He
was to flee no more; His blaspheming mouth was soon to be gaping in
agony, but it was to teach no more forever. The assassins might be
satisfied with themselves and with the foreign executioners. The
poisoner of the people, the enemy of the Temple and of business, was
fastened with four solid nails on the tree of ignominy. From that night
on the lords of Jerusalem could sleep more peacefully.
A clamor of demoniac laughter, of exultant exclamations, of ferocious
jests rose from the crowd about Golgotha. There He was, the bird of
ill-omen, nailed with outspread wings. The poor man, satisfied if He had
but a tunic, now was altogether naked; the vagabond, who had only a
stone on which to lay His head, now had a fine pillow of wood; the
impostor who deceived with His miracles, no longer had His hands free to
mold the clay which restored sight to the blind; the throne of the King
was a hard wooden peg; the hater of Jerusalem was hung up in sight of
the Holy City; the Master with so many disciples now had as companions
only two thieves who insulted Him, and four bored soldiers. “Call on the
Father now to save Thee, ask for a legion of angels to take Thee away
from there and disperse us with flaming swords. Then even we will
believe that Thou art the Christ, and we will fall down with our faces
in the dust to adore Thee.”
And some of the priests, shaking their heads, said: “Thou that
destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If
thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
This challenge recalls that of Satan in the desert. They, like Satan,
wished for a prodigy. They had asked so many times for a sign! “It would
be a fine sign if Thou couldst loosen the four nails and come down from
the cross, and if the power of the Father should flame out in the
Heavens destroying us as God-killers. But Thou seest well that the nails
are strong and are not loosened, and that no one appears to aid Thee
from heaven or from earth.”
The Scribes, the Elders, mocked Him in the same way, and so did even the
soldiers, although the affair was none of theirs, and even the thieves
also, suffering though they were in anguish with Him.
“He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel,
let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He
trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he will have him: ... for he
said, I am the Son of God.”
He had announced that He came to give life, but now He could not save
Himself from death! He had boasted that He was the Son of God, but God
did not move to save His firstborn from the scaffold. Therefore, He had
always lied; it was not true that He had ever saved any one. It was not
true that God was His Father, and if He had lied about that, He had lied
about everything, and deserved this fate. There was no need of proof,
but the proof was there so clear that all could see it, and their
consciences were perfectly at rest. If any miracle were possible, He
would no longer be crucified there to agonize; but the sky was empty and
the sun, God’s light, shone clearly that all men might see more clearly
the contractions of His face and the painful heaving of His chest.
“What a pity that the Romans do not allow our old punishment for
blasphemers, for it would have relieved us to have stoned Thee one by
one. Thus every one would have had his share of pleasure, taking aim at
the head with well-directed stones, and covering Thee with bruises,
clothing Thee in a tunic of stones. Once before when the adulteress was
brought before Thee we put down our stones, but to-day no one would be
backward, and Thou wouldst have paid for Thee and for her! The cross is
well enough, but how much less satisfying for the spectators! If only
these foreigners had permitted us to give a blow of the hammer on the
nails! Thou answerest not? Hast Thou no longer any desire to preach?
Canst Thou not come down? Why dost Thou not deign to convert us also? If
we ought to love Thee, show us first that God loves Thee enough to do a
great miracle to save Thee from death!”
But the divine Sacrifice was silent. The torture of the fever, which had
begun already, was not so terrible as those words of His brothers who
were crucifying Him a second time on the cross of their appalling
ignorance.
DISMAS
The thieves who had been crucified with Jesus had begun to be hostile to
Him in the street when He was liberated from the weight of His cross.
They felt aggrieved because no one thought of them; they were to die the
same death, but no one seemed to think of this; people abused Him, but
at least they recognized that He was there, they were all thinking about
Him, running along for His sake as if He had been alone. It was for Him
that all those people were following along—important people, educated
and wealthy—it was for Him that the women were weeping and that even the
Centurion was moved to pity. He was the King of the occasion, this
country cheat, and He drew every one’s attention as if He had really
been a King. Who knew, perhaps the wine with myrrh would never have been
offered to them, if He had not been so fastidious as to refuse it.
But one of them, when he heard the great words of his envied companion,
“Forgive them; for they know not what they do,” suddenly fell silent.
That prayer was so new for him, summoned him to emotions so foreign to
his nature and all his life, that it carried him back at one stroke to
his almost forgotten childhood, when he also was innocent, and when he
knew there was a God of whom one could ask for peace as poor men beg for
bread at the rich man’s door. But in no canticle could he remember
hearing any such prayer as this, so extraordinary, so paradoxical in the
mouth of one who was at that moment being killed. And yet those
impossible words found in the thief’s withered heart an echo of
something he would have liked to believe, above all at that moment when
he was about to appear before a Judge more awful than those of the
law-courts. This prayer of Jesus’ found an unexpected echo in his own
thought, a thought beyond his power to formulate or express, but which
now seemed to him luminous in the darkness of his fate. Had he really
known what he was doing? Had other men ever thought of him? Had they
ever done for him what they could to turn him from evil? Had there ever
been any one who really loved him? Had any one given him food when he
was hungry and a cloak when he was cold, and a friendly word when
suddenly temptations laid siege to his lonely and dissatisfied soul? If
he had had a little more bread and love, would he have committed the
actions which had brought him to Golgotha? Was he not also among those
who knew not what they do, distraught by poverty, abandoned among
ambushed passions? Were they not thieves like him, the Levites who
trafficked in the offerings of the faithful, the Pharisees who cheated
widows, the rich men, who by their usury drained dry the veins of the
poverty-stricken? Those were the men who had condemned him to death; but
what right had they to kill him if they had never done anything to save
him, and if they, too, were tainted with his guilt?
All these thoughts went through his distracted heart while he waited to
be fastened to the cross. The nearness of death—and what a death!—this
unheard-of prayer of the man who was not a thief, but who was suffering
the penalty of thieves, the hate which deformed the faces of the men who
had condemned him also, moved his poor, maimed soul, and inclined him to
emotions unfelt since his boyhood, to emotions the very name of which he
did not know, but which were very like to tenderness and repentance.
When they were all on the cross, the other thief, although suffering
terribly from his pierced hands and feet, began again to insult Jesus.
He also began to vomit out the challenge of the Jews, “If thou be
Christ, save thyself and us.”
If He were really the Son of God would He not have thought of freeing
also His companions in misery? Why was He not moved to compassion?
Hence, they were right, those men down there: He was a deceiver, a man
of no account, an execrated outcast. And the anger of the raging thief
was intensified by his fury over a lost hope, an abortive hope, an
impossible dream of miraculous salvation; but a despairing man hopes
even for the impossible, and this hope withdrawn seemed to him a
betrayal.
But the Good Thief who had been listening to him, and to the other
raging voices shrieking down below, now turned to his companion. “Dost
thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we
indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man
has done nothing amiss.”
The thief had passed from the doubt of his own blameworthiness to the
certainty of the innocence of that mysterious Pardoner at his side. “We
have committed deeds (he was not willing to call them crimes) which men
punish, but this man has done nothing amiss, and yet He is punished as
we are; why, therefore, insult Him? Hast thou no fear that God will
punish thee for having humiliated an innocent man?”
And he turned over in his mind what he had heard told about Jesus—only a
few things and those not at all clear to him—but he knew that Jesus had
spoken of a Kingdom of Peace and that He himself was to be at the head
of it. Then with impetuous faith as if he invoked the blood which fell
at the same moment from his criminal hands and from those guiltless
hands, he cried out these words, “Lord, remember me when thou comest
into thy kingdom.”
We have suffered together; wilt Thou not recognize the man who was
beside Thee on the cross, the only man who defended Thee when all were
attacking Thee?
And Jesus, who had answered no man, turned His head as well as He could
towards the pitying thief and answered him, “Verily I say unto thee,
To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
He could promise him nothing earthly: what would it have availed him to
be unnailed from the cross and to drag himself along the roads of the
earth a few years more, crippled and needy? And unlike the other thief
he had not asked to be saved from death: he had asked only to be
remembered after his death, if Jesus should return in glory. Jesus
instead of fleshly and uncertain life promised him the eternal life of
Paradise, and that without delay—“to-day.”
He had sinned; in the eyes of men, he had gravely sinned, he had taken
away from the rich a little of their riches, perhaps he had also stolen
a little from the poor, but for sinners ailing with an illness worse
than any bodily weakness, Jesus had always a tenderness of which He made
no show, but which He was never willing to hide. Had He not come to
bring back to the warmth of the stable the flock lost among the thorns
of the countryside? Were not the wicked already sufficiently punished
with their own wickedness? And those who thought themselves righteous,
were they not perhaps often more corrupt than the wicked they condemned?
Jesus does not pardon all men. That would be injustice, holier than the
injustice of the world, but still unjust. But a single motion of
repentance, a single word of regret is enough. The prayer of the thief
was enough to absolve him.
The Good Thief was Jesus’ last convert in His corporeal existence. He
was the last Disciple and at the same time the first of the martyrs, for
Peter’s Gospel tells us that when they heard his words, the Jews were
angered against him and demanded that his legs should not be broken, in
order that he might die in greater torment. The legs of crucified men
were broken out of mercy that their sufferings might end sooner; this
shortening of his torture was refused to him because he had defended
Christ and believed in Him: like his Master, he was forced to drink his
cup to the dregs.
We know nothing more of him; only his name preserved in an apocryphal
manuscript. The Church has received him among her saints because of this
promise of Christ, with the name of Dismas.
THE DARKNESS
Jesus’ breathing was more and more like the death-rattle. His chest
heaved with convulsive efforts to breathe; loud, painful pulses hammered
at His temples. His heart beat so rapidly and so violently that it shook
Him as if it would tear Him loose; the feverish thirst of crucified men
flamed all over His body, as if His blood had become a raging molten
fire in His veins. Stretched in that painful position, nailed to the
beams and not able to move, held up by His hands, which were lacerated
if He let Himself hang by them, but which, if He held them up, exhausted
His weak and worn-out frame, that young and divine body which had
suffered so many times because it contained too great a soul, was now a
funeral pyre of suffering where all the sufferings of the world burned
together.
As ancient writers admitted, crucifixion was the cruelest and blackest
of punishments. It gave the greatest torture for the longest time. If
tetanus set in, a merciful torpor hastened death; but there were men who
held out, suffering always more and more, until the second day after
crucifixion, and even longer. The thirst of their fever, the congestion
of their hearts, the rigidity of their veins, their cramped muscles, the
dizziness and terrible pains in the head, the ever-greater agony—all
these were not enough to make an end of them. But most men died at the
end of twelve hours.
The blood from the four wounds of Jesus had clotted about the
nail-heads, but every movement made fresh blood gush out, which fell
slowly along the cross and dripped upon the ground. His head drooped on
His weary neck; His eyes, those mortal eyes, whence God had looked out
upon the earth, were glazing over in the death stupor; and His livid
lips, parched with suffering and thirst, drawn by His painful breathing,
were withered by that last kiss, the poisonous kiss of Judas.
Thus died a God, who had cooled the blood of the feverish, had given the
water of life to the thirsty, who had raised up the dead from their
tombs, who had quickened the paralyzed, cast out demons from obsessed
souls, who had wept with the weeping, who, instead of punishing the
wicked, had made them to be born again into a new life, who had taught
with poetic words and proved by miracles that glorious aspiration—the
life of perfect love—which raging beasts sunk in stupor and in blood
would never have been capable of discovering for themselves. He had
healed wounds and they wounded all His perfect body; He had pardoned
evildoers, and evildoers nailed Him, an innocent man, between two
criminals; He had infinitely loved all men, even those unworthy of His
love, and hatred had nailed Him there where hatred punished and was
punished; He had been more righteous than righteousness and they had
wreaked upon Him the most iniquitous unrighteousness; He had called mean
souls to holiness and He had fallen into the hands of vilifiers and
demons. He had brought life, and in return they gave Him the most
ignominious death.
All this was necessary that men should learn again the road to the
earthly Paradise; that they should mount above drunken bestiality and
attain the exaltation of the saints; that they should be resurrected
from their sluggish folly which seems life and is death, to the
magnificence of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The mind may bow before the dreadful mystery of this necessity, but the
heart of men can never forget the price exacted as payment of our debts.
For nineteen hundred years, men born again in Christ, worthy to know
Christ, to love Christ, and to be loved by Him, have wept, at least once
in their lives, at the memory of that day and of that suffering. But all
our tears gathered together like a bitter sea do not compensate for one
of the drops which fell, red and heavy, on Golgotha.
A barbarous king of barbarians pronounced the most vigorous words ever
spoken by Christian lips about that blood. They were reading to Clovis
the story of the Passion, and the fierce King was sighing and weeping
when suddenly, no longer able to contain himself, clapping his hand to
the hilt of his sword, he cried out, “Oh, that I had been there with my
Franks!” Ingenuous words, words of a soldier and of a violent man,
opposed to Christ’s words, spoken to Peter among the olives, but words
beautiful with all the naïve beauty of a candid and virile love. For it
is not enough to weep over Christ who gave more than tears; we must
fight, fight in us everything that divides us from Christ, fight in our
midst all of Christ’s enemies.
For, although millions of men have since wept when thinking of that day,
on that Friday around the cross, all except the women were laughing, and
those men who laughed have left sons and grandsons, many of them
baptized, and they still laugh and their descendants will continue to
laugh until the day when One alone will be able to laugh. If weeping
cannot cancel that blood, what punishment can ever expiate that awful
laughter?
Look at them therefore once more, those who are laughing about the cross
where Jesus hangs pierced by the most agonizing pain. There they are,
clustered on the slopes of Golgotha, dehumanized by hate! Look at them
well, look them in the face, one by one; you will recognize them all,
for they are immortal.
See how they thrust out their twitching muzzles, their scrawny necks,
their noses humped and hooked, their rapacious eyes, gleaming under
their bristling eyebrows. See how hideous they are, branded with the
mark of Cain. Count them over well, for they are all there, just like
the men whom we now know, brothers of the men whom we meet every day in
our streets. Not one is missing.
In the front row there are the priests, with crammed paunches, with arid
hearts, with great hairy ears, with thick-lipped, gaping mouths, craters
of blasphemy. And elbow to elbow with them, the arrogant Scribes,
blear-eyed and scrofulous, their faces of an excremental yellow,
piecers-together of lies, belching out pus and ink. And the Epulones,
thrusting out before them the obscene heaviness of their stuffed
bellies, brutes who trade on hunger, who fatten on famines, who convert
into money the patience of the poor, the beauty of virgins, the sweat of
slaves. And the money-changers, expert in illicit traffic and in
oppression, who live to wrest unlawfully from others; and the knotty
lawyers skillful at turning the law against the innocent. And behind
these high pillars of society, there is the mob of cheating scullions,
of overbearing rascals, of foul-mouthed rogues, of whining beggars, of
filthy knaves, the lower dregs of the population, famished hounds who
eat under the tables and snarl between the legs of whoever does not give
them either a mouthful or a kick.
They are the eternal enemies of Christ—they who celebrated on that day
their infamous Saturnalia; and they have vomited out on Christ’s face
their poisonous saliva, the muddy lees of their souls. This miry dross
of humanity, foul and polluted, vomited out from their filthy hearts
their hatred for Him who was saving them; they howled against Him who
was forgiving them; they insulted Christ who was agonizing for them,
Christ who was dying for them. The antithesis of good and evil,
innocence and infamy, light and darkness, was never presented with such
a dramatic and utter contrast as on that irreparable day.
Nature itself seemed to wish to hide the horror of that sight: the sky,
which all the morning had been clear, suddenly grew dark. A thick cloud,
dark as though it came from the marshes of hell, rose above the hills
and little by little spread to every corner of the horizon. Black clouds
gathered about the sun, that sweet, clear April sun, which had warmed
the hands of the murderers, encircled it, laid siege to it, and finally
covered it with a thick curtain of darkness ... “and there was a
darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.”
LAMA SABACHTHANI
Many, alarmed by the falling of that mysterious darkness, fled away from
the Hill of the Skull, and went home, silenced. But not all; the air was
calm; no rain fell as yet, and in the obscurity, the three pallid bodies
shone out whitely; many of the spectators wished to sate themselves to
the very last on His agony; why go away from the theater until the
tragedy is finished to the last scream?