“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Our Holy Week Retreat for Beyond These Stone Walls
Each Holy Week since 2010 Fr Gordon MacRae has composed a special post based on the Scriptural events of the Way of the Cross. They now comprise a Holy Week retreat.
Each Holy Week since 2010 Fr Gordon MacRae has composed a special post based on the Scriptural events of the Way of the Cross. They now comprise a Holy Week retreat.
March 20, 2024 by Father Gordon MacRae
As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. Born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider instead its legacy. Many posts in my long Prison Journal since 2010 have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”
And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight to write a post about the Passion of the Christ. I compose a new Holy Week post every year since to present a different scene in the Way of the Cross. For me, this has become a sacred obligation as a priest to take part in my own unique way in the events that led to Calvary and beyond. And, yes, there IS a beyond.
Many readers, especially those who have also suffered in ways large or small, have found these posts to be inspiring. No one has been more surprised by this than me. So we have collected our Holy Week posts in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative to become an invitation for a personal retreat. We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance.
If any of them touches your heart and soul in some way, or gives you a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, then please also share a link to them with others. I hear from many newer readers who first came to this blog in just that way, and then found in these pages spiritual consolation and a path to peace.
We will add a new post on Wednesday of Holy Week this year and will make the title linked here, active at that time. We will retain these links at our “Special Post” feature until Pentecost, the conclusion of the Easter Season:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage (2020)
Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light (2020)
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane (2019)
The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.
The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ (2024)
The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands (2014)
‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ (2017)
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross (2023)
Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found (2012)
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.
To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell (2022)
The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, what happened to Jesus between the Cross and the Resurrection, is a mystery to be unveiled.
Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb (2015)
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.
Before the gates there sat, On either side a formidable Shape
One of Gustave Dore’s illustrations of the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton (Courtesy of University at Buffalo)
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross
Simon of Cyrene was just a man coming in from the country to Jerusalem for the Passover when his fated path intersected the Way of the Cross and Salvation History.
Simon of Cyrene was just a man coming in from the country to Jerusalem for the Passover when his fated path intersected the Way of the Cross and Salvation History.
Holy Week 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
I first wrote about Simon of Cyrene in Holy Week, 2010. While restoring that post, I ended up completely rewriting it. It led me almost immediately to a vivid example of the descent of this world at a time when faith invites us to ascend to Eternal Life. We are all going to die. It is an ordinary part of life. But don’t just die. Set out now for home. The only true path to life leads “To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate.”
A single sentence about Simon of Cyrene in each of the Synoptic Gospels conveys a wealth of meaning with a roadmap to the way home. Several readers told me privately and in comments that they were struck by these last few sentences in a recent post that mentioned Pornchai Moontri. In “God in the Dock: When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” I wrote,
“It was upon reading [a] passage from Pope Benedict that Pornchai made his decision to journey with me from the Exodus, through the desert, to the Promised Land toward which we, in hope, are destined. Faith never rescued us from our trials, but it taught us to carry one another's cross like Simon of Cyrene. That is the key to Heaven. Even in suffering and sorrow, it is the key to Heaven.”
Under the weight of Earthly Powers, this world loses sight of our true destiny while the great masses of people focus only on what they have stored up in this life. When a bank fails those whose treasury contains little more than money in life, people panic, some even commit suicide. It's a tragedy unfolding before our very eyes in the weeks leading up to Holy Week.
I turn 70 years old on Easter Sunday this year. It haunts me to reflect on how much the values of this world have changed in my lifetime. While researching this post about Simon of Cyrene, I came across a reference to The Greatest Story Ever Told, a 1960 United Artists film production of the life of Jesus from his birth to his Resurrection. Today, many of the woke denizens of Hollywood might shun such a project, but in 1960 it drew an enormous cast of Hollywood stars clamoring to be part of 'it.
Some of the film industry's most stellar actors were cast, some surprisingly in even minor roles: Max von Sydow portrayed Jesus, Dorothy McGuire was Mary, Claude Rains was Herod the Great, Jose Ferrer was Herod Antipas, Charlton Heston was John the Baptist, Telly Savalas was Pontius Pilate. He shaved his head for the role and never grew his hair back again. This is why he was bald when he played the famous NYPD detective, Kojak. David McCallum was Judas Iscariot. The list of Hollywood stars goes on and on.
The great John Wayne was cast as a captain of the Roman Centurions who professed his belief in Jesus at the foot of the Cross, as depicted in the top graphic on this post. John Wayne became a Catholic not long after this film. Today, his grandson is a Catholic priest in California.
Simon of Cyrene was portrayed by Sidney Poitier who three years later won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a drifter who became a handyman for a community of nuns in Lillies of the Field. He was an interesting choice to play Simon of Cyrene. In New Testament times, Cyrene was a major city in Northern Africa with a large Jewish population in what is present day Libya. It was the home of Lucius, a prophet and teacher of Antioch mentioned in Acts 13:1, and of Simon, a man who ventured to Jerusalem for the Passover but found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time or, depending on your perspective, in the right place at the right time.
Weep Not for Me, Jerusalem
My first inkling to learn about Simon of Cyrene was during Holy Week in 2000, nine years before this blog began. An old friend planning a visit to the Holy Land asked me to write a prayer that he promised to leave in a crevasse in the famous Western Wall. Known popularly as the “Wailing Wall,” it was built by Herod the Great (who was not so great, really!). That section of wall was all that remained standing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. Known in Hebrew as “ha-Kotel ha-Maaravi,” it is today one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land.
According to the Midrash, a collection of ancient rabbinic scholarship, the Wall survived the destruction of the Temple because the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, rests there. My friend left my handwritten prayer in a crevasse in that Wall. Just a day later, during a historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope John Paul II left his own prayer in that same place in the Wall. I recall hoping that his was not blocking mine!
On that same day, just beyond the city walls, my friend came upon a tourist area where a photographer was capitalizing on the presence of the Pope. He tried to coax my friend into picking up a mock cross and carrying it for a photograph. My friend was appalled by the disconnect between what happened at Calvary 2000 years earlier and what was happening in that present scene. He refused to pick up the cross.
Reflecting on the scene upon his return from Jerusalem, my friend wrote to me in prison asking, “What can you tell me about Simon of Cyrene?” His question took me to a single sentence in each of the Synoptic Gospels from which I felt compelled to unpack some hidden meaning. It turned out that there was much to unpack.
Jesus, denounced by the Chief Priests, tried and condemned before Pilate, was mercilessly scourged to the point of near death. Roman soldiers tasked with his crucifixion feared that he may die before the ascent of Golgotha while bearing history's heaviest cross. Roman law allowed soldiers to press Jews into service for Rome so they forced a passerby to assist the “King of the Jews” as recounted in all three of the Synoptic Gospels:
“As they went out, they came upon a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; this man they compelled to carry the cross.”
— Matthew 27:32
“And as they led [Jesus] away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus.”
— Luke 23:26
“And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.”
— Mark 15:21
Sidney Poitier as Simon of Cyrene in The Greatest Story Ever Told
He Was There When They Crucified My Lord
Crucifixion was entirely unknown in Jewish history until the Roman occupation of Palestine in 31 BC. Sacred Scripture, however, contained echoes of the sacrifice to come. Some 2,000 years before Jesus ascended Calvary bearing his Cross, Abraham was summoned by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac in the land of Moriah (Genesis 22).
Israelite tradition (2 Chronicles 3:1) identifies Moriah as the site of the future Jerusalem Temple. What became Golgotha or Calvary was one of its foothills. Obedient but brokenhearted, Abraham placed upon his son the wood for his sacrifice and together they climbed Mount Moriah.
Isaac asked his father, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered, “God will provide himself the lamb for the offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8). In the end, an Angel of the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand, and his obedience became the basis for God’s covenant with Israel. Two millennia later, in that same place, God Himself did provide the lamb for the sacrifice. Hence, in our Liturgy, Jesus is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Crucifixion was a common form of capital punishment among Persians, Egyptians, and Romans from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD. The punishment was ritualized under Roman law which required that a criminal be scourged before execution. The accused had to carry the entire cross or just the crossbeam from the place of scourging to the execution. Crucifixion was abolished in 337 AD by Emperor Constantine out of respect for the emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Jews carried out their own form of capital punishment by stoning, but the Romans forbade such executions when they occupied Palestine. This is why Jesus was handed over to Pilate for trial.
The gruesome punishment of crucifixion was reserved by the Romans for criminals, seditionists, and slaves. Roman law forbade the crucifixion of a citizen for any crime. Saint Paul, who was a Roman citizen, could not be crucified so he was martyred by Emperor Tertullian, likely by beheading, in 60 A.D.
When Pilate had Jesus scourged, he may have instructed his tormentors to go beyond the usual torture hoping to convince the Sanhedrin and the mob that scourging was punishment enough. That plan failed when the crowd, spurred on by the Chief Priests, shouted “Crucify Him!”
However Jesus had been beaten so severely that Roman soldiers doubted that he could carry his cross the entire distance to Calvary alone. Note that I use the terms “Golgotha” and “Calvary” interchangeably. They are one and the same place. Golgotha is a Greek translation from an Aramaic word meaning “Place of the Skull,” a name likely derived from the fact that many executions were carried out there. “Calvary” is derived from “calvaria,” the Latin translation of Golgotha.
A condemned man was then led through the crowds to the place of crucifixion. Just as today, most of the people in the crowds assumed that an all-powerful and righteous state has justly condemned a real criminal to punishment, so many joined in the mocking and humiliation even if they knew nothing of the accused or the alleged crime. It was part of the ritual. Along the way, the condemned was forced to carry his cross — or at least the crossbeam upon which his arms would be tied and his hands or wrists nailed (see John l9:l7).
In 1994, the year I was sent to prison, archeological remains of a crucified man were discovered intact near Jerusalem. It was the first evidence of what actually took place in a typical Roman crucifixion.
It is unclear from the Gospel passages above exactly what part of the Cross was imposed upon Simon of Cyrene. Luke’s Gospel refers to Simon carrying the Cross behind Jesus, a position which also came to be symbolic of discipleship. It is likely that Jesus, like other condemned, carried the crossbeam upon which he would be nailed, while Simon may have carried the vertical beam or the rear of the entire Cross.
I learned from Mel Gibson’s famous film, The Passion of the Christ, that Simon of Cyrene is the person in the Gospel to whom I can most relate. I did not pick my cross willingly, nor do I willingly carry it. I did not see it as a share in the Cross of Christ at first. Few of us ever do.
The Passion of the Christ portrayed with power what I have always imagined must have become of Simon of Cyrene. Something stirred within him compelling him to remain there. He became a part of the scene, setting his own journey aside. The lights went on in Simon’s soul and he became compelled not just from Roman force, but from deep within himself.
Note that Saint Mark alone mentions that Simon of Cyrene had two sons, Alexander and Rufus. The Gospel implies that both became well known to the early Church. Being the earliest of the Gospels to come into written form, Mark addressed his Gospel to Gentile Christians in Rome. So did Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans. Mark was with Paul at the time he was imprisoned in Rome so he was likely aware of Simon’s profound transformation as a witness to the Crucifixion and Saint Paul’s knowledge of his sons, Rufus and Alexander cited in Saint Mark’s Gospel.
Hence in the concluding verses of Paul’s Letter to the Romans Paul wrote: “Greet Rufus, eminent in the Lord, and also his mother who is a mother to me as well” (Romans 16:13).
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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post which is now on our list of Holy Week posts for our sponsored Holy Week Retreat. It is not too late to follow the Way of the Cross this week by pondering and sharing our
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls
Each year since 2010, Fr Gordon MacRae composed from prison a special Holy Week post. These posts follow the Way of the Cross creating a personal Holy Week retreat.
Each year since 2010, Fr Gordon MacRae composed from prison a special Holy Week post. These posts follow the Way of the Cross creating a personal Holy Week retreat.
March 29, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. It was born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider its legacy. Many posts in this Prison Journal have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”
And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight for a time to write a post about the ascent to Calvary. Then I repeated that effort year after year, with each post presenting a different scene in the Passion of the Christ.
Taken as a whole, these Holy Week posts now form a complete Way of the Cross. Some readers have found them to be inspiring. So this year we have collected our Holy Week posts, not in the order in which they were written, but in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative. They become, for some readers, a personal Holy Week retreat.
We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance. We will retain them at our “Holy Week” page until Pentecost, the conclusion of the Easter Season:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage
Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane
The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands
‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross
Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Christians.
To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell
The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, that Jesus descended into hell, is a mystery to be unveiled.
Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerge from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
There are few things in life that a priest could hear with greater impact than what was revealed to me in a recent letter from a reader of These Stone Walls. After stumbling upon TSW several months ago, the writer began to read these pages with growing interest. Since then, she has joined many to begin the great adventure of the two most powerful spiritual movements of our time: Marian Consecration and Divine Mercy. In a recent letter she wrote, “I have been a lazy Catholic, just going through the motions, but your writing has awakened me to a greater understanding of the depths of our faith.”
I don’t think I actually have much to do with such awakenings. My writing doesn’t really awaken anyone. In fact, after typing last week’s post, I asked my friend, Pornchai Moontri to read it. He was snoring by the end of page two. I think it is more likely the subject matter that enlightens. The reader’s letter reminded me of the reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians read by Pornchai a few weeks ago, quoted in “De Profundis: Pornchai Moontri and the Raising of Lazarus”:
“Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
I may never understand exactly what These Stone Walls means to readers and how they respond. That post generated fewer comments than most, but within just hours of being posted, it was shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook and other social media.
Of 380 posts published thus far on These Stone Walls, only about ten have generated such a response in a single day. Five of them were written in just the last few months in a crucible described in “Hebrews 13:3 Writing Just This Side of the Gates of Hell.” I write in the dark. Only Christ brings light.
Saint Paul and I have only two things in common — we have both been shipwrecked, and we both wrote from prison. And it seems neither of us had any clue that what we wrote from prison would ever see the light of day, let alone the light of Christ. There is beneath every story another story that brings more light to what is on the surface. There is another story beneath my post, “De Profundis.” That title is Latin for “Out of the Depths,” the first words of Psalm 130. When I wrote it, I had no idea that Psalm 130 was the Responsorial Psalm for Mass before the Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus:
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
Lord hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication…
”I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and I hope in his word;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn,
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.”
Notice that the psalmist repeats that last line. Anyone who has ever spent a night lying awake in the oppression of fear or dark depression knows the high anxiety that accompanies a long lonely wait for the first glimmer of dawn. I keep praying that Psalm — I have prayed it for years — and yet Jesus has not seen fit to fix my problems the way I want them fixed. Like Saint Paul, in the dawn’s early light I still find myself falsely accused, shipwrecked, and unjustly in prison.
Jesus also prayed the Psalms. In a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic, he cries out from the Cross, “Eli, Eli làma sabach-thàni?” It is not an accusation about the abandonment of God. It is Psalm 22, a prayer against misery and mockery, against those who view the cross we bear as evidence of God’s abandonment. It is a prayer against the use of our own suffering to mock God. It’s a Psalm of David, of whom Jesus is a descendant by adoption through Joseph:
“Eli, Eli làma sabach-thàni?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are You so far from my plea,
from the words of my cry? …
… All who see me mock at me;
they curse me with parted lips,
they wag their heads …
Indeed many dogs surround me,
a pack of evildoers closes in upon me;
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones …
They divide my garments among them;
for my clothes they cast lots.”
So maybe, like so many in this world who suffer unjustly, we have to wait in hope simply for Christ to be our light. And what comes with the light? Suffering does not always change, but its meaning does. Take it from someone who has suffered unjustly. What suffering longs for most is meaning. People of faith have to trust that there is meaning to suffering even when we cannot detect it, even as we sit and wait to hear, “Upon the Dung Heap of Job: God’s Answer to Suffering.”
The Passion of the Christ
Last year during Holy Week, two Catholic prisoners had been arguing about why the date of Easter changes from year to year. They both came up with bizarre theories, so one of them came to ask me. I explained that in the Roman Church, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (equinox is from the Latin, “equi noctis,” for “equal night”). The prisoner was astonished by my ignorance and said, “What BS! Easter is forty days after Ash Wednesday!”
Getting to the story beneath the one on the surface is important to understand something as profound as the events of the Passion of the Christ. You may remember from my post, “De Profundis,” that Jesus said something perplexing when he learned of the illness of Lazarus:
“This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it”
The irony of this is clearer when you see that it was the raising of Lazarus that condemned Jesus to death. The High Priests were deeply offended, and the insult was an irony of Biblical proportions (no pun intended). Immediately following upon the raising of Lazarus, “the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council” (the Sanhedrin). They were in a panic over the signs performed by Jesus. “If he goes on like this,” they complained, “the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place (the Jerusalem Temple) and our nation” (John 11 47-48).
The two major religious schools of thought in Judaism in the time of Jesus were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Both arose in Judaism in the Second Century B.C. and faded from history in the First Century A.D. At the time of Jesus, there were about 6,000 Pharisees. The name, “Pharisees” — Hebrew for “Separated Ones” — came as a result of their strict observance of ritual piety, and their determination to keep Judaism from being contaminated by foreign religious practices. Their hostile reaction to the raising of Lazarus had nothing to do with the raising of Lazarus, but rather with the fact that it occurred on the Sabbath which was considered a crime.
Jesus actually had some common ground with the Pharisees. They believed in angels and demons. They believed in the human soul and upheld the doctrine of resurrection from the dead and future life. Theologically, they were hostile to the Sadducees, an aristocratic priestly class that denied resurrection, the soul, angels, and any authority beyond the Torah.
Both groups appear to have their origin in a leadership vacuum that occurred in Jerusalem between the time of the Maccabees and their revolt against the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanies who desecrated the Temple in 167 B.C. It’s a story that began Lent on These Stone Walls in “Semper Fi! Forty Days of Lent Giving Up Giving Up.”
The Pharisees and Sadducees had no common ground at all except a fear that the Roman Empire would swallow up their faith and their nation. And so they came together in the Sanhedrin, the religious high court that formed in the same time period the Pharisees and Sadducees themselves had formed, in the vacuum left by the revolt that expelled Greek invaders and their desecration of the Temple in 165 B.C.
The Sanhedrin was originally composed of Sadducees, the priestly class, but as common enemies grew, the body came to include Scribes (lawyers) and Pharisees. The Pharisees and Sadducees also found common ground in their disdain for the signs and wonders of Jesus and the growth in numbers of those who came to believe in him and see him as Messiah.
The high profile raising of Lazarus became a crisis for both, but not for the same reasons. The Pharisees feared drawing the attention of Rome, but the Sadducees felt personally threatened. They denied any resurrection from the dead, and could not maintain religious influence if Jesus was going around doing just that. So Caiaphas, the High Priest, took charge at the post-Lazarus meeting of the Sanhedrin, and he challenged the Pharisees whose sole concern was for any imperial interference from the Roman Empire. Caiaphas said,
“You know nothing at all. You do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, so that the whole nation should not perish”
The Gospel of John went on to explain that Caiaphas, being High Priest, “did not say this of his own accord, but to prophesy” that Jesus was to die for the nation, “and not for the nation only, but, to gather into one the children of God” (John 11: 41-52). From that moment on, with Caiaphas being the first to raise it, the Sanhedrin sought a means to put Jesus to death.
Caiaphas presided over the Sanhedrin at the time of the arrest of Jesus. In the Sanhedrin’s legal system, as in our’s today, the benefit of doubt was supposed to rest with the accused, but … well … you know how that goes. The decision was made to find a reason to put Jesus to death before any legal means were devised to actually bring that about.
Behold the Man!
The case found its way before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Prefect of Judea from 25 to 36 A.D. Pilate had a reputation for both cruelty and indecision in legal cases before him. He had previously antagonized Jewish leaders by setting up Roman standards bearing the image of Caesar in Jerusalem, a clear violation of the Mosaic law barring graven images.
All four Evangelists emphasize that, despite his indecision about the case of Jesus, Pilate considered Jesus to be innocent. This is a scene I have written about in a prior Holy Week post, “Behold the Man as Pilate washes His Hands.”
On the pretext that Jesus was from Galilee, thus technically a subject of Herod Antipas, Pilate sent Jesus to Herod in an effort to free himself from having to handle the trial. When Jesus did not answer Herod’s questions (Luke 23: 7-15) Herod sent him back to Pilate. Herod and Pilate had previously been indifferent, at best, and sometimes even antagonistic to each other, but over the trial of Jesus, they became friends. It was one of history’s most dangerous liaisons.
The trial before Pilate in the Gospel of John is described in seven distinct scenes, but the most unexpected twist occurs in the seventh. Unable to get around Pilate’s indecision about the guilt of Jesus in the crime of blasphemy, Jewish leaders of the Sanhedrin resorted to another tactic. Their charge against Jesus evolved into a charge against Pilate himself: “If you release him, you are no friend of Caesar” (John 19:12).
This stopped Pilate in his tracks. “Friend of Caesar” was a political honorific title bestowed by the Roman Empire. Equivalent examples today would be the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon a philanthropist, or a bishop bestowing the Saint Thomas More Medal upon a judge. Coins of the realm depicting Herod the Great bore the Greek insignia “Philokaisar” meaning “Friend of Caesar.” The title was politically a very big deal.
In order to bring about the execution of Jesus, the religious authorities had to shift away from presenting Jesus as guilty of blasphemy to a political charge that he is a self-described king and therefore a threat to the authority of Caesar. The charge implied that Pilate, if he lets Jesus go free, will also suffer a political fallout.
So then the unthinkable happens. Pilate gives clemency a final effort, and the shift of the Sadducees from blasphemy to blackmail becomes the final word, and in pronouncing it, the Chief Priests commit a far greater blasphemy than the one they accuse Jesus of:
“Shall I crucify your king? The Chief Priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar.”
Then Pilate handed him over to be crucified.