The Prelude to the Crucifixion

The Prelude to the Crucifixion

The Catholic Church has always used a crucifix as a sacramental. It is one of its oldest devotions. One of the reasons is due to St Paul telling us, “We preach Christ crucified.” It is not a pleasant sight to see Our Lord hanging on a cross, but it clearly spells out His love for each of us. Most Protestant churches show a cross without the body. Jesus told the apostles to “take up their cross” and follow Him. When we contemplate the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary, we truly contemplate what this God/Man did for us. Jesus’ death on the cross was one part of His physical and mental suffering. But the events leading up to His crucifixion cannot be overlooked. When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He asked the apostles, his closest friends, to stay awake with him. He clearly knew what was coming. They, being weak, slept. Our Lord fell on his face in agony when contemplating what was about to unfold. This agony, it could be argued, was equally painful to the physical pain He was about to suffer. He was about to take on ALL the sins of humanity, before His birth, and after his Ascension. One of his closest friends was about to sell his soul for a little money by leading the soldiers to the Garden. According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus also sweat, “as drops of blood.” His arrest started several hours of agony, and led to a confrontation with Pontius Pilate who has the misfortune of having his name mentioned during every Mass, every day, for the past 2,000 years. It must be noted to those who think Jesus was only a man that He was arrested and sentenced to be crucified because He claimed His divinity. At one point during the questioning, Jesus said, “Even before Moses, I AM.” Hearing this, the men in the room were knocked to the floor. Moses heard these same words, “I AM”, from Mount Sinai. It is a sad commentary on the human race that the people calling for His crucifixion chose Barabbas, a horrible man, to be released in Jesus’ place.

After a mock trial, punches and being spit on, Our Lord was whipped; which has to be one of the most painful things that anyone could endure. Mel Gibson accurately depicted this scourging in his movie, The Passion of the Christ. Their whips had metal and/or bone fragments that dug into the skin and tore flesh away from the body. Next, the soldiers placed a crown of thorns on Jesus’ head. What gets overlooked here is that every time Jesus fell carrying the cross, not to mention hanging on the cross, anything the crown came into contact with, forced the thorns deeper into His scalp.

Next, Jesus has to carry His own cross to Golgotha, the place of His crucifixion. After He fell three times, Simon of Cyrene is pulled from the crowd to carry the cross the rest of the way. There, Jesus was forced to lie on the cross, bringing more agony due to the scourging. The spikes used to secure Him to the cross were known to be six or seven inches long. We know from the Shroud of Turin that the spikes went through the wrists, to keep the flesh from tearing away.

From the cross, he is berated by a thief on another cross. The bystanders mock him. He is offered hyssop. A sign is placed above his head, mocking him as the King of the Jews. What actually killed him was a slow asphyxiation. He died before the two criminals, probably due to the enormous torture he had to endure, prior to being nailed to the cross. One of His greatest agonies, it is opined, is seeing His own mother suffer at seeing His agony. Even though Jesus is true God and true man, he cried to His Father. Again, it is hard to imagine anyone having to experience all of this. It is certainly humbling for Christians to meditate on all of this suffering. He did it for all everyone ever conceived.

As the Venerable Fulton Sheen said, “If you were the only person on earth who sinned and was in need of redemption, He would have become man and died the same way just for you.”

God Bless

Steven L Salter Sr