Jesus is arrested.
Jesus was standing with his three Apostles on the road between
Gethsemani, and the Garden of Olives, when Judas and the band who
accompanied him made their appearance. A warm dispute arose between
Judas and the soldiers, because he wished to approach first and speak
to Jesus quietly as if nothing was the matter, and then for them to
come up and seize our Saviour, thus letting him suppose that he had no
connection with the affair. But the men answered rudely, 'Not so, friend,
thou shalt not escape from our hands until we have the Galilean safely
bound,' and seeing the eight Apostles who hastened to rejoin Jesus when
they heard the dispute which was going on, they (notwithstanding the
opposition of Judas) called up four archers, whom they had left at a
little distance, to assist. When by the light of the moon Jesus and the
three Apostles first saw the band of armed men, Peter wished to repel
them by force of arms, and said: 'Lord, the other eight are close at
hand, let us attack the archers,' but Jesus bade him hold his peace, and
then turned and walked back a few steps. At this moment four disciples
came out of the garden, and asked what was taking place. Judas was
about to reply, but the soldiers interrupted, and would not let him
speak. These four disciples were James the Less, Philip, Thomas, and
Nathaniel; the last named, who was a son of the aged Simeon, had with a
few others joined the eight Apostles at Gethsemani, being perhaps sent
by the friends of Jesus to know what was going on, or possibly simply
incited by curiosity and anxiety. The other disciples were wandering to
and fro, on the look out, and ready to fly at a moment's notice.
Jesus walked up to the soldiers and said in a firm and clear voice,
'Whom seek ye?' The soldiers answered, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' Jesus said to them,
'I am he.' Scarcely had he pronounced these words than they all fell to the
ground, as if struck with apoplexy. Judas, who stood by them, was much
alarmed, and as he appeared desirous of approaching, Jesus held out his
hand and said: 'Friend, whereto art thou come?' Judas stammered forth
something about business which had brought him. Jesus answered in few
words, the sense of which was: 'It were better for thee that thou hadst
never been born;' however, I cannot remember the words exactly. In the
mean time, the soldiers had risen, and again approached Jesus, but they
waited for the sign of the kiss, with which Judas had promised to
salute his Master that they might recognise him. Peter and the other
disciples surrounded Judas, and reviled him in unmeasured terms,
calling him thief and traitor; he tried to mollify their wrath by all
kinds of lies, but his efforts were vain, for the soldiers came up and
offered to defend him, which proceeding manifested the truth at once.
Jesus again asked, 'Whom seek ye?' They replied: 'Jesus of Nazareth.' Jesus
made answer, 'I have told you that I am he,' 'if therefore you seek me, let
these go their way.' At these words the soldiers fell for the second time
to the ground, in convulsions similar to those of epilepsy, and the
Apostles again surrounded Judas and expressed their indignation at his
shameful treachery. Jesus said to the soldiers, 'Arise,' and they arose,
but at first quite speechless from terror. They then told Judas to give
them the signal agreed upon instantly, as their orders were to seize
upon no one but him whom Judas kissed. Judas therefore approached
Jesus, and gave him a kiss, saying, 'Hail Rabbi.' Jesus replied, 'What,
Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?' The soldiers
immediately surrounded Jesus, and the archers laid hands upon him.
Judas wished to fly, but the Apostles would not allow it, they rushed
at the soldiers and cried out, 'Master, shall we strike with the sword?'
Peter, who was more impetuous than the rest, seized the sword, and
struck Malchus, the servant of the high priest, who wished to drive
away the Apostles, and cut off his right ear; Malchus fell to the
ground, and a great tumult ensued.
The archers had seized upon Jesus, and wished to bind him; while
Malchus and the rest of the soldiers stood around. When Peter struck
the former, the rest were occupied in repulsing those among the
disciples who approached too near, and in pursuing those who ran away.
Four disciples made their appearance in the distance, and looked
fearfully at the scene before them; but the soldiers were still too
much alarmed at their late fall to trouble themselves much about them,
and besides they did not wish to leave our Saviour without a certain
number of men to guard him. Judas fled as soon as he had given the
traitorous kiss, but was met by some of the disciples, who overwhelmed
him with reproaches. Six Pharisees, however, came to his rescue, and he
escaped whilst the archers were busily occupied in pinioning Jesus.
When Peter struck Malchus, Jesus said to him, 'Put up again thy sword
into its place; for all that take the sword shall perish with the
sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot ask my Father, and he will give me
presently more than twelve legions of angels? How then shall the
Scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must be done?' Then he said, 'Let me
cure this man;' and approaching Malchus, he touched his ear, prayed, and
it wad healed. The soldiers who were standing near, as well as the
archers and the six Pharisees, far from being moved by this miracle,
continued to insult our Lord, and said to the bystanders, 'It is a trick
of the devil, the powers of witchcraft made the ear appear to be cut
off, and now the same power gives it the appearance of being healed.'
Then Jesus again addressed them, 'You are come out as it were to a
robber, with swords and clubs, to apprehend me. I sat daily with you
teaching in the Temple, and you laid not hands upon me, but this is
your hour and the power of darkness.' The Pharisees ordered him to be
bound still more strongly, and made answer in a contemptuous tone, 'Ah!
Thou couldst not overthrow us by thy witchcraft.' Jesus replied, but I do
not remember his words, and all the disciples fled. The four archers
and the six Pharisees did not fall to the ground at the words of Jesus,
because, as was afterwards revealed to me, they as well as Judas, who
likewise did not fall, were entirely in the power of Satan, whereas all
those who fell and rose again were afterwards converted, and became
Christians; they had only surrounded Jesus, and not laid hands upon
him. Malchus was instantly converted by the cure wrought upon him, and
during the time of the Passion his employment was to carry messages
backwards and forwards to Mary and the other friends of our Lord.
The archers, who now proceeded to pinion Jesus with the greatest
brutality, were pagans of the lowest extraction, short, stout, and
active, with sandy complexions, resembling those of Egyptian slaves,
and bare legs, arms, and neck.
They tied his hands as tightly as possible with hard new cords,
fastening the right-hand wrist under the left elbow, and the left-hand
wrist under the right elbow. They encircled his waist with a species of
belt studded with iron points, and to this collar were appended two
leathern straps, which were crossed over his chest like a stole and
fastened to the belt. They then fastened four ropes to different parts
of the belt, and by means of these ropes dragged our Blessed Lord from
side to side in the most cruel manner. The ropes were new; I think they
were purchased when the Pharisees first determined to arrest Jesus. The
Pharisees lighted fresh torches, and the procession started. Ten
soldiers walked in front, the archers who held the ropes and dragged
Jesus along, followed, and the Pharisees and ten other soldiers brought
up the rear. The disciples wandered about at a distance, and wept and
moaned as if beside themselves from grief. John alone followed, and
walked at no great distance from the soldiers, until the Pharisees,
seeing him, ordered the guards to arrest him. They endeavoured to obey,
but he ran away, leaving in their hands a cloth with which he was
covered, and of which they had taken hold when they endeavoured to
seize him. He had slipped off his coat, that he might escape more
easily from the hands of his enemies, and kept nothing on but a short
under garment without sleeves, and the long band which the Jews usually
wore, and which was wrapped round his neck, head, and arms. The archers
behaved in the most cruel manner to Jesus as they led him along; this
they did to curry favour with the six Pharisees, who they well knew
perfectly hated and detested our Lord. They led him along the roughest
road they could select, over the sharpest stones, and through the
thickest mire; they pulled the cords as tightly as possible; they
struck him with knotted cords, as a butcher would strike the beast he
is about to slaughter; and they accompanied this cruel treatment with
such ignoble and indecent insults that I cannot recount them. The feet
of Jesus were bare; he wore, besides the ordinary dress, a seamless
woollen garment, and a cloak which was thrown over all. I have
forgotten to state that when Jesus was arrested, it was done without
any order being presented or legal ceremony taking place; he was
treated as a person without the pale of the law.
The procession proceeded at a good pace; when they left the road
which runs between the Garden of Olives and that of Gethsemani, they
turned to the right, and soon reached a bridge which was thrown over
the Torrent of Cedron. When Jesus went to the Garden of Olives with the
Apostles, he did not cross this bridge, but went by a private path
which ran through the Valley of Josaphat, and led to another bridge
more to the south. The bridge over which the soldiers led Jesus was
long, being thrown over not only the torrent, which was very large in
this part, but likewise over the valley, which extends a considerable
distance to the right and to the left, and is much lower than the bed
of the river. I saw our Lord fall twice before he reached the bridge,
and these falls were caused entirely by the barbarous manner in which
the soldiers dragged him; but when they were half over the bridge they
gave full vent to their brutal inclination, and struck Jesus with such
violence that they threw him off the bridge into the water, and
scornfully recommended him to quench his thirst there. If God had not
preserved him, he must have been killed by this fall; he fell first on
his knee, and then on his face, but saved himself a little by
stretching out his hands, which, although so tightly bound before, were
loosened, I know not whether by miracle, or whether the soldiers had
cut the cords before they threw him into the water. The marks of his
feet, his elbows, and his fingers were miraculously impressed on the
rock on which he fell, and these impressions were afterwards shown for
the veneration of Christians. These stones were less hard than the
unbelieving hearts of the wicked men who surrounded Jesus, and bore
witness at this terrible moment to the Divine Power which had touched
them.
I had not seen Jesus take anything to quench the thirst which had
consumed him ever since his agony in the garden, but he drank when he
fell into the Cedron, and I heard him repeat these words from the
prophetic Psalm, 'In his thirst he will drink water from the torrent'
(Psalm 108).
The archers still held the ends of the ropes with which Jesus was
bound, but it would have been difficult to drag him out of the water on
that side, on account of a wall which was built on the shore; they
turned back and dragged him quite through the Cedron to the shore, and
then made him cross the bridge a second time, accompanying their every
action with insults, blasphemies, and blows. His long woollen garment,
which was quite soaked through, adhered to his legs, impeded every
movement, and rendered it almost impossible for him to walk, and when
he reached the end of the bridge he fell quite down. They pulled him up
again in the most cruel manner, struck him with cords, and fastened the
ends of his wet garment to the belt, abusing him at the same time in
the most cowardly manner. It was not quite midnight when I saw the four
archers inhumanly dragging Jesus over a narrow path, which was choked
up with stones, garments of rock, thistles, and thorns, on the opposite
shore of the Cedron. The six brutal Pharisees walked as close to our
Lord as they could, struck him constantly with thick pointed sticks,
and seeing that his bare and bleeding feet were torn by the stones and
briars, exclaimed scornfully: 'His precursor, John the Baptist, has
certainly not prepared a good path for him here;' or, 'The words of
Malachy, "Behold, I send my angel before thy face, to prepare the way
before thee," do not exactly apply now.' Every jest uttered by these men
incited the archers to greater cruelty.
The enemies of Jesus remarked that several persons made their
appearance in the distance; they were only disciples who had assembled
when they heard that their Master was arrested, and who were anxious to
discover what the end would be; but the sight of them rendered the
Pharisees uneasy, lest any attempt should be made to rescue Jesus, and
they therefore sent for a reinforcement of soldiers. At a very short
distance from an entrance opposite to the south side of the Temple,
which leads through a little village called Ophel to Mount Sion, where
the residences of Annas and Caiphas were situated, I saw a band of
about fifty soldiers, who carried torches, and appeared ready for
anything; the demeanour of these men was outrageous, and they gave loud
shouts, both to announce their arrival, and to congratulate their
comrades upon the success of the expedition. This caused a slight
confusion among the soldiers who were leading Jesus, and Malchus and a
few others took advantage of it to depart, and fly towards Mount Olivet.
When the fresh band of soldiers left Ophel, I saw those disciples
who had gathered together disperse; some went one way, and some
another. The Blessed Virgin and about nine of the holy women, being
filled with anxiety, directed their steps towards the Valley of
Josaphat, accompanied by Lazarus, John the son of Mark, the son of
Veronica, and the son of Simon. The last-named was at Gethsemani with
Nathaniel and the eight Apostles, and had fled when the soldiers
appeared. He was giving the Blessed Virgin the account of all that had
been done, when the fresh band of soldiers joined those who were
leading Jesus, and she then heard their tumultuous vociferations, and
saw the light of the torches they carried. This sight quite overcame
her; she became insensible, and John took her into the house of Mary,
the mother of Mark.
The fifty soldiers who were sent to join those who had taken Jesus,
were a detachment from a company of three hundred men posted to guard
the gates and environs of Ophel; for the traitor Judas had reminded the
High Priests that the inhabitants of Ophel (who were principally of the
labouring class, and whose chief employment was to bring water and wood
to the Temple) were the most attached partisans of Jesus, and might
perhaps make some attempts to rescue him. The traitor was aware that
Jesus had both consoled, instructed, assisted, and cured the diseases
of many of these poor workmen, and that Ophel was the place where he
halted during his journey from Bethania to Hebron, when John the
Baptist had just been executed. Judas also knew that Jesus had cured
many of the masons who were injured by the fall of the Tower of Siloe.
The greatest part of the inhabitants of Ophel were converted after the
death of our Lord, and joined the first Christian community that was
formed after Pentecost, and when the Christians separated from the Jews
and erected new dwellings, they placed their huts and tents in the
valley which is situated between Mount Olivet and Ophel, and there St.
Stephen lived. Ophel was on a hill to the south of the Temple,
surrounded by walls, and its inhabitants were very poor. I think it was
smaller than Dulmen.9
The slumbers of the good inhabitants of Ophel were disturbed by the
noise of the soldiers; they came out of their houses and ran to the
entrance of the village to ask the cause of the uproar; but the
soldiers received them roughly, ordered them to return home, and in
reply to their numerous questions, said, 'We have just arrested Jesus,
your false prophet--he who has deceived you so grossly; the High Priests
are about to judge him, and he will be crucified.' Cries and lamentations
arose on all sides; the poor women and children ran backwards and
forwards, weeping and wringing their hands; and calling to mind all the
benefits they had received from our Lord, they cast themselves on their
knees to implore the protection of Heaven. But the soldiers pushed them
on one side, struck them, obliged them to return to their houses, and
exclaimed, 'What farther proof is required? Does not the conduct of these
persons show plainly that the Galilean incites rebellion?'
They were, however, a little cautious in their expressions and
demeanour for fear of causing an insurrection in Ophel, and therefore
only endeavoured to drive the inhabitants away from those parts of the
village which Jesus was obliged to cross.
When the cruel soldiers who led our Lord were near the gates of
Ophel he again fell, and appeared unable to proceed a step farther,
upon which one among them, being moved to compassion, said to another,
'You see the poor man is perfectly exhausted, he cannot support himself
with the weight of his chains; if we wish to get him to the High Priest
alive we must loosen the cords with which his hands are bound, that he
may be able to save himself a little when he falls.' The band stopped for
a moment, the fetters were loosened, and another kind-hearted soldier
brought some water to Jesus from a neighbouring fountain. Jesus thanked
him, and spoke of the 'fountains of living water,' of which those who
believed in him should drink; but his words enraged the Pharisees still
more, and they overwhelmed him with insults and contumelious language.
I saw the heart of the soldier who had caused Jesus to be unbound, as
also that of the one who brought him water, suddenly illuminated by
grace; they were both converted before the death of Jesus, and
immediately joined his disciples.
The procession started again, and reached the gate of Ophel. Here
Jesus was again saluted by the cries of grief and sympathy of those who
owed him so much gratitude, and the soldiers had considerable
difficulty in keeping back the men and women who crowded round from all
parts. They clasped their hands, fell on their knees, lamented, and
exclaimed, 'Release this man unto us, release him! Who will assist, who
will console us, who will cure our diseases? Release him unto us!' It was
indeed heart-rending to look upon Jesus; his face was white,
disfigured, and wounded, his hair dishevelled, his dress wet and
soiled, and his savage and drunken guards were dragging him about and
striking him with sticks like a poor dumb animal led to the slaughter.
Thus was he conducted through the midst of the afflicted inhabitants of
Ophel, and the paralytic whom he had cured, the dumb to whom he had
restored speech, and the blind whose eyes he had opened, united, but in
vain, in offering supplications for his release.
Many persons from among the lowest and most degraded classes had
been sent by Annas, Caiphas, and the other enemies of Jesus, to join
the procession, and assist the soldiers both in ill-treating Jesus, and
in driving away the inhabitants of Ophel. The village of Ophel was
seated upon a hill, and I saw a great deal of timber placed there ready
for building. The procession had to proceed down a hill, and then pass
through a door made in the wall. On one side of this door stood a large
building erected originally by Solomon, and on the other the pool of
Bethsaida. After passing this, they followed a westerly direction down
a steep street called Millo, at the end of which a turn to the south
brought them to the house of Annas. The guards never ceased their cruel
treatment of our Divine Saviour, and excused such conduct by saying
that the crowds who gathered together in front of the procession
compelled them to severity. Jesus fell seven times between Mount Olivet
and the house of Annas.
The inhabitants of Ophel were still in a state of consternation and
grief, when the sight of the Blessed Virgin who passed through the
village accompanied by the holy women and some other friends on her way
from the Valley of Cedron to the house of Mary the mother of Mark,
excited them still more, and they made the place re-echo with sobs and
lamentations, while they surrounded and almost carried her in their
arms. Mary was speechless from grief, and did not open her lips after
she reached the house of Mary the mother of Mark, until the arrival of
John, who related all he had seen since Jesus left the supper-room; and
a little later she was taken to the house of Martha, which was near
that of Lazarus. Peter and John, who had followed Jesus at a distance,
went in haste to some servants of the High Priest with whom the latter
was acquainted, in order to endeavour by their means to obtain
admittance into the tribunal where their Master was to be tried. These
servants acted as messengers, and had just been ordered to go to the
houses of the ancients, and other members of the Council, to summon
them to attend the meeting which was convoked. As they were anxious to
oblige the Apostles, but foresaw much difficulty in obtaining their
admittance into the tribunal, they gave them cloaks similar to those
they themselves wore, and made them assist in carrying messages to the
members in order that afterwards they might enter the tribunal of
Caiphas, and mingle, without being recognised, among the soldiers and
false witnesses, as all other persons were to be expelled. As
Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and other well-intentioned persons were
members of this Council, the Apostles undertook to let them know what
was going to be done in the Council, thus securing the presence of
those friends of Jesus whom the Pharisees had purposely omitted to
invite. In the mean time Judas wandered up and down the steep and wild
precipices at the south of Jerusalem, despair marked on his every
feature, and the devil pursuing him to and fro, filling his imagination
with still darker visions, and not allowing him a moment's respite.