When we analyse each step of the Passion, whether physical or spiritual, we notice that Our Lord was spared nothing. He entered the deepest abyss of pain with a hero’s stride, took on every possible suffering and presented himself resplendent with suffering before the justice of the Eternal Father. And so He saved the human race.
It is interesting to examine, point by point, the nightfall, the “Tenebrae” within Our Lord, considered in the context of His most holy humanity.
The clamour of the crowds, the first step towards the gallows
In the first year of His public life, Jesus had joy, good success, and the response of love from the crowds of the chosen people who flocked to Him. However, He knew that all this – and here enters the bitterness – would yield but a small number of conversions and incite the Pharisees to seal His death.
If Our Lord had had far fewer followers, He might not have been killed. They killed Him because of the success of that first year. And in the crowds who adored Him, He saw that success as the first rung on the ladder that let led to the height of the cross. The Apostles and the others did not realize it; He did.
What was more, here and there, the Redeemer saw people in the fleeting plenitude of their vocation, of their joy, and whose beauty of soul enchanted Him. Nevertheless, He knew that one of them would stone Him, another would abandon Him, another would slander Him, laughing as he denigrated Him, insinuating that the slander was true. Our Lord had all this in mind and therefore bore the enormity of these torments.
Throughout His public life, Our Lord suffered, in the depths of His heart, with the prevision of all He would undergo in the Passion
I have the impression that the calumnies only began to spread after the Sanhedrin had done some work among those who followed Him, instilling tepidity in some and turning others against Him, so that the crowd became listless and divided. And Jesus saw the twilight of apathy descending as the number of miracles increased.
The resurrection of Lazarus: culmination of wonders and death sentence
In the second year, having built up the castle of His marvels, Our Lord enters into a kind of duel with tepidity, because the crowd is trying to escape His grasp. He tries to retain them by doing greater wonders. And He is faced with this humanly unsolvable situation: the more He works wonders, the more the crowd becomes insensitive and indifferent.
One of the people might comment: “He raised a dead man; is that the latest one He has done?” And he would laugh, as if to say: “I have had enough of this, I want to go back to my little life. Be gone wonders; I want banality!” And when Jesus brought His miracles to their peak, in the resurrection of Lazarus, He was aware of the death sentence; He knew of their decision to kill Him. He knew everything, and when He went to Lazarus’ house to celebrate the resurrection, He was in fact celebrating death, for Lazarus’ resurrection was the beginning of His death.
I am not sure if you grasp the poignancy of all this from the standpoint of sadness. To use a wrong expression, but one that somewhat signifies what I wish to say, it poisoned, it introduced a bitter taste into the most legitimate and splendid joys.
Imagine the atmosphere in Lazarus’ house, where He enjoyed being, just after his resurrection: the Apostles, Lazarus’ family and the local people who came to worship Him. Our Lord knew that most of those demonstrations would come to nothing. And for the sake of those souls, He ate the banquet and rejoiced. Meanwhile, in the depths of His Heart, He wept because He understood what was happening. This episode alone would have been a drama out of this world.
He must also have sensed the reaction of those who were there: it was no longer the same as before, with the exception of Our Lady and some Holy Women.
Events unfolded and Jesus achieved a triumph on Palm Sunday; however, He perceived the stench of that triumph. The people wanted to acclaim Him, but not in terms of breaking with the Pharisees. They expected the Pharisees to enthrone Him, and if they did not, the people would follow them. And they prepared that celebration for Our Lord – the feast of naivety, not of the innocent, but of the soft, so different from the innocent. And He, passing through the midst of those hosannas, knew perfectly well what was coming next.
The rhombus of sorrow
In all these steps – it has to be said at the outset – it is striking to see Our Lord, by design of the Eternal Father, suffering that sorrow and not just allowing suffering to fall on Him, but marching directly towards it. Jesus was sinking into the lowest, most terrible point of the rhombus of sorrow.
Our Lord Jesus Christ not only consented to the suffering that befell Him, but went out to meet it, with His head held high
Human life can be compared to a rhombus with two angles: the lower one suffering; the upper one, joy. Our Lord descended into the depths of the rhombus of sorrow, in each of these specific cases, with a probity, integrity and obedience reminiscent of the “Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” (Lk 1:38).1 He went to the final point, with His head held high, in the attitude that we see in the Holy Shroud. This is how Jesus marched.
This becomes more poignant on Holy Thursday, when the culmination of His work is celebrated. The Divine Saviour institutes the Mass, the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance, and with this the edifice of the Church is, in a certain sense of the word, completed.
The Jewish people were all celebrating the crossing of the Red Sea, the Passover. And Our Lord, in this atmosphere of general rejoicing, certainly saw the Apostles taking part in that joy. He partakes in the feast and completes His work without faltering. We can conjecture the mixture of His joy and sadness, because He knew that in a few hours the great tragedy would begin.
Imagine the sadness of the Redeemer washing the feet of Judas, St. Peter and St. John, contemplating what they would do next. Then distributing the Eucharist and having the Real Presence within each one of them, so mediocre, so inferior to the task… St. Peter, the Prince of His Church, was about to do what he did!
The heavenly Father’s inflexibilities
Once the feast was over, all the sorrows, great and small, converged. The terrible agony began, in which He saw before Him everything that would ensue and, in His intelligence, in His most holy soul, He willed it with such integrity that He suffered the disproportion between the forthcoming sorrow and the strength He possessed. He felt crushed. Despite this, He made an act of submission. He sweated blood and prayed to the Eternal Father: “Thy will, not mine, be done!” (cf. Lk 22:42).
Our Lord possessed a divine strength that has nothing in common with weakness, but it had the appearance of weakness. He said, “Thy will be done, not mine,” as one who sensed or knew that the heavenly Father’s will had inflexibilities. Jesus was colliding with one of them, which would crush Him. An Angel came and gave Him a strength that was not a consolation to suffer less, but an ability to suffer more. Then there was the abandonment of the Apostles and everything we know.
At every step, we see the horror reaching the unimaginable. He enters into this horror, clothes himself in it and drinks the chalice of sorrow. And that at every minute. For example, they remove His tunic, which in some places is soaked with dried blood and therefore stuck to the wounds. At the moment of pulling it off, the laceration is unspeakable! I am sure that a man, without the strength He had, would go mad and die from the pain.
This tunic was presumably thrown to the ground and the Precious Blood began to dry there. They kicked it, spat and trampled upon it. The unimaginable must have happened. Now, in the context of all the torments He underwent, this is a trifle.
In each of these steps, the worst imaginable happened. He accepted all of it in its entirety, without a moment’s hesitation. At no point in the Passion does the Redeemer ask for pity or for a moment’s respite so that He can catch His breath.
Even the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit abandoned Him
When He falls under the Cross it is because His strength fails. As soon as He could He arose and continued, suffering everything with remarkable serenity, as if He were not suffering at all.
Our Lord is obliged to perform this atrocious task of carrying His own Cross to the place where the torment would reach its apex. Every step taken was not towards His liberation. Had they said to Him “If You climb this hill, at the top You will be free,” it would have been a relief. Instead, the executioners seemed to say: “You climb that hill and when You reach the top the worst will come. Now walk!” He ascends and then the crucifixion begins.
The Redeemer’s human nature was immersed, until that final cry, in the darkest of nights that deprived Him of all consolation
One has the impression that this is nothing compared to what followed, that is, the entire lengthy and mortal process of the crucifixion. He could die of apoplexy at any moment. No. Jesus did not drink the chalice of death in one draught, but drop by drop, savouring it completely. He felt himself dying by millimetres, each one a small death.
Our Lord traversed each millimetre until the end, and wanted the world to know that He had no consolation in His final groan. Even the Eternal Father and the Divine Holy Spirit had abandoned Him.
The most holy humanity of Jesus was abandoned. The divinity – hypostatically united to His humanity – became closed to Him. And the Redeemer’s human nature remained in the most complete and darkest night, to the point of provoking that cry indicative of two beautiful realities, the tremendous acuteness of the pain and all the strength that yet remained in that Man: “Iesus autem iterum clamans voce magna”, and then “emisit spiritum” (Mt 27:50).2
It is the height of sorrow, predicted and accepted long before by His Soul’s preparation for it.
The paradox of sorrow
To meditate on Our Lord Jesus Christ, it is necessary to take all these aspects into consideration.
The concrete point consists in understanding something paradoxical: this life is the most terrible that can be imagined, it is very harsh, but the person has strength, tranquillity, stability and cleanness of soul that is already, on this earth, at least something of the hundredfold to be received in the other.
The pain against which one marches with a firm step is somehow diminished. When we try to evade it, it grows as we flee. As a result, we begin to wane and, when it comes to the point of rending us apart, we are nothing.
The more the individual anticipates suffering from afar, the less it will hurt. And true asceticism consists in long foresight, placing oneself in the hands of Providence. There is no other remedy. And, paradoxically speaking, this is where we find our chalice of the Garden of Olives – that is, the liquid that gives us strength. This means not saying “At the time of tragedy I will be a hero,” but rather “At the time of the small difficulties I will be a hero.” I must also be a hero in the little things of everyday life.
Nevertheless, these considerations do not lead to the following conclusion: every time the prospect of suffering presents itself to us, we should not ask for it to be removed. On the contrary, prayer can deliver us from suffering. Just as Providence not only allows, but wants – and the doctrine of the Church encourages – that we lessen the pain of the souls in Purgatory, also, as many people receive a part of this torment on earth, it is legitimate to ask that they be free from it. And often Providence mercifully frees them.
The role of confidence
Likewise, there is a light and dark contrast in what I am saying. First of all, there is the help of Our Lady so that we can obtain strength. I do not believe that any man, without the help of the Blessed Virgin, could do this. On the other hand, there are the adorable flexibilities of God, even more so when His Mother is supplicated as an intermediary, the glorious intercessio Beatæ Mariæ Virginis. And amazing things can be achieved; however, this point always remains: something inexorable may descend upon us.
If we want to seriously meditate on the Passion, we find this. And, as for Our Lady, one cannot imagine that of a mere creature could be asked what was asked of Her.
Imagine the Virgin Mary’s care and affection for Jesus as a child, then as a young boy, a youth, with what affection She embroidered the seamless tunic! And that Body that Our Lady had loved so much, that Soul that She had sought to fill with consolations – and knew She had filled – found Itself in that sea of torments. She was a part of that inexorability of God and wanted Jesus to die.
We have no idea what this represents. If we were to feel a spark of it within us, we would die of sorrow.
We must march towards the cross with a firm step, trusting in the help of the Blessed Virgin, in the hope of attaining the victory
The role of confidence is very beautiful in this regard. It is the virtue by which, in a mysterious way, we discern what is not inexorable, and manage to mitigate the pain to some degree. On the other hand, confidence is so powerful that, I believe, even a little of the inexorable itself is sometimes allayed.
It is a curious thing, but we trust that the sufferings that we feel are not normally in our path will not come upon us. Each of us has a confused notion about the path of our sufferings. We also feel it when we collide with the inexorable itself. And then confidence changes its name and is called resignation. However, the most terrible thing happens when the axiological trial3 comes, because the person loses the notion of the exorable and the inexorable.
This is a sincere meditation on Holy Week. It is also worth saying that behind all this are the glories and hopes of the Resurrection. How many things in our lives have occurred in the form of resurrection! And above all, the final resurrection of us all will come. Therefore, it is not an overwhelming perspective.
Our Lord’s words from the height of the Cross – “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46) – they are the beginning of a Psalm that prophesies the Resurrection and victory. ◊
Taken, with adaptions, from:
Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Year XXV.
N.289 (Apr., 2022); p.9-15
Notes
1 From the Latin: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
2 From the Latin: “Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit.”
3 In Dr. Plinio’s conception, the word axiology – originating from the Latin axis – and its derivatives always refer to the “axis” that should guide human life, that is, the end for which the person was created and their specific vocation, around which all your ideas, desires and activities should revolve.
