LENTEN SERIES OF SEVEN SERMONS

Published by JOSEPH F. WAGNER. Inc.. New York 8. N. Y.

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PHASES

SACRED

SSION

By REVEREND WILLIAM GRAHAM





PHASES OF THE

SACRED PASSION

A Lenten Course

By REV. WILLIAM GRAHAM

New York:

Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.



REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.L.

Censor

Imprimatur

^ JOHN M. FARLEY, D. D.

Archbishop of Nenv York

New York, January 18, 1909

Copyright, 1909, by Joseph F. Wagner, New York

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CONTENTS

Page

I The Shadow of the Cross . « »
.

• • 5

II The Betrayal of Judas ,14

III The Denial of Peter 23

IV Christ Before Herod 32

V Christ Before Pilate . . •
.

-

VI The Cross Bearing • o « « » o o 51





Phases of the Sacred Passion

A LENTEN COURSE IN SIX SERMONS

I. THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS

“And as he spoke these things, there came a cloud and overshadowed
them/’—Luke ix, 34.

SYNOPSIS.—Introduction.—The Cross both a power and a spell. No
wonder, for it sums up the life, teaching and ideals of Christ, ''Son of
the living God” though often directly opposed to pleasure, wealth and
culture, the gods of the world; yet its attractive force irresistible. Once

a badge of infamy, the Cross is now the symbol, the dag, the banner, of
the conquering Christ, and His advancing kingdom. In this uplifting and

glorification of the symbol, lurks the danger of our forgetting what the

Cross really meant to Christ in life; and what it ought to mean in ours.

Hence, the need of dwelling on the sacred Passion of Our Lord, of
which the Cross is the synonym.

I. The Cross in shadow ever lay over the world; for it implies

sacridce, the need and accompaniment of sin. Rested personally on Our
Lord all through His human life. His consciousness of the future. Horror

of impending and anticipated evils. The types and prophesies of the Old

Testament were to Him shadows of the Cross. The tree of life, the mur-
der of Abel, Noah carrying wood to build the ark, Isaac bearing the wood
on which he should be offered in sacrifice by his ozvn father, the wonder-

working rod of Moses, the life of David, all traced out in His mind the

image of the Cross on which He should redeem the world.
II. As He advances in life, the shadows deepen. They outline the

Cross in all its terrible features. Finally, they culminate as threatening

clouds massing in the sky; and the storm they presage, breaks in full

fury on Him, in the dread hour of the agony in the garden. The Passion

these shadows outlined now begins.
Lessons.—Lives of most of us lie in shadow. Deep shade or thick

darkness tinge, if they do not envelope, what are deemed the sunniest

and merriest lives. Death, and sin, and uncertainty of the future, are

enough to darken all lives. Whence came light, peace, hope and rest?

From that very Cross, the shadows of which darkened the life of Christ.
Under its shadow will the soul find forgiveness and peace and eternal

rest.

9

Introduction.—

K

spell clings to the Cross of Christ Since its

shadow fell alike on friend and foe at Calvary, the eyes of the

world have been riveted on it, either in love or hatred, in reverence

or contempt And no wonder, for the ideals of Christ are embodied

in it. It is the Gospel in a single word. It stands for His life, suf-

ferings and death; and shadows forth, too, the provision He made



6 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

for the redemption, sanctification and salvation of men. As an his-

torical event the Passion is past, but it ever lives in a visible and

tangible form in the Cross, which, like the flag of a great world

power, meets us everywhere. The attractive force of the Cross, in

a world where pleasure reigns supreme, is an enigma were it not

that Christ has said, ‘Tf I be lifted up from the earth, I shall draw

all things to myself.’’

That what was once an emblem of crime, shame and degrading

torture should become the ensign of the ‘'King of Glory,” the

banner and flag of the conquering Christ and His every-spreading

kingdom, is in itself no small wonder. And yet in this very triumph

of the symbol there lurks the danger of our forgetting what its

reality meant to Him when he bore it to Calvary, and for three

long hours hung on it in agony. We now see the Cross, deckea
with roses, carved in gold, silver and ivory, glittering in the dia-

dems of kings, and so overlook what it should mean and stand for

in our lives.

Lest, then, we forget the lessons it is meant to convey, it is well

for us, during this holy season of Lent, to follow Our Lord in some

phases of His Passion. The Cross, like Him who died on it, is

“set for the fall and resurrection of many.” It will either raise us

aloft, and be a ladder to heaven, or fall upon us, and crush us by

its weight. Its shadow is upon us all, for weal or woe. Like the

pillar of the cloud in the passage of the Red Sea, “it gives light by

night” to the children of God
;
but is “cloud and darkness to their

enemies.” Among the actors in the tragedy of the Cross some

repented, believed, and were saved: others hardened their hearts,

mocked, and were lost. So to-day the Cross is either supreme folly

or supreme wisdom. Its shadow chills or refreshes, brings spiritual

life or spiritual death. The Cross was never absent from Our Lord’s

life
;
and in and through it we must be fashioned into His image.

Its shadow must ever cover us.

I. The Cross did not appear to Him for the first time when He

quitted the judgment hall of Pilate to bear it upon His shoulders. It

haunted Him through life. Its shadow fell upon His manger-cradle

at Bethlehem. He grew up under it. A beautiful modern painting

represents Our Lord as a boy in the act of stretching His arms

after the work of the day at the door of His humble home in Naza-

reth. The rays of the setting sun behind Him cast the shadow of

a clearly marked cross that startles His mother and carries grief



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS 7

and agony into her heart. Where there is self-sacrifice, there truly

is the shadow of the Cross. This sacrifice, this Cross, is the antidote

of sin. Its shadow in a manner reached heaven; for, in the great

act of self-annihilation, that induced God to become man, and

suffer in His human nature for sin, the Cross cast its shadow.

Calvary was the culmination of the cycle of sin, and of sacrifice

for sin, the falling away of the mists and shadows that lay between

God and man. But there is nothing in shadow to the eye of God.

All stands out in brightest light. There is no future, there is noth-

ing prophetic, or uncertain, to Him. To Our Lord as God the Cross

in anticipation, the Passion in prophecy, stood out before Him in

grim reality. The hot glare of its cruel pangs ever fell upon His

soul and made Him indeed ''the man of sorrows.'^ Clearness of

vision, begetting a sure anticipation, intensifies coming evils. There

is a sense in which shadows and presentiments are as bad, if not

worse, than the reality. The shadow of the descending sword is as

terrible to the victim as the object that casts it.

How far did Our Lord as man realize in anticipation the terrible

sufferings of His sacred Passion? To what extent was He con-

scious of the doom that awaited Him? How far did the human

element in consciousness blend with the divine? These are perhaps

questions that will never be answered. The lamb springs into the

butcher’s arms, but the criminal recoils in horror at the mere threat

of even a justly deserved death. In the case of the innocent "Lamb

of God that taketh away the sins of the world,” the shadow of the

coming Cross revealed itself to Him in all its dread reality. What

is night to us was to Him as "light of day.” The Old Testament

types, figures, and prophecies, dim to us, even in the light of their

fulfilment, revealed themselves to Him in all their dread yet luminous

significance.

The tree of life, that rose in stately splendor in Eden, promise of

perpetual youth and vigor, symbolized to Him the dread tree of

shame, on which in untold agony He should yield up His life to

save us from eternal death and win for us life everlasting.

The cry of Abel, slain by a cruel brother, and this first just man’s

blood, calling to heaven for vengeance, foreshadowed His own

brutal murder by the wicked brethren He loved and prayed for, and

their mad cry to heaven, "His blood be upon us and upon our chil-

dren.” History has stored up for our warning what that cruel

prayer meant to Him and to them.



8 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

Past events cast their shadows into the future. The story of the

flood to the ordinary Jew was but the record of a visitation of

divine. wrath, which the rainbow in the sky told them could never

be repeated
;
but to the vision of Christ it was a shadow of Calvary.

He beheld the one just man of the day amid the scoffs and jeers of

his brethren painfully struggling under the wood that was to build

the ark wherein clean and unclean alike could find salvation; and

in that just man’s shadow He saw Himself amidst the jeers and im-

precations of a wicked crowd wounded, weary and ‘‘bruised for our

sins,” bending under the beam of shame on His way to Golgotha.

It was the cruel Cross again that cast its lurid shadow on His

soul when He read or heard His mother telling Him the story of

Isaac carrying the wood on which, at God’s command, he should be

sacrificed by his own father, Abraham. The child bends under the

wood, but, like an ox or a lamb, is blissfully unconscious of the

doom to which he is destined. God sends an angel to stay the

obedient father’s hand, and furnishes another victim; but for our

ungrateful sakes He sends an angel to hand the bitter cup of the

Passion, that the new Isaac is to drink to the dregs. Isaac’s burden

was to Christ the Cross in shadow. It was no mere fancy of a

Messianic mission, but His inherent divine insight into “how the

Scriptures should be fulfilled” that made Him see the outline of

the Cross in the life of His great prototype Moses, whom the

Messias was to succeed as a “leader like to himself” over the new

people of God, His Church. As Moses He plunged the wood

—

the Cross He died on—into life’s bitter waters and sweetened them
for all time

;
but at what cost to Himself God and His holy angels

alone can tell. Through a simple piece of wood—a mere rod

—

Israel’s great saviour and leader performed all the wonders re-

corded in the story of his life. God ordered him to throw it on

the ground. “He cast it down, and it was turned into a serpent:

so that Moses fled from it” (Exodus iv, 3). Did not Our Lord see

in this rod—^the Cross—that thing of shame and pain from which
all men, and even He Himself, should shrink as from a vile and

loathsome thing, as “from the face of a serpent” ? The shadows of

signs and wonders done by Moses with that same rod must have

shown Him what His own Cross should effect through “the travail

of his soul.” The rod of Moses again turned info a serpent, swal-

lowed up those of the Egyptian magicians, just as the Cross of

Christ, in its triumphant march, destroys all forms of worldly wis-



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS
9

dom, power, and wonder. Yet the shadow of the ‘‘holy rood/' that

lightened our burden, that delivered us from the ten plagues of

Egypt—^the various forms of deadly sin under which we groaned

—

pressed heavily on Him. Sorrow, too, must have filled His heart

at the thought of the evil use to which men would turn His Cross,

the very instrument of their delivery. “He was sent for the fall, as

well as for the resurrection of man in Israel"
—

“his Cross," a sign

that should be contradicted. The last plague inflicted by the rod

of Moses was of dense darkness. His Cross rejected, and scorned,

covers the land with thick spiritual darkness. See the once fair

lands, where the crescent has displaced the Cross, or where the

Holy Rood has been ruthlessly pulled down and the graven image

of Pharao and his satellites put in its place. This, too, was a shadow

of Calvary falling on His soul.

The Cross, that “should redeem Israel from all lier iniquity"

—

that, like the cloud, black and dark, on the side of the Egyptians,

and all soul-hardened nations—was yet a “light to the Gentiles" and
all “true Israelites." The people of God were baptized in the Red

Sea of the blood He shed on it
;
but hardened sinners are drowned

in it. For in its very shadow Our Lord foresaw that the Cross,

which is “wisdom to the truly wise," is yet “folly and a scandal

to the evil and the worldly wise." The wielding of the rod of Moses

saved the people of God, but hardened the hosts of Pharao
;
so the

lifting up of the Cross of Christ is a source both of salvation and

perdition. Personal hatred of Christ and His Cross, upheld in the

Church, is as intense to-day as when it was laid upon His shoulders

amid the exultant shrieks of His enemies. The shadow of this sin

was as vivid to Him as its reality is to us, and far more painful.

Though true God, Our Lord was also true man—a man among
men. He even called Himself “the son of man." Now in His deep

intimacy with her from whom alone He held this title, He must

have often alluded to David—^the pride and glory of their nation

—

the founder and head of the family to which they belonged. But

the vision of His mind did not regard David in all the pomp,

splendor and glory of dominion
;
but David, poor, hunted down by

his enemies, hiding in dens and caverns—David, the bard of sorrow,
over whose soul the “waters of affliction had flowed." He saw in

David the shadow of His own unquestionable royalty; but it was

the royalty of the palace of Caiphas, and hall of Pilate—the royalty
denoted by the crown of thorns, the purple rag, and the scepter of



lO PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

the reed. His courtiers are the mocking soldiers, who, with cruel

gibes and coarse jests, bow the knee before Him, saying, ^‘Hail,

King of the Jews’’; and the throne they prepare for Him is the

hard knotty cross. This was the kingly dignity that now cast its

shadow on His soul. True, He foresaw that He should reign in

absolute sovereignty over His kingdom, and in the hearts of all

true Israelites, to the end of time
;
but this vision was clouded by the

shadow of the hosts that should reject His royalty, do their utmost

to dismember His kingdom, abandon, in short. Him, ‘'the fountain

of living water, and dig to themselves fountains that hold not water.”

He was thus ever “the man of sorrows.” A criminal, condemned
to death without reprieve, knows not the sweets of rest after toil,

the joys of fancy, the pleasures of hope. His punishment is ever

before him; for anticipation of pain is even worse than the pain

itself. So was it with Our Lord, the all holy and all perfect. His

was not a soul hardened by sin, or a body besotted with vice
;
but re-

fined and delicate
;
and so fitted for pain and sacrifice beyond words

to describe. We can thus understand how the dark shadows of
His coming Passion gathered over His soul in pondering over the

revelations made to prophet, seer and king. The details, as de-

scribed by holy David and Isaias, are startling in their realism.

What must they have been to the Chief Sufferer, who as Eternal

Wisdom revealed them. “The chastisement of our peace was upon

him, and by his bruises we are healed.” “All we, like sheep, have

gone astray : and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

“For the wickedness of my people have I struck him” (Isaias liii,

6
,
8 ).

II. Deeper and deeper fell the shadows of the Cross as He

advanced in years—through the long period of His hidden life at
Nazareth, and the short term of His public career. Even in the

glimpses of kingship and glory, accorded on Mount Thabor, and on

His solemn entry into Jerusalem, Calvary and its Cross were ever in

view. In full consciousness of the treatment He was to receive, He

set His face steadfastly “to go to Jerusalem,” “he went before them”

to keep the pasch. How clearly impressed the shadow of His com-

ing sufferings were upon His mind we gather from His own words,

“Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the son of man shall be be-

trayed to the chief priests, and they shall condemn him to death,

and shall deliver him to the Gentiles, and they shall mock him, and



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS II

spit on him, and scourge him and kill him, and the third day he

shall rise again'' (Mark x, 33, 34).

He was thus drawing near to the valley of the shadow. The

triumphant entry on Palm Sunday forms the receding light that

lengthens the shadows of the days that follow. His whole life was

thus the Passion in anticipation—the Cross casting its dark shadow
before. His thirty-three years were but the foreground of the

Crucifixion.

The shadows keep deepening, till they culminate in Gethsemani;

and the fury of the storm, raised by the powers of darkness, breaks

in upon His soul. The spot where the Passion proper began looks

calm and peaceful to-day, as it lies sleeping in the sun, under the

shadow of Olivet, and facing the dark frowning rocks that encircle

Jerusalem. The old olive trees, or shoots from them, that once

cast their shadows on the Man of Sorrows still survive to remind

the pilgrim of that night of deep gloom, when the soul of the Son

of Man, weighed down with unspeakable anguish, was ‘‘sorrowful

even unto death." Why the God-man, whose face on Thabor “did

shine as the sun," and at sight of whom legions of evil spirits fled

in terror, should now crouch and tremble like a terrified babe,

where there was nothing to alarm Him save the weird moaning of

the wind and the shadows of the olive branches, is one of the mys-

teries of the Passion. Thus far it is only the anticipation, merely

the shadow of coming evil, that presses on His soul. The prophet

Isaias foretold, as subsequent events showed,, that under lash and

thorn, and nail, and insult, He should be “dumb as a lamb before his

shearer, and should not open his mouth" (Isaias liii, 7). Yet here,

under the mere shadow of the Cross, He cries out in anguish, “My

soul is sorrowful even unto death." He felt it would seem the

suspension of His divinity—^the marshalling of the powers of evil,
hell let loose on His humanity, in its loneliness. Holy souls when

nearest to God in the keenest anguish have deemed Him absent.

In the maelstrom of fast encircling woes we seem to hear Him

utter the Psalmist's words, “The waters have come in even to my

soul. I stuck fast in the mire of the deep; and there is no sure

standing. I am come into the depths of the sea, and a tempest

hath overwhelmed me" (Psalms, Ixxiii). He feels Himself now the

“scapegoat" of our race. He is coming into close contact with

sin; and the anguish of His soul at the view of our iniquities, and



12 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

the little profit sinners would draw from His Passion, cause the

blood to ooze from His body. ‘‘Quae utilitas in sanguine meo.”

God is punishing Him. He is veiling Himself that “by his bruises

we may be healed.’’ “For the sins of my people I struck him.”

Wicked men are plotting His death
;
the tramp of their armed hire-

lings, led by the traitor disciple, breaks in upon the silence of the

night. Dim lights are flickering in the palace of Caiphas
;
and the

shadows of the Cross are melting away before the grim reality.

What a terrible share they had in the sufferings of Our Saviour

we learn from the agonizing cry they wrested from His sacred lips

ere those of the traitor came in contact with them, “Father, if it

be possible, let this chalice pass from me, yet not my will but thine

be done.”

We, too, dear brethren, live under a cloud. Dark shadows over-

hang the brightest and sunniest lives. Tears follow smiles, even in

sinless, light-hearted children. The gayest and most frivolous have

longer spells of gloom than of pleasure, say what they may. The

future, in most cases, throws more shadow than light upon the

present. Death alone casts a deep dark shadow over all lives in

cutting short all present and prospective pleasures. Even to those

who have lost all belief in a future life it is a marfeast and a

destroyer.

People shrink from the Cross, yet it is the retrospect of our past

crosses, not of our pleasures, that brings us peace, joy and rest.

And why? Because Christ in embracing has exalted the Cross and

ennobled the idea of sacrifice that it implies. He alone, in the might

of His divine power, could have changed the Cross, symbol of de-

grading crime, worse than gallows or guillotine, into an altar, a

throne and a pulpit. Its very shadow to Him was life-long pain;

but to us it is light, revealing the mercy, the love, the tender bounty

of God. Thrice did He sink under its weight ; but He has made it

sweet, and light, and easy to us.

It is a law, and yet a mystery, that in all departments of life,

not pleasure, but sacrifice, leads to glory. “No cross, no crown.”

The way to bliss leads not by Thabor, but by Calvary. Suffering,

too, and sacrifice, are not only personal, but vicarious. We are not
isolated in our joys, no more are we in our sorrows. We suffer not
only with but for one another. His was the transcendent vicarious

offering
;
ours derive all their value from His. Every sorrow, every



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS ^3

pain, every act of unselfish sacrifice, in union with His, bears the

divine stamp of the Cross.

No wonder the shadow of the Cross fell heavy on Our Lord
;
for

it was the shadow of a wicked world’s sin. It points out the awful-

ness of moral evil and the need of a divine Saviour. Reading sin in

the gloom and darkness of Gethsemani and Calvary will help us

to realize how fearful it must be, since a divine victim was required

to atone for it. Sin it was that nailed this victim to the Cross. ‘‘All

we, like sheep, have gone astray: . . . and the Lord hath laid

on him the iniquity of us all.” He was offered because it was His

own will. “He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter and shall

be dumb as a lamb before his shearer” (Isaias liii, 6, 7). While re-

vealing the dread malice of sin which nailed Christ to the Cross, it

preaches the necessity of blotting out sin in our own souls by

sincere repentance and the application of Christ’s cleansing blood

in the Sacrament of Penance.

The Cross has introduced a new standard into life. It stands,

and ever will stand, in diametrical opposition to the world and its

ways, and thoughts, and ideals. It is for us, then, who love the

Saviour, to love His Cross, inseparable from Him; to nestle under

its shadow—^to make it our banner, our flag, our standard. It is
the only way to heaven. “Via crucis, via lucis.” To follow the way

of the Cross is to follow Christ; and “he who follows me walketh

not in darkness,” saith the Lord.



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

II. THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS

“Jesus said to him: Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”
—Luke xxii, 48.

SYNOPSIS.—Introduction.—The passion proper begins with the betrayal
of Judas. Desertion, or betrayal on part of friends, when help and
sympathy most needed, one of the hardest trials to bear. Jesus left

alone, in a sea of sorrow. His very love of “His own” measure of the
pangs He felt, in desertion of all, and betrayal on part of one. De-
cadence of Judas long a source of grief to our Saviour. Judas, type

of the traitor and informer to all time.

I. IVas a time server. Saw our Lord losing in popularity, and
throwing away His chances of becoming a king. Judas dreamed only of
place and power and wealth in a restored Jewish sovereignty. A spiritual
kingdom had no meaning for him. Avarice his main vice, would at

least gain something from wreck of his hopes. Bargains for betrayal

of Christ. Story of the betrayal.

II. Feels himself a Cain. His crime haunts him as a specter.

His sin has found him out. The strange thing is, he seems to repent
and atone for his crime by returning the accursed money he earned

by it; but his sorrow is loveless and hopeless; consequently, ineffectual.

His grief was human: no divine element in it, could not win pardon.

One act of true contrition, a movement of genuine repentance, would have
restored him to grace; but alas! it was too late. Tragic death of Judas.

III. Judas, a type of those who fail to live up to grace of their state
—the bad priest, the bad bishop, the bad religious, and the rest. First
bad communicant. Highest call may result in failure. Lessons taught
in betrayal of Jesus. Are we traitors to Christ? Do not many of us
hear the Master whisper into our ears, “Judas, dost thou betray the Son

of Man with a kiss?”

Introduction .—The storm that was gathering over ‘'the Man of
Sorrows’’ broke upon Him in Gethsemani. “Great as the sea is

thy sorrow,” was the brief prophetic description of the Passion.

Excess marked its every stage, from the agony in the garden, till

death on the Cross. There are depths in the sea that no plummet

has yet sounded. So are there in the sufferings of Christ, though

saints and divines have been exploring and sounding them for

centuries.

The great sacrifice consummated on Calvary begins with the be-

trayal of the divine victim by Judas. In the whole gamut of

mental pain endured by Our Lord none was more keenly felt than

the desertion of His Apostles. The abandonment of friends at the

moment when we stand most in need of their help and sympathy

adds an acute pang to sorrow; but the Apostles were more than



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 15

mere friends to Christ, they were His dearest and most intimate

associates. He loved His little community, ‘'His own,’’ as He

called them, “to the end,” with infinite tenderness. Hence the deep

pain He felt in their shameful desertion. A special mark of infamy,
however, clings to the memory of Judas. His very name, indeed,

stands as the synonym of the most hateful and loathsome class

known to us, the traitor or betrayer of the cause or society to which

he belongs. Judas is the type of the false witness and perjured

disciple.

To note the decadence, the gradual hardening of heart—for the
sin of Judas, unlike that of Peter, was no sudden impulse—in the
case of His chosen Apostle, was ever a secret, pent-up grief of the

Saviour. He felt as a good father or mother feels on seeing son

or daughter wilfully treading the downward path to ruin—powerless
to hinder or recall. For free will is so high a gift, so potent an

endowment, that it ties, so to say, the very hand of God. It was a

standing grief to the little band that formed the inner circle of the

friends of “the Master,” for in spite of their rough, blunt ways,

and subsequent flight and terror, they were simple, and straight, and

loyal, and loved Our Lord dearly and sincerely. Yet they heard

Him repeatedly say, “One of you shall betray me,” and from their

intimate knowledge of his character must have suspected Iscariot.

For one thing they were all Galileans, while he was a Jew.

The soul of union is the faith, the trust, the loyalty of its mem-

bers. To sell one’s country, to betray one’s friends, to barter away

the life and liberty of others, is deemed the worst form of criminal

offense. Every cause and nation has its traitors; but, as I said,

Judas is the standing type and common name for all. Others traf-

ficked in the lives and destinies of men and nations
;
but he sold for

thirty pieces of money his God, and, as far as in him lay, endangered

the highest and holiest cause the world has ever seen. Justly, there-

fore, is his name held in execration to-day. Like all the actors in

the tragedy of the Passion, Judas lives as a type—the type of the
traitor—for all time.
The story of the betrayal is quickly told. It was no sudden im-

pulse that drove Judas to hand his Master over to the fury of His

enemies. It was not his first, but his last, gross act of disloyalty

to Christ. Self had usurped the place of God in his heart. The

betrayal was the last link in a chain of sin. By words, and signs,

and deeds, Our Lord had repeatedly striven to stay the downward



i6 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

course of His erring disciple. But his ruling passion—greed for
gold—had gained the mastery. Like all sinners, he had fallen into
the devil’s trap: “Do my work, said the evil one, and I shall do

yours.” “All these things I will give thee if thou wilt fall down

and adore me/’ a tempting bargain
;
but, as Judas afterward found

to his cost, a lying and deceitful one. But needless to moralize at

this stage. “The die is cast.” Christ, Judas thinks, is on the los-

ing side. He is growing unpopular.' He either would not or could

not “restore the glory of the kingdom of Israel.” He is a mere

dreamer; and thirty pieces of solid silver, in his then frame of

mind, were worth far more to him than all the visionary gain of a

spiritual kingdom. The bargain with Christ’s enemies is struck,

and Judas, at the head of a hundred and twenty hirelings, makes

for the garden of Gethsemani.

There Our Lord and Saviour was in the throes of that stage of

His Passion that we name, “the agony in the garden.” It is the

first of the five sorrowful mysteries, the beginning of the harrow-

ing scenes that terminate on Calvary. Christ is in the deep waters

of distress—alone, forsaken, abandoned, even by God. He begins
to feel the pangs of the victim “striken for our sins,” “bruised for

our iniquities.” In the abyss of His depression of soul He seeks

the fellowship and s}Tnpathy of His chosen companions; but they

sleep while He watches in pain. “I looked for one that would

grieve together with me, but there was none; and for one that

would comfort me, and there was none” (Ps. Ixviii). The response

to His request is the approach of the betrayer, and that betrayer

His own disciple. “If my enemy had reviled me, I would verily

have borne with it. But thou, a man of one mind with me, my

guide and my familiar, who didst take sweet meats together with

me in the house of God, we walked with consent” (Ps. liv). “Judas

immediately going up to him saith. Hail, Rabbi, and he kissed him,”

an embrace which Our Lord bent down to accept, for tradition tells

us that Judas was a man of low stature, with dark scowling fea-

tures and obese. He is now the moving spirit of the Lord’s enemies,

the leader of the “many dogs that encompass him,” “the council of

the malignant that now hold him besieged,” “of them that open

their mouths against the Christ, as a lion ravening and roaring”

(Ps. xxi).

Judas is now filling up the measure of his iniquities. He seals

his own doom. “Better for that man if he had never been bom.”



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 17

Satan now enters into him, and he beconxes “the son of perdition/^

The prophet’s words seem to fit him to the letter, “Set thou the

sinner over him, and may the devil stand at his right hand. When

he is judged may he go out condemned. May there be none to help

him
;
because he remembered not to show mercy

;
but persecuted the

poor man and the beggar, and the broken in heart to put him to

death” (Ps. cviii). The beads of blood were still pearling off that

“Poor Man’s” brow. That outcast and brokenhearted One was

being “wounded for our sins,” “God-stricken and forlorn,” that we

might be healed. The look cast by Christ, as He returned his em-

brace, burned into the traitor’s soul.

“The multitude with swords and clubs soon did their work.”

The feeble attempt at defense is quickly overcome. The terrified

disciples broke and fled. “The shepherd is struck and the sheep

are scattered.” True, the whole hireling gang fell back in con-

fusion at His word and glance, a proof that he was no mere help-

less victim of material force; but this “was their hour and that of

the powers of darkness,” and He goes as a meek lamb to the

slaughter, “opening not his mouth.” Christ, the Man-God, is gagged

and led to judgment. Five times is He tried, or rather five times

does He undergo the mocking ordeal of a trial. He is “in the net

of the fowler.” His enemies have been “those of his own house-

hold.” No human help is nigh, and by the “high will of heaven”

divine help is arrested. “I am become as a man without help. I

looked on the right hand, and there was no one that would know

me. There is no one that hath regard to my soul” (Ps. cxli). He

“will tread the winepress alone,” He will accomplish the work “his

heavenly Father gave him to do.”

II. Meanwhile, what of Judas, the main actor in this phase

of Our Lord’s Passion. He, too, has done his work. He has sold

his God. He has betrayed his Lord and Master, whom, if he did

not fully realize to be God, he yet knew to be far beyond all other

men, just, pure, holy and innocent. He has the wages of sin in his

girdle, but it bums. The devil, he finds out, is a bad paymaster.

His dupes have ever the worst of the bargain, even in this life
;
and

chief among them is Judas. Money, he discovers, is not ever)rthing,

and, above all, money ill-gotten. Conscience, long dormant in petty

thefts, has a rude awakening in gross crime. “His sin has found

him out.” He flattered himself that he might deceive his Master

under the mask of friendship
;
and that, most likely, Christ would



i8 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

escape his enemies, as He had so often done before. In this way

he would cheat the hypocritical crew leagued against the Lord and

satisfy his own greed for gain at their expense. But now his well-

laid plan has failed. Christ is a manacled prisoner in the hands

of His foes. Perjured witnesses are now, perhaps, swearing His

life away
;
and at any moment He may be ‘‘delivered to the Gentiles,”

the brutal soldiery of cruel Rome, to be tortured to death on the

Cross. No supernatural agency has intervened to save Him. The

priests and Pharisees are triumphant. Judas is in the grip of despair.

The brand of Cain is upon him
;
for he has slain, npt only a brother,

but a “prophet of the most high God”—one in some mysterious
way the Son of God. The pale face of the Master, with its look

of anguish, and tears of blood trickling down His brow, rise up

before him, and His last words of mingled pity and reproach,

“Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” burn into his

very soul. His sin haunts him like a specter. Entangled in the

net of evil he has woven round his soul, he wanders aimlessly about

the dark valley of Hinnom till the morning dawned. Unable to

bear any longer the crushing weight of the blood money he car-

ried, he rushed to the Temple, where the priests, with broad phy-

lacteries around their brows, but venom and hatred for God’s

anointed in their hearts, had come to pray, he casts the thirty pieces

of money at their feet, exclaiming, “I have sinned in betraying in-

nocent blood.” The man they had suborned and tempted to betray

an innocent life must, by his words, have roused them to a sense

of the guilty plot in which they were engaged. They, too, must

have felt the lash of conscience
;
but they were hardened hypocrites

—
“blind and leaders of the blind.” Their sole response to their

guilty dupe, as they spurned him from their presence, was, “What is

that to us, look thou to it” (John v, 4)—'words that presaged his
doom and theirs.

The strange part of Judas’ story is that he seemed to repent, and

yet was not forgiven. Like penitent David, he cries out, “Peccavi,”

“I have sinned in betraying innocent blood,” and casts at the feet

of his fellow criminals the price of his treason. But alas for him,

his sorrow was loveless and hopeless. The necessary elements of

true contrition were wanting. It was human not divine grief,

founded only in disappointment, disillusion and despair—a mere
human experience of the “hard ways of sin.” Even then an act

of sincere sorrow would have restored him to grace. Christ was



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 19

at the gate. He stood knocking. But Judas lingered, hesitated,

and was lost The grace went to Peter. His lamp was out. Its

oil had run dry. The glance of Christ that softened Peter hardened

Judas. The soil of his heart, through long lack of tilling, had

grown hard and thorny
;
so that good seed could not root in it.

The remainder of his story is told in few words. Rushing out

from the Temple, into the long gloomy valley of Hinnom—the Tophat
of old—ere night's shadows had rolled away, despair on his face,
hell in his soul, he came to the summit of the rocky heights around,

and fastening his neck with the girdle or halter he was wearing

to the nearest tree, he let himself swing over the abyss below.

Striking against the jagged rock he burst asunder. Darkness passes

with the night. Sunless caverns and the dark depths of the sea

may one day be lighted up by the orb of day, but alas ! on the soul

of Judas, the betrayer of the Lord, the light of God's countenance

will never shine. For those that live without repentance there is a

ray of hope, but none for those that die without. Better for that

man ‘'never to have been born," says Our Lord. What He thus

said of Judas He meant also for us. When Christ on His way to

Calvary told the “daughters of Jerusalem to weep, not for him, but

for themselves and their children," was mother, or wife, or sister

of Judas among the mourners?

HI. To us, whose eyes, now open, are riveted on the person

and office of the victim of the treason of Judas, his crime seems

monstrous and unparalleled. Time has but deepened and heightened

it. With Satan, he is pre-eminently the “adversary of God," a “son

of perdition."

And yet, as St. Augustine says, “There is nothing that one man

does which another may not do if not helped by him by whom all

things were made." “What is this that hath been done? The

same that shall be done" (Eccl. i, 9). Judas sold Christ for thirty

pieces of silver. Are there not thousands, knowing more about

Christ's person than Judas did, who daily sell Him for less. Their

crime is less striking, less picturesque in the bad sense of the term,

but in God's sight none the less real. All down the ages has not

holy Church to mourn over those who sell her to the enemies of

her spouse ? Who were the great heresiarchs but men who had
once, like Judas, feasted on the body and blood of the Lord—^nay,
had power “to do this'* in remembrance of Him; and yet after



20 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

went forth to betray Him. Of them, as of Judas, Christ could

say, '‘I planted thee a chosen vineyard: how then art thou turned

unto me into that which is good for nothing and strange vineyard'’

(Jerem. ii, 21). Woe to ‘‘the salt that has lost its savor.” Life

gives and spreads life; but the dead spread infection and death.

So with Judas and his like.

His fall warns us that a high call and even close intimacy with
^

Christ are no guarantee of present holiness, much less of future

salvation. It reminds us all, priests and people, teachers and

scholars, in the school of Christ, that we must “work out our salva-

tion in fear and trembling.” It is what we become, and grow into,

at the finish of our career, and not what we were at the start, that

determines our worth and fate. The tone and color of our thoughts

regarding the character of Judas are usually taken from his last

fearful crime and tragic end. Yet he was once an enthusiastic fol-

lower of the Lord. He was once young and innocent. Nay, such

was his zeal in Christ’s cause, such his eagerness to “seek the king-

dom of God and his glory,” that he was admitted into the inner

circle, the privileged twelve who should follow the Lord wheresoever

He went. He was one of Christ’s bodyguard, in short. It is quite

possible that his motives at first for “leaving all things and follow-

ing Our Lord” were not of the highest. Like some of the other

raw, untrained disciples, he may have had visions of an earthly

kingdom of God, wherein he might play an important part The

new light that had arisen in the East, the great Messias, might yet

restore “the glory of Israel” and drive the hated strangers from the

land. He differed from the others in never rising to the idea of a

spiritual kingdom at all. He was shrewd, pushing and worldly-

wise, like the rest of his tribe
;
and hence he was made treasurer of

Our Lord’s household. He carried the bag.

For a time popularity was forced upon Our Lord; but He ever

shrank from it. The people would fain have made Him king, but

He ever withdrew from His admirers. “He hid himself,” the

Gospel says. Then they began to doubt as to whether He was the

Messias, the Son of David, the promised one of Israel at all, and

among them Judas. True, this popularity flickered up again on

the Palm Sunday, but it had long been on the wane. Those who

hailed Him as King at the beginning of the week were shrieking

loudly for His blood ere its close. The mob is ever fickle if its idol

is no flatterer. They did not want “a kingdom of heaven,” and one



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 21

‘‘of this world” Our Lord came not to found. Hence their rejec-

tion of Him.

Judas now deemed Our Lord’s mission a failure. He doubted,

waned in his loyalty, and turned traitor. He would gain something

from the wreck of his Master’s visionary kingdom, and to compass

this end sold that Master for a paltry thirty pieces of silver.

This was the culmination of a long series of sins of avarice. This

Gospel says he was a thief. He had begun by petty thefts from the

common purse. Filthy lucre, greed, gain, howsoever got, hurried

him on from bad to worse, till every shred of self-respect, all char-

acter, as we say, was gone. At one period of life no doubt he would

have shuddered at the excesses into which he fell; but like all set

sinners, he grew worse and worse, till, after his crowning act of

infamy, he died unwept for and unrepentant.

The fate of Judas illustrates the truth that there is no standing

still in the path either of righteousness or unrighteousness. We go
forward or backward. We turn to the light or from it, we go up
the “mountain of God” or down it. Like a boat on a swift-flowing

river, if we pull not vigorously up stream we drift aimlessly and

helplessly down it. ‘^He who perseveres not to the end, he who

putteth his hand to the plow and looketh back is not worthy of the

kingdom.”

Like all actors in the Passion, Judas is a type for all time. He

is, by no means, an isolated personage. The part he played in the

tragedy of redemption is repeated and re-echoed in the story of all

traitors to every good, holy and God-like cause, before and since.

As with Judas, money, the hunger for gold, engenders traitors

and informers, and both sows and feeds their vices. As I said,

every land, every cause has had its Judases, who put self and wealth

before honor, before truth, before their country, or before their

God.

Ask those who, called to preach Christ, and Him crucified, yet in

views and conduct preach the world and its vanities
;
ask the many

who follow Our Lord for a share of “the loaves and fishes,” and

deny or desert Him in the hour of His loneliness and need; ask

treacherous wives and unfaithful husbands are they not walking

in the footsteps of Judas? Inside the fold of the Master, Christ is

daily betrayed with a kiss—outwardly knelt to, honored and ad-
dressed as Lord, inwardly disbelieved, scorned, handed over, gagged

and bound, to His enemies.



22 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

Conclusion,—Brethren, ‘'what has been may be again.” The
infamy of Judas finds its counterpart in many Christian lives to-day.

As we read the Holy Father’s late appeal to some erring brethren,

to renounce worldliness under the mask of modernism, do we not

seem to hear Christ in His vicar uttering the words, “J^das, dost

thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” Let the story of Judas

warn us against false confidence. The appearance of health often

masks internal rottenness and decay. Flowers may bloom and wave

over dead men’s graves. The Cross, the banner of Christ, may

flutter over our heads, and Flis image glitter on our breasts, while

that of his adversary is engraven indelibly on our hearts. Are we

consciously nursing any vice that effects a cleavage between Christ

and us? Then we are not of ''his own/’ but Satan’s. Are we vic-

tims of avarice, or any other deadly sin? If so, we are digging

our souls’ graves. We are trenching in the heart those cisterns
that hold not the waters of grace. Do we not hear the warning

voice of Christ, “Amen I say to you, one of ydu shall betray me.”

Let us pause ere we, too, fall into the guilty ways of Judas, who

began by loving and serving Christ, and ended by betraying Him.

Are there not souls here present into whose ears the voice of Jesus

seems to whisper, “Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with

a kiss ?”



THE DENIAL OF PETER 23

III. THE DENIAL OF PETER

‘‘I say to thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, till thou thrice

deniest that thou knowest me/’—Luke xxii, 34.

SYNOPSIS.—Introduction.—The betrayal of Judas and denial of Peter
twin mental sorrows of Jesus in His sacred Passion. Christ, as He
stood before Annas, the traitorous kiss of Judas still lingering on His

lips, hears the oaths of His chief Apostle, denying that he knew Him'. The
ring of evil drawing tightly around Him; '‘No friend, no helper near.**

I. Christ and His Apostles. What they were to each other. Char-

acter of Peter. His strength and his weakness. His imprudent zeal

in the garden of olives, and subsequent iiight with the rest. His half-

hearted return, and following "afar off.** Story of the denial. His

repentance. How it differed from that of Judas. Life-long term of sor-
row, especially on hearing the cock crow.

II. Peter*s fall, not one of malice; due to weakness, in hour of

trial. Causes of his fall—self-confidence, impulsiveness, inconstancy.
Teaches us to avoid occasion of sin, especially bad company.

HI. His sincere repentance. The triple confession he made in

atonement for his triple denial. Two monuments in Rome. Keep
memory of St. Peter fresh.

^

In this phase of Our Lord*s Passion, two
thoughts strike us—the loving mercy of Christ to the fallen, and next,
the speedy and earnest repentance of Peter.

Conclusion.—Practical exhortation to rise from sin to true repent-
ance.

Introduction .—One Apostle betrays his Master, another denies
Him. This double apostasy must have deepened the anguish of

Our Lord in the bitter sorrows of His Passion. To be deserted by

one’s closest friends in the hour of need is a crushing blow, but to be

betrayed and ignored is still worse. As He stood before Annas,

shackled like a thief or murderer caught red-handed in crime, the

treacherous kiss of Judas still lingering on his lips, the oaths of

Peter, denying that he knew Him, struck in upon His ears. The

ring of evil was fast closing in around the '^Holy One of Israel.”

Hell was loose. He stood alone, deserted and undefended, in a

circle of triumphant and pitiless foes. Judas has done his Satanic

work. His loving friend and Master is now a wounded bird in the

net of the fowler, a meek and gentle lamb thrown to the wolves

;

and to add to the pangs of His stricken heart the one disciple who

had loudly professed fidelity to the bitter end declares with an oath

that He was an utter stranger to him. ^'Oh all ye who pass by the

way, see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” ‘T have

trodden the winepress alone.” ‘T looked around and there was no

helper.”



24 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

The denial of Peter as a phase of Our Lord’s Passion is the sub-

ject of my discourse to-day. In the Apostle’s fall and repentance

we may learn a lesson of love and sympathy for Our Lord and

of useful warning to ourselves.

I. The story of Peter’s denial is a sad and a base one. The

scene in the garden of Gethsemani is over. Our Lord, bound with

rough cords, is led, as a coarse criminal, to undergo a sort of pre-

liminary trial before Annas, the deposed high priest, who still

wields great influence with his son-in-law Caiphas, the actual holder

of the office. The full court of the Sanhedrin could not legally

try prisoners by night. The good Shepherd was struck, and His

little flock of timid Galileans were scattered to the winds—Peter,
who had made a brave show of resistance, fleeing with the rest.

The Apostles were all deeply attached to the person of Our Lord,

and had boundless faith in His power and Messiaship, as far as

they understood the term. As for His spiritual kingdom—a Church
embracing all nations—they did not rise to what it meant. The
Holy Ghost had not yet come .down upon them. They dreamt of

place and power in a restored earthly kingdom, like that of David.

They were proud of Our Lord, so to say. They thought no earthly

power could prevail against Him. Had He not stilled the angry

waves, conquered legions of devils more powerful than men, con-

founded His enemies, restored the dead to life? Surely, sinners

would have no power over Him. God would intervene to protect

His Holy One. But when they saw their divine Master in the

clutches of the law, bound and dragged away, a helpless prisoner,

their faith and courage gave way. The instinct of self-preservation

gained the mastery. They shrank from danger, and fled. Peter,

it is true, drew the sword, and even committed an act of violence in

his Master’s defense, but he soon lost heart, wavered and fled. From

what we glean of his character in the Gospel and elsewhere, we

have grounds for inferring tliat he was impulsive, generous and

enthusiastic, but irresolute and inconstant. He idolized his Master,

and in his warmhearted way ever gave vent to the feelings upper-

most in his heart, of unselfish love, loyalty, devotion and blind faith.

He deeply resented baseness and treachery, and was roused to in-

dignation at the bare thought of one of his companions betraying

his Lord. He would die, he said, and no doubt sincerely meant it,

rather than deny Him. But panic seized him in common with the

others, and Christ is left to ‘‘tread the winepress alone.” Tempta-



THE DENIAL OF PETER «5

tion reveals weakness as well as strength, and so did it in Peter's

case. He was over-confident in his own power. He forgot that

true friendship and love are best tested in the hour of misfortune

and trial.’

Peter soon grew ashamed of his cowardice and desertion, turns

back and follows his Master ''afar off/* Previously, to get near his

Lord, he had not hesitated to trust his feet to the treacherous waves

;

but now, cold, tepid, irresolute, he follows Him "afar off/* His place

was to stand near his Master in the supreme moment of danger,

and, if necessary, die with Him, rather than lounge near a snug fire

in the midst of his Master's enemies. But we anticipate.

Gaining admittance through the influence of another disciple,

probably St. John, personally known either to the servants or even

high priest himself, Peter makes his way to a fire, lighted in the

outer court by the soldiers and attendants, and stood warming him-

self, as if in nowise interested in the cruel proceedings taking place

a few paces away. Laden with chains, His face covered with

bruises and filthy spittle, the Lord and Master stands in mock trial

before a venomous judge, while the disciple listens with apparent

unconcern to the gibes and jeers of those around. Eyeing him

curiously, a servant maid, the only one of her sex who seems to

have taken an unsympathetic part in the Passion, said, ‘^Thou also

wast with Jesus of Nazareth; but he denied saying, I neither know

nor understand what thou sayest" (Mark xiv). Woman, I know

him not." Conscience-stricken for his base denial, he moves out to

the vestibule to escape notice. ‘‘He went forth before the court,

and the cock crew," The ominous sound merely told the approach

of dawn. The maid persistently clung to her opinion, and told it

to others, some of whom followed Peter out, accosting him with the

words, “Thou also art one of them. And again he denied with an

oath, that I know not the man" (Matt. xxvi). He still lingers

about, nailed to the spot, fascinated as by some secret spell. Mean-

while, insults and blows are raining on his sacred Master's person.

Peter's place, and he knew it, was either by his Master's side or out

from the hall, away from danger. He, too, was chained and

gagged. Grace was rejected, the voice of conscience unheeded.

Evil had fastened on him, and now a third, and his last, fall crowns

his apostasy. Not that he lost his faith, for Peter's faith never

faltered, either before or after the divine promise, but he wavered

in loyalty, he failed to “confess Christ before men," nay, more, he



26 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

openly denied, was ashamed of his Master, while all the time secretly

believing in Him. The very strength of his faith and depth of his

love made him all the more guilty, and intensified his Master’s grief.

He still flitted about the fire, like a moth round a candle, till ‘‘they

came that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou art also one of

them, for even thy speech doth discover thee. Then he began to

curse and swear that he knew not the man” (Matt. xxvi). Thus,

jwhile Christ is victim of the hollow mockery of a trial, the sole

purpose of which is conviction, within, His chief disciple is, with

oaths and imprecations, denying Him without. His boasted devo-

tion and undying love end in denial and blasphemy. He was now

fully alive to his guilt. Could he ever dare to look His beloved

Master in the face again ? It was then that the herald of the dawn

carried its third warning message to his heart. While Our Lord

was being led through the court, either to prison or to Caiphas, he

cast a glance upon Peter. The very oaths of His recreant disciple

had probably reached His ears. Not a word passed between them.

The Gospel merely says, “The Lord looked on Peter”; but that

look spoke volumes of sadness, of pity and of love. It penetrated

the heart and flashed light, and sorrow, and love. The foun-

tains of the heart’s abyss were opened, and tears of true con-

trition, of mingled shame and self-condemnation gushed forth.

“And going forth he wept bitterly.” The true Peter, the impulsive,

warmhearted disciple and lover of Jesus, stood revealed. The

glance of Jesus had burned into his soul, and the sinner left the hall

of judgment a penitent saint.

Jesus had looked also on Judas with inviting tenderness, but there

was no penitential response. Black despair and long cherished

habits of evil shut out the grace of God, whereas in Peter it found

ready entrance and glad welcome. Judas typifies the repentance

of despair, Peter that of hope and love. Sin ever does and ever will

create a Judas or a Peter. It leads either to despair and impenitence

or to hope and sorrow. Peter, model of true penitents, did not go on

in sin “grieving the Holy Spirit,” but turned at once to God by

sincere repentance. Tradition tells us that his cheeks were ever

afterward furrowed with the tears shed in the bitterness of grief

for his fall, and that he never heard the cock crow at break of

day without dropping on his knees and asking his dear Lord for

mercy and contrition.

Peter’s fall is a striking object lesson to all time of man’s inherent



THE DENIAL OF PETER 27

spiritual weakness. The head of the apostolic college, ‘‘Chrisfs

other self,'’ trained under the Master's own eye, falls, swiftly,

deeply, shamefully. A prying woman's curiosity, dread of the jeers

and gibes of worthless scoundrels, made him deny the highest, the

noblest and tenderest of masters. He was neither traitor nor

coward in the usual sense of the terms. Far from it. He was ever

to the front, the most fearless and zealous of the twelve. Withal,

he fell; and so may we all. If the oaks and cedars yield so easily

to the storm, what may we not expect from feeble twigs and bend-

ing branches!

II. Peter's sin was not one of malice. He fell through moral

weakness. He was not, and never had been, hopelessly bad. His

character had not grown vicious through long sinning and resist-

ance to the light, as in the case of Judas, the betrayer. No one be-

comes good or bad through single acts. There were weak ele-

ments, dangerous tendencies in his character that, if not repressed,

might have led to final ruin. St. Theresa, we are told, was shown

the place reserved for her in hell had she not overcome certain

dangerous inclinations of soul—tendencies, likely, that were, in the
world's eyes, the basis of her popularity and the esteem and love

she ever inspired. So with St. Peter. He was a very human and

very loveable character. But there were faults, possibly seeds of

great vices. There \vas, in the first place, a strain of overweening

self-confidence, that, in the spiritual order, is fatal. Self-reliance

is deemed a good and strong point in character, and under reserve

this is true; but unless built or rooted on confidence in God's grace

it is a hindrance. ‘T can do all things," says St. Paul, almost boast-

fully, yet he adds, ‘'in him who strengthens me." Both in nature

and in grace God's part is the main factor; but in the spiritual

order particularly, both “to do and to wish" what is right come

from Him.

St. Peter trusted to his physical strength and natural love of

Christ. He was ready to draw his sword against a cohort; he

threw himself into the sea, as I said, to get near his Lord; yet he

trembled before a servant maid. Now it is just moral courage, and

not brute strength, that is wanted in life. It is not physical daring,

but strength of will—the heroism of grace to stand out in defense
of God and righteousness—^that keeps us spiritually safe. In this
Peter failed. So self-trustful was he that he paid no heed to Our

Lord’s warning prophecy. His impulsiveness, born of self-confi-



28 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

dence, to rush into, and worse still to remain in, a dangerous situa-

tion, shrank and failed in the supreme moment of trial. True

inward strength, springing from reliance in God, was wanting, and

his boasted loyalty proved to be as chaflf before the wind. ^'Though

I should die with thee yet shall I never deny thee,"' were brave

words, and would have been justifiable, had they been qualified by

an expression of confidence in Almighty God. He trusted to un-

aided nature, and nature failed him in the moment of spiritual

danger. It is easy to be a hero or a martyr in dream and fancy,
*

but quite another thing to be so in action. It is easy to pitch one’s

tent on Thabor, but a very different matter to take one’s stand on

Calvary. To stand by Christ’s side m distributing ‘‘the loaves and
fishes,” calming the waves, expelling evil spirits, holding the multi-

tude spellbound by His words, refutftig the false notions current

in the piety and wisdom of the day, Peter found a much easier task

than to cling to his Lord in chains, buffetted, spat upon, “the scorn

of men and the outcast of the people.” And yet the latter is the

only true test of discipleship, as Peter fearlessly showed in after life.

Did time permit we might add other grounds of explanation of

Peter’s fall, his impulsiveness and consequent lack of steadiness.

Peter had to be taught that God is not to be served by fits and

starts, but steadily and perseveringly. He was full of fiery zeal

and enthusiasm at one moment, and just as tepid and lukewarm the

' next. He would wage war on Christ’s enemies singlehanded rather

than be separated from Christ, and yet very soon after he was fol-

lowing Him ''afar off’' His intemperate zeal in the garden is in

striking contrast to his base coldness and apostasy in the council

hall. Herein he is a type of the lukewarm and disloyal followers

of Our Lord, who serve Him "afar off”—who, during missions or
retreats, or on certain occasions, are zealous to the verge of im-

• prudence, but who soon fall away in faith and piety, ending, per-

haps, in betrayal or denial. Peter’s fall teaches the necessity of

never losing sight of our divine Master, of ever keeping in close

touch with Him, cost it what it may.

It is worthy of note, too, that Peter persisted in exposing himself

to the danger of sin. Aware of his own moral weakness, feeling

lack of courage and fear of the scoflfer and the scorner, he mingles

rashly among his Master’s enemies—nay, in manner and conversa-
tion, outwardly at least, becomes one of them. Bad company is the

worst of all possible occasions of sin. The strongest go down be-



THE DENIAL OF PETER 29

fore it. What of those that are at once weak and rash? Two points

are clear in this matter : God will not help souls wilfully exposing

themselves to needless danger; and next, that most souls are

spiritually too weak to help themselves
;
for it is ever true that ‘‘He

who loveth the danger shall perish therein/'

III. But though Peter fell, and fell basely, he repented quickly

and sincerely. Grace found a ready entrance into his heart. There

is thus a consoling side to the picture presented to-day. The look

the Master cast upon him, so sad, so reproachful, was not lost on

Peter. What shame it aroused, what recollections it brought to

mind, what floods of repentant tears he shed, as he thought of his

treachery to a Master, so kind, so true and so tender ! The heinous-

ness of his crime, for he sinned against the light, broke in upon his

soul in all its hideous reality. The veil that darkened his vision

was torn aside, and he judged himself, as he was, “a sinful man."

His repentance was no passing sentiment, but a deep and lasting

awakening of conscience to the hatefulness of sin, and lifelong

sorrow for incurring it. As I said, his cheeks were furrowed dur-

ing life with the tears shed in atonement for it.

God, we know, took away his sin. He was pardoned and re-

stored to grace. The illustrious penitent, type of true compunction

for all time, became his Lord's first vicar, the keystone of the world-

encompassing arch, the foundation stone on which alone united

Christendom can rest. The promise made to Peter still lives
;
and out

of his boat, the Roman Church, the new ark of Noe, Christ still

teaches “the multitude on the shore."

The shameful crucifixion was over, and the glorious resurrection

had become a fact in history. Peter had again resumed his humble

occupation of fishing. On one occasion he and his companions “had

spent all the night and caught nothing." A stranger appeared who
told them to cast the net on the right side of the ship, and forthwith

“it was filled to breaking." Over a fire of coals an humble meal is

prepared, and they all recognize in the stranger their risen Lord.

It was then that, standing near a fire such as had flickered in the

court of the denial, that Our Lord in His risen majesty evoked the

triple confession of faith and love, that blotted out the triple denial

of the Passion, “Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" And Peter,

no longer boastful and self-confident, appeals humbly to Our Lord's

intimate knowledge of his heart, “Thou knowest, O Lord, that I
We thee." Thrice was the question put and answered; and his-



30 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

tory tells how faithful Peter, personally and in his successors, has

been to the injunction of his Master.

Two monuments attest in Rome to-day how Peter witnessed to

his Lord, even to the shedding of blood. Both deeply impress the

visitor, but very differently. One is an humble wayside chapel, stand-

ing lone, solitary and abandoned, like Christ in His Passion, and

marking the spot where St. Peter, flying from Rome, at the request

of the faithful in Nero’s time, met Our Lord bearing His Cross.

The chapel is named ‘'Domine quo vadis,” from St. Peter’s words on

the occasion, ‘‘Lord, whither goest thou?” “To Rome, to be cruci-

fied,” was the reply. Taking the words to heart, the Apostle hurried

back to shed his blood for Christ. The other monument is the

noble and lordly pile of St. Peter’s Church, on the Vatican Mount,

where Peter’s crucifixion took place, and wherein the penitent

Apostle undid by his great alhrmation at Rome his base denial at

Jerusalem.

Surely the “finger of God is here, and it is wonderful in our eyes.”

The risen Christ has made the risen Apostle the foundation stone

of His kingdom. Rome, that hammered the nations into unity, by

^law and force, paved the way for the new Rome, that binds all

nations into unity by faith and love. Peter chose it as the center of

“the kingdom,” and “being confirmed, now confirmeth his brethren,”

and ever will, till “Christ’s own” are gathered in and Rome is re-

placed by the “Jerusalem that is above,”

Conclusion.—Two things strike us in this phase of the sacred
Passion—the mercy and grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and next,
the speedy and earnest repentance of Peter. Well might David,

himself a penitent, cry out, “The mercies of God I shall sing for-

ever.” “His mercy is above all his works.” This mercy tracked

Peter down in his sin till he “returned to his father’s house.” On

Peter’s part there was little or no delay. There was no tampering

with grace. Ere the morning sun rose in the sky he was back again

into favor with God. There was no halting between God and Baal.

His earnestness was shown by his life-long compunction and perse-

verance.

We have dwelt long and minutely on the fall and repentance of

Peter, but let us turn our eyes to our own souls. Let us ask our-

selves two questions : Have we ever, like Peter, basely denied

Christ, and, if so, have we followed him in his repentance? Re-

member, we have clearer light and quite as much grace, if not far



THE DENIAL OF PETER 3 ^

more, than the Apostles ere the descent of the Holy Ghost. The

greater the light the greater the responsibility. The higher the

sun in the sky the less the excuse for falling over precipices.

Let us ask ourselves if there is not a great deal of cant in our

condemnation of Peter. Have we never denied or done something,

tantamount to it? Have we never been ashamed of Jesus, and of

His cause? Have we not listened to or taken part with those who

jeered, and scoffed, and ridiculed Him in His Church and her min-

isters? When He is daily bound, and tried, and judged by His

enemies, the world and the flesh, whose side do we take? Even

when not going so far as to join the Pharisees and Sadducees of

the day, when still calling ourselves by His name and professing

His doctrine, do we not follow Him ''afar While Jesus stands

cold, lonely, hungry and naked in our poorer brethren, do we not

sit ‘‘warming ourselves,’’ thus practising the gospel of ease and self-

indulgence, while professing “to take up our cross daily and fol-

low him,”

Again, while falling like Peter, have we risen with him ? Do we

never hear the cock crow to awaken us from the sleep-like death of

sin? Are we not deaf, wilfully deaf, to the call of conscience and

the warning looks of Christ? He is ever near us in the Church.

Do we respond to His calls and looks ?

If we have fallen with Peter—and who has not?—let us weep,
repent, change with him, and not by persistence in sin “crucify

again and again the Lord of Glory,”

I



3«
PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

IV. CHRIST BEFORE HEROD

"And Herod with his army set him at nought: and mocked him”—
Luke xxiii, ii.

SYNOPSIS,—Introduction.—Five times did Christ stand in the guise of a
guilty criminal before His creatures. His appearance before Herod our
theme to-day. Pilate, anxious to transfer responsibility of condemning

an innocent man to another, sent Our Lord for trial to Herod, tetrarch,
under Rome, of the province from which Our Lord came, then in Je-
rusalem to keep the Passover.

I. Story of the Herods. Closely connected with Our Lord’s life and
works. A family of successful adventurers. . The Herod of the Passion,
called Antipas, son of Herod the Great; called the fox by Our Lord. His

sins of adultery and incest^ denounced^ by John the Baptist, foully mur-

dered by him at the instigation of the wicked woman with whom he
lived. To him was Christ brought for trial. Anxious to see and con-
verse with Our Lord. Christ silent. Awful judgment of Herod im-
plied herein.

II. Why? No worthy motive behind Herod’s curiosity. Herod
type of impure worldlings. God speaks not to such. Silence of God in

a soul worst form of punishment. The Herods of the day.

HI. Herod’s last and greatest sin, mockery of Christ. The depth

of mental torture to Christ, Eternal Wisdom, in being treated as a fool.'

The mystery it contains. The folly of the Cross. The opposition of the

world to the wisdom of Christ. Reason in the higher realms of thought

needs light of faith. Herod’s sad end. The two lessons taught by his life.

When Our Lord looked with eyes of tenderness and pity on

Simon Peter, it was nearly dawn, on the first Good Friday. He

had still to stand His trial before Caiphas, and the full court of

the Sanhedrim, that could not meet to hear cases till daytime.

The mockery of this trial is soon over, and Christ, laden with

chains, is dragged before the Roman governor, Pilate, to have

sentence of death pronounced, as to him the infliction of this pen-

alty was reserved. A hollow charge of blasphemy and sedition, got
up against Him by illegal questioning and false accusations, had

been framed by the Sanhedrim; and they now seek the sanction-

of the Roman authorities to put Christ to death. Pilate, the gov-

ernor, had come to Jerusalem from Cesarea, with an additional

cohort of soldiers, the better to overawe the turbulent Jews, during

the Passover feast.

Herod, too, tetrarch or kinglet, under Rome, ruling over Galilee

and Perea, was in Jerusalem at the time, partly to comply with the

Paschal precept, inasmuch as in religion he was a Jew; but mainly,



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 33

perhaps, to take a share in the amusements and license then preva-

lent in the city. His share in Our Lord’s Passion, as well as Our

Lord’s bearing toward him, form the theme of our discourse to-day.

I. A footsore and weary prisoner, worn out with the ill-treat-

ment of the night—^already almost reduced to the level of ‘‘a worm
and no man,” to use the prophet’s graphic description. He is led away

again from the house of Pilate, where His trial began, to the house

of Herod. Our Lord was a Galilean, as were most of His fol-

lowers, and this circumstance gave Pilate an opportunity of cast-

ing the responsibility of passing sentence on Him on Herod. It is

with this Herod, a puppet of Rome and one of the chief actors in

Our Lord’s passion, that we have now to deal.

No small measure of Our Lord’s sufferings sprang from His

being brought into close contact with the wretched creatures who

compassed His death. For a refined, cultured, sensitive mind,

association with the low, the ignorant, the coarse, and the sordid

is martyrdom. To the holy and God-fearing, sin and the godless

are a source of acute pain. What then must Our Lord, infinite

holiness, justice and truth, have felt when brought a victim into ‘'the

council of evildoers”? How revolting and loathsome to Him was

the foul touch, and breath, and speech, and conduct of the rabble

of Jews and their leaders, to say nothing of the Gentile soldiers.

Pilate, to whom He was first led, saw through the flimsy veil of

accusation woven against Him in the council chamber of the high

priest; but he had not the courage of his opinions. He was glad

of the excuse, therefore, to send Him for trial to Herod, on hearing

that He was a Galilean, and as such, under Herod’s jurisdiction.

It was thus that Herod became an actor in the Passion. Indeed,

there is an intimate connection between him and Our Lord’s mis-

sion and life. The Scripture says that Herod, seeing Jesus, was

very glad, for “he had heard many things concerning him,” “Herod,

the tetrarch, heard of all things that were done by him” (Luke ix).

The great prophet and teacher of the land over which he ruled

could not have escaped his notice. There were disciples of Our

Lord in his own household—amongst others, Joanna the wife of his
steward, Chausai. Some time after the murder of John the Baptist,

moved by superstitious fear, and a bad conscience, Herod said

of Our Lord, “This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead”

(Matt. xiv). “And he sought to see him” (Luke x). His wish is

now unexpectedly gratified. Not that he wished to satisfy his



34 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

curiosity through any praiseworthy or unselfish motive. It was

not to free an innocent victim of perverted justice nor to learn the

ways of the Lord from his accredited teacher; but to amuse him-

self with a display of strange, magical power; or even a wonderful

cure—that perhaps of his now crippled step-daughter, Salome, the
dancing girl, whose request had caused him to order the beheading

of John the Baptist. Herod has gained the odious double distinc-

tion of having mocked Christ, and of having murdered His pre-

cursor. -

He came of a bad stock—an Idumean family that had adopted
the religion of the Jews and the politics of Rome, a type of the true

Eastern adventurer, able, cruel, crafty and licentious
;

utterly

devoid of conscience where their temporal interests were at stake.

As very often happens, they were successful and prosperous; and

yet at heart miserable and unhappy, an object lesson in illustration

of the truth that even in this world wealth, place and power are

not everything, and that they often hinder, rather than promote,

true joy, peace and content.

The Herod of the Passion, known as Herod Antipas, was the

son of Herod the Great, founder of the family, who had married

Mariamne, the last of the Machabeans, whom he afterward foully

murdered. He was an imperialist—a partisan of the Romans, and
formed in the state a political party called Herodians, aiming at :

eventual kingship. He beautified and enlarged both Temple and

city, in Roman fashion. Herod Antipas was, like his father, cruel,

crafty and licentious; but without his father’s ability and force of

character. He was called fox by Our Lord. He intrigued with a

woman of loose life, his brother’s wife, and to marry her he illegally

divorced his own lawful spouse. His new partner in guilt led him

into the most revolting crimes. Their openly scandalous union was

publicly denounced by the Baptist, Christ’s precursor. 'Tt is not

lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.” Herod dared not

publicly slay the last of the prophets, and instead cast him into

prison. But one act of injustice leads to another. To fulfil a wicked

oath, made to a vicious maiden, urged thereto by her mother, his

partner in guilt, Herod orders the Baptist to be beheaded.

In spite of his gross cruelty and lust, Herod had a sort of venera-

tion, or rather fascination, for religious rites and ceremonies, and

never failed to make a show of attendance at them. Like all good

instincts gone wrong, the husk and chaff remained when the grain



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 35

and kernel of religion had gone. He was the type of many a royal

and imperial persecutor in ancient and modern times. If true re-

ligion does not suit them, they frame one to ''their own image and

likeness.” Flattering tools are ever at hand to help the great and

powerful in this sort of unholy work. But neither Christ nor the

Baptist feared or flattered Herod. Hence their treatment by him,

and his own undoing. Well for him had he taken to heart the

Psalmist’s words: "The just man shall correct me in mercy, and

shall reprove me, but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head”

(Ps. cxl, 5). His courtiers persuaded him that the keeping of the

Passover made him religious. He clung to the ritual and cere-

monies of religion, whilst casting the moral law to the winds. He

was punctual to the letter, whilst thwarting the spirit, of the law.

Like the other enemies of Christ, who were now plotting His

judicial murder, Herod "gave tithe of mint and cummin,” to the

utter neglect of the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy,

purity and truth.

And now the opportunity that Herod long craved for came

round. Christ is actually sent to him for trial. This gracious i,ct

on the part of the Roman governor gratifies his pride, and heals

a mutual feud of long standing. His curiosity to see and h^;ar

Christ is great. We have every reason to think that Herod was
kind and complimentary, flattering even, in his reception of Chr/st.

"He questioned him in many words; but he answered him nothing.”

This silence of Christ before Herod, like the dread silence of CA'd

in souls lost to a sense of sin, was more eloquent than words. He

answered Pilate, He had something to say even to the hypocritical

high priest; but for Herod, not a single word, though he spoke

fairly, nay unctuously. And why? Because Herod’s heart was

hardened, and his mind clouded by the most God-expelling of all

vices—lust. It was his predominant passion. His murders and
cruelty were but its consequences. When long indulged in, more

.than any other sin, it "divides between God and the soul.” To

draw near to God in prayer, to offer incense, to join in church

services, when the soul is wallowing in sin—particularly sins of the
flesh that a man will not give up—is adding hypocrisy to guilt.
"When you multiply prayers I will not hear, for your hands are

full of blood” (Isaias i, 15). Repentance for wilful sin, deep,

true, and sincere, is the first essential condition for admittance into

favor in God’s sight. "Wash yourselves, be clean, cease to do per-



3^
PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

versely, and then come and accuse me.” ‘‘If your sins be red as

scarlet they shall be made whiter than snow” (Id. v, i8).

Now this is just what Herod would not do. He clung to the

fiendish woman who had marred his life and her own. At her re-

quest he had slain the innocent Baptist, next to Christ Himself

amongst men in holiness of life; and the blood of this “just Abel”

was crying to heaven for vengeance. In vain does the impenitent

sinner speak honeyed words to the Son of God. How terrible is

the silence of God to a soul irrevocably “inclined to evil.” “Chas-

tise me not in thy wrath, O Lord: be not thou silent'' Woe to the
sinner who feels not the grace of repentance stirring in his heart,

whose conscience hears not the warning voice of God. The last

rattle even in the throat of the dying is an indication of life; but

unbroken silence is the seal and symbol of death. Herod would

not take God’s grace when oifered; and God will not change His

laws to suit Herod’s whims. He is still and calm as the silent

grave.

II. As I said, no worthy motive was behind Herod’s desire to

see and hear Christ. Our Lord invites all, even the “worst sinners

to repentance.” “He even stands at the door of their heart and

knocks,” and gladly welcomes “all who seek him in truth"

;

but

herein Herod failed. He wished to see and hear wonders from

Christ, as rustics go to mock and gape at jugglers in a fair.

There was no desire to approach Christ “in spirit and truth” by

ceasing “to do evil and learning to do well.” Hence, no miracle is

wrought, no word either of comfort, exhortation, or reproof is

uttered. Dead silence marks Christ’s dealings with Herod.

Herod was the type of the worldling of his day. Herods abound

and ever have abounded—men weak, absurdly vain, sensual, fri-
volous, and yet often wonder loving and clinging to the rags of

religion under the form of some favorite superstition or other.

In views, they may be advanced Modernists, who, like Herod, see

Him only to mock the reality of His person and mission
;
but

their advanced religion is but a deadly superstition withal.

To humble souls, who seek God in sincerity and truth, Jesus

ever speaks. Such as these He is ever ready to heal, enlighten and

console; but the proud He sends “empty away.” As in the days

of His earthly pilgrimage, to the gaping crowd, who observe Him

only to carp and criticize, who ask questions merely to entrap or

“ensnare him in speech,” who seek for signs and wonders, only to



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 37

gratify curiosity, no sign is shown—^to them Jesus is silent. The
blind see, the deaf hear, the dead in sin rise again, the poor have

the gospel preached to them ; but the Herods of the day He passes

by. They see only a Galilean peasant—a Jewish rabbi, the son of
Joseph and Mary; but the Son of God they see not.

In all souls, in or out of the body of the Church, wherein there

is a festering habit of sin which they do not seriously mean to re-

nounce, J^us is silent. His words would be wasted on them.

They would take no effect. Such as are in this frame of mind

are hopelessly godless, and to the utterly godless, Christ is ever

silent. The Baptist’s furrow has not been traced in their souls. He

sent His herald to prepare His way. John’s sole and whole mes-

sage was, ‘'Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’’ The

method is still the same. The heart must be plowed by grief for

sin ere the seed of God’s grace can germinate. Herod slew the

Baptist. The modern Herod—the world, the embodiment of Herod
—would slay God’s heralds also, the voice of conscience and the
voice of the Church, if they durst, and could. God’s revenge is

silence. His worst punishment on this side the grave is: “You

will call upon me and I will not hear; and you will die in your

sins.”

III. And now came Herod’s greatest sin; his mockery of Jesus.

He mocked his God. He clad Eternal Wisdom, incarnate in Christ,

in the robe of a fool. It was his chief share in the Passion, and

gives him a principal place amongst the actors in the drama of the

Cross. Though he did not imbue his hands directly in Christ’s

blood, as in the slaying of the Baptist, nor was he aware of Christ’s

divinity, yet was he guilty of the death of the Lord indirectly and

negatively by not liberating Him when it was his duty and in his

power to do so. Herod and his jeering myrmidons clad their silent

prisoner in a white robe of scorn, to show their contempt of Him

as a witless fool—a man bereft of common sense and intelligence.
The tetrarch, irritated at Our Lord’s persistent silence, puts on

Him the distinguishing mark of those who in losing their reason

lose their humanity.

Now if there is any one form of trial more than another that

men necessarily conscious of their superiority to others wince

under, and shrink from, it is ridicule, the being deemed stupid and

ignorant. They will endure any physical torment rather than be,

as Christ was in the most humiliating degree, “the scorn of men



38 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

and the outcast of the people/’ Picture to yourselves Eternal Wis^

dom, who planned the world—of whose infinite intelligence the
combined wisdom of men and angels is but a faint and distant

shadow—and even putting aside the truth of His Divinity, think of
Him who composed the Our Father, who uttered the maxims

stored in the Sermon on the Mount, and the discourse of the Last

Supper—think of Him treated as a fool—turned out into the streets
in the garb of an idiot. The highest created intelligenaes stood in

mute adoration before Him as the giver of their powers
;
the holiest

and wisest of our race are ever finding new treasures of wisdom

in the few sayings and maxims He left behind Him in the Gospel,

and yet He is presented by Herod as a laughing-stock to a coarse,

besotted rabble. The very sick He healed, the deaf whose ears He

unstopped, the blind to whom His word restored the light of day,

the cripples who ‘‘rose up and walked” at His command ; nay. His

own chosen Apostles, are hiding out of sight, ashamed to be seen

near Him. The very children He loved are encouraged to cast

stones and ordure at the poor fool of Galilee, as He wearily tramped

along the rough, hard streets, back again to Pilate. ‘

There is a deep mystery in this imputing folly, madness, to the

Son of God. We shudder at the bodily torments of the Passion,
and the thought of the scourge, the thorns, the cross and the cruel

nails; and it seems incredible God could have “so loved the world

as to give his own beloved son over to them”
;
but the shame, the

degradation to which the “Light of lights,” Eternal Wisdom, the

world’s true light, of which both faith and reason combined are

btit rays, was subjected to are worse.

/is I said, Herod is the embodiment of the spirit of the world,

and the flesh kindred, nay, almost twin spirits. His deeming Our

Lord mad and mocking Him as such shows the gulf that existed

between the spirit of Christ and that of Herod. “The carnal man,”

i, f the world and the flesh, “understandeth not the things that

are of God.” The wisdom of the Cross is folly to the Gentiles
;
that

God, clad in human form, should become an object of laughter and

scorn to His creatures shows how far the world had drifted from

the divine standard.

Kut is the world, in spirit, much better to-day? Outwardly,

no doubt, it is better. Christ has overcome it, and His Cross has

toiled, elevated and renewed all things
;
but inwardly, and in spirit,

it is as hostile to Him and as bad as ever. Worldlings would go as



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 39

far as Herod, if they dared. The world, their master, is in heart as

lecherous, as incredulous, as selfish as ever. Men are what they

are in God's sight, i, e,, what they think and will; and we all know

what the minds and hearts of the votaries of the world and the

flesh are like. To ''men of the world" Christ is certainly not "the

way, the truth and the light." The wisdom of the Cross ever is

and ever will be foolishness to the Greek, i, e., to the worldly wise.

"They mocked him, clothing him with a white garment," expresses

the attitude of the world to Christ in His Church to-day. Scorn

and derision greet the invitation of Our Lord's vicar to a world

"wise in its own conceits," when inviting it to return to the ways

of righteousness and truth. Even in the realms of reason and

higher thought the world is ever "digging pits that hold not water,"

extinguishing reality and common sense; yet hisses out invectives

against those to whom the light of faith points a better way, and

who would fain be "a light to their feet and a guide to their

paths."

But to return to Our Lord and His persecutors. He passes in

His robe of scorn from the palace of Herod back again to Pilate.

Herod has now rejected forever "the day of his visitation." The

silence of Jesus both to ear and heart remains unbroken. No rec-

ord tells of Herod's ever repenting of his crimes. In exile and

infamy his sinful career was brought to an end.

Urged by his partner, Herodias, he went with her to Rome to

sue from the emperor the full title of king; but the report of his

misdeeds had gone before him, and fortune, the only divinity he

really worshiped, mocked him who had dared to mock God. De-

prived of his office, even of tetrarch, he was banished to Gaul,

where he ended his days in misery. The world is but a poor pay-

master at best, and even in this life deludes rather than rewards its

votaries. It tempts us into piling up heavy debts, and leaves us

morally and spiritually bankrupt.

Two lessons are suggested by the phase of the Passion treated

of to-day. The first is summed up in St. Paul's words, "I beseech

you, brethren, not to receive the grace of God in vain," and is illus-

trated in Herod's life. Stifle it not as he did by a life of worldli-

ness, sensuality and irreligion. God sent him, as He sends us all,

sufficient, if not abundant, grace. He had his lights and calls; and

both could and ought to have lived up to them. God spoke to him

in conscience. He spoke to him through John the Baptist, and the



40 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

t

preaching of Our Lord. But Herod went his own way. Like Pha-

rao, he hardened his heart. The voice of God was drowned by

the voice of the world and the flesh, till it ceased. and was heard

no more.

The next lesson, and a consequence of the preceding, is con-

tained in those other words of St. Paul, ‘‘God forbid I should glory

save in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is no desire to

see us suffer, that Our Lord tells us to renounce a life of pleasure

and take up our cross. It is His inherent love of us and interest

in our welfare that urges Him to make us tread the path He chose

Himself. Herod’s life of pleasure ended in disappointment and

misery. Christ’s Passion was brief and led to the glories of the

Resurrection and joy without end. So with us. The sufferings of

this life are not to be compared with the joys that await those

who take up their cross daily and follow Our Lord, and who under

its weight both feel and say with their Leader, “Not my will but

thine be done.”



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 41

V. CHRIST BEFORE PILATE

‘‘But they were instant, with loud voices requiring that he might be cruci-
fied. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required.'’—Luke
xxiii, 23, 24.

SYNOPSIS.—Introduction.—Of the actors in the tragedy of the Crucifixion
the names of Judas and Pilate best known. Why? Pilate guilty of
judicial murder of Christ, whom he could and ought to have saved.
The scourging and crowning with thorns due to his direct action.

I. Our Lord’s return from Herod. Pilate convinced of Christ’s^ in-
nocence and declares it. His dealings with the Jews. Deservedly un-

popular and hated. His character. Weakness in all that involved sacri-
fice of self. '‘An enemy of the Cross.” His last chance. "Weighed in
the balance and found wanting.”

II. Pilate orders Our Lord to be scourged. One of the most terrible
and humiliating torments of the Passion. Savagely and recklessly carried

out. No limit to number of stripes in Roman law, though there was in
Jewish. Free hand given herein to Roman soldiers.

III. The crowning with thorns. The pain involved. What it typi-
fied. Pilate’s guilty weakness. What it brought him to. He feared
Caesar more than God. Looked only at this life. Never thought of an-
other. Life of Christ reproduced in Church.

Conclusion.—Exhort to he spiritually strong and to fear only God;
and the reproach of one’s own conscience.

Amongst those who took a direct part in Our Lord's Passion,

two names stand out prominently in the Gospel—^Judas Iscariot
and Pontius Pilate. The former betrayed, the latter condemned

to death, the Lord of glory. Christ Himself prophesied this

double event. ‘‘One of you," alluding to Judas, “will betray me,"

and, referring to Pilate and the Romans, “The Son of Man

shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and

scourged and spat upon" (Luke xviii). Then, Jew and Gentile,

East and West, took part in the great crimes enacted on the first

Good Friday in Jerusalem.

Though Pilate would fain have washed his hands of the blood

of that “just man," yet, by common consent, his conscience was

weighted with the guilt of condemning One whom he knew and

declared to be innocent. Water may cleanse the body, but repen-

tance and reparation of the wrong done can alone remove stains

from the soul. As long as the creed lives on human lips, so

long will the name of Pontius Pilate be held in execration; for

therein it is recorded that through his judicial sanction the Pas-



42 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

sion took place. ‘‘Suffered under Pontius Pilate.’’ A display
of the firmness from which no judge, and especially a judge like

Pilate, with an armed force at his back, is justified in shrinking,

would have quelled the frenzied mob that shrieked for the blood

of “the lamb of God.” But Pilate vacillated, dallied with a self-

evident duty, claiming fulfilment, and fell. Justice prevaricated,

and mob rule carried the day. Over and beyond the gross miscar-

riage of justice, two of the sorrowful mysteries of the Passion,

the scourging and crowning with thorns, were due to his direct ac-

tion. In this degenerate Roman judge, weakness and cruelty re-

placed the national justice and strength of his race.

I. We left Our Lord in the garb of a fool, weary and foot-
sore, wending his way back again, from the house of Herod,

to the hall of Pilate, for His final trial, the fifth He was to

undergo before men. A few days before, Pilate and his court
must have been startled by the shouts of, “Hosanna to the Son of

David,” greeting the entry into the city of a meek and lowly

stranger, who had ridden over the slopes of Olivet. The object

of that ovation is now dragged before him, a second time, for

judgment. He had previously, as a trained judge, read inno-

cence in the very gait and countenance of Christ; and to rid him-

self of responsibility, had sent him to Herod. The prisoner now

returns, still uncondemned. To the bold effrontery of his ac-

cusers, who would fain bluff Pilate into a hasty sentence, the

judge replies, “Behold, I having examined him before you, find

no cause in this man in those things wherein you accuse him.

No, nor Herod, either. For I sent you to him, and behold nothing

worthy of death is done to him” (Luke xxiii, 15). “Take ye him

and judge him according to your law,” he had said, to throw

the guilt of condemnation on others; but, retort the enemies of

Jesus, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” Christ’s

trial now begins in grim earnest; and we may add, Pilate’s, too.

Will he be strong enough, and just enough to decide fairly, and

act up to his conscience throughout? From the very beginning,

he seems to have had an irresistible conviction of the prisoner’s

innocence, and a desire to save him, which all the cunning devices

and sophistry of the Jews failed to shake. He knew the temper

of the Jews and their leaders well. There was no love lost be-

tween them. He feared that their evil reports about him might

reach his imperial master in Rome. They abhorred him in turn;



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE
43

and it must be owned that his rule, as Procurator, had been

harsh and untactful. To Jewish fanaticism and deep religious

scrupulosity he ever opposed Roman insolence and impiety. They

deeply resented his bringing his army from Cesarea to Jerusalem

and thus flaunting the standards of pagan Rome, introducing at

the same time pagan rites and emblems into the holy city. He,

on his part, indifferent to religion, in any shape or form, could

not understand their bigotry; and solely on compulsion did he

remove the hated standards. A cohort only was quartered on
certain festivals, in order to overawe the mob. Pilate had, more-

over, given deep offense, by applying the money of the Temple

treasury—the sacred corban—to the profane purpose of construct-
ing an aqueduct. This caused tumult and uproar, resulting in

massacre. We learn from the Scriptures that on one occasion he
slew some Galileans worshiping in the Temple, mingling their

blood with that of the sacrifices. He loathed the tenacity with

which the Jews clung to their religion and nationality; he enter-

tained, in short, all the hatred and contempt which oppressors

ever have for the victims of their oppression. His insolent dis-

play of Roman superiority roused the Jews to frenzy, themselves

proud in their turn of their ancient lineage; and looking forward

to worldwide dominion under a triumphant Messias—a sort of
Jewish Mahomet, whose kingdom should be of this world, whatso-

ever its relation to the next. For a Messias, ‘‘meek and humble

of heart/’ they had neither respect nor love. With such accusers,

and before such a judge, the gentle Saviour was brought for trial.

Pilate, as he sat on the judgment seat, raised on the marble

pavement, called in Hebrew “Gabbatha,” was angry at his recall

to business, and anxious to get rid of trouble. Though he could

be, and was, stern and cruel at times, yet was he, at bottom,

weak and irresolute—deadly failings in a ruler of men. He was
selfish, and consequently untrue and unfaithful. He thought only

of his own personal aggrandizement, heedless of the means that

led to it. The shifting motives of the hour, rather than fixed

principles, guided his conduct and decisions. Nor was he without

an element of good. Though in the long run “Their voices pre-

vailed/’ and he “did as they required,” and “Jesus he delivered up

to their will” (Luke xxiii, 23-24) ; still, his desire was ever to

“release Jesus.” Three distinct times did he declare Christ’s

innocence of the charges of conspiracy, sedition and treason.



44 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

brought against him; but he would make no personal sacrifice in

support of what he saw to be right. Release ought to have fol-

lowed his declaration of Christ’s freedom from guilt; but he

faltered and failed. '‘He followed not justice, but iniquity”; and

he ‘‘gave sentence that it should be as they required” (Luke

xxiii, 24)

.

Pilate had often sat in the seat of judgment, and in many

cases, doubtless, had decided lightly, hastily, cruelly, but never

so unjustly as now. Never had he felt the sting of conscience

so sharp, the innocence of the prisoner so manifest. It was in

vain he went through the theatrical farce of washing his hands.

Moral guilt is not removed by water. It is dangerous to tamper

with the convictions of conscience. Duty, when plain, demands

instant compliance. The right thing must be done, cost what

it may. But Pilate, like so many others before and since his day,

was a moral coward. He dared not do what he knew and felt

to be right. His hand-washing did but add hypocrisy to guilt.

The blood of the innocent ever calls aloud for vengeance.

Meanwhile, what of Jesus? He, the Saviour of the world,

stands before His own creatures, as the sheep before its shearers,

and butchers. He saw the struggle going on in Pilate’s heart:

for Pilate, too, as I observed, was on his trial before Jesus. It

was his last grace, perchance. Divine light and help to know and

do the right thing were not wanting. His own vacillating will

was at fault. A warning message from his wife im-
plored him to ‘‘have nothing to do with this just man”; but he

still hesitates and temporizes. The cry, “If thou releasest this

man, thou art not Caesar's friend,” rang in his ears. It was self-

interest against the claims of duty—Caesar against God. He still
clings, however, to the hope of saving Jesus by compromise. It

was the custom to release a criminal at the Paschal feast, and

thinking they would prefer the prophet before whom they had

strewn palm branches a few days before, tries to persuade them

to free Jesus, and crucify Barabbas, the notorious thief and high-

wayman. Grace was no doubt working in Pilate’s heart; for

where Christ is, “Virtue goeth forth from him.” Pilate is

plainly overawed by this wonderful Jewish prophet. His wife’s

dream, ancient beliefs, containing scattered rays of primitive light

as to the gods appearing in certain favored places, and persons,

were telling on him. He questioned Jesus, half in curiosity, half



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE
45

in superstitious fear, as to his origin and mission; but the fear

of Caesar proved stronger in his case than the fear of God. Christ,

too, was silent. He saw that Pilate was neither earnest nor

sincere in following truth and justice. He gauged and measured

Pilate’s sin, as compared with that of Judas: ‘‘He that betrayed

me to thee, hath the greater sin”; but sin it was—and grave,
a sin against light, a gross breach of his duty, as judge and

governor. His fate is a warning to those who are content to

will what is right; but make no effort to do it. He wished to

release Jesus; but no more. He proposes to free Him, instead

of Barabbas; but, with all the might and majesty of the Roman

Empire at his back, takes no effectual means to carry out his good

resolution. “He released unto them him, who, for murder and

sedition had been cast into prison; but Jesus he delivered up, to

their will” (Luke xxiii, 25). It seems blasphemy to put the

names of Jesus and Barabbas side by side—crime with holiness

—

a thief, a rebel and an assassin, with One 'against whom even

His bitterest enemies could not find a word to say. The hoarse

cry of “Away with him, crucify him,” “Not this man but Barab-

bas,” that broke loose from the throats of the mob, stuns and

appalls us, as it did Pilate. It is almost a consolation to learn that

“They knew not what they did,” in the sense that we know now.

And yet does not a similar cry rise from every Christian heart,

that prefers vice to virtue, the will of the world and of the

flesh, to that of the great and good God. Do we not all, at times,

call out loudly, “Not this man, but Barabbas”?

II. But let us put aside for the moment our own share in

the Passion of Christ to fix our attention on that of Pilate. In-

stead of turning his cohort loose on the rabble, unjustly clamor-

ing for blood, as he had done before when it suited his pur-

pose, he basely yields to the storm of popular clamor. He frees

a seditious robber; and hands Jesus over to his brutal soldiery,

to be scourged. “Then therefore Pilate took Jesus and scourged

him.” The Paschal lamb of the dying Passover was not flayed

till dead; but Jesus Christ, by Pilate’s orders, the true Paschal

lamb of the new alliance, was flayed whilst alive. “We have

thought him as it were a leper, and one stricken by God?

By Jewish law, the stripes in scourging could not exceed forty,

“Lest thy brother depart shamefully torn before thy eyes” (Deut.

XXV ) ; but the Roman law recognized no limit. The scourgers.



46 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

bribed by the Jews, wishing their victim to die under the lash,

strove as to which amongst them could lay most stripes on Our

Lord’s already worn out and tortured body. On that body, fast-

ened to a pillar, the horrible ''flagellum” made up of several

leathern thongs, with hooks of bone attached, , rained on his

quivering nerves. The scourging is one of the most terrible

scenes of the Passion. The prophetic allusions to it in the Old

Testament, and the revelations made to saints in subsequent

times, make reflection on it painful. Hundreds of strokes fell

upon Him as the cruel scourgers, prompted by the evil one,

relieved each other. “The wicked have wrought upon my back,”

or, as St. Jerome translates it, have plowed a furrow on my

back (Ps. cxxviii, 3). The cruel lash reaches every part of His

sacred body. In the whole of His Sacred Passion, He is “Wound-

ed for our iniquities;” but in the scourging, He suffers specially

for sins of the flesh—the most blinding, the most opposed to the
purity and holiness of God

;
and alas ! the most numerous and

widespread of all sins. “According to the measure of the sin

shall the measure of the stripes be” (Deut. xxv, 2). “The whole

head is sick, the whole heart is sad.” “From the sole of the foot

unto the top of the head there is no soundness in him, wounds

and bruises and swelling sores. They are not dressed nor bound

up nor fomented with oil” (Isaias i, 6). The thorn crown pierces

His head; and the cruel lash reaches every other part of His

body. The prophet who glows in describing Him as “beautiful

amongst the sons of men,” elsewhere in sorrow, says of Him,

“There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness, and his look was,

as it were, hidden and despised. We have thought him as it were
a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted” (Isaias liii).

HI. It was thus that, “Pilate took Jesus and scourged him.”

It is not Pilate’s own judgment. “What evil hath this man done?

I find no cause of death in him”; and then adds the unjust

judge, “I will chastise him, therefore, and let him go.” But

Pilate’s share in the Passion is not limited to the scourging; his

soldiery interpret his words more widely. Unused to a victim,

“In whose mouth there was no complaint,” they invent a new

torture, never inflicted before, or since. He is dragged to the

guardroom, where the whole cohort are gathered. The robe, that

had been hastily flung over his bleeding back, is torn off and an

old purple ragged soldier’s cloak is thrown over his shoulders.



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE
47

A wisp of thorns, gathered from a neighboring bush, is woven
into a garland, and beaten down savagely on his brow, with the

reed, placed in his hand, in mockery of his kingly claims.

Adam’s sin brought thorns into the world as a curse. In

symbolism, sin is a thorn. Isaac, as victim, was saved by the ram

entangled in a thicket of thorns. We, too, victims, doomed to

punishment for our sins, escape through Him, the spotless lamb,

whose Divine head was entangled in the thorny crown, woven

by Pilate’s soldiery. Victims of old were decked in roses; but

the Victim of Sin was crowned with the thorns, that symbolize

the sins for which He suffered. They were of Pilate’s weaving.

The law is bound to protect the remaining rights of its guilty

victims
;
how much more those of the innocent victim of a mis-

carriage of justice.

Thus arrayed in a purple rag, and a thorny crown, the Lord

of glory is exposed to the rude jests and cruel mockeries of a

profligate soldiery. ‘'Scandals must come” (in the course of

things) “but wo to him, through whom they come.” “Christ had

to suffer”; all was foretold; but wo to those through whom

these sufferings came about. To deck us with roses. He was

crowned with thorns. To blunt the edge of every instrument

of torture. He endured them all. It was not merely physical

pain .and torment He bore in silence, but what is harder, moral—

he was the butt of jeers and scoffs, and insults innumerable.

Prisoners are usually spared the mockery and gibes of their

jailers; but Christ was clad as a buffoon for the sport of brutal

Roman soldiers. Pilate has not thought of according Him the

protection of the law. His minions kneel before their victim,

saying, “Hail, King of the Jews.” Little do they know the

truth of their salutation. “Who is this that cometh from Edom,

with dyed garments from Bosra, this beautiful one in his robe?

. . . Why then is thy apparel red, and thy garments like

theirs that tread in the winepress?” (Isaias Ixiii, 2). Pilate’s

wicked weakness reduced Christ to the condition of “a worm

and no man”; but the day will come when ''this worm” this

embodiment of justice, will “trample on his enemies and tread

them in his wrath, and their blood be sprinkled on his garments”

(Ibid. 3).

Again, the Saviour, in ragged garb and with blood-stained coun-

tenance, is brought before this unjust steward of the authority



48 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

of God. Kings, conquerors and victims, used to be crowned;

and so was Christ, the embodiment of all three, but in a crown

of Pilate’s weaving. The noble and patient bearing of the prisoner

overawed his unjust judge. Pilate, whether in mockery or in pity,

who can tell, making one last appeal for mercy and forbear-

ance to the infuriated mob, cried out, as he presented Christ to

the people, ''Behold the man.” Surely the spectacle of a prophet,

once the darling of the nation, reduced to His now pitiable con-

dition, will soften their hard hearts; but as well appeal to the

wild waves in a storm, or a pack of hungry wolves in sight of

prey, as to the sea of upturned faces that surged round his

judgment seat. A fierce swelling cry, of "Crucify him, crucify

him,” arose. The passions of the mob were thoroughly roused;

and Pilate stood powerless and irresolute. He had let go the

helm of justice. He was a cork on the billows, a "reed shaken

by the wind.” Even in this extremity it was his duty to be

just, to resist iniquity and injustice, even to the shedding of

blood. But Pilate would be no martyr to righteousness. He

never meant to suffer, in person, for any abstract principle of

justice. Self-interest was his moving power. To be well with

Caesar, to hold his office as long as it suited him, was his main

object. The Jews know this and cry out, "If thou release this

man, thou art not Caesar’s friend.” To be accused of official

neglect and rapacity, to be called to account by his imperial

master meant for him disgrace, poverty, possibly a cruel death.

The commands of conscience are as imperious as those of Caesar.

Pilate argued, hesitated and, in the spiritual realm, fell. He kept

his place, and power, and ill-gotten wealth; but stained his soul in

doing so. Pie lost peace of mind. He inflicted a wound on his

own conscience that all the waters of the Jordan or the Tiber

could neither heal nor cleanse. He condemned the Lord of glory

;

and if ignorant of His person, he knew full well he was condemn-

ing an innocent man. "Then therefore he delivered him to them

to be crucified” (John xix, 6). These words seal the fate of

Christ, and doom of Pilate. Christ’s body is in the hands of the

Jews; but the unjust judge is in the hands of God. One of the

many lessons suggested by this phase of the Passion is not to

fear Coesar, not to fear those "who can do no more than slay

the body
;
but rather to fear God, who can cast both body and



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE
49

soul into hell.” If only Pilate, as^far as his lights went, had taken

this lesson to heart!

It is said that in a happy union husband and wife fuse into

the likeness of each other. How truly is the life of Christ repro-

duced in that of His spouse, the Church. She, too, like her Lord,

has her life of shadows, mingled with glimpses of glory, as His

was. Her triumphal entry into one nation or city is often fol-

lowed by shouts of, ‘‘Away with her,” crucify her, from throats

whence once proceeded hosannas of welcome. The same charges

of blasphemy, treason and sedition are brought against her.

She makes herself out to be Divine, “she deludes the people,

perverts the nation, conspires against the state, forbids to pay

tribute to Caesar, and those who take part with her can not be

Caesar's friends”; she claims kingly powers and prerogatives;

and her presence and influence are opposed to the best interests

of the state. Annas and Caiphas and Sanhedrims are not want-

ing to judge and condemn her. Pilates, too, there are, who

whilst professing to “find no fault in her,” owning to her

power for good, yet hesitate not to scourge and crown her with

thorns, rob her of her ensigns of royalty, and thus reduced, ex-

pose her to the contempt and ridicule of the Gentiles. Her his-

tory in many lands is a rehearsal of the trial of Christ. Pilate

in his representatives, partly through weakness, partly through

cruelty, “delivers her over to her enemies to be crucified.”

Pilate's part in the Passion has many a lesson for us all. His

main fault, the source of his fall in the great trial, was moral

weakness, a deadly fault in a judge and ruler of men. Weakness

seems no sin, yet it disposes to sin. It appears to be no more

blamable in character than delicacy of health to the body, yet

it may be the source of deliberate and reckless wickedness. Though

Pilate honestly tried to save Christ in the beginning, yet in the

end, as the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and mockery

of the Saviour prove, he showed himself unjust, cruel, crafty and

cowardly. Like all who prefer wealth and place and power to

principle; who keep the world, not God, before their eyes, Pilate

ended by perverting justice, ignoring rights, and surrendering all

that it was his duty as a judge and governor to uphold. He is

the type, for all time, of the weak, in all states of life, who are

ever shirking their responsibilities; who, though not wishing to

do wrong, yet fear to do right; who, though their hearts are



50 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

with Christ, yet shout with the mob for Barabbas. Half the

crimes of history are due to the lack of firmness in rulers. It will

not do to plead good will, and the dilemma to which circumstances

reduce us. No hand-washing or protest of good intentions will

blot out sin.

Pilate might, and indeed ought, to have died a martyr. Grace

was not wanting. Its author stood ready to dispense it had Pilate

willed to receive it; but Pilate, like so many others, preferred to

risk his souFs life, rather than endanger that of the body. He

chose '‘the life that now is, rather than that which is to come.'’

And yet how the world deludes its votaries! Pilate clung to

Caesar and this world—^yet did both play him false. The remnant
of life granted him was far from happy. Ostracized by the

world, banished by Caesar to Gaul, he passed it in exile, poverty,

and wretchedness
;
and is said to have taken it away by his own

act. Thus ended the brief' career of the unjust judge who

handed over Jesus "to the will of the Jews."

All through life we, too, have a choice to make, between the

world and God, between our body’s peace and our soul’s peace,

between Barabbas and Jesus. We can not be neutral. By the very
nature of things, we must be partisans. The cleavage is too deep.

God and Baal are not to be reconciled.

But remember, that to decide for Christ and His Cross, in this

life, requires above all things moral strength, spiritual courage.

Weakness is a vice, well nigh a sin. Life is a combat, and the

strong only win the day. The feeble are in the way—food for
death.

Let us therefore resolve ever to be in deed what we are in

conviction. We are not alone. Christ is with us. His Cross is our
strength, our tree of life, by the fruits of which we live and grow

strong in spirit.

We all, I am sure, would be His disciples. There is no other
course left, then, but to take up our cross daily, and "follow Him/’



THE CROSS-BEARING 51

VI. THE CROSS-BEARING

‘‘Bearing his own cross he. went forth.”—John xix, 17.

SYNOPSIS.—Introduction.—The Cross-hearing as pictured in fourth sor-
rowful mystery of the Rosary and stations, as well as the lessons it

teaches, theme of our discourse to-day. The task of Simon of Cyrene to
he ours in life.

I. Christ's hfth and last trial over, Pilate delivers Him up to the
will of His enemies. He is mockingly called a King and as such He dies.
His royalty, in highest sense of term, real and eternal. The procession
to Calvary. Legal forms no guarantee of truth and justice. The meaning

of death by cruciiixion. Sidelights thrown on it from history. The Cross
before and after Our Lord touched and carried it. What it was and what

’it is—His shame, our glory. The Way of the Cross. Its incidents and
their meaning.

II. Christ alone and unaided^ till now. Bore unflinchingly the full
brunt of the storm; but in bearing His Cross He staggers and falls.
Would teach us need of sharing Cross with Him. Circumstances undef
which Simon of Cyrene took up the Cross. Did it under constraint; bui

found it light and easy. All have to carry their cross. None exempt.
Christ, by contact with it, has lightened and sweetened the Cross. Even

if constrained to bear the yoke, grace and good zvill make the burden,
easy. The daughters of Jerusalem. How we all hnd our counterpart in
the actors of the Passion. New era opens with raising of standard of
Cross. If we would have it a sign of promise and redemption, we must
“take it up daily and follow our Lord."

The phase of Our Lord’s Passion to which I propose drawing

your attention this morning is put before us for meditation in the

fourth sorrowful mystery of the Rosary. The Stations of the

Cross that adorn the walls of most churches and chapels ever

picture it vividly to eye and mind. The scene it recalls is that of

Our Lord carrying His Cross to Mount Calvary. This path of

sorrows, this '‘Way of the Cross,” was a sad and painful journey to

Our Lord; but its every step, its every incident, is suggestive of

lessons to help us in the way of life. As followers of Christ, we,

too, have to take up our cross and tread the rough, hard way of

sorrow. Christ meant more than a mere figure of speech when

He said : "Amen, I say to you, unless a man take up his cross and

follow me, he cannot be my disciple.” We have all to climb Cal-
vary on our way to Thabor and Olivet. The thought of Christ,

"bearing his own Cross,” ever has been and ever will be a source of

strength, encouragement and hope to weary saint and sinner alike.

Many, alas, play the part of Judas, or Pilate, or Herod, in life. Be



52 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

it ours, on the contrary, to tread in the steps of the humble Cyren-

ean, who, though constrained, yet helped the Lord Jesus to carry

His Cross.

I. The fifth and concluding trial of Christ is over. Pilate’s last

act in the drama of the Cross is to hand Him to those who hun-

gered for His blood—pithily expressed in the words of the Gospel,
Jesus he delivered up to their will” (Luke xxiii, 25). Having thus,

as it were, thrown the lamb to the wolves, the unjust judge vacates

his seat. Divine justice alone reigns now, for human justice has

failed. Christ was ever a stranger to the houses of kings and gov-

ernors. The one occasion on which He entered He now leaves

bearing the marks of cruel buffetings, the welts of the scourge,

a crown of thorns, and a white and purple rag of scorn and mock-

ery. Yet He is the fountain of royalty and a King, in every true

sense of the word, even though ‘‘His kingdom is not of this

world.”

The mock trappings of royalty the world gave Him, fit emblem

of the world’s gifts to the worshipers at its shrine, are torn off, and

His own simple and seamless garment, woven by her who shared

His griefs, is put on, and He is led forth to bear His Cross. The

cross that faced Our Lord then was not that we see to-day raised

above our heads as a symbol of victory and hope. It was no work

of art, towering over temples and palaces, glittering in the crowns

of kings, or shining starlike on the neck and breasts of beauty.

No, it was a vile, accursed instrument of torture, associated with

shame, crime and degradation. It was not a cross embowered in

roses; but two coarse, rough beams, hastily jointed, knotty, hard,

heavy and ugly. No free Roman could suffer by it whatsoever his

crimes. Death on it was reserved for slaves and the dregs of a

foreign populace. “Cursed truly,” as the Scriptures put it, “was

he that hung upon the tree.” “Go, lictor; bind his hands, veil

his face, and hang him on the tree of shame,” was the legal formula

of crucifixion amongst the Romans. The procession duly

formed, starts on its weary round. A trumpeter goes first, to ar-
rest attention, and keep streets clear. Members of the Sanhedrim

were present to see the sentence for blasphemy duly carried out.

A centurion, representing Pilate, and a band of soldiers also fol-
lowed. In the popular excitement against Jesus, and in favor

of the thieves, regarded as semi-political offenders, such a measure

was deemed necessary to quell riot, should any such arise. This



THE CROSS-BEARING
SI

deed of wrong was carried out in due form by process of law.

It is a revolting fact that all martyrdoms have been inflicted by a

parody of justice, for some legal offense. From the martyr on

Calvary to the saintly heroines of Compiegne, all have found a

Pilate and a Sanhedrim to declare them worthy of death.

' On the shoulders of ‘‘the Man of Sorrows,’’ already livid with

“wounds, bruises and swelling sores,” the Cross is laid. A side-
light is thrown on the cross-bearing by a Roman writer, speaking

of the crucifixion of a slave, who thus writes: “He was dragged

all over the main thoroughfares of the city. He was made to

carry his own cross. His hands were bound to its arms, and the

full weight of the rough cross was laid on his back and shoulders,

raw and bleeding from the scourging he had received” (Dion

Halicarnassus : Antiq. xii). Death by crucifixion was so terrible that

we read of criminals longing for the approach of wolves and other

wild animals to tear out their living entrails, and so hasten the

death they craved for. See what it was for Our Lord to drink

the bitter cup of the chalice of our sins, and die a cruel death on

the tree of shame. Could such a symbol, we may ask, be glorified ?

Yes, for “God has chosen the weak things of this world to con-

found the strong.” That emblem of infamy is now the mark of

the elect of God. It is the ladder of heaven. By it the very outcasts

of social life scale the skies. The giants of pagan myth are told

of as piling mountain on mountain, to besiege and capture heaven;

but thieves have done so on the tree of shame. It is Jacob’s ladder.

On it man ascends to heaven, and angels descend to earth. Amidst

scoffs and jeers Christ went forth bearing it, as Noe of old car-

ried the beams that built the ark to save humanity, drowned in the

sea of God’s wrath. It is the wood that Abraham piled on his

son Isaac’s shoulders to light the fire for the sacrifice of that son,

which God demanded. A substitute was found for Isaac, but none
for Christ, the sacred sheep, caught by His head in a thorny crown.

It is His throne. Regnavit a ligno Deus: Christ reigned from the

wood. “The government is on his shoulders,” sang Isaias of old.

“Christ’s Cross is the key of heaven, that openeth the door, which

no man shutteth.” “I will lay the key of the house of David on

his shoulders” (Isai. xxiii).

For weal or woe in love or scorn, the eyes of the world are riveted

on the Cross. It is as much a sign of God’s love and anger as the

rainbow in the sky. “If I be lifted up,” says Christ, speaking of the



54 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

Qoss, ‘‘I shall draw all things to myself/' The eyes and hearts of

Grd's holiest, purest, and, let me add, bravest, servants are ever

directed to this sign of redemption. Even politically, it points to

vh'tory. All other symbols of dominion go down before it—the
crescent, the dragon, the rising sun. Whatever is of good repute,

wiiatever has promise, either of this life, or the life to come, pro-

ceeds directly or indirectly, from the Cross. ‘‘He that sat on the

throne," i. e., rested on the Cross, ‘'hath said. Behold, I make all

things new." Now what greater wonder than in the change

wrought in the Cross He took upon His shoulders, and the idea of

sacrifice, and self-abandonment, it implies.

But, what meant the Cross ' to Him, when He bore it, on

the first Good Friday to Calvary? Its weight crushed Him, its

hideous associations appalled Him. In the fierce glare of a hot

Syrian sun, along the rough winding cobble paved streets of a city,

all either steeply ascending or descending. He has to bear the rough

hewn beams that composed it on His bleeding back and shoulders.

In the narrow lanes, the mob push and trample one another to get

near, and hiss into His ears their vile imprecations.

He is thus the scapegoat for our sins, going forth without the

camp "bearing our reproach"—the innocent Abel going to the field
to be slain by his brother Cain—Noe bearing the wood of the ark
to save both clean and unclean—the meek and gentle Moses carry-
ing the wood of the tree, to be cast into the bitter waters of life, in

order to sweeten them.

Tradition has preserved many touching incidents of the way of

sorrows—His meeting with His holy mother, whose heart was cleft
with the sword of grief—unmoved and tearless, though deep as the
sea, was her sorrow, whilst the daughters of Jerusalem wept and

lamented aloud; the heroic charity of Veronica, wiping His face

with a napkin, and His leaving His sacred image impressed thereon,

as a mark of loving acknowledgment. Loving pens have woven all

these touching circumstances into the fourteen stations that make

up the touching and beautiful devotion of the Way of the Cross.

I choose one, in which a humble peasant took the leading part.

Up to the bearing of the Cross He "trod the winepress alone." He

had gone through, in mind and body, more than enough to cause

death. No mioan or complaint or cry for help or soothing of pain

escaped His lips. "They that were near me stood afar off." "I

looked around, and there was no helper," He mournfully complains,



THE CROSS-BEARING
'55

through the prophets. He stood alone, yet in the cross-bearing He

staggered and fell; and needed the help of His creatures. The

incidents of the Passion are not mere accidents. Each has its les-

son. He would teach us the duty and necessity of sharing the

burden of the cross with Christ in life's journey. All are called.

None are exempt. On the way to Calvary it was Simon from

Cyrene, in distant Africa, a member of the despised race of Ham,

on whom this supreme honor was conferred.

True, he shrank from it naturally, and was compelled to carry

it after Christ; but once he bent his back to the burden, he found

it, as we all do, easy and light. The Roman authorities were free

to press men and their cattle, during an emergency, into the service

of the state. Hence their compelling Simon, not out of pity for the

bearer of the Cross, but because they wished Him to survive, to

die on it. Simon, probably, was carrying the wood for preparing

the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb—strange coincidence, that the new
high priest, carrying the wood, on which He should be immolated

in the new sacrifice, met Simon, carrying wood for the typical sacri-

fice. He is forced to cast down his load—his own self-imposed bur-
den, and take on his shoulders the Cross of Christ. There was a

sacred magnetism in the touch of Jesus; and the loathed Cross was

raised and carried easily by the strength of the virtue that went forth

from Him, and healed all, even the ‘‘accursed tree" of the Cross.

What a strange procession wound its way to Calvary. The Roman

representatives, the Jews, children of Shem and Asia, Simon the

Black, a son of Ham, from the burning sands of Africa, all part of

the living stream, trending forward to the sacred mound. Each race

furnishes a convert to the new religion of the Cross. It is not the

lofty, or learned, or proud, that are chosen, but the poor and the

lowly. Neither Annas nor Caiphas, nor scribe nor Pharisee, was

chosen from amongst the Jews; but the penitent thief. He was the

only Jew found worthy that day to enter into the Kingdom. Grace

was offered to Herod, and Pilate; but it was the brave centurion,

presiding at the crucifixion, who alone of the sons of Japhet “re-

turned that day to his house justified." And so, a lowly African

peasant was chosen to replace Christ in carrying His Cross. Our

Lord bore up under scourge and thorn
;
but fell under the Cross,

that we sinners might show our good will in coming to His aid.

This is the import of St. Paul's words, “I fill up those things that

are wanting to the sufferings of Christ in my flesh" (Coll. i).



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION56

The Cross of Christ is the magic word that sweetens the bitter

waters of life. It is hard and repulsive to sight and touch; but as

with Simon, who shrank from it, at first, it becomes “sweet when

chosen, and light when lifted on the shoulders.'' Simon at first was

under constraint. He was compelled to lay down his bundle of

wood, and take up the Cross of Christ. So are we all constrained

by the law of God to lay aside every weight, every sin, every worldly

care that hinders us from bearing in the proper spirit the Cross of

Christ. Simon shrank from contact with the Cross, just as the

natural man, the worldly man, the sensual man, shrinks from pain,

and penance, and aught else that shadows the Cross. For our soul's

health, God our Master lays it on us all. He compels us as the

rulers did Simon, to bear the “reproach of Christ." Bear the Cross

we must, willingly or unwillingly, after Christ, or away from Him.

According to the spirit in which it is borne, it will lead, either to

darkness or light. It hardens or softens. It is a ladder by which

we may climb, or from which we may fall. It will stay us up, or

crush us under its weight.

Simon bears the Cross. The procession winds its way through the

gate of judgment—leading to the place of execution. “For, as the
- bodies of the beasts, slain by high priests for sin offerings, were

burnt outside the camp," “wherefore," says St. Paul, “Jesus also,

that he might sanctify the people by his own blood, suffered with-

out the gate" (Heb. xiii). They skirt the city walls on their way

to the rising hillock of Golgotha. Relieved of His Cross though

still faint and weary, He utters a few words of warning pity to the

sympathetic souls behind Him. “Daughters of Jerusalem," He said

to the wailing and tenderhearted- women close by, “weep not for

me, but for yourselves, and for your children." Not that He re-

jects or fails to appreciate their sympathy—a very natural display
of feeling, in the sufferings He was undergoing—but He would have
them understand that there are deeper woes and evils than those

springing from physical torture. The sufferings of the body pass,

melt away, into rest or oblivion
;
but there are other evils that never

pass away. The wounds of sin never heal. The shadow of wrong-

doing ever darkens the restless conscience. The thorns in His head,

from which the blood was streaming, should blossom in glory—^the
scars on His sacred person should heal and shine as the sun

—

His

Cross should be the symbol of victory, and power; but incurable

evils were lurking in Jerusalem; sin, too, maybe, was in their own



THE CROSS-BEARING
57

hearts. These were the evils they should grieve for. Let them

weep for these evils, and not merely give vent to useless sorrow

for a suffering fellow creature. Thus would they reap in joy, for-

giveness of sin, and promise of life—^the fruits of His Cross.
Calvary is soon reached. The way of sorrows ends in a cruel

death; but is followed by a triumphant Resurrection. “Death is

swallowed up in victory.’’ Men “shall now look on Him whom they

have pierced.” The whole world is called to gaze on Christ and

His Cross. Whether as a sign to be revered or contradicted, it is a

sign that can not be ignored. Whether we explain the fact on

natural or supernatural grounds, the Cross of Christ ever has drawn

to itself the gaze of mankind. True, it is erected for the fall and

resurrection of many. Types of all classes of men assisted at the

closing scenes of the most holy life that ended on the Cross; but

with very varying dispositions and results. In some one or other

of the actors of the Passion each one may find his counterpart.

One, alas! perhaps, like Judas, betrays his Master—-sells his God

—

sinks deeper and deeper into crime, despairs, dies and “goes to his

place.” Another, like Peter, denies Him, but repents and is re-

stored to grace by sincere sorrow; some like Annas, seek to cover

up their own wicked lives by affected horror of the political aims

and actions of Christ, and the society He founded. Others, like

Caiphas, would stop their ears at the blasphemy of His calling Him-

self Son of God, and Judge of the world to come. Herod and

Pilate trifle with grace, and the warning voice of conscience. Oth-

ers, like our lady and the saintly women, hear and see and “keep

the Word of God in their hearts.”

All, saint and sinner alike, are constrained, as Simon of Cyrene,

to carry the Cross. He submitted, though opposed to it at first, and

was saved
;
others refuse, sink under it, and are lost. All are lov-

ingly invited to take it up, and follow Christ willingly and cheer-

fully. All have to bear life’s burden—itself a cross, why not then
gladly and resignedly?

Judgment is but a searching inquiry as to how we have carried

our cross. And that day of reckoning will come to all. The Cross

has been dipped and sweetened in the fountains of the precious

blood. Hence we are inexcusable if we carry it not aright. The

death of Christ on the Cross is the opening of a new era. The

synagogue is rejected and replaced by the Church. The seventy

weeks of years of Daniel are closing in, and Christ should be slain,



S8 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION

and the people that denied Him should no longer be His (Daniel

ix, 26). The old Jerusalem, the city of God, the city of per,fect

peace, the joy of all the earth, was doomed and replaced by the new.

The destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish

people are but figures of the wrath of God, awaiting unrepentant

sinners who reject and despise the Cross of Christ. “O crux ave

spes unica/' One sole hope rests to us all in this Cross. Christ

carried it in shame and sorrow, to Calvary, for our Redemption.

But, one day He will reappear as Judge with His Cross borne be-

fore Him, in might, and power, and majesty. If we would have

Him propitious and His Cross a sign, not of condemnation, but

redemption, let us listen to His words now, and imprint them on

our hearts : ‘‘Let us deny ourselves and take up our Cross daily and

follow him.”

















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