protagonist would break by some word His groaning death-rattle. Christ’s
sufferings constantly became more intolerable. His body, sensitive and
delicate by nature, exhausted by the tension of these last days,
convulsed by the struggle of the last night, worn out by the tortures of
the last hours, could endure no more. And His spirit suffered even more
than the tortured body which still for a short time was its prison. It
seemed to Him that His divinely youthful soul had become suddenly aged,
and that He was old beyond memory. Everything seemed far-distant from
Him, the companions of His happy days, the confidants of His tenderness,
the poor who looked lovingly at Him, the children whose heads He had
caressed, the healed men and women who could not bring themselves to
leave Him, His Disciples for whom He had created a new soul—they were
all far away. Close to Him there were only a gang of cannibals,
possessed by the devil, eager for Him to die.
Only the women had not deserted Him. On one side at some distance from
the cross, through fear of the howling men, Mary, His mother, Mary
Magdalene, Mary of Cleofa, Salome, mother of James and John—and perhaps
also Joanna of Cusa, and Martha—were present, terrified witnesses of His
death. He still had the strength to confide to John, the dearest and
most sacred inheritance which He left on earth—the Virgin of Sorrows.
But after this, through the veil of His suffering, He saw no one and
believed Himself alone with death, as He had ever been alone at the most
solemn moments of His life. Even the Father seemed suddenly remote,
inexplicably absent. Where was that loving Father to whom He was wont to
speak, sure that He would be answered, would be helped? Why did the
Father not help Him, give some sign of His presence, or at least show
Jesus the mercy of calling Him to God without cruel delay?
And then there was heard in the thick air, in the silence of the
darkness, these words, “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?” that is to say: “My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
This was the first verse of a psalm which He had repeated to Himself
many times because He had found there so many presages of His life and
of His death. He no longer had the strength to cry it all aloud as He
had in the desert, but now into His troubled spirit those sorrowing
invocations came back one by one, “My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of
my roaring?... Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted and thou didst
deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: ... but I am a
worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All
that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the
head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him
deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. But thou art he that took me
out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s
breasts. Be not far from me: for trouble is near; for there is none to
help. Many bulls have compassed me: ... they gaped upon me with their
mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in
the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd: and my
tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of
death. For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet ... they look and stare
upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my
vesture. But be thou not far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee
to help me.”
The supplications of this prophetic psalm, which recall so closely the
Man of Sorrows of Isaiah, rose from the wounded heart of the crucified
Man as the last expression of His dying humanity. But certain of the
brutes nearest to the cross thought that He was calling Elias, the
immortal prophet, who in the popular imagination was to appear with
Christ. “Behold, He calleth Elias.”
One of the soldiers now took a sponge, soaked it in vinegar, put it on a
reed and held it to the lips of Christ. But the Jews said, “Let alone;
let us see whether Elias will come to take him down.”
The legionary, not wishing to make trouble, laid down the reed. But
after a little—and the time seemed infinitely long in that darkness, in
that suspense, that painful tension—Christ’s voice came down as if from
a great distance, “I thirst.”
The soldier took up the sponge again, dipped it once more in the vessel
full of the mixture of water and vinegar and once more held it to the
parched mouth which had prayed for his forgiveness. And Jesus when He
had taken the vinegar said, “It is finished.”
Christ, who had satisfied so many times the thirst of others, and who
left in the world an ever-springing fountain of life, where the weary
find strength, the corrupt find their youth, and the restless find
peace, Christ had always suffered with an unsatisfied thirst for love.
And even now in the terrible burning of His fever, His thirst was not
for water but for a pitying word which would break the oppression of His
desolate solitude. Instead of the pure water of the Galilean brooks,
instead of the heart-warming wine of the Last Supper, the Roman soldier
gave Him a little of his acid drink, but the prompt and kindly act of
that obscure slave quenched His thirst, because, although reeling in the
darkness of death, He felt that a human heart had pitied His heart.
If a stranger who had never seen Him before that day had done this,
although so small a thing, through compassion for Him, it was a sign
that the Father had not abandoned Him. The cup was finished: all the
bitterness was drunk. Eternity began. With His last strength He cried
with a loud voice in the darkness: “Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit!”
I called Thee because it seemed to me in the darkness of my suffering
that Thou hadst left me. But now Thou hast answered. Thou hast answered
by means of this poor soldier; Thou hast answered with the peace which
dulls the last pangs of my death, the death which brings me to my
awakening with Thee. It is not true that Thou hadst abandoned me. When I
called Thee it was not I who spoke but that human blood burning in my
veins, and dropping from the nails. I know that Thou art present with
me, one with me to all eternity: Thou art my Father and I Thy Son. Into
what dearer and surer hands could I commend my soul?
And Jesus, after he had cried out with a loud voice, bowed His head and
gave up the spirit. That loud cry, so powerful that it freed the soul
from the flesh, rang out of the darkness and lost itself in the
furthermost ends of the earth. Matthew tells us that “the veil of the
temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did
quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened, and many bodies
of the saints which slept arose, and appeared unto many.” But the hearts
of the spectators were harder than rocks; none of those dead souls who
wore the outward aspect of life were reanimated at that supreme summons.
Nineteen hundred years have passed from the day when the earth echoed to
that cry, and men have intensified the tumult of their lives that they
may drown it out. But in the fog and smoke of our cities, in the
darkness, ever more profound where men light the fires of their
wretchedness, that despairing cry of joy and of liberation, that
prodigious cry which eternally summons every one of us, still rings in
the heart of every man who has not forced himself to forget.
Christ was dead. He had died on the cross in the manner which men had
willed, which the Son had chosen, to which the Father had consented. The
death-struggle was over and the Jews were satisfied. He had expiated all
up to the last, and now He was dead. Now our own expiation begins—and it
is not yet finished.
WATER AND BLOOD
Christ was dead, as the leaders of His people had wished, but not even
His last cry had awakened them. Some of them, says Luke, went away
smiting their breasts; but were there within those breasts hearts which
truly felt for the great heart which had stopped beating? They did not
speak, they hurried home to their supper,—perhaps it was more terror
than love which they were feeling.
But a foreigner, the Centurion, Petronius, who had been the silent
witness of the execution, was moved, and from his pagan mouth came the
words of Claudia Procula, “Certainly this was a righteous man.”
He did not even know the true name of the man who was dead, but he was
sure at least that He was no evildoer. He was the third Roman witness in
favor of the innocence of Christ, who was to become, through the
Apostles, eternally Roman.
The Jews had no thought of recantations. What was in their minds was the
thought that the Passover would be spoiled if the bloody corpses were
not carried away at once. Evening was close at hand and with the setting
of the sun the great Sabbath began. Therefore they sent word to Pilate
to have the condemned men’s legs broken at once and to have them buried.
The breaking of the legs was one of the cruel discoveries of cruelty to
shorten the sufferings of crucified men,—a sort of grace useful in cases
of haste. The soldiers, when they had received the order, came up to the
bad thief, who, more robust than his companions, was still alive, and
they broke his legs with a club.
They had seen Jesus die, and they could save themselves the trouble of
using the club, but John says that one of them, to make quite sure,
pierced His side with a spear, and saw with astonishment that water and
blood came out from the wound. The name of this soldier according to an
old tradition was Longinus, and it is said that some drops of that blood
fell upon his eyes which had been infected, and immediately cured them.
The history of martyrs tells of him that Longinus believed in Christ
from that day on, and was a monk for twenty-eight years at Cæsarea until
he was murdered because of his faith. Claudia Procula, the pious
legionary, who for the last time wet the lips of the dying man, the
Centurion, Petronius, and Longinus were the first Gentiles who accepted
Jesus on the very day when Jerusalem had cast Him out.
But not all the Jews had forgotten Him. Now that He was dead, really
dead, now that He was cold like all dead men, and motionless like any
other corpse, now that He was a silent, harmless, quiet corpse, a body
with no soul, a silent mouth, a heart which beat no more, see how they
come out from the houses where they had shut themselves in, the friends
of the twenty-fifth hour, the tepid followers, the secret disciples, the
anonymous admirers, who at night hide their light under a bushel, and
when the sun shines, disappear. We have all known friends like these,
cautious souls, trembling at the idea of what people will say, who
follow you but from afar; receive you—but when no one can see you
together; esteem you—but do not so much as admit this esteem to others;
love you—but not so much as to lose a single hour of sleep or a single
miserable penny to help you! But when death comes, even when it comes
through the fault or the avarice, or the cowardice of such despicable
men, then their celebration begins. They are the ones who weep more
tears and more glittering tears than any one else. They are the ones who
weave together with busy hands the flowers of the wreaths and the
flowers of funereal rhetoric; and with enthusiasm and ardor become
necrologists, epitaph writers, and memorialists. To see them you would
think that the deceased had had no more faithful, no more loving
companions than they, and good-hearted people are moved to compassion
for those unfortunate survivors who seem to have lost a half, or at the
very least, a quarter of their souls.
To His sorrow in life and in death Christ had many friends of this sort,
and two of them stepped forward in that Good Friday twilight. They were
two serious and worthy citizens, two notables of Jerusalem and of the
Council, two rich lords, in short two members of the Sanhedrin; Joseph
of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
In order not to stain their hands with the blood of Jesus, they had kept
away from the meeting of the Sanhedrin and had hidden themselves in
their houses, heaving regretful sighs, perhaps, and thinking that they
could thus save their reputation and their conscience. But they did not
reflect that even passive complicity was active help to the assassins,
and that to abstain from opposition, not even to voice their opposition,
was equivalent to consenting. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had
therefore taken part in the murder of Christ, although they had been
absent and invisible, and their posthumous grief can diminish but by no
means cancel their responsibility.
But in the evening when they ran no risk of offending their colleagues,
when the Elders had received full satisfaction and had left Golgotha,
when there was no danger of compromising themselves in the eyes of high
clerical and middle-class society, since the dead man was dead and could
harm no one, the two nocturnal disciples, hidden, “for fear of the
Jews,” thought that they would diminish their remorse by providing for
the burial of the executed man.
The bolder of the two, Joseph, “... went in boldly unto Pilate” (Mark
noted the fact as remarkable for that toga-clad rabbit) and asked for
the body of Jesus. Pilate was astonished that He should already be dead,
since crucified men often lived for two days—and called in Petronius,
who had been charged with the execution. After Pilate had heard his
report, he “gave” the body to the Sanhedrist. The Procurator was
generous on that day because as a rule the Roman officers forced the
families of condemned men to pay for the corpses. He could not say no to
a person so respectable, and rich into the bargain. Possibly, too, this
free gift came as much from weariness as from generosity. They had
annoyed him all the morning with that troublesome King, and now he had
no peace even when He was dead!
When Joseph had received permission he took a fine white winding-sheet
and linen bands, and went towards the Hill of the Skull. There, or on
the way there, he met Nicodemus, who, having the same character, may
have been his friend, and who had come with the same thought. Nicodemus
also had not spared expense, and had brought with him on the shoulders
of a servant a hundred pounds of a mixture of myrrh and aloes.
And when they came to the cross, while the soldiers were taking down the
two thieves to throw them into the common grave of condemned men, they
prepared themselves to take down the body of Jesus.
PERFUMES IN THE ROCK
What little light had penetrated the dark cloud disappeared with the
setting of the sun. The darkness was thick and sinister. A black night
was shutting down on the world which on that day had lost the only Being
which could give it light. Against the scarcely visible whiteness of the
Hill of the Skull, the naked corpses glimmered dimly. They were obliged
to work by the red light of torches, flaming without smoke in that
windless air, and by that blood-red light they could see clearly, even
to the long streaks of blood which had run down the foot of the cross,
to the newly stirred earth.
Joseph, aided by Nicodemus and by a third helper, was scarcely able to
draw out the deep-driven nails which held the feet. The ladder was still
there. One of them, climbing up on it, took out the nails from the
hands, supporting the loosened body with his shoulder. The others helped
him to lower down the corpse, and the body was placed on the knees of
the Virgin of Sorrows who had borne Him. Then they all made their way
towards a garden near by where there was a sepulcher destined for Jesus.
The garden belonged to the rich Joseph, who had had the sepulcher hewn
out of the stone for himself and his family, for in those days every
well-to-do Jew had a family sepulcher far from all the others, and the
dead were not condemned to the promiscuity of our administrative
cemeteries; temporary, geometric, and democratic like all our modern
magnificent barbarisms.
As soon as they had arrived at the garden, the two bearers of the dead
had water brought from the well, and washed the body. Until then the
women, the three Marys—the Virgin Mary, the contemplative Mary, the
liberated Mary—had not moved from the place where He whom they loved had
died. Now, defter and more skillful than men, they began to help in
order that this burial, performed thus at night and in haste, would not
be unworthy of Him for whom they wept. They lifted from His head the
insulting crown of Pilate’s legionaries, and plucked out the thorns
which had penetrated the skin: they were the ones to smooth and arrange
the hair clotted with blood; and to close the eyes into which they had
looked so many times with pure tenderness, and that mouth which they had
never kissed. Many loving tears fell upon that face where in the calm
paleness of death the old sweetness shone once more, and their tears
washed it with water purer than that from Joseph’s well.
All His body was sullied with sweat, with dust, with blood; bloody serum
oozed out from the wounds of the hands, of the feet, of the chest. When
the washing was finished, the corpse was sprinkled with Nicodemus’
spices, and that without sparing, for they were abundant; even the black
wounds left by the nails were filled with spices. The body of Jesus had
received nothing but insults and blows after the evening when the
sinning woman with a premonition of this day had poured nard upon the
feet and upon the head of the Pardoner. But now, as then, the murdered
white body was covered with perfumes and with tears sweeter than
perfumes.
Then, when the hundred pounds of Nicodemus had covered Jesus with a
fragrant pall, the winding sheet was tied about the body with long linen
bands, the head was wrapped in a napkin and another white cloth was
spread over the face, after they had all kissed Him on the forehead.
There was space but for one body in the open sepulcher. Recently made,
it had never been used. Joseph of Arimathea, not able to save Christ
alive in any of his houses, now that the fury of the world had died
down, gave up to Him the dark subterranean habitation hewn in the rock,
and intended for his own dead body. According to the ritual the two
Sanhedrists recited aloud the mortuary psalm, and finally, after they
had placed the white-wrapped body in the cave, they closed the opening
with a great stone and went away silently, followed by the others.
But the women did not follow them. They could not bring themselves to
leave that rock which separated them forever from Him whom they loved
more than their beauty. How could they leave Him alone in the darkness,
doubly black, of the night and of the tomb, He who had been so
desperately alone in His long death agony? They whispered prayers, and
recalled to each other the memory of a day, or a gesture, or a word of
the loved one, and if one of them tried to comfort another, the second
but sobbed more bitterly. Sometimes they called Him by name as they
leaned against the rock, and spoke lovingly to Him now that His ears
were closed in death, as they had not dared while He was alive. They
poured out, at last in the damp black shade of the garden, that love
greater than love, which their poor, limited human hearts could no
longer hold back.
Then finally, chilled and terrified by the night’s blackness, they too
went away, their eyes burning, stumbling amid the bushes and the stones,
promising one another to return there as soon as the feast-day had
passed.
HE IS NOT HERE
The sun had not yet risen on the day which for us is Sunday, when the
women once more drew near to the garden; but over the eastern hills a
white hope, light as the distant reflection of an earth clothed with
lilies and silver, rose slowly in the midst of the throbbing
constellations, vanquishing little by little the sparkling brilliance of
the night. It was one of those calm dawns, suggesting innocents asleep,
and the clear benign air seemed stirred as by a recent stir of angels’
wings. It seemed one of the virginal days, ushered in with transparent
pallor, shy and cheerful with cool breezes.
In the half light, the women advanced, breathed upon by wandering airs,
lost in their sadness, under the spell of an emotion they could not have
explained. Were they returning to weep upon the rock? Or to see Him once
more, He who had captured their hearts without laying them waste? Or to
put about the body of the Immaculate One spices stronger than those of
Nicodemus? And speaking among themselves, they said, “Who shall roll us
away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?”
There were four of them, since Joanna of Cusa and Salome had joined Mary
of Magdala and Mary of Bethany, but they were women and weakened by
their sorrow.
But when they came to the rock they stood still, astounded. The opening
into the sepulcher showed black against the darkness. Not believing her
eyes, the boldest of them touched the sill with her trembling hands. In
the daylight, brightening now with every moment, they saw the stone
there beside them, leaning against the rocks.
The women, struck into silence by their fright, turned around as if
expecting some one to come to tell them what had happened in those two
nights which had passed. Mary of Magdala feared at once that the Jews,
not satisfied with what they had made Him suffer when He was alive, had
stolen away the body of Christ; or perhaps, unwilling to have the
honorable sepulcher used by a heretic, they had thrown Him into the
shameful common grave used for men stoned and crucified.
But this was no more than a presentiment. Perhaps Jesus was still lying
inside in His perfumed wrappings. Enter they dared not, yet they could
not bear to go away, not knowing what had happened. As soon as the sun,
risen at last above the summit of the hills, shone into the opening of
the sepulcher, they took courage and entered.
At first they saw nothing, but they were shaken by a new fear. At their
right, seated, was a young man clothed in a long white garment, showing
in that darkness like snow. He seemed to be awaiting them.
“Be not affrighted: he is not here: for he is risen. Why seek ye the
living among the dead? Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in
Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of
sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.”
The women listened, terrified and trembling, not able to answer, but the
youth went on, “Go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from
the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye
see him.”
All four of them, quivering with terror and joy, left the grotto to
hasten where they had been sent. But after a few steps, when they were
almost outside the garden, Mary of Magdala stopped, and the others went
along the road towards the city without waiting for her. She herself did
not know why she had remained behind. Perhaps the words of the unknown
youth had not convinced her, and she remembered that they had not even
made sure that the sepulcher was really empty; perhaps the youth in
white was an accomplice of the priests who wished to deceive them?
Suddenly she turned and saw a man near her, outlined against the green
of the garden, and the sunlight; but she did not recognize Him even when
He spoke. “Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?”
Mary thought that it might be Joseph’s gardener come early to his work.
“Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have
laid him. Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast
laid him, and I will take him away.”
The unknown man, touched by this impassioned candor, by this child-like
simplicity, answered only one word, spoke only one name, her name,
pronounced longingly, wistfully in the touching and unforgettable voice
which had called her so many times: “Mary!”
At this, as if awakened with a start, the despairing woman found her
lost Master: “Rabboni, Master!” And she fell at His feet in the dewy
grass and clasped in her hands those bare feet still showing the two red
marks of the nails.
But Jesus said to her, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my
Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my
Father, and your Father; and to my God, and to your God.”
And at once, He withdrew from the kneeling woman, and moved away among
the plants, crowned with sunshine.
Mary watched Him until He had disappeared; then she lifted herself up
from the grass, her face convulsed, wild, blind with joy, and ran after
her companions.