Then the whole multitude of the Jews require that He might be crucified, and thus He was condemned by that miserable judge, Pilate. His benefits, His mighty works, are all forgotten; His innocence does not move them; and what appears most cruel is, tjiat after all that He has already suffered, they draw not back at the sight of His afflictions ; nay, the chief men and elders are full of joy, that they can at last carry out their wicked design. They laugh, they mock Him, Who is the Very and Eternal God ; they hasten on His death. They lead Him within, they despoil Him of the purple robe : He stands bare before them, hindered from re-clothing Himself. Attend here diligently, and consider His posture in every particular. And feel tenderly for Him ; and that you may nourish the affection of compassion the more, avert your eyes a little while from His Divinity, and regard Him as simply man. You have before you a young man, most noble, comely, innocent, and loving, His whole body, bruised, discoloured, waled by the lash of the scourge, covered with blood, collecting His poor garments which are thrown hither and thither, clothing Himself with them, with bashfulness, recollection, and shame, at the presence of His persecutors who revile Him, as though He were the lowest of them, forsaken of God, and destitute of all human help. Look at Him with a fixed gaze, and you will be touched with tenderness and compassion. Now He collects one garment, now another, as He clothes Himself anew with them. Now return to the thought of His Divinity ; consider the Infinite, Eternal, Incomprehensible, and Royal Majesty, made Flesh, bending lowly to the ground, and collecting His garments and clothing Himself with modesty and reverence, as though the meanest of men, yea, a slave with no rights, and simply in their power, corrected and chastised by them for some offence. Behold Him, then, attentively, and be filled with amazement at His lowliness, and compassionate Him in a similar manner, when you see Him bound to the pillar and scourged beyond all limit. When re-clpthed, they lead Him forth, not to defer His death any longer ; they lay upon His shoulders the venerable wood of the Cross, long, thick, and weighty, which the most meek Lamb patiently received and carried. Tradition says the cross was fifteen feet high. He is dragged, hurried along, overwhelmed with revilings, as before we saw Him at the First Hour. He was led along with His companions, the two thieves.
Behold, this is His society ! O good Jesus ! What shame do these companions cause Thee ; they associate Thee with robbers. They even treat Thee worse than they treat them ; for they lay on Thee the heavy cross, which they are not said to do to them. Thus not only, as Isaiah says, “He was numbered with the transgressors,”1 but He was counted worse than they. Indescribable, O Lord, is Thy patience !
Contemplate, then, our Lord carefully, how with bent form He carries His cross, and how fearfully exhausted He is through want of breath. Feel all possible pity for Him, in such distress, at every renewal of insult. And because His mother, full of sorrow, on account of the crowd could not get near Him, nor get to see Him, she, with John and her friends, may, we can imagine, have taken a shorter road, that, being before the rest at the point where He would pass, she might be able to approach Him. But when beyond the gate of the city, where the roads meet, she perhaps came in His path, and saw Him bearing the heavy cross, she was half dead with sorrow, and became speechless; nor yet could the Lord address her, for He was hurried along by those who led Him to be crucified. But, proceeding a little further, Christ turned to the weeping women, and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves,” etc., as in the Gospel is fully related. Where these events are said to have occurred, there are remains of Churches, which some state as a matter of memory. Mount Calvary, where Christ was crucified, is distant from the gate of the city, about as far as our place is from the gate of S. Germanus ; so that the cross had to be borne a long way. When, then, He had gone a little further, He became so fatigued and cramped with carrying the cross, that He laid it down. Then, those most vile men, disliking to defer His death, fearing, too, lest Pilate should revoke the sentence — for He had displayed vacillation — compelled a certain one to bear His cross ; but Him, thus unburdened, they led as a robber bound to the place of Calvary. Do not, then, these sufferings, which He endured, at the matin, at the first and the third hours, seem to you, apart from the Crucifixion, to have been most violent and bitter afflictions, fearful and dreadful indeed? Yes, I think so, and fitted to call out our compassion for Him, and to excite intense grief. Thus, we seem to have completed what we have to say for the present concerning the sufferings of our Lord at these three points of time. Let us now turn to those events which happened at the sixth and ninth hours, His Crucifixion and Death. Then we will afterwards consider what took place after His Death, at evening time, and at the close of the day. 1
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Footnotes
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Is. liii. i2. ↩