Chapter XVI: Part 16

Pilate surrendered. He was forced to yield unless he wished to start an uproar which might set all Judea on fire. His conscience did not disturb him: had he not tried everything possible to save this man who did not wish to save Himself?

He had tried to save Him by referring the matter to the Sanhedrin, which could not pronounce a death sentence; he had tried to save Him by sending Him to Herod; he had tried to save Him by affirming that he found no fault in Him; he had tried to save Him by offering to free Him in the place of Barabbas; he had tried to save Him by having Him scourged in the hope that this ignominious punishment would pacify them; he had tried to save Him by seeking to arouse a little pity in those hardened hearts. But all his maneuvers had failed, and he certainly did not wish the whole province to rise on account of that unfortunate Prophet; and even less was he willing that on His account they should accuse him before Tiberius and have him deposed.

Pilate thought himself innocent of the blood of this innocent man. And in order that they might all have a visible representation of that innocence which they would not forget, he had a basin of water brought to him and washed his hands there before them all, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.”

Then answered all the people and said, “His blood be on us, and on our children.”

“Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus he delivered him to be crucified.”

But the water which flowed over his hands was not enough to cleanse them. His hands are still blood-stained, and will be to all eternity. He might have saved Christ if he had really wished. Jesus was sent to Golgotha by Pilate’s subterfuges, by the multiple forms taken by the cowardice of Pilate’s soul, poisoned by the irony of skeptics. He would have been less base if he had really believed Christ guilty and had given his consent to the assassination. But he knew that there was no fault in Jesus, that Jesus was a just man as Claudia Procula had said, as he himself had repeated after her. There is no excuse for a man in authority who, fearing for himself, allows a just man to be killed: he holds office in order to protect the just against assassins. But Pilate said, “I have done everything that I could to save Him from the hands of the unjust.” That was not true; he had tried many ways, but not the only way which could have succeeded. He had not offered himself, had not sacrificed himself, had not been willing to risk his dignity and his fortune. The Jews hated Jesus, but they also hated Pilate, who had harassed and derided them so many times. Instead of proposing the seditious Barabbas in exchange for Jesus, he ought to have proposed himself, Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea, and perhaps the people might have accepted the bargain. No other victim except himself would have satisfied the rage of the Jews. It would not have been necessary for him to die. It would have been enough to let them denounce him to Cæsar as Cæsar’s enemy. Tiberius would have deposed him and perhaps have banished him, but he would have taken into exile and into disgrace a comforting certainty of innocence. Little did his shifts avail him; for the fate he now sought to avert by giving Jesus over into the hands of his adversaries fell upon him a few years later. The Jews and the Samaritans accused him; the Governor of Syria deposed him, and Caligula banished him to the frontiers of Gaul. But he was followed into his exile by the shade of that great, silent man, assassinated with his consent. In vain had he constructed in Jerusalem the great reservoir full of water, in vain had he washed himself with that water before the multitude. That water was Jewish water, turbid and ill-omened water that did not cleanse. No washing will ever cleanse his hands from the stains left on them by the divine blood of Christ.

GOOD FRIDAY

The sun rose higher in the clear April sky and now it was near to noon. The contest between the flaccid defender and the furious assailants had wasted most of the morning, and there was no time to lose. According to Mosaic law, the bodies of executed criminals could not remain after sunset on the place of punishment, and April days are not as long as June days.

Moreover, Caiaphas, reënforced though he was by so many furiously enraged partisans, could not draw a tranquil breath until the Vagabond’s feet were forever halted, fastened with iron nails on the cross. He remembered how, a few days before, Jesus had entered the city surrounded with waving branches and joyful hymns. He was sure of the city itself, but at this period it was full of provincials come from everywhere, who had not the same interests and the same passions as the clientele dependent on the Temple. Those Galileans especially, who had followed Him until now, who loved Him, might make some effort at resistance and put off, even if they did not actually prevent, the real votive offering of that day.

Pilate, too, was in haste to have that troublesome, innocent man taken away. He did not wish to think of Him again. He hoped that he would forget after His death that look, those words and, above all, his own corroding uneasiness, so painfully like remorse. Although he had washed and dried his hands, that man in His silence, it seemed to him, was sentencing him to a penalty worse than death itself. Before that scourged man, at the point of death, he felt himself the guilty one. To vent his uneasiness on those who really caused it, he dictated the wording of the titulus or superscription, which the condemned man was to wear about His neck until it was fastened above His head at the top of the cross, as follows: “Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.” The Scribe wrote these words three times in three languages in clear, red letters on the white wood.

The leaders of the Jews, who had remained there, craning their necks, to hasten the preparations, read this sarcastic inscription and protested. They said to Pilate, “Write not, The King of the Jews; but that he said, I am King of the Jews.”

But the Procurator cut them short with a dry brevity: “What I have written I have written.”

These are the last words recorded of him, and the most profound! I am forced to make you a present of the life of this man, but I do not deny what I have said. Jesus is a Nazarene, which means also, saint. And He is your King, the wretched King who fits your wretchedness. I wish all men to know how your ill-born race treats saints and kings. It is for this I have written these words in Latin and Greek as well as in Hebrew. And now be off, for I have endured you long enough, “Quod scripsi, scripsi.”

In the meantime the soldiers had put back on the King His poor man’s garments and had tied the notice about His neck. Others had brought out from the storerooms three massive crosses of pine, the nails, the hammer and the pincers. The escort was ready. Pilate pronounced the usual formula: “I lictor, expedi crucem.” And the sinister procession moved forward.

The Centurion rode at the head, he whom Tacitus calls with terrible brevity, “exactor mortis.” Immediately after him came, in the midst of the armed legionaries, Jesus and the two thieves who were to be crucified with Him. Each of them carried a cross on his shoulders, according to the Roman rule. And behind them, the shuffling steps and the uproar of the excited crowd, increased at every step by accomplices and idle sight-seers.

It was Parasceve, the day of preparations, the last night before the Passover. Thousands of lambs’ skins were stretched out on the sunlit roofs; and from every house rose a column of smoke, delicate as a flower-bud, which opened out in the air and then was lost in the clear, festal sky. Old women with malignant faces, mumbling anathemas, emerged from the dark alley-ways; dirty-faced little children trotted along with bundles under their arms; bearded men carried on their shoulders a kid or a cask of wine; drovers were dragging along asses with hanging heads; children stared with impudent and melancholy eyes at the foreigners who were walking about circumspectly, impeded by this festal bustling. In every home the house-mother was busy, preparing everything needful for the next day, because with the setting of the sun every one was exempt for twenty-four hours from the curse of Adam. The lambs, skinned and quartered, were all ready for the fire; the loaves of unleavened bread were piled up fresh from the oven; men were decanting the wine, and the children to lend a hand somewhere were cleaning the bitter herbs.

There was no one idle, no one whose heart was not rejoicing at the thought of that festal day of repose, when all families would be gathered about the father, when they would eat in peace and drink the wine of Thanksgiving from the same cup; and God would be witness of this cheer because the psalms of the grateful would go up to Him from every house. On that day even the poor felt themselves almost rich; and the rich, because of their unusual profits, felt themselves almost generous; and children whose hopes had not yet been dashed by experience of life felt themselves more loving; and women more loved.

Everywhere there was that peaceful confusion, that good-natured tumult, that joyous bustle which goes before a great, popular feast-day. An odor of hope and of Spring purified the old filth of the Jewish ant-heap. And the great eastern sun sent down a flood of light upon the four Hills.

SIMON OF CYRENE

Under that festal sky, through that festal crowd, slow as a funeral procession, the sinister column of the bearers of the cross made its way. About them everything spoke of joy and of life, and they were going to burning thirst and to death. About them all men were waiting joyfully to spend the evening with their loved ones, to sit down at the well-garnished table, to drink the bright, genial wine served on feast-days, to stretch themselves out on their beds to wait for the most longed-for Sabbath morning of the year. And the three, cut off forever from those who loved them, would be stretched upon the cross of infamy, would drink only a sip of bitter wine, and, cold in death, would be thrown into the cold earth.

At the sound of the Centurion’s horse, people stepped to one side and stopped to look at the wretched men toiling and sweating under their terrible burden. The two thieves seemed more sturdy and callous, but the first, the Man of Sorrows, seemed scarcely able to take another step. Worn out by the terrible night, by His four questionings, by the buffetings, by the beatings, by the flogging, disfigured with blood, sweat, saliva, and by the terrible effort of this last task set Him, He did not seem like the fearless young man who a few days before had scourged the vermin out of the Temple. His fair, shining face was drawn and contracted by the convulsions of pain; His eyes, red with suppressed tears, were sunken in their sockets; on His shoulders, torn by the rods, His clothes clung to the wounds, increasing His sufferings; His legs, more than His other members, felt this terrible weakness, and they bent under His weight and under that of the cross. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” After the vigil, which had been the beginning of His agony, how many blows had been struck upon that flesh! Judas’ kiss, the flight of His friends, the rope on His wrists, the threats of the judges, the blows of the guard, the cowardice of Pilate, the howling demands for His death, the insults of the legionaries, and now this weight of the cross, carried along amid the sneers and scoffing of those whom He loved!

Those who saw Him pass took no notice of Him, or at the most, those who knew how to read tried to make out the inscription which hung down on His chest. Many, however, knew Him by sight and by name, and pointed Him out to their neighbors with learned and complacent airs. Some of them mingled with the crowd, following behind to enjoy to the end the spectacle, always new, of a man’s death; and more would have followed if it had not been a day when there was much to do at home. Those who had begun to hope in Him now despised Him because He had not been stronger, because He had let Himself be taken like any sneak-thief; and to ingratiate themselves with the Priests and Elders mingled with the crowd, they cast out at the false Messiah as He went by some neatly phrased insult. Very few were those who felt any movement of pity to see Him in that situation and among those few were some who did not know who He was, who were moved merely by the natural pity which any crowd feels for condemned men. Some few there were who still felt a little love in their hearts for the Master who had loved the poor, who had healed the sick, who had announced the Kingdom so much more righteous and holy than the kingdoms then in existence and ruining the earth. But these were few, and they were almost ashamed of that secret tenderness for one whom they had believed to be less hated or more powerful. The greater part laughed, satisfied and contented, as if this funeral procession had been a part of the feast-day.

Only some women, their heads wrapped in their cloaks, came behind all the rest, weeping, but trying to hide this seditious grief.

They had not yet come to the Gate of Gardens, but they were almost there when Jesus, His strength utterly exhausted, fell to the ground and lay there stretched under His cross. His face had suddenly gone white as snow; the reddened eyelids were dropped over His eyes; He would have seemed dead if it had not been for the painful breath coming and going through His half-open mouth.

They all stopped, and a dense circle of jeering men stretched out their faces and hands towards the fallen man. The Jews, who had followed Him from Caiaphas’ house, would not listen to reason.

“He is only pretending,” they cried. “Lift Him up! He is a hypocrite! He ought to carry the cross to the last! That is the law! Give Him a kick, as you would to an ass, and let Him get along!”

Others said, “Look at the great King who was to conquer Kingdoms. He cannot manage even two sticks of wood, and yet He wanted to wear armor. He said that He was more than a man, and see, He is a womanish creature who faints away at the first work given Him. He made paralytics walk and He Himself cannot stand up. Give Him a cup of wine to bring back His strength.”

But the Centurion who, like Pilate, was in great haste to finish his distasteful task, was experienced in the handling of men, and saw clearly that the unfortunate Jesus would never be able to drag the cross along all the way to Golgotha. He cast his eyes about to find some one to carry that weight. Just at that moment there came in from the country a Cyrenian called Simon, who, at the sight of so many people, had stepped into the crowd and was looking with an astonished and pitying expression at the body prostrate and panting under the two beams. The Centurion saw that he had a kindly look, and furthermore that he was strongly built, and called to him, saying, “Take this cross and come after us.”

Without a word the Cyrenian obeyed, perhaps out of goodness of heart, but in any case from necessity, because the Roman soldiers in the countries which they occupied had the right to force any one to help them. “If a soldier gives you some task to do,” wrote Arrian, “be careful not to resist him and not to murmur, otherwise you will be beaten.”

We know nothing more of the merciful-hearted man who lent his broad countryman’s shoulders to lighten Jesus’ load, but we know that his sons, Alexander and Rufus, were Christians, and it is extremely probable that they were converted by their father’s telling them of the death of which he was an enforced witness.

Two soldiers helped the fallen man up on His feet, and urged Him forward. The procession took up its way again under the noon-day sun, but the two thieves muttered between their teeth that no one thought of them, and that it was not right that that other man by pretending to fall should be freed of His burden while they still were forced to carry theirs. It was favoritism, nothing less, especially as that fellow, to hear what the priests said about Him, was much more guilty than they. From that moment His two companions in punishment, jealous of Him, began to hate Him, and were to insult Him even when they were nailed at His side on the crosses which they were then carrying on their backs.

FORGIVE THEM

The Centurion halted outside the old walled city, in the midst of the young verdure of the suburban gardens. The city of Caiaphas did not allow capital punishment within its walls; the air perfumed with the virtue of the Pharisees would be polluted; and the soft hearts of the Sadducees would be distressed; hence, condemned prisoners were expelled from the city before their death.

They had stopped on the summit of a rounded mound of limestone resembling a skull. This resemblance might seem to be the reason for choosing this place for executions, but the real reason was rather because the two great roads from Jaffa and Damascus crossed each other close at hand, and it was well that the cross should show its terrible warning to the traveling multitude of pilgrims, merchants and provincials.

The sun, the benign sun of the solstice, the high noon-day sun, shone on the white mound and on the mattocks ringing sonorously in the rock. In the nearby gardens the spring flowers expanded in the mild air; singing birds, hidden in the trees, rent the sky with the silver arrows of their warblings; doves flew about in pairs in the warm, pastoral peace. It would be sweet to live there in some well-watered garden beside a well, in the perfume of the earth awakening and clothing itself, awaiting the harvest moon, in company with loving friends! Days of Galilee, days of peace, days of sunshine and friendship among the vineyards, beside the lake, days of light and liberty, wandering with friends who listened understandingly, days drawing to a close with the well-earned cheerfulness of supper, days which seemed eternal, although they were so short!

Now Thou hast no one with Thee, Jesus, called the Christ. These soldiers preparing that appalling bed, these thieves insulting Thee, those hounds awaiting Thy blood, are only shadows, cast by the great shadow of God. Thou art alone as Thou wert alone at night; the sun that warms Thy assassins is not for Thee. Before Thee lies no other day, no other journey; ended are Thy wanderings and now at last Thou canst rest; this skull of rock is Thy goal. A few hours hence, Thine imprisoned spirit shall be torn from its dungeon.

God’s human face is wet with cold sweat. The blows of the mattocks ring in His head, as if they struck at Him; the sun which He loved so much, symbol of the Father, just even to the unjust, now falls harshly on His aching eyes and swollen eyelids. His whole body aches with weariness, trembles in a yearning for rest which He resists with all His soul. Has He not promised to suffer as much as is needful up to the very last? At the same time it seems to Him that He loves with a more intimate tenderness those whom He is leaving, even those who are working for His death. And from the depths of His soul, like a song of victory over the torn and weary flesh, rise up the words, never to be forgotten by men, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

No more divine prayer was ever raised to Heaven since men have lived and prayed; it is not the prayer of a man, but of a God to a God. Men, who cannot pardon even the innocence of an innocent man, had never before that day dreamed that a man might pray for the forgiveness of those who were putting him to death.

For they know not what they do! Wrongs consciously wrought cannot be absolved without assurance of repentance. But the ignorance of men is so appallingly great that only a few really know what they do.

Jesus had taught what men should know; but how many knew it? Even His own Disciples, the only ones to know that Jesus was Christ, had been overcome by the fear of losing this last remnant of their lives; even as they fled away, they had shown that they did not know what they did. And even more ignorant of what they really did were the Pharisees, fearful of losing their preëminence; the Doctors, fearful of losing their privileges; the rich, fearful of losing their money; Pilate, fearful of losing his office; and most ignorant of all were the Jews, misled by their leaders, and the soldiers obedient to orders. None of them knew who Christ was and what He came to do, and why He was killed. Some of them were to know it, but afterwards, and they came to know it only through the intercession of the Man whom they were killing.

Now, at the point of death, He had confirmed His most difficult and divine teaching, “Love for enemies,” and He could now hold out His hands to the hammer. The crosses had been raised; now they were piling stones about them to steady them under the weight, and were filling the holes with earth, stamping it down with their feet.

The women of Jerusalem approached the condemned Man with a pitcher. It contained a mixture of wine, incense and myrrh, which the executioners, out of the goodness of their hearts, imagined would dull consciousness. Those very people who were making Him suffer pretended as a last insult that they had mercy on that suffering, and by reducing it by the merest trifle they thought they had the greater right to demand that the rest of the cup of suffering be drained. But Jesus, as soon as He had tasted this mixture, bitter as gall, pushed it away. He would have accepted a single word in place of the wine, but the only one on that day who could find the word to say was one of the thieves whom they had dragged up to the place of the skull with Him.

The incense and the myrrh which they offered Him on that day were not perfumed like that incense and myrrh brought to Him in the stable by the Wise Men from the distant Orient. And in place of the gold which had lighted the dingy darkness of the stable, there was the iron of the nails, gray now, waiting to be reddened. And that wine which seemed poisoned so bitter was it, was not the genial nuptial wine of Cana, nor that which He had drunk the evening before, warm and dark as blood dripping from a wound.

FOUR NAILS

On the top of the hill of the Skull the three crosses, tall, dark, with 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?

And those who remained listened in the darkness to hear if the hated 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?”