The Bloody Sacrifice of the Cross

7. The Death of Jesus Christ on the Cross a True and Real Sacrifice

Jesus Christ was in His mortal life, as He is now, that He sitteth at the right hand of the throne of majesty in the heavens (Heb. 8, 1), the perfect Mediator, the true and great Highpriest of the human race. Hence it follows that He must have offered a real sacrifice on earth; for the offering of sacrifice is the first and essential duty of a priest. “For every highpriest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is necessary that he should also have something to offer” (Heb. 8, 3). Christ offered Himself as an unspotted sacrifice unto God (Heb. 9, 14) on the Cross, upon which He, as the Good Shepherd, gave His life for His sheep. To this end the Father had sanctified and sent Him into the world (John 11, 36) at the moment of the Incarnation. God willed, namely, that the redemption and restoration of the human race should be accomplished by the bloody sacrifice of the Cross; therefore, in loving obedience to the will of His Father, when the hour had come, Jesus Christ offered Himself, His body and blood, upon the altar of the Cross for the life of the world, so that “He Himself was the priest offering the sacrifice as well as the sacrifice offered” (ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio).¹²12S. August., De civit. Dei, l. 10, c. 20. — The death of Christ on the Cross, the offering of His body and the shedding of His blood for the human race, is a sacrifice in the strictest and fullest sense of the word, not in a merely wide or figurative sense, as was His whole life upon earth. This His life constituted the preparation for the sacrificial death of Christ and is justly designated, in a wider sense, as a sacrifice; for even in those mysteries of Christ which preceded His passion and death, we everywhere find the intention, will and deeds of sacrifice.¹³13Tota vita et conversatio Christi in carne mortali a primo incarnationis instanti usque ad instans suae expirationis in cruce, fuit quasi una continua missa et celebratio, qua se indesinenter obtulit Patri pro nobis voluntate promptissima et affectuosissime oravit pro nobis, et quidquid deliberata voluntate precatus est, impetravit (Dion. Carthus., Elementat. theolog., propos. 119).

1. Holy self-sacrifice forms the seal of the life of Christ on earth: His life was a constant martyrdom, a bloody sacrifice of mortification, an incense-offering of devotion and prayer, a burnt-offering of love for God and men. — Truly, the whole earthly career of Christ from the womb of His Mother to the grave, was a sacrifice of abnegation and self-denial. A vail of mourning shrouded His entire life, bearing the character of severe penance and atonement for a world full of frivolity, sinful, sensual enjoyment and horrible godlessness. p. 37—This painful way began in the crib, to end only on the Cross: crib and Cross are closely connected with each other. In the crib Jesus lay as a meek, lovely Infant-God; on the Cross He was suspended, His body torn and bleeding: but in the one situation as well as in the other, He is the Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world. Calvary cast its shadow upon His hidden, silent life at Bethlehem and Nazareth. “Poor and sorrowful” (Ps. 68, 30) was Jesus throughout the whole course of His life. Privations, humiliations, sufferings were His inseparable companions: they surrounded Him on His entrance into the world, accompanied Him during His earthly pilgrimage and ascended with Him on the Cross. — Whatever the world cherishes, seeks and values, all its joys, riches and glory, all its pomp and grandeur, He despised and disdained; in their stead He endured poverty, hardships, hostility, contradictions, vexations innumerable, such as only an unbounded love could choose and endure. As a stranger who had not whereon to lay His head, did the Lord of Heaven dwell many years upon this earth,—an earth yielding thorns and thistles. At the same time, we must remember that His pure, delicate body and noble and holy soul were created peculiarly susceptible of suffering, and consequently experienced, a thousand times more than men can imagine, the severity, acuteness and bitterness of all corporal and spiritual sufferings. — His infancy, boyhood and youth were passed in retirement and obscurity, in poverty and self-denial, in painful labor and austere penance; also the three years of His public life, His ministry among an “unbelieving and perverse generation” (Matt. 17, 16) were filled with bitterness arising from the inappreciation, ingratitude and persecution on the part of His own nation; and this was all the more painful to Him, since He had come but to seek and save those who were lost. He was repudiated, blasphemed and calumniated by the obdurate Jews, so that before leaving this world, He could apply to Himself these words of the Prophet: “They have hated Me without cause” (John 15, 25; cf. Ps. 68, 5), and He could say to His disciples: “If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you” (John 15, 18).

An offering of sweetest incensed prayer, ascending to God from the golden altar that stands before the throne of God (Apoc. 8, 1–4), was the wonderful life of our Saviour under the form of a servant. The fire of devotion burned unceasingly with heavenly ardor and purity in His Sacred Heart. All the days and nights, yea, all the hours of His poor, humble and painful life He consecrated by prayer, by the most sublime and powerful prayer that ever pierced the clouds and mounted to the throne of the Most High.

In fine, the life of Jesus was a most perfect holocaust of the purest love of God and man. His food was to do the will of His Heavenly Father (John 4, 34); at the close of His earthly career, He could say to His Father: “I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do” (John 17, 4). Like unto the flame of sacrifice the zeal glowed in His breast for the p. 38house of God and for the honor of His Father, and “consumed” Him as the burning wick consumes the altar taper (John 2, 17). — From this fervent love of God proceeded the flame of His zeal for the conversion and the salvation of mankind.

What our Lord thus did and suffered “in the days of His flesh,” during His three and thirty years upon earth, would have been more than sufficient to redeem thousands of worlds, to amass untold treasures of grace and merits; but according to the adorable decree of God, this did not suffice to free us from the slavery of sin and purchase for us the liberty of the children of God; for this the price of the blood and life of Christ was requisite. The justice of God required this ransom for our redemption, and Christ voluntarily, through love, offered Himself to pay it for us; Christ’s death on the Cross was to constitute the crown, the conclusion and the completion of the work of redemption. That the death of Christ is a true and real sacrifice is especially taught by the word of God, and has at all times been believed and acknowledged by Christians.

2. From a multiplicity of proofs only a few will be given here.

a) The primary object of the sacrifices of the Old Testament, particularly the principal ones, that is, the bloody sacrifices, was to prefigure and to represent the offering of the life of Jesus by a violent death. Now, if these imperfect figures and representations of the only and truly redeeming death of Christ on the Cross were, without doubt, real sacrifices, must not His death itself have been a real sacrifice, a sacrifice in every sense of the word? The reality, fulfilment and consummation cannot and must not be inferior to the shadow, figure and representation. The holy Pope St. Leo thus very beautifully expresses this thought: “In the public sacrifice was to be fulfilled what in the figurative mystery had long before been promised: that the true Sacrificial Lamb was to supplant the figurative, (ut uno expleretur sacrificio variarum differentia victimarum) and that in one sacrifice the various, manifold sacrifices were to find their accomplishment: for all that which was ordained beforehand by God through Moses relative to the sacrifice of the lamb, predicted the Redeemer and explicitly announced the sacrificial death of Christ. That, therefore, the shadows might depart from the body, and figures cease at the appearance of truth, the old custom was abolished by the new mystery, the victim passed over into the Victim, (hostia in hostiam transit), blood replaced by blood, and the legal celebration found its fulfilment inasmuch as it was changed.”¹⁴14Seventh Discourse on the Sufferings of the Lord.

b) What the sacrificial worship of the Old Law prefigured in a mystical sense, the Prophet, enlightened by God, announced beforehand in a precise and touching manner: prophesying the sacrificial character of the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Isaias¹⁵15Posuit Dominus in eo iniquitatem omnium nostrum. Oblatus est, quia ipse voluit... sicut ovis ad occisionem ducetur et quasi agnus coram tondente se obmutescet... si posuerit pro peccato (as a sin-offering) animam suam, videbit semen longaevum (Is. 53, 4–12). says p. 39expressly that Christ would suffer and die for our sins, and that the death which He would voluntarily undergo for us would be a true atoning sacrifice: “He was offered because it was His own will.” Then the Prophet compares the Saviour to a sheep led to the slaughter and not opening its mouth, as well as to a lamb dumb before its shearer: these pathetic symbols are intended to signify that He, though innocent, would undergo the painful sacrificial death in quiet resignation and peace. An eternal spiritual generation is designated as the fruit of His atoning sacrifice, that is, the whole assembly of the predestined whom no one can number, all those whose names are written in the Book of Life—they were and they will be saved only by the redeeming blood of Christ shed for them.

c) In the Old Law a lamb was one of the animals most usually sacrificed: recall the Paschal Lamb, the daily morning and evening sacrifice. As Christ was prefigured by these lambs, it is quite natural that in the New Law He should often be represented and extolled as the true Lamb, the Lamb without blemish, as our Pasch, as the Lamb of God; in the Apocalypse of St. John there occurs in many places the word Lamb (Agnus) even as the very name of the God-Man. The designation of Jesus as the Lamb is, then, characteristic, and is intended to express that His death is a sacrifice, a real propitiatory sacrifice,—drawing attention, at the same time, to the heavenly meekness, resignation and patience that He displayed during His passion. The Prince of the Apostles reminds us of this, when he says that “The Lord did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. Who, when He was reviled, did not revile: when He suffered, He threatened not: but delivered Himself to him that judged Him unjustly” (1 Peter 2, 22–23). — St. John Baptist alludes to Christ as “the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world,”¹⁶16Ecce Agnus (ὁ ἀμνὸς—the prophetically foretold lamb as a victim) Dei ecce qui tollit (ὁ αἴρων—who has the power to take upon Himself and thereby to take away) peccatum mundi (all the sins of all men). John 1, 29. that is, who reconciles Heaven and earth by shedding His blood. — St. Paul exhorts us to celebrate the true spiritual Pasch, since Christ our Pasch is sacrificed.¹⁷17Pascha nostrum (our paschal Lamb) immolatus est (ἐτύθη—being slain, is offered as a bloody sacrifice) Christus (1 Cor. 5, 7). — St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, encourages and exhorts Christians to lead a holy life in view of the glorious ransom by which they have been redeemed: “Walk in (holy and wholesome) fear during the time of your sojourning here. Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold and silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb unspotted and undefiled” (1 Peter 1, 19). Therefore, Christ, absolutely sinless and holy, is the Lamb, the Victim perfectly faultless and infinitely pleasing to God, whose blood effaces all sin and effects true reconciliation. — Writing on these texts of Scripture, St. Leo remarks that “the reconciliation of the Immaculate Lamb and the fulness of all the sacraments were imparted to us,” and then adds, “Christ offered Himself to the Father as a new and truly reconciling sacrifice,” and that it was not in the Temple nor within the limits of the city, but outside of it and the camp that He was crucified, so that after the old, figurative, immolated sacrifices should cease, “a new Sacrifice would be placed upon the new altar, and the Cross of Christ should be the altar not of the Temple, but of the world” (nova hostia novo imponeretur altari et crux Christi non templi esset ara, sed mundi. — De pass. Dom. Serm. 8, n. 5).

d) Our Lord Himself declared that He had come “to give His life a new redemption for many.”¹⁸18Dare animam suam (His soul = His life, His blood, Himself) redemptionem (λύτρον = money or price of ransom) pro multis (ἀντὶ πολλῶν, representative for many, who actually obtain the full result or fruit of the redemption in heaven). Mat. 20, 28. Vicarious blood-shedding or the giving up of life is, indeed, a real sacrifice. Shortly before His departure from this world, Christ in His prayer, as Highpriest, called His death a sanctification, that is, a dedication and offering of Himself for His disciples, to merit for them true sanctity, interior purification from sin and justification: “For them do I sanctify Myself: that they also may be sanctified in truth.”¹⁹19Pro eis ego sanctifico meipsum (= in sanctam hostiam me tibi offero et immolo in cruce), ut sint et ipsi sanctificati in veritate (Joann. 17, 19). — St. John writes: “Jesus is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”²⁰20Ipse est propitiatio (ἱλασμός=sacrificium expiationis) pro peccatis nostris: non pro nostris autem tantum, sed etiam pro totius mundi (1 Joann. 2, 2). St. Paul says that we become justified “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.”²¹21Quem proposuit (προέθετο, publicly erected on the cross) Deus propitiationem (as a sacrifice of reconciliation ἱλαστήριον) per fidem in sanguine ipsius (Rom. 3, 25). God gave up His Son and revealed Him on the cross as a propitiatory sacrifice, which He “in His own blood,” i. e., by shedding His blood, offered, and in which we share “by faith” (διὰ τῆς πίστεως). To restrain the faithful from sin and to animate them to the practice of virtue, the Apostle represents to them the intimate and courageous, tender and generous love of Christ, by which He offered Himself for us: “Be ye, therefore, followers of God, as most dear children, and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and hath given Himself for us as an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness.”²²22Christus dilexit nos et tradidit semetipsum pro nobis oblationem (προσφοράν) et hostiam (θυσίαν) in odorem suavitatis (Eph. 5, 2). — Christus obtulit sacrificium suavitatis summae pro perfecta Dei placatione (S. Bonav. Breviloq. p. 4, c. 9). — In the Epistle to the Hebrews the doctrine of the vicarious and atoning death of Christ is repeatedly expressed in the clearest and most emphatic manner. The Apostle therein proves the dignity and efficacy of the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross in contrast with the inefficacious offerings of the Old Testament. To abolish and remove these inefficient figures, Christ offered “the sacrifice of His body,” the sweet odor of which ascended to heaven, drawing down God’s favor and grace, procuring for us all salvation and sanctification. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered Himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works (that is, from sin), to serve the living God” (9, 14). “To offer sacrifices for the sins of the people, this Christ did once, in offering Himself” (7, 27). “But now once at the end of ages, He hath appeared for the destruction of sin in sacrifice (per hostiam suam); so also Christ was offered once (oblatus est) to exhaust the sins of many” (9, 26, 28).

3. Now, how is Christ’s death on the Cross to be understood as a true sacrifice? In how far does it contain all the constituents of a sacrifice taken in its strict sense? — Upon the altar of the Cross, Jesus Christ, the great Highpriest, as the representative of the human race, dedicated His precious life to the most painful of deaths, thus worthily to glorify and perfectly propitiate the Divine Majesty, as well as to regain for man the favor and grace of God.

a) He who was sacrificed on the Cross, was Jesus Christ, the Man-God and our Highpriest. Hence it was a divine Person, it was the Son of God Himself who was offered on Mount Calvary; but He could offer the sacrifice only through His human nature, that is, by acts of love and obedience, of humility and submission, with which His holy soul was filled and inflamed. This sacrifice was of an infinite value and merit, because it proceeded from and was offered by an infinite Person.

b) That which was offered on the Cross—the Victim—was also the Son of God according to His human nature; in other words, it was the human nature, in so far as it was united to the Eternal Word and through this union possessed of infinite dignity. Thus Jesus Christ was not only the Priest of His sacrifice, but also the sacrifice of His priesthood, when He offered Himself, His life, His body and His blood on the tree of the holy Cross. For according to St. Peter, “it is the Author of life (auctor vitae) you killed” (Acts 3, 15); according to St. John, “God hath laid down His life for us”(1 John 3, 16); according to St. Paul, “the Jews crucified the Lord of Glory” and “God purchased the Church with His own blood” (1 Cor. 2, 8; Acts 20, 28).²³23Absque dubio concedendum est, Filium Dei pro nobis fuisse mortuum, et hoc quidem sibi vere attribuitur non secundum naturam divinam, sed secundum humanam... Et hoc in nullo derogat divinae dignitati et multum consonat pietati. Nullum enim verbum majoris dignationis resonare potest in auribus cordis nostri, quam quod unigenitus Dei Filius mortuus fuerit pro nobis debitoribus mortis. Et ideo non tantum est hoc credendum et asserendum tamquam verum, sed etiam frequentissime recolendum (S. Bonav. III, dist. 21, a. 2, q. 3).

In the Sacrifice of the Cross, therefore, the God-Man²⁴24The Son of God alone—not the Father and not the Holy Ghost—is both Priest and Victim, because and inasmuch as He alone assumed human nature, which placed Him in a condition to sacrifice and to be sacrificed; but according to His divine nature, by which He is one with the Father and the Holy Ghost, He receives and accepts the Sacrifice which is perpetually offered to the triune God. is the priest offering and, at the same time, the lamb offered: He offers and He is offered according to His human nature. He is Priest and offers, in as far as He acts without restraint and freely gives His life; He is the Victim and He is offered, inasmuch as He suffers pain and undergoes death, in order to be slain for the honor of God.²⁵25Nihil mundum (Christus) invenit in hominibus, quod offerret pro hominibus: seipsum obtulit mundam victimam. Felix victima, vera victima, hostia immaculata! Non ergo hoc obtulit, quod nos illi dedimus: immo hoc obtulit, quod a nobis accepit et mundum obtulit. Carnem enim a nobis accepit, hanc obtulit. Sed unde illam accepit? De utero Virginis Mariae, ut mundam offerret pro immundis. Ipse rex, ipse sacerdos: in eo laetemur (S. August. Enarrat. in Ps. 149, n. 6). — Formam servi obtulit (Christus), in hac oblatus est: quia secundum hanc mediator est, in hac sacerdos, in hac sacrificium est (S. August. De civit. Dei, l. x, c. 6).

c) Since the offering of sacrifice pertains to the priest, it must, consequently, have been accomplished by our Saviour Himself upon Golgotha. — Evidently it did not consist in the physical execution effected by the enemies and tormentors of Jesus, but in the voluntary acceptation and endurance of the bloody death on the part of the Man-God as Highpriest. The executioners and soldiers who lacerated our Lord, wished to kill Him and in reality they did so with violence and cruelty, but in nowise did they sacrifice Him; they did not perform a work pleasing to God, but rather committed the greatest of outrages.²⁶26Passio Christi ex parte occidentium ipsum fuit maleficium, sed ex parte ipsius ex caritate patientis fuit sacrificium. Unde hoc sacrificium ipse Christus obtulisse dicitur, non autem illi qui eum occiderunt (S. Thom. 3, q. 48, a. 3 ad 3). “The Lord took upon Himself what, according to the decree of His will, He hath chosen; He permitted the hands of the godless to rage against Him, this became of service to Him in the performance of their own transgressions.”²⁷27St. Leo, Eleventh Sermon on the Lord’s Passion. — Jesus Christ acting as priest on the Cross performed the sacrificial act without compulsion, but of His most free choice He shed His blood amid unspeakable pains, and in prompt obedience gave His infinitely precious life, in order to glorify and to propitiate the majesty of the most High dishonored by sin. — To be a real sacrifice, Christ’s passion and death had to be entirely voluntary, that is, to depend upon His human will, to be accepted by it and directed to the divine glory. That this was really the case is frequently and strongly proved in Holy Writ: “Christ was offered because it was His own will” (Isa. 53, 7). — In the first place, the willingness of Christ to undergo His passion and death is evidenced by His allowing sinners to afflict and torment His body, although by His human will He could easily have prevented it; for without or against His will all the powers of this world and all the rage of hell could not have done Him the slightest harm. When His hour had come, the Saviour voluntarily surrendered Himself into the hands of His enemies and ascended the altar of the Cross; for by His mere words, “I am He” (John 18, 6), He prostrated the soldiers to the ground, rendered His adversaries powerless, and at His petition the Father would have sent “more than twelve legions of angels,” consequently, an innumerable host of heavenly warriors to His aid (Matt. 26, 53). But “the Son of the living God” would not ward off the violence committed against Himself: of His own choice and love He entered upon the painful way of the Cross. — Hence sufferings and death were the natural outcome of those cruel torments by which the body and the soul of the Saviour were overwhelmed and consumed; but these natural consequences,—suffering and death—He could likewise have prevented by His own free will and power. This He refused to do; rather would He drink the chalice of sufferings to the dregs and taste the bitterness of death in all its severity. — With strong voice and loud cry He commended His spirit into the hands of His Heavenly Father (Luke 23, 46), bowed His head and expired, “because He willed it, when He willed it and as He willed it.”²⁸28Quia voluit, quando voluit, quomodo voluit (S. August., De Trinit., l. 4, n. 16). Why this loud cry? To show His power over death and life; to prove to the world that He possessed the might and strength to ward off death and to preserve His life; that “He died not out of weakness, but by His own might,”²⁹29Non infirmitate, sed potestate mortuus est (S. August., De nat. et grat. n. 26). that is, by His free will and free choice. The effect upon the beholders was, in fact, so great that later on the Pagan Centurion exclaimed: “Indeed, this man was the Son of God!” Thus was accomplished on Golgotha what the Saviour had, beforehand, distinctly foretold: “I lay down My life for My sheep; no man taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself and I have power to take it up again” (John 10, 15, 18).³⁰30Quia anima Christi non repulit a proprio corpore nocumentum illatum, sed voluit, quod natura corporalis illi nocumento succumberet, dicitur suam animam posuisse vel voluntarie mortuus esse (S. Thom. 3, q. 47, a. 1).

The priestly activity and self-sacrifice of our Saviour were first of all accomplished in spirit and in heart, but did not remain interior and invisible, for Christ’s intention and will to offer Himself in sacrifice appeared outwardly and revealed itself by the shedding of His blood and the loss of His life, which He could have prevented, but would not prevent.

d) The object and fruit of this bloody sacrifice of Christ was the redemption of the world, the restoration and completion of the supernatural order in the human race, in fact, in the whole creation. For “what else has the Cross of Christ effected, what else does it still effect, than that enmity is destroyed and the world reconciled to God, so that by the sacrifice of the Lamb slain all be led back to true peace?”³¹31St. Leo, 15th Sermon on the Lord’s Passion. — To accomplish the redemption, the Lord did not offer a gift of little value, but His own humanity, which in itself is incomparably more valuable than all creation, and which, in union with the divine nature, possesses infinite dignity and majesty. It was this august, adorable humanity of Christ that was sacrificed on the Cross, that was “bruised in its infirmity” (Isa. 53, 10), actually to acknowledge and honor the inviolable majesty of the Most High, as well as to appease the anger of God and propitiate His justice.³²32Sacrificium proprie dicitur aliquid factum in honorem proprie Deo debitum ad eum placandum. Christus autem “seipsum obtulit in passione pro nobis” (S. Aug.) et hoc ipsum quod voluntarie passionem sustinuit, Deo maxime acceptum fuit, utpote ex caritate maxima proveniens. Unde manifestum est quod passio Christi fuerit verum sacrificium (S. Thom. 3, q. 48, a. 3). — The fruit of this homage and atonement which Christ offered for us, and in our stead, is profitable to us men; by means of it He deserved for us the remission of all sin and punishment, as well as the bestowal of every grace and blessing. The majesty and justice of God could not have been glorified in a more brilliant and stirring manner than was done by the unfathomable and incomprehensible self-abasement of the divinely human Highpriest on the Cross. Infinitely worthy was the adoration offered to the Divine Majesty by the Sacrifice of the Cross; infinitely perfect the satisfaction rendered to the divine justice by the passion and death of Christ; infinitely abundant also the merit which our Saviour, by giving His life, acquired for man. “What sacrifice was ever holier than that which the true Highpriest offered on the altar of the Cross by the sacrifice of His body?”³³33St. Leo, 13th Sermon on the Lord’s Passion. Here the Highpriest is infinitely worthy, the gift offered infinitely precious, and the act of offering infinitely valuable; consequently, it is the absolutely perfect Sacrifice to which all other sacrifices are referred, and from which all other sacrifices draw their significance, power and efficacy.³⁴34Consideremus hujus sacrificii latitudinem, qua universum in suis complectitur primitiis, et universo profuit mundo; ejus longitudinem, quum jam adumbratum fuerit in Abelis oblatione, qua de causa Christus agnus occisus ab origine mundi dicitur (Apoc. 13, 8), et idem commemorandum sit usque ad saeculi consummationem; ejus altitudinem, sua enim virtute penetravit coelos eosque nobis iterum aperuit; profunditatem effectuum, nam animae maculas radicitus delet et vel ex infernis animas justorum ibi degentium eripuit; aut etiam ratione ss. Cordis Jesu, in quo radicatur. Huic enim Cordi adscribi debet a) tantum pietatis consilium, quo nos dilexit usque in finem non solum suae vitae, sed etiam usque ad supremam caritatis mensuram: nam majorem hac dilectionem nemo habet, ut animam suam ponat quis pro amicis suis (Joann. 15, 13). Ex illo Corde b) tamquam e fonte manavit sanguis ille pretiosus pro mundi vita; c) ex amore illius Cordis speciale derivatur pretium hujus sacrificii, quia cum tanto oblatum est amore, ut plus contulerit ad mortem, quam carnifices: nisi enim ille permisisset, nihil hi potuissent. Quare Christus (Joann. 14, 31) ait: Sed ut cognoscat mundus, quia diligo Patrem... surgite, eamus hinc. Quocirca sacrificium crucis verum est holocaustum, cujus ignis erat intensissimus ss. Cordis amor (Hurter, Theol. dogm. Comp. II. [edit. 2], p. 419).

4. At the touching ceremony of the unveiling of the Cross on Good Friday, the Church three times sings these words to the faithful: Ecce lignum crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit. Venite, adoremus! “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which was suspended the Salvation of the world. Come, let us adore!” We will accept this invitation; therefore, let us tremblingly with reverence and adoration linger a while at the foot of the Cross erected upon Golgotha, the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense (Cant. 4, 6). Upon the mountain of Golgotha the passion of the Highpriest was consummated amid incessant sacrificial prayer; hence the place of Christ’s crucifixion is a mountain of myrrh, that is, a mountain which became for our Saviour the myrrh of most bitter torments of soul and body—and a hill of frankincense, that is, a hill whence the odor of fragrant devotion and the sacrificial flame of acts of loving atonement ascended without intermission to Heaven from the Sacred Heart of Jesus. — Place yourself in spirit on Golgotha, behold the bleeding sacrificial Lamb and consider whether there was ever sorrow like unto His! For eighteen hours—from the night before to the day of His death—the God-Man was immersed in a fathomless ocean of the bitterest sorrow. How piercing, excruciating and unendurable were all His pains for His so delicately and nobly constituted body and His most pure and sensitive soul! The incomprehensible prerogatives of the holy humanity of Jesus served but to sharpen His sense of pain and His confusion; for it was, as it were, framed to taste fully the bitterness of suffering.³⁵35Poenam amarissimam pro nostris peccatis in cruce sustinuit, in proprio corpore immaculatissimo, tenerrime ac nobilissime complexionato ideoque maxime perceptivo doloris et summe passivo (Dion. Carthus. Enarrat. in I. Petr. 2, 24). Along the bloodstained Stations of the Cross, the Divine Sacrificial Lamb was dragged without mercy to the shambles. His soul was overwhelmed with anguish and sorrow, with shame and contumely, His Heart was as molten wax in His body and all His bones were dislocated (Ps. 21, 15), His body struck and beaten, bruised and tortured, shamelessly stripped and scornfully clothed, His face spat upon and defiled, His head pierced with sharp-pointed thorns, His hands and feet transfixed with cruel nails. “From the soles of the feet to the crown of the head, there is no soundness in Him: wounds and bruises and swelling sores: they are not bound up, nor dressed, nor fomented with oil” (Isa. 1, 6). He that was comely in countenance beyond all the children of men, from whose lips sweetness and benignity flowed, whom God had filled with blessings and anointed with the oil of gladness,—upon Golgotha He became a man of sorrows, a twig in an arid soil, one without form or beauty, a worm and no man, the reproach of men, the outcast of the people, unworthy of esteem, unrecognizable, and, as it were, struck and crushed by God (cf. Ps. 21 and 44; Isa. 53). In suffering and pain, in untold misery, amid the intense pangs of wounds, amid a parching thirst, the innocent Sacrificial Lamb hangs suspended, for three long hours, on the hard wood of the Cross, His blood oozing out in the slow agony of death. The sacrificial ardor with which the Divine Victim is consumed, is that fire which the Lord Himself brought from heaven upon the earth and enkindled—the fire of the love of God and of the neighbor; that fire of love environs His thorn-crowned head, encircling in vivid flames His wounded body, p. 47radiating in streams from His pierced members and from His open Heart. At the sight of such inexhaustible sufferings, the Church deeply penetrated and impressed, sings to the tree of the Cross:

St. Ignatius bids us pray “for sorrow with Christ filled with sorrow, to be bruised with Christ bruised; to beg for tears, for interior grief at the remembrance of the excessive torments that Christ endured for us.” Where may our hard, stony hearts be more readily softened and transported with love and gratitude, with grief and compunction, with constant sorrow for sin, than on Calvary at the sight of the Cross upon which our Saviour shows to us poor, lost creatures a love that shrinks from no sacrifice, that knows no measure and no bounds? “Is the Cross with our dying Lord upon it anything else than the open book of our sins? Is not Christ He that knew no sin, but was made by God sin for us, as says the Apostle? (2 Cor. 5, 21.) Alas! if I open this book of the Cross, I read therein all my transgressions! On beholding the pierced hands, I recognize all my perverse actions; if I look upon the transfixed feet, I think on the evil ways in which I have strayed; if I glance upon this body become one wound, I have before me all my effeminacy, all my sensuality; do I consider the thorn-crowned, bleeding brow, it is a fearful mirror of my vanity, of my sinful ambition; and this Heart transpierced by the lance—ah! it denotes my want of love and my unfaithfulness toward God, my hardheartedness and impatience, my implacability towards my neighbor!”³⁶36Molitor, Das Gleichniss von den klugen und thörichten Jungfrauen, p. 97. “Our Lord bore our sorrows and endured our pains” on the Cross—and yet His boundless love is returned with coldness and indifference, with ingratitude and outrages of all kinds: this pains and wounds His Heart a thousand times more bitterly than all the sufferings of His passion. This should, moreover, impel us to compensate and atone for the despised love of our Redeemer, by gratefully considering and honoring the immensity of His sufferings, by which we bring sweetest consolation to His Heart.

But why this excess of suffering and misery, of humiliation and abandonment, of blood and wounds?³⁷37Dolor passionis Christi inter ceteros dolores et passiones fuit acerbissimus et acutissimus. Et hoc patet, si illa considerentur, quae doloris passionem acerbiorem reddunt. Haec autem sunt tria, videlicet causa passionis et modus patiendi et conditio patientis. — Si consideretur causa, ob quam Christus passus est, fuit in eo doloris afflictio magna. Non enim patiebatur pro culpa propria, imo pro aliena; non pro amicis tantum, sed etiam pro inimicis, et etiam pro his, quos videbat ingratos. — Si autem consideretur modus patiendi, fuit in eo passio doloris acerbior, tum propter generalitatem, quia in omnibus membris affligebatur, tum etiam propter continuitatem, quia suspendium ejus continuabatur, et clavi adeo affligebant pendentem, sicut affixerunt, quando manus ejus et pedes confodiebantur, in quibus maxima erat afflictio propter nervos et musculos ibidem concurrentes, in quibus praecipue viget sensus. — Si autem consideretur qualitas sive conditio patientis, maxima erat afflictio propter maximam complexionis aequalitatem et propter sensus vivacitatem. Unde quia nullus potuit ei aequari nec in aequalitate complexionis, nec in vivacitate sensus, dolor illius omnium dolorum fuit acutissimus. — Et ideo rationes, quae hoc ostendunt, concedamus, et ei gratias, quantas possumus et supra quam possumus, referamus si quo modo donetur nobis, ut tam graviter patienti compatiamur (S. Bonav. III, dist. 16, a. 1, q. 2). — In Christo patiente fuit verus dolor et sensibilis, qui causatur ex corporali nocivo, et dolor interior, qui causatur ex apprehensione alicujus nocumenti, qui tristitia dicitur. Uterque autem dolor in Christo fuit maximus inter dolores praesentis vitae (S. Thom. 3, q. 46, a. 6). All this was by no means necessary to pay the full price of redemption; the slightest suffering, each single tear, each single step and grief and sigh of our Saviour sufficed, since all His acts and sufferings were of infinite value on account of the infinite dignity of His person, and, consequently, they were infinitely meritorious and propitiatory before God. — And yet our Lord poured out His precious blood in streams and, so to speak, lavishly in the seven adorable mysteries, namely, of the Circumcision, the Agony, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Way of the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Transpiercing of His Sacred Heart!³⁸38Christus pro nobis sanguinem suum fudit piissime, plenissime et acerbissime. Piissime fudit, si consideretur causa: nam causa effusionis sui pretiosi sanguinis fuit piissima, quia ipsum fudit ex charitate ferventissima, ex qua voluntarie pro nobis pati voluit.... Plenissime fudit, si consideretur mensura: quia totum sanguinem effudit, ita ut unica gutta in eo non remaneret.... Acerbissime fudit, si consideretur natura: nam quanto natura et complexio est nobilior et delicatior, tanto est suae laesionis perceptibilior, et per consequens poena inflicta et ejus sensibilitas est acerbior; sed constat, quod complexio corporis Christi fuit delicatissima, quia Spiritus Sancti artificio de Virginis sanguine formata, et ergo sui sanguinis effusio et poenarum illatio fuit acerbissima, et ideo dicit: Attendite (sc. mentaliter) et videte (sensibiliter), si est dolor similis, sicut dolor meus—quasi diceret: Non (Ludolph. de Saxon. Vita Jesu Christi, II, cap. 64, n. 16). This He did through love of God and man; for in what is the Divine Majesty more greatly and splendidly glorified, the salvation of mankind more powerfully and efficaciously accomplished, than by a sacrifice so sorrowful, so bitter and painful as the one the Son of God consummated on the Cross? The greatest mystery of God and Christ (1 Cor. 2, 7; Eph. 3, 4), that is, the work of redemption, was in every detail to be perfect as a miracle of divine power, wisdom and love; and, in effect, it is so profound, so glorious and so bountiful, that even the angels desire to contemplate it (1 Peter 1, 12). Yes, during the long ages of eternity, it will be for angels and for man a subject of unfailing contemplation and never ending adoration,—a subject in the meditation of which all the blessed spirits, with ecstatic jubilation and reverential awe, with ever fresh admiration, will be forever immersed and lost. Hence the Church, on the holy night of Easter, sings in transport of joy: O mira circa nos tuae pietatis dignatio! O inaestimabilis dilectio caritatis! Ut servum redimeres, Filium tradidisti! — “O wonderful condescension of Thy goodness to us, O God! O inestimable favor of love! To redeem the slave, Thou didst give Thy Son!” “O Eternal Wisdom!” — exclaims Blessed Henry Suso—“I realize perfectly that whoever desires a great reward and eternal salvation, exalted science and profound wisdom, whoever would be equal in love and sorrow, have perfect security from all evil and desire to taste Thy bitter passion and receive supernatural sweetness, must keep and bear Thee, O Crucified Jesus, at all times before the eyes of his soul, beholding himself therein as in a mirror, so as to regulate his life according to Thine. Ah! loving Lord, draw me, by means of love and suffering, from all the world to Thee and to Thy Cross; penetrate me most intimately with Thy Cross, so that my soul may enjoy Thee in all Thy glory!”