[Life of Christ] [Previous] [Next]
Our Lord spoke seven times from the Cross; these are called His Seven Last Words. In the Scriptures the dying words of only three others were recorded: Israel, Moses, and Stephen. The reason perhaps is that no others are found so significant and representative as these three. Israel was the first of the Israelites; Moses, the first of the legal dispensation; Stephen, the first Christian martyr. The dying words of each began something sublime in the history of God’s dealings with men. Not even the last words of Peter or Paul or John have been human legacy, for no spirit ever guided a pen to reveal the secrets of their dying lips. And yet the human heart is always anxious to hear of the state of mind of anyone at that very common, and yet very mysterious, moment called death.
In His goodness, Our Blessed Lord left His thoughts on dying, for He—more than Israel, more than Moses, more than Stephen—was representative of all humanity. In this sublime hour He called all His children to the pulpit of the Cross, and every word He said to them was set down for the purpose of an eternal publication and an undying consolation. There was never a preacher like the dying Christ; there was never a congregation like that which gathered about the pulpit of the Cross; there was never a sermon like the Seven Last Words.
THE FIRST WORD
The executioners expected Him to cry, for everyone pinned to the gibbet of the Cross had done it before Him. Seneca wrote that those who were crucified cursed the day of their birth, the executioners, their mothers, and even spat on those who looked upon them. Cicero recorded that at times it was necessary to cut out the tongues of those who were crucified to stop their terrible blasphemies. Hence the executioners expected a word, but not the kind of word that they heard. The Scribes and Pharisees awaited His reaction, and they were quite sure that He Who had preached “Love your enemies,” and “Do good to them that hate you,” would now forget that Gospel with the piercing of His feet and hands. They felt that the excruciating and agonizing pains would scatter to the winds any resolution He might have taken to keep up appearances. Every one expected a cry, but no one, with the exception of the three at the foot of the Cross, expected the cry they did hear. Like some fragrant trees which bathe in perfume the very axe which gashes them, the great Heart on the Tree of Love poured out from its depths something less a cry than a prayer—the soft, sweet, low prayer of pardon and forgiveness:
Father forgive them;
They do not know what it is they are doing.
LUKE 23:34
Forgive whom? Forgive enemies? The soldier in the courtroom of Caiphas who struck Him with a mailed fist? Pilate, the politician, who condemned a God to retain the friendship of Caesar? Herod who robed Wisdom in the garment of a fool? The soldiers who swung the King of Kings on a tree between heaven and earth? Forgive them? Forgive them, why? Because they know what they do? No, because they know not what they are doing. If they knew what they were doing and still went on doing it; if they knew what a terrible crime they were committing by sentencing Life to death; if they knew what a perversion of justice it was to prefer Barabbas to Christ; if they knew what cruelty it was to take the feet that trod everlasting hills and pinion them to the limb of a tree; if they knew what they were doing and still went on doing it, unmindful of the fact that the very Blood which they shed was capable of redeeming them, they would never be saved! Rather they would be damned! It was only the ignorance of their great sin that brought them within the pale of the hearing of that cry from the Cross. It is not wisdom that saves: it is ignorance!
Men on dying either proclaim their own innocence, or condemn the judges who sentenced them to death, or else ask pardon for sins. But Perfect Innocence asked no pardon; as Mediator between God and man He extended pardon. As High Priest Who offered Himself in sacrifice, He pleaded for sinners. In a certain sense, the words of forgiveness were spoken twice: once in Eden, as God promised Redemption through the “seed of the woman” who would crush the serpent of evil; now as God in the form of the Suffering Servant fulfilled the promise. So great was the Divine Love manifested in this First Word from the Cross that echoes were caught of it through history, such as Stephen asking that the Lord lay not to their charge the sin of those who stoned him; and Paul who wrote:
I was deserted by everybody;
May it be forgiven them.
II TIMOTHY 4:16
But the prayers of Stephen and Paul were not like His, in which forgiveness was identified with His sacrifice. Being Himself both Priest and Victim, He was upright as a Priest, prostrate as a Victim. Thus He interceded and offered Himself for the guilty. Abel’s blood clamored for the wrath of God to avenge the murder of Cain; the new Abel’s Blood spilled by jealous brethren of the race of Cain was raised to lift the wrath and to plead for pardon.
THE SECOND WORD
The Last Judgment was prefigured on Calvary: the Judge was in the center, and the two divisions of humanity on either side: the saved and the lost, the sheep and the goats. When He would come in glory to judge all men, the Cross would be with Him then too, but as a badge of honor, not shame.
Two thieves crucified on either side of Him at first blasphemed and cursed. Suffering does not necessarily make men better; it can sear and burn the soul, unless men are purified by seeing its redemptive value. Unspiritualized suffering may cause men to degenerate. The thief at the left was certainly no better because of pain. The thief on the left asked to be taken down. But the thief on the right, evidently moved by Our Savior’s priestly prayer of intercession, asked to be taken up. Reprimanding his brother thief for his blasphemy, he said:
What, hast thou no fear of God,
When thou art undergoing the same sentence?
And we justly enough; we receive no more than
The due reward of our deeds;
But this Man has done nothing amiss.
LUKE 23:40, 41
Then throwing himself upon Divine mercy, he asked for forgiveness.
Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.
LUKE 23:42
A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but in the Divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into Paradise. If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief’s request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer:
I promise thee, this day thou shalt be
With Me in Paradise.
LUKE 23:43
It was the thief’s last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Savior. If Barabbas came to the execution, how he must have wished that he never had been released, and that he could have heard the words of the compassionate High Priest. Practically everything about the Body of Christ was fastened by nails, or tortured by whips and thorns, except His Heart and His tongue—and these declared forgiveness that very day. But who can forgive sins, but God? And who can promise Paradise except Him Who by nature is eternal to Paradise?
THE THIRD WORD
The third message of Our Lord from the Cross contained exactly the same word that was used in addressing His mother at the marriage feast of Cana. When she, for the sake of the embarrassed host, made the simple prayer that the guests had no wine, He answered: “Woman, what is that to Me when My Hour is not yet come?” Our Lord always used the word “Hour” in relation to His Passion and His death.
In our own language, Our Lord was saying to His Blessed Mother at Cana: “My dear mother, do you realize that you are asking Me to proclaim My Divinity—to appear before the world as the Son of God, and to prove my Divinity by My works and My miracles? The moment that I do this, I begin the royal road to the Cross. When I am no longer known among men as the son of the carpenter, but as the Son of God, that will be My first step toward Calvary. My Hour is not yet come; but would you have Me anticipate it? Is it your will that I go to the Cross? If I do, your relationship to Me changes. You are now My mother. You are known everywhere in our little village as the mother of Jesus. But if I appear now as the Savior of men, and begin the work of Redemption, your role will change too. Once I undertake the salvation of mankind, you will not only be My mother, but you will also be the mother of everyone whom I redeem. I am the Head of humanity; as soon as I save the body of humanity, you who are the mother of the Head will become also the mother of My Mystical Body or the Church. You will then be the universal mother, the new Eve, as I am the new Adam.
“To indicate the role that you will play in Redemption, I now bestow upon you that title of universal motherhood; I call you—Woman. It was to you that I referred when I said to Satan that I would put enmity between him and the woman, between his brood of evil and your seed, Which I am. That great title of woman I dignify you with now. And I shall dignify you with it again when My Hour comes and when I am unfurled upon the Cross like a wounded eagle. We are in this work of Redemption together. What is yours is mine. From this Hour on, we are not just Mary and Jesus, we are the new Adam and the new Eve, beginning a new humanity, changing the water of sin into the wine of life. Knowing all this, My dear mother, is it your will that I anticipate the Cross and that I go to Calvary?”
Our Blessed Lord was presenting to Mary not merely the choice of asking for a miracle or not; rather He was asking if she would send Him to His death. He had made it quite plain that the world would not tolerate His Divinity, that if He turned water into wine, some day wine would be changed into blood.
Three years had passed. Our Blessed Lord now looked down from His Cross to the two most beloved creatures that He had on earth—John and His Blessed Mother. He picked up the refrain of Cana, and addressed Our Blessed Mother with the same title He gave Her at the marriage feast. He called her, “Woman.” It was the second Annunciation. With a gesture of His dust-filled eyes and His thorn crowned head, He looked longingly at Her, who had sent Him willingly to the Cross and who is now standing beneath it as a cooperator in His Redemption; and He said: “Woman, this is thy son.” He did not call him John; to do that would have been to address him as the son of Zebedee and no one else. But, in his anonymity, John stood for all mankind. To His beloved disciple He said: “This is thy mother.”
Here is the answer, after all these years, to the mysterious words in the Gospel of the Incarnation which stated that Our Blessed Mother laid her “firstborn” in the manger. Did that mean that Our Blessed Mother was to have other children? It certainly did, but not according to the flesh. Our Divine Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was the unique Son of Our Blessed Mother by the flesh. But Our Lady was to have other children, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit!
There were two great periods in the relations of Jesus and Mary, the first extending from the Crib to Cana, and the second, from Cana to the Cross. In the first, she was the mother of Jesus; in the second, she began to be the mother of all whom Jesus redeemed —in other words, she became the mother of men. From Bethlehem to Cana, Mary had Jesus, as a mother has a son; she even called Him familiarly “Son,” at the age of twelve, as if that were her usual mode of address. He was with her during those thirty years, fleeing in her arms to Egypt, living at Nazareth, and being subject to her. He was hers, and she was His, and even at the very moment when they walked into the wedding feast, her name was mentioned first: “Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there.”
But from Cana on, there is a growing detachment, which Mary helped to bring on herself. A year after Cana, as a devoted mother, she followed Him in His preaching. It was announced to Our Lord that His mother was seeking Him. Our Lord with seeming unconcern, turned to the crowd and asked:
Who is a mother to Me?
MATTHEW 12:48
Then revealing the great Christian mystery that relationship is not dependent on flesh and blood, but on union with Divine nature through grace, He added:
If anyone does the will of My Father
Who is in heaven,
He is My brother, and sister, and mother.
MATTHEW 12:50
The mystery came to an end on Calvary. There she became our mother the moment she lost her Divine Son. What seemed an alienation of affection was in reality a deepening of affection. No love ever mounts to a higher level without death to a lower one. Mary died to the love of Jesus at Cana, and recovered Jesus again at Calvary with His Mystical Body which He redeemed. It was, for the moment, a poor exchange, giving up her Divine Son to win mankind, but in reality, she did not win mankind apart from Him. On that day when she came to Him preaching, He began to merge the Divine maternity into the new motherhood of all men; at Calvary He caused her to love men as He loved them.
It was a new love, or perhaps the same love expanded over the wider area of humanity. But it was not without its sorrow. It cost Mary something to have men as sons. She could give birth to Jesus in joy in a stable, but she could give birth to Christians only on Calvary, and in labors great enough to make her Queen of Martyrs. The Fiat she pronounced when she became the Mother of God now became another Fiat, like unto Creation in the immensity of what she brought forth. It was also a Fiat which so enlarged her affections as to increase her pains. The bitterness of Eve’s curse—that woman would bring forth children in sorrow—was now fulfilled, and not by the opening of a womb but by the piercing of a heart, as Simeon had foretold. It was the greatest of all honors to be the mother of Christ; but it was also a great honor to be the mother of Christians. There was no room in the inn for that first birth; but Mary had the whole world for her second. Recall that when Our Lord spoke to John, He did not refer to him as John for then he would have been only the son of Zebedee. Rather, in him all humanity was commended to Mary, who became the mother of men, not by metaphor, or figure of speech, but by pangs of birth. Nor was it a mere sentimental solicitude that made Our Lord give John to His mother, for John’s mother was present at the Cross. He needed no mother from a human point of view. The import of the words were spiritual and became fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when Christ’s Mystical Body became visible and operative. Mary as the mother of redeemed and regenerated humanity was in the midst of the Apostles.
THE FOURTH WORD
From twelve o’clock until three o’clock there was an unearthly darkness that fell over the land, for nature, in sympathy with its Creator, refused to shed its light upon the crime of deicide. Mankind, having condemned the Light of the World, now lost the cosmic symbol of that Light, the sun. At Bethlehem, where He was born at midnight, the heavens were suddenly filled with light; at Calvary, when He entered into the ignominy of His Crucifixion at midday, the heavens were bereaved of light. Centuries before, the prophet Amos had said:
Day of doom, says the Lord God,
When there shall be sunset at noon,
And earth shall be overshadowed under the full light!
AMOS 8:9
Our Blessed Lord entered into the second phase of His suffering. The catastrophe of being fixed to the Cross was followed by the passion of being crucified. His Blood congealed where it could not flow freely; fever consumed the body; the thorns which were the curse of the earth now are covered with blood poured out as a curse of sin. An unearthly stillness, which was rather normal in darkness, now became frightening in the abnormal darkness of high noon. When Judas came with the band to arrest Him in the garden, Our Lord told him that it was His Hour and “the power of darkness.” But this darkness not only signified that men were putting out the Light Who illumined every man coming into this world, but also that He was denying Himself, for the moment, the light and consolation of His Divinity. Suffering now passed from the body into the mind and soul, as He spoke with a loud voice:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
MATTHEW 27:46
During this part of the Crucifixion, Our Blessed Lord was repeating the Psalm of David which prophetically referred to Him, though written a thousand years before.
My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me…?
But I, poor worm, have no manhood left;
I am a by-word to all,
The laughing-stock of the rabble.
All those who catch sight of Me fall to mocking;
Mouthing out insults, while they toss their heads in scorn,
He committed Himself to the Lord,
Why does not the Lord come to His rescue,
And set His favorite free…?
My enemies ring me round
Packed close as a herd of oxen, strong as bulls from Basan;
So might a lion threaten Me with its jaws,
Roaring for its prey.
I am spent as spilt water, all My bones out of joint,
My heart turned to molten wax within Me;
Parched is My throat like clay in the baking,
And My tongue sticks fast in My mouth;
Thou hast laid Me in the dust, to die.
Prowling about Me like a pack of dogs,
Their wicked conspiracy hedges Me in;
They have torn holes in My Hands and Feet;
I can count My bones one by one,
And they stand there watching Me, gazing at Me in triumph.
PSALM 21:2; 7–9; 13–19
The signal feature in the sufferings of Our Lord revealed in this Psalm was His desolation and solitude. The Divine Son called His Father “My God”—in contrast to the prayer which taught men to say “Our Father Who art in heaven.” It was not that His human nature was separated from His Divine nature; that was impossible. It was rather that just as the sun’s light and heat can be hidden at the base of a mountain by intervening clouds, though the peak is bathed in sunlight, so too, in taking upon Himself the sins of the world He willed a kind of withdrawal of His Father’s face and all Divine consolation. Sin has physical effects, and these He bore by having His hands and feet pierced; sin has mental effects which He poured forth in the Garden of Gethsemane; sin also has spiritual effects such as a sense of abandonment, separation from God, loneliness. This particular moment He willed to take upon Himself that principal effect of sin which was abandonment.
Man rejected God; so now He willed to feel that rejection. Man turned away from God; now He, Who was God united personally with a human nature, willed to feel in that human nature that awful wrench as if He Himself were guilty. Earth had already abandoned Him by lifting His Cross above it; heaven had already abandoned Him by veiling itself in darkness; and yet suspended between both, He united both. In that cry were all the sentiments in human hearts expressive of a Divine nostalgia: the loneliness of the atheist, the skeptic, the pessimist, the sinners who hate themselves for hating virtue, and of all those who have no love above the flesh; for to be without love is hell. It was, therefore, the moment when leaning on nails He stood at the brink of hell in the name of all sinners. As He entered upon the extreme penalty of sin, which is separation from God, it was fitting that His eyes be filled with darkness and His soul with loneliness.
In each of the other words, He acted as the Divine mediator; in the first word, He pleaded for the forgiveness of sinners in general; in the second word, He anticipated His final role at the end of the world when He would separate the good from the bad; in the third word, He was the mediator assigning a spiritual motherhood for redeemed humanity. Now in the fourth word, He acted as mediator for sinful humanity. God and He stand over against each other for the moment. The Old Testament had prophesied that He Who hangs upon a tree is cursed; the darkness gave expression to that burning curse which He would remove by bearing it and triumphing in the Resurrection. One of God’s first great gifts to man was the gift of light which He Himself said He caused to shine upon the just and the wicked; but as mediator and pleader for the emptiness and darkness of sinful hearts, He would deny Himself that primitive gift of light.
The history of God’s dealings with man began in the Old Testament when light was made, and history will come to an end in the final judgment, when the sun and moon shall be darkened and the stars withdraw their shining, and all the heavens will be clothed with blackness. In this particular midday, He stood between the light which was created and the ultimate darkness where evil will be condemned. The tensions of history He felt within Himself: The Light came into the darkness but the darkness did not comprehend the Light. As a dying person sometimes sees his whole life summarized, so now He saw all history recapitulated in Himself when the darkness of sin had its moment of triumph. The scapegoat, on which the priests of the Old Law laid their hand and then sent into the wilderness, now became verified in Him Who descended to the very gates of hell. Evil cuts off every thread connecting man with God, setting up barriers against all the avenues that open unto Him and closing all the aqueducts that might strengthen man to go to God. He now felt as if He Himself had severed the cord that bound human life to the Divine. The physical agony of Crucifixion was as nothing compared to this mental agony which He took upon Himself. Children can make crosses, but only sin can make the darkness of soul.
Christ’s cry was of abandonment which He felt standing in a sinner’s place, but it was not of despair. The soul that despairs never cries to God. As the keenest pangs of hunger are felt not by the dying man who is completely exhausted but by the man battling for his life with the last ounce of strength, so abandonment was felt not only by the ungodly and unholy but by the most holy of men, the Lord on the Cross. The greatest mental agony in the world, and the cause of many psychic disorders, is that minds and souls and hearts are without God. Such emptiness would never have a consolation, if He had not felt all of this as His own. From this point on, no atheist could ever say in his loneliness, he does not know what it is to be without God! This emptiness of humanity through sin, though He felt it as His own, was nevertheless spoken with a loud voice to indicate not despair, but rather hope that the sun would rise again and scatter the darkness.
THE FIFTH WORD
There now came a point in the discourse of the Seven Last Words from the Cross which would seem to indicate that Our Blessed Lord was speaking of Himself, whereas in some of the previous words He was speaking to others. But the facts are not quite so simple. It is, indeed, true that the loss of blood through the sufferings, the unnatural position of the Body with the extreme tension on hands and feet, the overstretched muscles, the wounds exposed to air, the headache from the crowning of thorns, the swelling of the blood vessels, the increasing inflammation—all would have produced a physical thirst. It was not surprising that He thirsted; what was surprising was that He said so. He Who threw stars into their orbits and spheres into space, He Who shut up the sea with doors, He Who made waters come out of the rock smitten by Moses, He Who had made all the seas and rivers and fountains, He Who said to the woman of Samaria: “The man who drinks the water I give him will not know thirst any more,” now let fall from His lips the shortest of the seven cries from the Cross:
I am thirsty.
JOHN 19:28
When He was crucified, He refused to take a concoction which was offered Him; now He avidly asked for a drink. But there was considerable difference between the two drinks; the first was myrrh and was a stupefying potion to ward off pain; that He refused, in order that His senses might not be dulled. The drink that was now given to Him was vinegar or the sour bad wine of the soldiers.
There was a jar there full of vinegar;
So they filled a sponge with the vinegar
And put it on a stick of hyssop,
And brought it close to His mouth.
Jesus drank the vinegar.
JOHN 19:29
He Who had turned water into wine at Cana could have used the same infinite resources to have satisfied His own thirst, except for the fact that He never worked a miracle in His own behalf. But why did He ask for a drink? It was not solely because of the need, great though that must have been. The real reason for the request was the fulfillment of the prophecies:
And now Jesus knew well that all was achieved
Which the scripture demanded for its accomplishment;
And He said, I am thirsty.
JOHN 19:28
All that the Old Testament had foretold of Him had to be fulfilled to the smallest iota. David in the Scriptures had foretold His thirst during His Passion:
Parched is My throat,
Like clay in the baking,
And My tongue sticks fast in My mouth…
I look round for pity, where pity is none,
For comfort, where there is no comfort to be found.
They gave Me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty
They gave Me vinegar to drink.
PSALM 21:16; PSALM 68:21–22
Thus the soldiers, though they gave Him the vinegar in mockery, for so it is explicitly stated, nevertheless fulfilled the Scriptures. The vinegar was given to Him on a bunch of hyssop, a plant that grew about a foot and a half high. It was hyssop, too, that was dipped in the blood of the Paschal Lamb; it was hyssop that was used to sprinkle the lintel and posts of the Jews in Egypt to escape the avenging angel; it was hyssop that was dipped in the blood of the bird in cleansing the leper; it was David himself, after his sin, who said that he would be purged with hyssop and be made clean.
That which takes place last in the life of men held by intention the first place in His, for He came to suffer and die. But He would not give up His life until He had fulfilled details of the Scriptures that men might know that it was He, the Christ, the Son of God, Who was dying on the Cross. He was taking out of the Scriptures the idea that the Messias of the promise must not accept death as a fate, but perform it as a deed. Exhaustion was not to put Him to death, as exhaustion accounted not for His thirst. As High Priest and Mediator it was the prophecies concerning Him that prompted the cry of thirst. Indeed the Jewish Rabbis had already applied that prophecy to Him; the Midrash stated: “Come and dip thy morsel in the vinegar—this is spoken of the Messias—of His Passion and torments, as is written in the prophet Isaias. ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.’”
Since the soldiers mockingly gave Our Blessed Lord the vinegar at the end of hyssop, it is very likely that they intended to ridicule one of the Jewish sacred rites. When the blood of the lamb was sprinkled by the hyssop, the purification through a symbol was now fulfilled as the hyssop touched the Blood of Christ. St. Paul, dwelling on that idea, writes:
It is His own Blood, not the blood of goats and calves,
That has enabled Him to enter, once for all,
Into the sanctuary; the ransom He has won lasts forever.
The blood of bulls and goats, the ashes of a heifer
Sprinkled over men defiled, have power to hallow them
For every purpose of outward purification;
And shall not the Blood of Christ, Who of ered Himself,
Through the Holy Spirit, as a Victim unblemished in God’s sight,
Purify our consciences, and set them free from lifeless
Observances, to serve the living God?
HEBREWS 9:12–12
The bystanders at the Cross who knew well the Old Testament prophecies were thus given another proof that He was the suffering Messias. His fourth word, which expressed His sufferings of Soul, and His fifth word, which expressed sufferings of Body, were both foretold. Thirst was the symbol of the unsatisfying character of sin; the pleasures of the flesh purchased at the cost of joy of the spirit are like drinking salt water. The rich man in hell, in the parable, thirsted and begged Father Abraham to ask Lazarus to wet his tongue with but a drop of water. Making complete atonement for sin demanded that the Redeemer now feel the thirst even of the lost before they are lost. But for the saved, too, it was a thirst—a yearning for souls. Some men have a passion for money, others for fame; His passion was for souls! “Give Me to drink” meant “give Me thy heart.” The tragedy of Divine love for mankind is that in His thirst men gave Him vinegar and gall.
THE SIXTH WORD
From all eternity God willed to make men in the image of His Eternal Son. Having perfected and achieved this likeness in Adam, He placed him in a garden, beautiful as God alone knows how to make a garden beautiful. In some mysterious way the revolt of Lucifer echoed to earth, and the image of God in man became blurred. The Heavenly Father now willed in His Divine mercy to restore man to his pristine glory, in order that fallen man might know the beautiful image to which he was destined to be conformed. God sent His Divine Son to this earth, not just to forgive sin but to satisfy justice through suffering.
In the beautiful Divine economy of Redemption, the same three things which cooperated in the Fall shared in Redemption. For the disobedient man Adam, there was the obedient new Adam, Christ; for the proud woman Eve, there was the humble new Eve, the Virgin Mary; for the tree of the Garden, there was the tree of the Cross. Looking back on the Divine plan and after having tasted the vinegar which fulfilled the prophecy, He now uttered what in the original is only one word:
It is achieved.
JOHN 19:30
It was not an utterance of thanksgiving that His suffering was over and finished, though the humiliation of the Son of Man was now at an end. It was rather that His life from the time of His birth to the time of His death had faithfully achieved what the Heavenly Father sent Him to do.
Three times God used that same word in history: first, in Genesis, to describe the achievement or completion of creation; second, in the Apocalypse, when all creation would be done away with and a new heaven and earth would be made. Between these two extremes of the beginning and the accomplished end, there was the link of the sixth utterance from the Cross. Our Divine Lord in the state of His greatest humiliation, seeing all prophecies fulfilled, all foreshadowings realized, and all things done which were needful for the Redemption of man, uttered a cry of joy: “It is achieved.”
The life of the Spirit could now begin the work of sanctification, for the work of Redemption was completed. In creation, on the seventh day, after the heavens and the earth were finished, God rested from all the work that He had done; now the Savior on the Cross having taught as Teacher, governed as King, and sanctified as Priest, could enter into His rest. There would be no second Savior; no new way of salvation; no other name under heaven by which men might be saved. Man had been bought and paid for. A new David arose to slay the Goliath of evil, not with five stones but with five wounds—hideous scars on hands, feet, and side; and the battle was fought not with armor glistening under a noonday sun, but with flesh torn away so the bones could be numbered. The Artist had put the last touch on his masterpiece, and with the joy of the strong He uttered the song of triumph that His work was completed.
There was not a single type from the turtledove to the temple which was not fulfilled in Him. Christ, one with the Eternal Father in the work of creation, had perfected Redemption. There was not a historic foretelling—from Abraham who offered in sacrifice his son, to Jonas who was in the belly of the whale for three days—which was not in Him fulfilled. The prophecy of Zacharias that He should make entrance into Jerusalem on an ass in humility; the prophecy of David that He should be betrayed by one of His own familiars; the prophecy of Zacharias that He should be sold for thirty pieces of silver, and that this price should afterwards be used to buy a field of blood; the prophecy of Isaias that He would be barbarously treated, scourged, and put to death; the prophecy of Isaias that He would be crucified between two malefactors, and that He would pray for His enemies; the prophecies of David that they would give Him vinegar to drink and divide His garments among them, that He would be a prophet like Moses, a priest like Melchisedech, a Lamb to be slain, a scapegoat driven out of the city, that He would be wiser than Solomon, more kingly than David, and that He should be the One to Whom Abraham and Moses looked in prophecy—all these wonderful hieroglyphics would have been left unexplained, had not the Son of God Incarnate on His Cross looked back on all the sheep and goats and bullocks who were offered in sacrifice and said: “It is achieved.”
It was not after preaching the beautiful Sermon on the Mount that He said that His work was perfected. It was not to teach that He came; it was, as He said, to give His life as a ransom for many. On His way up to Jerusalem He had told His Apostles that He would be delivered to the Gentiles, would be mocked and spat upon, and would be scourged and put to death; in the garden when Peter lifted his sword, Christ asked if He should not drink the chalice that the Heavenly Father had given Him. At the age of twelve, the first time He spoke in Scripture, He said that He must be about the business of His Father. Now the work which the Father had given Him to do was finished. The Father had sent the Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and by the Eternal Spirit He was conceived in Mary’s womb. All this came to pass that He might suffer on the Cross. Thus reparation involved the whole Trinity. What was achieved was Redemption, as Peter himself would say after he received the Spirit, and understood the meaning of the Cross.
What was the ransom that freed you from
The vain observances of ancestral tradition?
You know well enough that it was not paid
In earthly currency, silver or gold;
It was paid in the precious Blood of Christ;
No lamb was ever so pure, so spotless a Victim.
I PETER 1:18–18
THE SEVENTH WORD
One of the penalties imposed on man as a result of original sin was that he would die in body. After the exile from the garden, Adam stumbled upon the limp form of his son Abel. He spoke to him, but Abel did not answer. The head was lifted, but it fell back limp; his eyes were cold and staring. Then Adam remembered that death was the penalty for sin. It was the first death in the world. Now the new Abel, Christ, slain by the race of Cain, prepared to go home. His sixth word was earthward; the seventh was Godward. The sixth was the farewell to time, the seventh, the beginning of His glory. The prodigal Son was returning back home; thirty-three years before, He had left the Father’s house and gone off into the foreign country of this world. There He began spending His substance, the Divine riches of power and wisdom; in His last hour, His substance of Flesh and Blood was wasted among sinners. There was nothing left to feed upon except the husks and the sneers and the vinegar of human ingratitude. He now entered into Himself and prepared to take the road back home into His Father’s house and, as He did so, He let fall from His lips the perfect prayer:
Father, into Thy Hands I commend My spirit.
LUKE 23:46
These words were not spoken in an exhausted whisper, as men do as they breathe their last. He had already said that no one would take away His life from Him, but that He would lay it down of Himself. Death did not lay its hand on His shoulder and give Him a summons to depart; He went out to meet death. In order to show that He would not die from exhaustion, but by an act of will, His last words were spoken:
Crying with a loud voice.
MATTHEW 27:50
It is the only instance in history of a Dying One Who was a Living One. His words of departure were a quotation from the Psalms of David:
Into thy hands I commend My Spirit; Thou,
God ever faithful, wilt claim Me for Thyself.
Let fools provoke Thee by the worship of false gods,
For Me, no refuge but the Lord.
I will triumph and exult in Thy mercy;
It was Thou didst pity my weakness,
And save Me when I was hard bestead.
PSALM 30:6–6
He was not singing the song of death to Himself; He rather proclaimed the onward march of Divine life. He was not taking refuge in God because He must die; rather His dying was a service to man and the fulfillment of the will of the Father. It is difficult for man, who thinks of dying as the most terrible crisis in his life, to understand the joy that inspired these words of the dying Christ. Man thinks that it is his dying that decides his future state; it is rather his living that does that. Some of the choices he has made, the opportunities that were in his hand, the graces that he accepted or threw away are what decide his future. The peril of living is greater than the peril of dying. So now it was the way He lived, namely, to ransom men, that determined the joy of His dying and His union with the Heavenly Father. As some planets only after a long period of time complete their orbits, as if to salute Him Who sent them on their way, so the Word Incarnate, having completed His earthly mission, now returned again to the Heavenly Father Who sent Him on the work of Redemption.
As these words were spoken, there came from the opposite hill of Jerusalem the sound of thousands of lambs who were being slain in the outer court of the temple that their blood might be offered before the Lord God on the altar, and their flesh might be eaten by the people. Whether there is any truth in the teaching of the Rabbis that it was on the same day that Cain slew Abel that God made the Covenant with Abraham, that Isaac was led up to the mountain for sacrifice, that Melchisedech offered bread and wine to Abraham, and that Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, we know not; but on this day the Lamb of God was slain and all the prophecies were fulfilled. The work of Redemption was finished. There was a rupture of a heart in a rapture of love; the Son of Man bowed His head and willed to die.
[Life of Christ] [Previous] [Next]
No comments:
Post a Comment