Point to Ponder - The Crucifixion

Oh, it is not very complicated; the executioners know their work. First of all He must be stripped. The lower garments are dealt with easily enough, but the coat has firmly stuck to His wounds, that is to say, to His whole body, and this stripping is a horrible business. Have you ever removed the first dressing which has been on a large bruised wound, and has dried on it ? Or have you yourself ever been through this ordeal, which sometimes requires a general anæsthetic ? If so, you know what it is like. Each thread has stuck to the raw surface, and when it is removed it tears away one of the innumerable nervous ends which have been laid bare by the wound. These thousands of painful shocks add up and multiply, each one increasing the sensitivity of the nervous system. Now, it is not just a question of a local lesion, but of almost the whole surface of the body, and especially of that dreadful back. The executioners are in a hurry and set about their work roughly. Perhaps it is better thus, but how does this sharp, dreadful pain not bring on a fainting fit ? How clear it is that from beginning to end He dominates, He directs His Passion.

The blood streams down yet again. They lay Him down on His back. Have they left Him the narrow loin-cloth which the modesty of the Jews has been able to preserve for those condemned to this death ? I must own that I do not know : it is of little importance; in any case, in His shroud, He will be naked. The wounds on His back, on His thighs and on the calves of His legs become caked with dust and with tiny pieces of gravel. He has been placed at the foot of the stipes, with His shoulders lying on the patibulum. The executioners take the measurements. A stroke with an auger, to prepare the holes for the nails, and the horrible deed begins.

An assistant holds out one of the arms, with the palm uppermost. The executioner takes hold of the nail (a long nail, pointed and square which near its large head is 1/3 of an inch thick), he gives Him a prick on the wrist, in that forward fold which he knows by experience. One single blow with the great hammer, and the nail is already fixed in the wood, in which a few vigorous taps fix it firmly.

Jesus has not cried out, but His face has contracted in a way terrible to see. But above all I saw at the same moment that His thumb, with a violent gesture, is striking against the palm of His hand : His median nerve has been touched. I realise what He had been through : an inexpressible pain darts like lightning through his fingers and then like a trail of fire right up His shoulder, and bursts in His brain. The most unbearable pain that a man can experience is that caused by wounding the great nervous centres. It nearly always causes a fainting fit, and it is fortunate that it does. Jesus has not willed that He should lose consciousness. Now, it is not as if the nerve were cut right across. But no, I know how it is, it is only partially destroyed; the raw place on the nervous centre remains in contact with the nail; and later on, when the body sags, it will be stretched against this like a violin-string against the bridge, and it will vibrate with each shaking or movement, reviving the horrible pain -- This goes on for three hours.

The other arm is pulled by the assistant, the same actions are repeated and the same pains. But this time, remember, He knows what to expect. He is now fixed on the patibulum, to which His shoulders and two arms now conform exactly. He already has the form of a cross : how great He is !

Now, they must get Him on His feet. The executioner and his assistant take hold of the ends of the beam and then hold up the condemned man Who is first sitting, then standing, and then, moving Him backwards, they place Him with His back against the stake. But this is done by constantly pulling against those two nailed hands, and one thinks of those median nerves. With a great effort, and with arms extended (though the stipes is not very high), quickly, for it is very heavy, and with a skilful gesture, they fix the patibulum on the top of the stipes. On the top with two nails they fix the title in three languages.

The body, dragging on the two arms, which are stretched out obliquely, is sagging a bit. The shoulders, wounded by the whips and by carrying the cross, have been painfully scraped against the rough wood The nape of the neck, which was just above the patibulum, has been banged against it during the move upwards, and is now just above the stake. The sharp points of the great cap of thorns have made even deeper wounds in the scalp. His poor head is leaning forward, for the thickness of His crown prevents Him leaning against the wood, and each time that He straightens it He feels the pricks.

The body is meanwhile only held by the nails fixed into the two wrists - Once more those median nerves ! He could be held fast with nothing else. The body is not slipping forwards, but the rule is that the feet should be fixed. There is no need of a bracket for this; they bend the knees and stretch the feet out flat on the wood of the stipes. Why then, since it is useless, is the carpenter given this work to do ? It is certainly not in order to lessen the pain of the crucified. The left foot is flat against the cross. With one blow of the hammer, the nail is driven into the middle of it (between the second and third metatarsal bones). The assistant then bends the other knee, and the executioner, bringing the left foot round in front of the right which the assistant is holding flat, pierces this foot with a second blow in the same place. This is easy enough, and with a few vigorous blows with the hammer the nail is well embedded in the wood. This time, thank God, it is a more ordinary pain, but the agony has scarcely begun. The whole work has not taken the two men much more than two minutes and the wounds have not bled much. They then deal with the two thieves, and the three gibbets are arranged facing the city which kills its God.
Dr Pierre Barbet ~ ‘The Corporal Passion’ from ‘A Doctor at Calvary’

Point to Ponder - The Scourging

The soldiers of the guard take Jesus into the hall of the Prætorium, and all the men of the cohort are summoned to the scene; there are few amusements in this occupied country. And yet the Saviour has often shown Himself to have a special sympathy with soldiers. He admired the trust and humility of the centurion and his affectionate care for the servant whom He healed. Later, it will be the centurion of the guard on Calvary who will be the first to proclaim His divinity. The cohort seems, however, to be seized by a collective frenzy which Pilate had not foreseen. Satan is there, breathing hatred into them.

But that is enough. Nothing is said, there are just blows; and let us try to follow to the end. They remove His clothes and bind Him, naked, to a column of the hall. The arms are held up in the air and the wrists are bound to the shaft.

The scourging is done with numerous thongs to which are fixed, at some distance from the loose ends, two balls of lead or small piece of bone. (Certainly, the stigmata on the Holy Shroud correspond to this type of flagrum.) The number of strokes is limited to thirty-nine by Hebrew law. But His executioners are legionaries without restraint, and they will go on to the point of making Him faint. There are, in fact, marks without number on the shroud, and they are nearly all on the back; the front of the body is against the column. They are to be seen on the back, on the shoulders and the loins. The lashes fall on His thighs and on the calves of His legs; and it is there that the ends of the thongs, beyond the balls of lead, encircle the limb and mark it with a furrow right round to the other side.

There are two executioners, one on each side of Him, of unequal height (all this may be deduced from the direction of the marks on the shroud). They alternate their strokes, with great zest. At first, the strokes leave long livid marks, long blue bruises beneath the skin. Remember that the skin has already been affected; that it is sore owing to the millions of little intra-dermic hæmorrhages brought about by the sweat of blood. Further marks are made by the balls of lead. Then the skin, into which the blood has crept, becomes tender and breaks under fresh blows. The blood pours out; shreds of skin become detached and hang down. The whole of the back is now no more than a red surface, on which great furrows stand out like marble; and, here and there, everywhere, there are deeper wounds caused by the balls of lead. These wounds, shaped like a halter (the two balls and the thong between them), will make their marks on the shroud.

At each stroke, the body gives a painful shudder. But He has not opened His mouth, and His silence redoubles the Satanic rage of His executioners. It is no longer a cold-blooded, judicial execution; it is the unchaining of demons. The blood flows from His shoulders down to the earth (the large paving-stones are covered with it), and is scattered like rain by the lifted whips as far as the red cloaks of the onlookers. But the strength of the Victim soon begins to fail; sweat breaks out on His forehead; His head whirls with giddiness and nausea; shivers run down His spine; His legs give way under Him, and if He was not tied up by His wrists, He would slip down into the pool of blood. They have completed the count, even though they have not counted. After all, they have not received the order that He should die under the lash. Let Him recover a bit; there will be further chances for amusement.

Dr Pierre Barbet ~ ‘The Corporal Passion’ from ‘A Doctor at Calvary’

Thought for Today - Good Friday

‘Let us go often to the foot of the Cross . . . We shall learn there what God has done for us, and what we ought to do for Him.’
S. Jean-Marie Vianney, Curé d’Ars

Point to Ponder - The Agony in the Garden

The holocaust was to begin, in fact, at Gethsemani. Jesus, having given to His own His Body to eat and His Blood to drink, leads them by night to that grove of olives where they were in the habit of going. He allows them to rest at the entrance, taking with Him a little further His three intimate friends, from whom He separates Himself about a stone's throw, in order to prepare Himself in prayer. He knows that His hour is come. He has Himself sent on the traitor of Carioth: quod facis, fac citius. He is eager to be finished with it, and it is His will. But as He has assumed, by incarnating Himself, this form of a slave which is our humanity, the latter rebels, and there is all the tragedy of the struggle between His will and human nature. Cœpit pavere et tœdere.

This cup which He must drink contains two bitternesses: first, the sins of men which He must take on Himself, on Him the Just One, in order to ransom His brothers, and this was probably the worst: an ordeal that we cannot imagine, because it is the saints amongst us who feel most keenly their worthlessness and their baseness. We shall perhaps better understand His anticipation. The experience beforehand of the physical tortures, which He already suffers in thought; nevertheless, we have only experienced the retrospective shudder at those sufferings which are passed. It is inexpressible. Pater, si vis, transfer calicem istud a me: verumtamen non mea voluntas sed tua fiat. It is His Humanity speaking . . . and which submits, for His Divinity knows what it wills from all eternity; the Man is caught in a blind alley. His three faithful friends are asleep, proe tristitia, as St. Luke says. Poor men !

The struggle is terrible; an angel comes to strengthen Him, but at the same time, so it seems, to receive His acceptance. Et factus in agonia, prolixius orabat. Et factus est sudor ejus sicut guttœ sanguinis decurrentis in terram. It is the sweat of blood which certain rationalist exegetists, scenting some miracle, have treated as symbolical. It is strange to note what nonsense these modern materialists can talk in regard to scientific matters. Let us remember that the only evangelist to record the fact was a physician. And our venerated colleague, Luke, medicus carissimus, does so with the precision and conciseness of a good clinician. Hæmatidrosa is a very rare phenomenon, but has been well described. It is produced, as Dr. Le Bec has written, in ‘very special conditions: great physical debility accompanied by violent mental disturbance, following on profound emotion or great fear’. (Et cœpit pavere et tœdere.) Dread and horror are here at their maximum, and so is mental disturbance This is what St. Luke means by agonia, which in Greek signifies a combination of struggle and anxiety. ‘And His sweat became as drops of blood, trickling down upon the ground.’

How can one explain this? There is an intense vasolidation of the subcutaneous capillaries, which burst on contact with the millions of sudoripary glands. The blood mingles with the sweat, and it is this mixture which forms into beads and flows over the whole body, in a sufficient quantity to fall to the ground. Note that this microscopic hæmorrhage is produced all over the skin, which thus already suffers a general injury, and becomes sore and tender while awaiting the blows to come.

Dr Pierre Barbet ~ 'The Corporal Passion' from 'A Doctor at Calvary'

Point to Ponder - The Last Supper

‘Was ever another command so obeyed ? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy, and before it, to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of a Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain So-and-So, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of St. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with reasons why men have done this and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei – the holy, common, people of God.’

Dom Gregory Dix OSB ~ ‘The Shape of the Liturgy’

Points to Ponder - the 'Blue Peter' way !

During the Triduum I shall - obviously enough - be rather occupied; so in best Blue Peter* tradition, I have prepared in advance some ‘points to ponder’ - micro-meditations, if you like - which will post themselves automatically at the appropriate times, and relate to what is happening for those who are not able to be at the Sacred Liturgy, but want to keep it in their minds.

Some are quotations, some are original; but I hope that they will start your mind off along paths which will be helpful as you follow Our Lord's journey through these holiest of days.

(* for my non-UK Readers, ‘Blue Peter’ is a long-running children’s TV ‘magazine’ programme which has a long tradition of telling viewers how to make all sorts of things, which always include the production of a finished example with the – now famous – words ‘and here’s one I made earlier’ !
The famous Blue Peter Badge, shown above, is given to children who contribute to the programme; you can read more about it all here.)

A 'Campaign of Demoralization'

What is going on in the world ? What is behind the current media obsession with paedophilia in the Church, and the attempts to link the Holy Father to it ? Is it really just coincidence, or is there some sinister campaign at work ?

Well, Pravda - hardly the friendliest newspaper in the world towards the Church and the Holy Father - printed an interesting article on Tuesday, entitled (in their English translation) 'To confuse the wood with the trees . . .'

Although one would hardly agree with all of it, there is one particularly interesting observation :

'Another detail that suggests that a campaign of demoralization of the Catholic Church is in motion . . .'

My feeling is that if even Pravda think that, then there may be something in it. Read the article, and see what you think.

UPDATE
A visitor has posted an informative Comment which is well worth reading. Amongst other things, it points out that this isn't the old Communist Pravda, but a 'successor' which is perhaps rather less reliable . . . Nevertheless, I think the story remains interesting.