St. Philaret of New York: On the Passion of Christ

 

Those who were present last year at the same talk on the Sufferings of Christ, perhaps may remem­ber that at the time, having read the Gospel of the Evangelist Matthew on the Sufferings of the Sav­ior, we talked here about the Gethsemane prayer of the Savior, how He, in order to redeem sinners, took upon Himself the sinfulness of all mankind. Just now we heard the account of the Savior’s Suf­ferings from the Evangelist John the Theologian. Let us emphasize now the characteristic unique­ness of this particular account. It is known that the first three Gospel readings, those of Evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke, are significantly alike, while the Gospel of St. John differs significantly from the first three. Many things which they say are not found in St. John’s Gospel. And on the contrary, many things which they do not say, he cites and at times in great detail.

The Evangelist Matthew, the Evangelist Mark and the Evangelist Luke speak about the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. We began today’s Gospel reading from the moment when the Geth­semane prayer had ended and the Savior of the world, strengthened by this prayer for that great podvig for which He came, comes out to meet His betrayer and that crowd of armed people together with the enemies of Christ who had come to take Him (speaking in contemporary language, to ar­rest Him). The Evangelist John does not speak of the Gethsemane prayer, he merely hints at it, saying in the very beginning that Jesus, “knowing what would happen to Him, came out to meet them.” Judas was here and a militarized guard, and the enemies of the Savior — the publicans and the Pharisees, members of the Sanhedrin.

And then the Savior addresses them saying, “Whom do you seek?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” The Lord responded briefly, “It is I.” But upon this response they drew back and fell to the ground. Rarely, rarely did the Lord Jesus Christ in such a manner allow people to feel His fearful, limitless, divine power, and here He merely spoke two words, and it was as if a terrible light­ning of divinity flashed in this brief answer and they all crumbled to the ground. They rise up dis­oriented, and the Lord again poses the same ques­tion; they repeat their response. Then the Lord says to them once again: “I have already told you that it is I.” But evidently He said this in a quite ordinary tone, and immediately out of concern for His apostles, He says, “Leave them be; let them go.” We also know how Simeon Peter attempted to defend Him, striking the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear, but the Lord said to Peter to put his sword in its sheath and Himself healed the wounded servant.

Saint John the Evangelist says that the Savior was led from the Garden of Gethsemane first to the high priest Annas and there the high priest ques­tioned him about His teaching and about His dis­ciples. But the Lord responded in His character­istic manner, saying that by questioning Him, the high priest had violated the established order of prosecution. According to those times, first the witnesses were to be questioned and only then the accused. Had there been no one present there who had heard the teachings of the Savior, what things He had said, then the high priest would have been right. But he immediately addresses the Savior, and the Lord, gently and tactfully pointing out the incorrectness, says, “I never said anything in secret. I always spoke where Jews had assembled. Why do you question me? Ask those who heard. They heard those things which I spoke.” Gently and tactfully the Lord steers the high priest onto the correct path of prosecution, but one of the ser­vants of the high priest, desiring to show loyalty to his chief, feigning disdain at the insolence of the response, struck the Savior on the cheek, say­ing: “Do you answer the high priest in this man­ner?” The answer of our Savior was simple; the Lord meekly responded to this: “If I spoke evil, bear witness of the evil, but if I spoke well, why do you smite me?” Incidentally, a tradition has been preserved among the writings of the holy fathers, that the one who smote the Savior was the same one whom He had healed of paralysis. This is how he thanked his Divine Healer!

Then the Savior was led to Caiaphus, the high priest, who was the chief priest. It is during these hours, as we know, that Peter’s terrible denial oc­curs. Apostle Peter, who just recently had made oath and sworn that he would even die for his Teacher, is gripped here with fear of a servant woman, is frightened of the persistent questioning and with an oath denies knowing Him thrice. The apostle and evangelist John, almost immediately after this, speaks of how the Savior was sent to the Prætorium to Pilate so that he be interrogated by the ruler himself in the judgment hall. The head of the regime comes out and asks: “What charge do you levy against this Man; what is He accused of?” The Jews answered this question on the one hand rudely with a shade of insolence, on the oth­er hand they emphasized their own helplessness. “If He were not an evil doer we would not have brought Him to you.” The Gospel says that to this unsubstantiated statement, Pilate merely respond­ed: “Take Him and judge Him according to your own law.” It was then that they announced that “it was not lawful” for them to put anyone to death, to kill him or have him killed, thereby demon­strating that they had already reached a verdict but lacked the means to carry it out themselves and therefore were asking the prosecutor to do this. Then Pilate entered into his Prætorium and the Savior is brought to him. He asks Him: “Are You the King of the Jews?” The Savior answers the question with a question. “Are you asking this of yourself or did others tell you of Me?” In other words, are you asking this for your own sake or on the basis of what others had told you. Was this question a mere formality based on what others had said about Me, or are you yourself interested to know? Pilate responded to this haughtily, like a Roman, like a high-placed Roman official, aware of his authority: “Am I a Jew? Your nation and their leaders handed You over to me. What have You done?” And then, in responding to the ques­tion whether He is King of the Jews the Lord says: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” Let every person remember this, every person who wishes to lower the Church onto a platform of some sort of human organization, even if it be the most lofty, the most benevolent, but nonetheless a human or­ganization. “My Kingdom is not of this world!” the Savior says categorically. “If My Kingdom were of this world then would My servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews.” That is, if My Kingdom were of this world, like every other kingdom, then I would have my defenders who would not permit that which is occurring now. “But now is My Kingdom not from hence” says the Lord.

We know how when the Lord was speaking with Pilate He added these words, directing them now to his inner sense, to his heart, to his conscience: “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.” He said this immediately after he gave Pi­late an answer to his question: “Are you the King of the Jews?” “Thou sayest that I am a king.” Ac­cording to the phraseology of those days this sig­nified an affirmative answer: yes, I am a king. But the Lord says: “For this purpose was I born and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth, and every one who is of the truth shall hear My voice.” This appeal to Pilate’s moral sense, to his heart, to his conscience passed him by. Standing before the Savior was a representative of Roman skepticism, who had decisively disbelieved everything and no longer believed in anything, but especially in some kind of truth! Probably, when Pilate was hearing this, he was thinking: “He’s talking about truth now! Does truth even exist?! Every one has his own concept of truth, and even if it exists somewhere far off what does it matter?” Therefore, evidently evading the issue he merely says: “What is truth?” and with that walked away from his accused.

This is a tragic moment, my beloved! The answer was standing in front of Pilate. A living incarnate answer! The One Who said of Himself: “I am the way, the truth, the life.” But Pilate could not see the truth in the Truth and with his skeptical answer he turned away from the Living Truth; he walked away, however saying: “I find in Him no fault” — that is to say, I do not find Him guilty of anything. Then he hears the people demand­ing that Barrabas be released, as was the custom at Passover. (St. John the Theologian does not men­tion this, but the other Evangelists speak of this.) Pilate asks the people, “whom shall I release, Bar­rabas or Jesus called the Christ?” Undoubtedly Pi­late was convinced that the people would say Jesus because Barrabas was a murderer, thief and rebel. But when they shouted: “Not this One, but Bar­rabas,” then Pilate became perplexed. St. John the Evangelist says that Pilate, upon hearing this, took Jesus and had Him flogged. Flogging is a horrific punishment from which many died not being able to endure it, yet Pilate had just said that he found no guilt in Him. Then for what reason did he or­der Him to be flogged? Yet he ordered it…. Cov­ered in blood from head to foot, wearing a purple robe and a thorny crown, the Savior stood before him after the flogging, and undoubtedly the cruel and harsh heart of the pagan shuddered when he saw what his industrious soldiers had done with their Victim…

And again, in the hopes that the crowd would understand what was happening and take pity on the Innocent Accused, such a mutilated and tor­tured Man, Pilate brings Him out before them and says: “Behold the Man!” Look at Him, for He is a person just like us people!... However not even this appeases the malice of the crowd, their insatiable malice. And they then began to shout: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Then Pilate says: “Ye take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him” i.e., what has already been done is not enough for you, so take and crucify Him your­selves; I find no guilt in him at all. He seems to be saying: “I have already made a concession toward you by ordering the flogging of a Man Whom I consider to be innocent. But if you want to also crucify Him, then crucify Him yourselves.” But they could not do this, so they say to Pilate: “We have a law and according to our law He must die for He has called Himself the Son of God.” But this caused a reaction which they evidently did not foresee. The Gospel says that Pilate, having heard this word “he was the more afraid,” he be­came more frightened, for at the time the Romans held a belief that the gods could appear on earth in the form of a man. Pilate became afraid and again leads the Savior into his judgment hall and asks Him, “where are You from?” At this moment when the trial is underway, the Evangelist Mat­thew indicates that Pilate’s wife sends him word that he “not do anything evil to this Righteous Man, for in my sleep I suffered greatly because of Him.” And this, of course, added to Pilate’s alarm. But when he asked Christ “whence art Thou?” the Lord did not start to answer the ques­tion of the one who had turned away from the question concerning truth and “Jesus gave no an­swer.” The pride of the high ruler spoke out and he says: “Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?” You are in my hands, You are in my power and You don’t answer me?! The Lord Savior’s answer is touching: “You had no power over me if it had not been given to you from on high, and therefore those who delivered Me to you have a greater sin.” Notice how the Lord does not wish to either compound, empha­size or increase Pilate’s guilt. He already sees the limit of the power he has over the decree demand­ed by the enemies, and yet here also it is as if the Lord is attempting to minimize, reduce his guilt, He tries if not to justify but to somehow excuse him and says: “your main sin is not the greatest, but he who delivered Me to you, he has the main sin.” And this evidently moved Pilate and it is stated outright that just from that moment, Pi­late tried especially to let Him go, but he did not find the courage within himself when he heard the accusation of the Jews that “if you let Him go you will be no friend of Caesar’s.” Of course this could not have been pleasant for Pilate to hear, for the cruel and suspicious Tiberius was Caesar at the time. Pilate imagined what would hap­pen to him when it is reported to Tiberius that he had released the One Who called Himself King of the Jews. At that point, he was completely gripped by fear; he still attempted to resist and brought the Savior out again before the people and said: “Here is your King!” And those high priests and publicans who so hated Roman rule, of which they could not calmly hear, who had only one desire — to be freed from this odious subordination, shouted as if they were loyal and faithful Roman citizens: “We have no king but Caesar.” We have not nor do we know any king besides Caesar. “Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified.”

As St. John the Evangelist writes: “And they took Jesus and led Him away.” Carrying His cross, He walked toward Golgotha, as tradition says, exhausted from all He had endured and the ter­rible flogging, blood-drenched, He was losing His strength. He was falling under the weight of the cross, until finally the soldiers compelled the able-bodied Simon a Cyrenian to take His cross and carry it himself.

The Savior is crucified between two thieves. The scribes and pharisees saw the sign which Pilate had fastened to the cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” and began to demand that he change it, for it was an embarrassment and disgrace for the Jews that their King should be nailed to the cross, executed so disgracefully. “No,” they say, “write that He is an imposter. Do not write that He is King of the Jews, but rather that He said ‘I am King of the Jews’.” In other words, He claimed He was king. But they had already exasperated Pilate with their persistence and their insatiable malice and he an­swered them: “What I have written I have written.”

We know how at the Cross of Christ stood His most blessed Mother, His beloved disciple, the only one who did not become afraid and did not flee but walked behind Him to the Cross, the myrrh-bearing women who were loyal and de­voted and were not unfaithful to Him. We know, finally, how the terrible suffering of Christ ended, when the Lord Jesus Christ, Who had endured incredible physical suffering (for the agony on the cross was particularly terrible) fiery torments, but for Him it was immeasurably more acute and torturous because He was without sin. It was not within His nature to suffer so, just as it is not within the nature of a person who is engulfed in fire to suddenly be covered with a layer of ice. For Him sufferings were unnatural and there­fore incomparably more torturous than for all of us. He endured them without complaint and He endured an immeasurably greater, terrible in­ner cross, suffering for the sins of the people, which He took upon Himself, and for which His Father forsook Him... and when this terrible, mystical abandonment of Him by the Father occurred, at that moment on the Cross He exclaimed: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?!” Notice, He had always called Him Father, yet here He cries out: “My God, My God!” He calls Him God, like the worst of sinners. As the holy hierarch Innocent of Cherson said: “In these mo­ments it was as if the divinity of the Son of God was concealed within the soul of the Man Jesus, leaving Him as if He were one of us, enduring this terrible agony... God the Father Himself and the Holy Spirit alone know what He endured then... If before us one millionth part of that suffering which He endured then were to be revealed, our hearts would burst, unable to endure it...”

The suffering on the Cross nears its end, in ful­fillment of the prophecy. The Lord exclaims: “I thirst!” For He, like any one being crucified, was tortured by unbearable thirst. But as it was said in one sermon, this exclamation had a greater significance: “I thirst for your salva­tion, O sinner! That it may be accomplished, finally!” He accomplishes his feat for sinners, and the Savior of the world, experiencing the last bitterness, tasting the vinegar mixed with gall, finally called out: “It is finished (accom­plished)!”

What was accomplished? That which was spo­ken of yet in Paradise, which was foretold by the prophets, which was prefigured by a multitude of Old Testament events but particularly all the whole-burnt offerings of the Old Testament. How many prefigurative lambs were slaughtered n the history of the Hebrew nation, until finally the Lamb of God was slaughtered Who took upon Himself the sins of the entire world. That which was accomplished was what the entire world had been waiting for, not only what the Jewish nation was awaiting. The entire human race, without even realizing it, was awaiting it as well. Finally the purpose for which the Son of God came to earth was accomplished. He accomplished the salvation of the human race. Amen.

 

Source: Living Orthodoxy, Vol. XXXV, No. 2; Mar - Apr 2015, #206, pp. 6-10.