¿»è>)i'c<?I c^yeëHoi'SS 

ND-
D--PS I 

RUDOIPH G. BANDAS 
SERIES SEVEN 



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BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
A Discussion Club Manual for 

Young People's and Adult Groups 

by 
R E V . R U D O L P H G. B A N D A S 

Series V I I 



Nihil Obstat 
Rev. George Ziskovsky, S.T.D., L.S.Sc. 

Censor Deputatus 
die 14a Februarii, 1949 

Imprimatur 
J O A N N E S G R E G O R I U S M U R R A Y , 

Archiepiscopus Sancti Pauli 
die 15a Februarii, 1949 

Published in U. S. A. 
M a y 21, 1949 

by 
Our Sunday Visitor Press 

Huntington, Indiana 



Table of Contents 
I The Paschal Supper and the Holy Eucharist '_ 5 

II The Agony and the Betrayal of Christ 20 
III The Condemnation of Christ :........__ 31 
IV The Crucifixion .;•;, r.- • . . ......;..__.... 41 
V Our Lord Forlorn .'„.' ^ ........ 55 

VI "He Descended Into Hell" . 68 
VII The Redemption T : ..... .... 76 
VIII The Redemption, continued ^ 89 



Series I of Biblical Questions aims to give the 
student a general acquaintance with the Bible. The' 
Chapters and Discussion Aids are constructed in 
such a way as to oblige the student to page the 
Bible, become acquainted with the arrangement of 
the Books, and read some sections of each Book. 

Series II continues this general discussion about the Bible. 
Series III takes up specific questions in the 

Old and the New Testament, and this method is 
continued in the subsequent Series. 

With the permission of the Bruce Publishing 
Company of Milwaukee, some of the materials in 
the Series are taken from our work, Biblical Ques-
tions, Old Testament, a book which is now out of 
print. We also wish to express our gratitude to St. 
Anthony's Guild of Paterson, New Jersey, for, per-
mission to incorporate into these booklets materials 
found i g our volume "Biblical Questions, Vol II-
New Testament," published by the Guild, and to 
use its Scriptural publications in the preparation of 
these booklets. The Biblical texts are from the 
Rheims-Douay Version published by the E. M Loh-
mann Company of St. Paul. In enunciating the 
Church's traditional and unchanging dogmatic teach-
ings bearing upon the questions under discussion 
we have used as sourcebooks J. M. Herve's Manuale 
Theologiae Dogmaticae (Paris, 1924) Vol. II, Tan-
querey's Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae (Tournai, 
1921) Vol. II, and our own work, The Master Idea 
of St. Paul's Epistles or the Redemption (Bruges, 

The Author 



Chapter I 

The Paschal Supper and the 
Holy Eucharist 

I. Origin and Nature of the Paschal Supper 
The ceremonies of the Paschal Supper had 

their roots f a r back in the history of the Jews in 
Egypt. When the Israelites were in Egyptian bond-
age, God sent one plague after another upon the 
Pharaos in order to effect the release of the Jews 
(Exodus 7 to 11). The tenth and last of these 
plagues came when, on the fourteenth day of the 
month at midnight, the destroying angel went 
through Egypt and smote all the first-born, whether 
of man or beast, throughout the land. 

By command of God, this month became the 
first month of the Hebrew year. Originally it was 
called the month of Abib, but after the Babylonian 
Captivity it received the name of Nisan. It corres-
ponds approximately to the greater part of our 
month of March and the first days of April. 

The Lord made provisions, however, to exempt 
the Hebrew people from this plague. He com-
manded that at evening before that dreadful night 
of God's wrath, every Jewish family should kill a 
male yearling lamb without blemish. The Jews were 
to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the two side 
posts and on the lintel of every Hebrew house. This 
blood was to be a sign: wherever the avenging 
angel saw the blood on the house, he "passed over" 
that house and struck no one therein. Hence the 

3 Special # Collections 



6' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
event itself eventually came to be known as the 
"passover." By metonymy the animal killed and 
eaten was also called the passover. 

The people were commanded to eat the roasted 
lamb in haste, with their loins girded, their shoes 
on their feet, and their staff in their hand. They 
were to eat its flesh with unleavened bread and wild 
lettuce. Suddenly at midnight, "there arose a great 
cry in Egypt, for there was not a house wherein 
there lay not one dead" (Exodus 12:30). Then 
Pharao arose and ordered the Hebrews to depart 
out of the land at once. "And the Egyptians press-
ed the people to go forth out of the land speedily, 
saying: We shall all die" (Exodus 12:33). The 
Hebrew people were ready to depart hastily out of 
the land. The command to eat unleavened bread 
facilitated their quick exit; the dough could not have 
been leavened at the time and would have been 
difficult to carry: "The people, therefore, took 
dough before it was leavened; and tying it in their 
cloaks, put it on their shoulders . . . for it could not 
be leavened, the Egyptians pressing them to depart" 
(Exodus 12:39). 

The deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt was 
at God's command commemorated annually by the 
feast of the Pasch. The word "Pasch" comes from 
the Hebrew term pisach, meaning "to pass over." 
The Pasch was kept on the fourteenth day of Nisan, 
commencing after sunset on the thirteenth of Nisan 
and ending at sunset on the fourteenth. This was 
called the eve or the preparation of the Pasch. The 
Pasch was also called "the day of the unleavened 
bread," a feast which really occupied seven addi-
tional days: "On the fourteenth day of the month 



PASCHAL SUPPER A N D THE HOLY EUCHARIST 7 
at evening, ye shall eat unleavened bread until the 
one and twentieth day of the same month in the 
evening. Seven days shall there be no leaven found 
in your houses" (Exodus 12:18, 19). This abstin-
ence was in memory of the Jews' hurried departure 
from Egypt, when they had no time to leaven their 
dough. During the eight days of the Paschal 
solemnity, the Israelites were not allowed to keep 
leavened bread in their house. They were enjoined 
to search their houses carefully with a lighted candle 
and in silence lest any crumbs of leavened bread 
should have been overlooked. 

The Paschal Supper was eaten after sunset on 
the fourteenth day of Nisan, and comprised the fol-
lowing six articles of food: 

1. The Paschal lamb which was to be a male of 
one year and without blemish (Exodus 12:5). The 
Paschal lambs were generally purchased at the sheep 
market which to a certain extent was under the 
control of the Jewish priests. They were killed be-
tween noon and sunset on the fourteenth day of 
Nisan. All the statutes relating to the Passover 
seem to fix the Temple as the only lawful place of 
slaying the Paschal lamb. Scholars, however, are 
of the opinion that the law was fulfilled if the lamb 
was slain in Jerusalem. After the lamb was flayed, 
the f a t was removed from the intestines and thrown 
into the fire, and the body was then roasted whole. 
The Paschal lamb was eaten in memory of that 
lamb whose blood, sprinkled on the lintels of the 
homes of the Israelites, saved the firstborn of the 
Jews in Egypt. It was eaten in companies of ten or 
more persons. 

2. The unleavened bread, which was eaten in 



8' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
memory of the quick exit of the Jews out of 
Egypt. 

3. To these two articles were added the bitter 
herbs, lettuce, endive, horehound, succory, parsley, 
to recall the bitter servitude of the Jews in Egypt. 

These three articles in the celebration of the 
Pasch were prescribed by law. The tradition of the 
Jewish Fathers added three others: 

4. A condiment known as "charoseth" and 
made of figs, filberts, pistachio nuts, almonds, 
apples—all of which was crushed in a mortar and 
mixed with spices; vinegar and salt were also used. 
The unleavened bread was dipped into this sauce 
before being eaten. This dish recalled to the Jews 
their making bricks with clay and straw while 
they were in the land of Egypt. 

5. A pitcher of red wine; during the Supper 
a chalice of wine was passed around four or five 
times. 

6. A pitcher of water; this water was partly 
mixed with the wine and partly used for the ablu-
tion of the hands. 

In Egypt the Jews ate the lamb standing; at 
the subsequent Paschal solemnities they ate the 
Passover reclining—a bodily attitude which was in-
dicative of rest, safety and liberty. It was customary 
for the Jews of Jerusalem to lend their rooms to the 
pilgrims who came to celebrate the Pasch. With 
characteristic Eastern hospitality they offered the 
visitors the best room, and expected and accepted 
little or no remuneration. This guest chamber was 
usually on the upper floor, and contained a table, 
couches and the necessary utensils. The Gospels do 



PASCHAL SUPPER A N D THE HOLY EUCHARIST 9 
not indicate the name of the "master of the house" 
in which Christ ate the Paschal Supper with His 
Apostles. He was undoubtedly one of our Lord's 
disciples; some conjecture that the house in ques-
tion was the paternal home of St. Mark. Whatever 
may be said about the controversy concerning the 
date on which Christ celebrated the Paschal Supper, 
it is certain that He Himself partook of the Paschal 
Supper and that He used unleavened bread. Both 
He and the Apostles would naturally wish to retain 
all the ancient observances. The belief of the Greek 
Church that Christ used leavened bread is based on 
an error concerning the date of the Paschal Supper 
and can claim little authority in its support. In in-
stituting the Eucharist Christ made use of un-
leavened bread and of one of the four chalices of 
wine passed around at the Paschal Supper. 

Ceremonies Of The Paschal Supper— 
The Eucharist 

The Paschal Supper comprised several steps. 
1. It began by the head of the company taking 

the first of the four cups of wine mingled with 
water, and speaking over it "the thanksgiving." 
The formula of blessing in use consisted really of 
two benedictions—the first "over the wine" and the 
second "over the day." The latter was a thanksgiv-
ing for the return of the feast day and for being pre-
served once more to witness it. The cup was then 
passed around the circle of the company. Some 
scholars think that each one present had his own 
cup. 

2. At the next stage of the ceremonial the head 
of the company rose and "washed hands." It is this 



10' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
part of the ritual of which St. John records (13:4) 
the adaptation and transformation on the part of 
Christ. The washing of the disciples' feet is evi-
dently connected with the ritual of hand-washing. 

3. After the hand-washing, the head of the 
company would dip some of the bitter herbs into 
salt water and vinegar, pronounce a blessing over 
them, and hand them to each in the company. Next 
he would break one of the unleavened breads, of 
which half was put aside for after supper. This 
"after-dish" was probably the bread of the Holy 
Eucharist. The youngest in the company was in-
structed to make formal inquiry as to the meaning 
of the observances which were carried out on that 
night. The president replied by explaining each 
rule. 

4. A part of the Hallel (Psalms 112, 113) was 
then chanted, and the second cup of wine was filled 
and passed around. The dipping of the unleavened 
bread into the charoseth also took place at this point. 
It was in this connection that the traitor Judas was 
revealed and identified (John 13:26), 

5. All the members of the company then 
washed hands and prepared to eat the Paschal lamb. 
The actual supper now began. Each one could 
satisfy his appetite and conversation was allowed. 

6. They then partook of the "after-dish," and 
the cup of blessing (I Corinthians 10:16) was 
handed round to each. The institution of the Holy 
Eucharist by our Lord is supposed by many com-
mentators to have taken place at this point. It is 
narrated in the following terms by St. Matthew: 
"And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, 



PASCHAL SUPPER A N D THE HOLY EUCHARIST 11 
and blessed and broke, and gave to His disciples and 
said: Take ye, and eat. This is My body.- And 
taking the chalice, He gave thanks, and gave to them, 
saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is My blood 
of the 'New Testament, which shall be shed for 
many unto remission of sins (Matthew 26:26-28). 

7. A prayer of thanksgiving followed, after 
which the fourth cup was drunk, and the remainder 
of the Hallel was sung (Psalms 114-117). 

It is certain that Christ Himself also ate the 
Pasch. The certainty of this fact is implied in the 
question of the Apostles recorded by St. Matthew: 
"Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee to eat 
the Pasch?" (Matthew 26:17). St. Luke's Gospel 
is even more explicit: "And when the hour was 
come, He sat down and the twelve with Him. And 
He said to them: With desire I have desired to eat 
this Pasch with you before I suffer. For I say to you 
that from this time I will not eat it till it be ful-
filled in the kingdom of God" (Luke 22:14-16). 

On the evening of the Paschal Supper the 
Apostles were alone at table with Christ. The Evan-
gelists mention only the Apostles whether before or 
during or after the meal. The Divine Mister no 
doubt wished to be alone on this solemn occasion 
with those who eminently represented His Church. 
He was about to confer a new office upon them, and 
impart to them special instructions. There is an 
ancient legend that Our Lady was in the adjoining 
room and that Martha and Mary unsuccessfully 
asked of our Lord permission to be present at the 
institution of the Eucharist. 

What was the exact position of Christ and the 
Apostles at table? The Orientals half reclined on 



12' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
couches when at table. Each of the dinner couches 
ordinarily held three persons, the most honored 
person being in the middle, the two others re-
clining one in front of him and one behind him. 
Now, we know that St. John was at Christ's side, so 
that in reclining his head would be close to Jesus' 
breast, so that in fact he declared of himself that 
he reclined on Christ's bosom. Since it was custo-
mary for the guests to recline on their left elbow, 
John was at our Lord's right hand. Judas was close 
at hand, probably at the other side of Jesus. The 
fact that Jesus gave him a piece of bread dipped in 
the condiment is proof that Judas must have been 
near Jesus. This explains, too, that when Judas 
asked directly of Jesus if he should betray Him, 
Jesus answered him yes, and no one save Judas 
heard the declaration (Matthew 26:21). Men have 
assigned to Peter the last place on the other side of 
the table, opposite St. John. This position assigned 
to St. Peter is based on St. John's statement that 
in washing the Apostles' feet, our Lord began with 
St. Peter (John 13:6). 

Did Judas Receive Holy Communion? 
The question is often asked whether at the Last 

Supper Judas partook of the Holy Eucharist. 
According to St. Matthew and St. Mark, whose 
accounts are substantially the same, the denuncia-
tion of the traitor took place before the institution 
of the Holy Eucharist. St. Matthew gives us the 
following account of this incident: "But when it 
was evening, He sat down with His twelve disciples. 
And whilst they were eating He said: Amen I say 
to you, that one of you is about to betray Me. And 



PASCHAL SUPPER A N D THE HOLY EUCHARIST 13 
they, being very much troubled, began every one to 
say: Is it I, Lord? But He answering said: He 
that dippeth his hand with Me in the dish, he shall 
betray Me. The. Son of Man indeed goeth, as it is 
written of Him. But woe to that man by whom the 
Son of Man shall be betrayed; it were better for 
him if that man had not been born. And Judas that 
betrayed Him answering said, Is it I, Rabbi? He 
saith to him : Thou hast said it. And whilst they 
were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed and 
broke, and gave to His disciples, and said: Take 
ye and eat. This is My body. And taking the chal-
ice, He gave thanks, and gave to them saying: 
Drink ye all of this. For this is My blood of the 
New Testament which shall be shed for many unto 
remission of sins" (Matthew 26:20-28 ; Mark 14:17-
22). According to St. Matthew and St. Mark, then, 
it does not seem probable that Judas remained to 
be ordained a priest and to receive Holy Com-
munion. 

St. Luke seems to give us a different account. 
He places the denunciation of the traitor only after 
the institution of the Holy Eucharist (22:19-20) : 
"But yet behold, the hand of him that betrayeth Me 
is' with Me on the table. And the Son of Man goeth, 
according to that which is determined. But yet woe 
to that man by whom He shall be betrayed. And 
they began to inquire among themselves, which of 
them it was that should do this thing" (22:21-23). 

St. John does not narrate explicitly but rather 
presupposes thé institution of the Holy Eucharist. 
The thirteenth chapter opens with the immortally 
beautiful phrase, "Having loved His own who were 
in the world, He loved them unto the end." Some 



14 BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
understand these words as referring to the Euchar-
ist which had already been instituted. Later, in the 
course of the thirteenth chapter, St. John describes 
the denunciation of the traitor in the following 
terms: "When Jesus had said these things, He was 
troubled in spirit, and He testified and said: Amen, 
amen, I say to you, one of you shall betray Me. The 
disciples therefore looked one upon another, doubt-
ing of whom He spoke. Now there was leaning on 
Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus 
loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, and 
said to him: Who is it of whom He speaketh? He 
therefore, leaning on the breast of Jesus, said to 
Him: Lord, who is it? Jesus answered: He it is to 
whom I shall reach bread dipped. And when He 
had dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, 
the son of Simon . . . . He, therefore, having re-
ceived the morsel, went out immediately" (John 
13:21-30). 

Did Judas receive the Eucharist? Opinions 
differ widely, and both the negative and affirma-
tive have had ardent exponents. The negative opin-
ion—the view, namely, that Judas did not receive 
the Eucharist—seems preferable for many reasons. 

In the first place, the designation of the traitor 
took place during the Paschal Supper, "whilst they 
were eating" (Matt. 26:21), "when they were at 
table and eating" (Mark 14:18). According to 
John's account likewise, the designation took place 
during the supper: "He it is to whom I shall reach 
bread dipped" (unleavened bread dipped into the 
charoseth). Judas left before the end of the Pas-
chal Supper: "He, therefore; having received the 
morsel, went out immediately" (John 13:30). 



PASCHAL SUPPER A N D THE HOLY EUCHARIST 15 
According to St. Luke (22:20) and St. Paul (I Cor-
inthians 11:25) Jesus instituted the Eucharist 
"after He had supped," that is, at the end of the 
Paschal Supper. Hence Judas was not present when 
the Holy Eucharist was being instituted. 

But what about the section in Luke 22:21-23 
which seems to place the denunciation of the traitor 
after the institution of the Eucharist? It is prob-
able that St. Luke was not following the historical 
order in enumerating the different stages of the 
Paschal Supper. He narrates, first of all, what was 
essential and then, after the manner of an appendix, 
mentions some of the other things that were said 
and done that night. St. Luke clearly indicates that 
he is not following a chronological order. He tells 
us that the Eucharist was instituted after the Pas-
chal Supper—"after He had supped." And yet, al-
though he places the account of the traitor after 
that dealing with the Eucharist, he tells us that the 
traitor was designated during the Paschal Supper: 
"Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with 
Me on the table," that is, to take food. Hence St. 
Luke is substantially in agreement with St. Matt-
hew and St. Mark. The passage in John 13:1, re-
fers to all the proofs of Christ's supreme love to be 

' afforded the disciples that night. Even if it did refer 
to the Eucharist, it does not determine the moment 
of its institution. 

The universal command, "Drink ye all of this" 
(Matthew 26:27), refers to the body of the Apostles 
who remained after the sole exception, Judas, had 
gone out. Besides, could Christ command that 
Judas, by a new and horrible sacrilege, bring 
Christ's blood and hence Christ Himself into a soul 



16' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
which had become the abode of Satan? Did He not 
direct His ministers not to submit holy things to 
the abuse of the unworthy? Would Christ direct to 
Judas the words, "Do this in commemoration of 
Me," thereby creating him a priest, and at the same 
time by that dignity increasing Judas' eternal suf-
fering? St. Thomas says that Christ could not pub-
licly refuse the Eucharist to an occult sinner. This 
is true. But Christ prudently postponed the institu-
tion of the Eucharist until after the departure of 
Judas, so that the traitor might not be stained by a 
new sacrilege. St. Paul (I Corinthians 11:27) 
speaks a good deal about an unworthy communion 
but makes no reference to Judas. 

Did Our Lord Partake Of The Eucharist? 
It is not probable that Christ partook of the 

Eucharist after its institution at the Last Supper. 
The Gospels give no positive support to the contrary 
opinion. It is recorded that Christ took break, broke, 
gave to His disciples and said to them: "Receive ye 
and eat." Such a mode of expression does not imply 
but rather excludes the supposition that Christ ate 
His body which He gave to the disciples. In like 
manner He blessed the chalice, gave to His disciples, 
and said to them: "Drink ye of it all." He who 
gives a chalice to another and commands him to 
drink of it is not, by that fact, thought to drink him-
self. 

Some maintain that Christ partook of the 
Eucharist in order to prevent His disples from being 
disturbed at the thought of eating His body and 
blood. But this is hardly a serious reason. Since 
'-he species as well as the appearances of bread and 



PASCHAL SUPPER A N D THE HOLY EUCHARIST 17 
wine remained, it is difficult to see why the disciples 
should be so confused and perturbed as to refuse to 
eat and drink the Eucharist. 

Others claim that Christ first observed Himself 
what He commanded others to do. This reason,, 
however^ is not universally valid. Christ bade the 
Apostles to go into the whole world and to baptize 
every creature. Yet He Himself did not leave the 
land of Israel nor did He receive sacramental 
Baptism. 

Did He receive the Eucharist in order to give 
us an example? No. Christ's precept and the great 
blessings which would flow from a reception of the 
Eucharist were sufficient reasons for this great 
Sacrament's never being neglected. 

From the Eucharist flows life—eternal life. 
By it we abide in Christ and Christ in us. By it we 
apply to ourselves the fruits of the Redemption. 
Now, no one would assert that Christ was in need of 
the Eucharist in order to participate in these blessed 
effects of the Sacrament. 

Discussion Aids 
Set I 

1. How many plagues did God send on the 
Pharaos and the Egyptians? 

2. How were the Israelites saved from the 
tenth plague? 

3. Describe the first Passover. What was the 
origin of the unleavened bread? 

4. What was the feast of the Pasch? When 
was it kept? What is the meaning of the 
word "Pasch?" 

5. What articles of food were eaten at the 



18' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
Paschal Supper? What ideas was each 
to recall to the Jews? 

6. How is the "charoseth" associated with the 
traitor Judas? 

7. Where was the Paschal Supper ordinarily-
eaten? Where did Our Lord eat the Pas-
chal Supper? 

8. What were the principal steps of the Pas-
chal Supper? 

9. At what stage was the Holy Eucharist 
probably instituted? 

10. Did Christ eat the Paschal Supper? 
11. Who was present at the Paschal Supper? 
12. What was the exact position of Christ and 

of the Apostles at the table? 
13. Why does the priest use unleavened bread 

at Mass? 
14. Why does he add a few drops of water to 

the wine at the Offertory? 
Set II 

1. When did the denunciation of Judas the 
traitor take place ? 

2. Did Judas receive the Holy Eucharist? 
3. Why is it more reasonable to suppose that 

Judas did not receive the Holy Eucharist 
and was not ordained a priest? 

4. What arguments are advanced to show that 
Christ partook of the Holy Eucharist? 
Are they valid? 

Religious Practices 
1. I will celebrate gratefully and devoutly on 

Holy Thursday the annual commemoration 
of the institution of the Holy Eucharist. 



PASCHAL SUPPER A N D THE HOLY EUCHARIST 19 
2. I will make a visit to the Repository on 

Holy Thursday and thank God for giving 
us the great gift of the Eucharist. 

3. I will try to assist at the solemn procession 
on Corpus Christi. 



Chapter li 

The Agony and the Betrayal 
of Christ 

I. The Bloody Sweat 
The agony and bloody sweat are recorded only 

by the Third Gospel. Being a physician by profes-
sion (Colossians 4:14), St. Luke was no doubt inter-
ested in a special way in this unusual event. The 
agony took place in the garden of Gethsemani. Since' 
no gardens were permitted in Jerusalem, the 
wealthier classes had garden on the adjacent moun-
tain slopes. The garden of Gethsemani probably 
belonged to one of Christ's disciples. Today eight 
ancient olive trees mark the site, probably sprung 
from trunks of trees that stood there in our Lord's 
time. The garden, as it now exists, is almost square, 
each side measuring about 168 feet. In Hebrew 
the word "Gethsemani" signifies "olive-press." 

The term "agony" denotes an intense struggle, 
pressure and tension of the soul. Our Lord's agony 
was due to several reasons. It was caused'partly by 
the terrible sufferings which Christ—in the fullness 
of His knowledge—saw that He must undergo. Since 
He was true and perfect man, His human was even 
more sensitive than ours, and hence He dreaded the 
awful torments of the Passion. By an act of His 
own will, He prevented the Beatific Vision of His 
Soul from in any way influencing His body and les-
sening His sufferings. With His full consent all inter-



THE AGONY AND THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST 21 
nal consolation was withdrawn. At the same time, 
His thrice-holy conscience perceived the heinous-
ness of humanity's sins and the ingratitude of those 
numberless souls who would not profit by His 
redemption. 

Our Lord met these rising anxieties and fears 
with a powerful resistance and great fortitude of 
soul. "And being in an agony," says St. Luke, "He 
prayer the longer. And His sweat became as drops 
of blood, trickling down upon the ground (22:43, 
44)." 

"Physicians tell," writes Father Maas, "that 
in certain cases of great mental excitement the pal-
pitation of the heart is so greatly increased and the 
circulation of the blood so accelerated that the pres-
sure becomes very great on the blood vessels, and 
results in hemorrhage, and sometimes in an exud-
ing of the blood, which mingles with and discolors 
the perspiration." 1 

A learned dissertation on Christ's bloody sweat 
has been written by the theologian Calmet. This 
author tells us that in his investigation he was 
assisted by Dr. Alliot de Mdssey, a doctor and pro-
fessor of medicine at the University of Paris. He 
quotes examples of men condemned in prison or 
awaiting execution and undergoing a bloody sweat 
in their whole body. Dr. Baraban, professor of 
medicine in Nancy, France, says that the "account 
of St. Luke does not present anything impossible 
since other observers have reported facts of the same 
kind." Christ's bloody sweat, however, was miracul-
ous: that He lost thereby so great a quantity of 
(!) Life of Christ, p. 497. 



22' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
blood without death ensuing is to be ascribed to 
miraculous power. 

In this connection the following question is 
occasionally raised: If saints looked forward to 
an equally terrible death—slow roasting on grid-
irons, being flayed alive, being dissected joint by 
joint—not only without agony but with joyful ex-
pectancy, why did Christ undergo a bloody sweat? 
The answer to this question is easy: It was in the 
agony in the garden that Christ merited for us 
the graces to bear our sufferings patiently and even 
gladly. Christ voluntarily underwent—without any 
mitigation—the cruelest of sufferings in order to 
make our sufferings light and easy. 

While Christ in utter loneliness was undergoing 
the agony and bloody sweat, His disciples were 
asleep. How could St. Luke, then, come to a knowl-
edge of the happenings during those dread moments? 
It is possible that the Apostles saw the red marks 
on His face and clothing when they rejoined Him. 
It is possible, too, that they perceived bloody traces 
on the spot where He had been kneeling. Besides, 
they did not sleep continually nor were they so f a r 
away. In the light of the full moon or in the radiant 
light of the angel's presence they could observe what 
was going on. Christ during the forty days after 
His Resurrection could have narrated the principal 
facts connected with this incident to the Apostles. 
The Holy Ghost, too, could have revealed them direct-
ly to St. Luke and inspired him to put them down 
in writing. 

II. The Treason of Judas 
During the Paschal season there was stationed 

at the Tower Antonia a Roman legion to guard the 



THE AGONY A N D THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST 23 
city and watch over the Temple. On their great 
festivals the Jews were wont to be very turbulent, 
and hence the Romans on these occasions were in 
readiness to quell any uprising. The Roman legion 
differed in number at different periods. In the time 
of the republic it consisted of 4,500 men. In the 
days of Marius the legion numbered about 6,000 
men, besides the cavalry. The cohort—which was a 
tenth part of a legion—varied in size accordingly, 
and numbered at times 450 men, at times 500 men, 
and sometimes 600 men. But in common parlance 
the term "cohort" was applied to any band of sol-
diers. How these solders were brought into the 
drama of the Redemption will be explained shortly. 

The Jews had by now fully determined that 
Jesus was to die. But they did not wish to appre-
hend Him openly during the feast, least a tumult 
should arise among the multitude of pilgrims. For the 
knowledge of Christ's words and deeds had come 
to many of the common people who regarded Him 
as a prophet and wonderworker. On the other hand, 
the chief priests and elders shrewdly calculated that 
if they could capture Jesus, they could easily per-
suade the unthinking multitude that He- was an 
enemy of their nation. For they knew that the mob 
is usually illogical, unreflecting and fickle. An un-
foreseen event now shaped itself favorably to their 
designs. 

In the soul of one of Christ's chosen Twelve a 
tendency toward covetousness was waxing without 
resistance. The gradual growth of this vice in 
Judas' heart can be traced throughout the Gospel 
narrative, until it comes to a head in Holy Week. 
After the anointing of Christ's feet, we find Judas 



24' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
unblushingly exclaiming: "Why was not this oint-
ment sold for three hundred pence and given to the 
poor?" (John 12:4-6). And St. John aptly remarks : 
"Now he said this not because he cared for the poor 
but because he was a thief." In the measure in 
which this habit filled the heart of Judas, to that 
extent it excluded the workings of Divine grace. 
And when finally this attachment to creatures, un-
der the instigations of Satan, completely dominated 
Judas' soul, the workings of divine grace ceased 
entirely. Judas was left to his own natural powers, 
and a crash became inevitable. Hence we find that 
he who has been closely associated with Jesus for 
years, is now bargaining in cold blood with the 
priests for the best possible price for delivering 
Him to death. One of the Twelve sells his Master 
for thirty pieces of silver—about twenty dollars. 
Judas' crime is aggravated by the fact that the 
Jews had not come to him and offered him a bribe; 
ne voluntarily went to them and offered to do thé 
deed for money. 

Judas' proposal precipitated the action of the 
Jews. It relieved them of the necessity of appre-
hending Christ in the open, among the people. With 
the traitor's help they could be guided by night to 
the silent retreat where Jesus prayed. By represent-
ing to the Romans that Christ was a seditious man, 
the priests and Pharisees were able to obtain from 
the Roman military authorities a cohort—that is, 
a band of soldiers—to assist in the arrest of Jesus. 
At the same time, they organized a band of their 
own followers; perhaps some of the priests and 
Pharisees went with the party. We know that 
Malchus, the servant of the high priest, was present. 



THE AGONY A N D THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST 25 
All were fully armed and prepared for a night 
attack and the putting down of any resistance. 

In the crowd there were many rude men who 
did not know Jesus by sight. In the uncertain light 
of night a mistake might be made and the wrong 
man apprehended. Hence Judas was not only to 
guide them to the spot where Jesus prayed but he 
was to point out Jesus Himself. The prearranged 
sign of betrayal was a kiss—in the Orient a cus-
tomary sign of friendship. Judas thus wished to 
act as a faithful disciple and so conceal his treach-
ery, for he feared the anger of the other Apostles. 
To bring out this twofold aspect and purpose of 
Judas' kiss has always proved a severe task for 
painter and artist. According to the reading of the 
original Greek, Judas not only kissed our Lord but 
covered Him with kisses—kissed Him repeatedly, 
effusively, loudly. 

Why did Christ choose Judas as an Apostle, 
since He foreknew and predicted Judas' deed even 
before it was conceived in the traitor's mind? Christ 
chose Judas in order to show us that the stability of 
the Church would not be destroyed by the scandals 
which should come. The members of the Church 
are, indeed, human and often fail. But the power 
on which the Church's infallibility and indefectibil-
ity rest is Divine and can never fail. Hence if one 
or another of the Church's rulers fails, we must not 
condemn the whole priesthood and the Church it-
self. Although Judas was a traitor, the other 
Apostles loved our Lord with all their hearts. 

III. Peter's Denial 
After having been bound by the soldiers, Christ 

was led back into the city by the same road on 



26' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
which He had left it. Since our Lord was accused 
of teaching false doctrines, and since it was the 
office of the high priest to judge religious questions, 
Christ was led thither. The nominal high priest at 
that time was Caiphas, but the former high priest 
Annas was the real power. The two probably lived 
in the same place as the common official residence. 
Annas had for a long time controlled the office of 
the high priesthood, and had placed five of his sons, 
his son-in-law Caiphas and a grand-son in this 
office. In Acts 4:6 we read that Annas again holds 
the post in person. The high-priestly office, it must 
be remembered, remained in the families of Eleazar 
and Ithamar (the sons of Aaron) and was inherited 
with the primogeniture. After the time of An-
tiochus Epiphanes (165 B. C.) the high-priestly 
office was no longer hereditary and for life, but 
was bought from the Roman governors, who arbi-
trarily appointed and dismissed high priests. 

After the first panic of our Lord's sudden cap-
ture by the soldiers and the flight of the Apostles, 
Peter and John seem speedily to have rallied. Peter 
was the first to stop in his flight and to follow "afar 
•off"; he finally entered the court of the high priest. 
After the manner of Oriental houses, the house of 
Caiphas was built round a quadrangular court which 
was paved and opened to the sky. Through a large 
gate which gave entrance Peter advanced to the 
middle of the court. Here, because of the chill spring 
air, a coal fire had been lighted. The glow threw 
a light on the faces of the men who gathered around 
it to discuss the events of the night. 

It was at this point that--Peter's denials of 
Christ begin. Commentators are wont to note that 



THE AGONY A N D THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST 27 
it was not Pilate, nor a member of the Sanhedrin, 
but a simple waiting-maid that scared the presum-
ptuous Peter into a denial of Christ. Nor was a 
simple denial sufficient, but Peter added successively 
oaths, cursing and swearing. Then, as Christ was 
being conducted across the court, to or from Caiphas, 
He "looked upon Peter" and brought him to his 
senses. This look burned itself into Peter's mind 
and memory, and was the mainspring of Peter's life-
long tearful repentance. 

In this connection theologians discuss the 
causes, nature and import of Peter's sin. The catffces 
which finally led to Peter's denial of our Lord are 
quite apparent in the Gospels. Peter was impetuous 
and impulsive. He presumed too much on his own 
natural strength and did not heed Christ's warnings. 
He neglected to "watch and pray" in Gethsemani, 
followed his Master from "afar off," and joined the 
company of Christ's foes. Finally, he feared ex-
cessively for his own personal safety. What lessons 
are we to draw from this incident? We must learn 
to watch and pray against temptations, to distrust 
ourselves, have confidence in God's mercy and look 
to Him for strength. We must learn to repent 
sincerely of our faults, and have compassion on 
those who sin grievously. 

Theologians also discuss the gravity of Peter's 
sin. Some, as St. Ambrose, try to excuse Peter by 
means of the following distinction: Peter denied 
that he knew the man, the Nazarene, the Galilean— 
not that he knew the Son of God. This explanation 
is untenable because Peter denied the Person of 
Jesus Christ Who was at once God and man. Others 
maintain that Peter lacked adequate knowledge; he 



28' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
could not view the message and work of Christ in 
its completeness and the faith of the world was not 
yet confirmed by the miracle of the Resurrection. 
This explanation is likewise inadmissible. It con-
fuses sufficient with exhaustive knowledge. After 
hearing Christ's teachings, witnessing His miracles, 
and proclaiming His Divinity, Peter had sufficient 
knowledge of Christ's Person. Hence—although 
God alone is judge in these matters—we believe with 
St. Thomas and Suarez that Peter sinned mortally. 

Theology can also offer some explanations as 
to why God permitted Peter to fall. Both the head 
of the Church and the members of the Church were 
soon to pass through terrible trials, tribulations and 
persecutions. They needed to learn from the out-
set that man is weak in himself but strong in God. 
Peter had not yet realized this, and his excessive 
trust in himself brought upon him the bitter experi-
ence of his weakness. God permitted him to fall 
to teach him not to confide too much in his own 
strength—to make him realize that man can do all 
things only with the help of God's grace. 

Discussion Aids 
Set I 

1. What is the meaning of the word, "Gethse-
mani"? Where was the garden of Gethse-
mani? What is its present size? 

2. What is the meaning of the term "agony"? 
To what was Our Lord's agony due? 

3. How do physicians explain a bloody sweat? 
4. Why was Our Lord's bloody sweat mir-

aculous ? 
5. Why do saints today look forward with 



THE AGONY A N D THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST 2D 
calm and peace to cruel tortures and a ter-
rible death? 

6. Since Christ suffered in utter loneliness, how 
did St. Luke obtain information about Our 
Lord's bloody sweat? 

Set 11 
1. Why was a Roman legion stationed in Jeru-

salem during the Paschaltime? 
2. How large was a Roman legion? A cohort? 
3. Why did not the Jews wish to apprehend 

Jesus openly during the feast? 
4. If the Jews did capture Jesus, how did 

they plan to justify their action before the 
people? 

5. What was Judas's predominant fault? How 
did it lead to his downfall ? 

6. How did Judas play into the hands of the 
Jews? 

7. Why did the Jews take a band of soldiers 
with them when they went to arrest Jesus? 

8. What was the prearranged sign of betrayal ? 
What was its double purpose? 

9. Why did Christ choose Judas as an Apostle 
when He foreknew that Judas would turn 
out to be a traitor? Was Judas damned 
(John 17-12; Matthew 26:24)? 

Set III 
1. Who was high priest at the time of Our 

Lord's death? 
2. Describe the house of the high priest? 
3. Who was the occasion of Peter's denying 

Our Lord ? What brought him back to his 
senses ? 

4. What were the causes of Peter's downfall? 



So' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
5. What was the gravity of Peter's sin? 
6. Why did God permit him to fall ? 
7. Is it true that each one of us has a predom-

inant fault? How is it to be cured? 
Religious Practices 

1. I will examine my conscience frequently in 
order to ascertain my predominant fault, 
and with the help of God's grace try to 
eradicate it and practice the opposite vir-
tue. 

2. I will watch and pray against temptations, 
distrust myself, and rely on God's grace and 
help. 

3. I will sincerely repent of my falls and have 
compassion on those who sin grievously. 



Chapter I I I 

The Condemnation of Christ 
I. Pilate 

During the hearing before the Sanhedrin—the 
supreme court of the Jews—our Lord remained meek 
and silent. He had nothing to say to the lying 
witnesses, who contradicted one another so openly 
that even the false-hearted Pharisees dared not 
issue a verdict of guilt on their evidence. Sorely 
vexed, the high priest now forces the issue to a 
crisis. He says to Jesus: "I adjure Thee by the 
living God that Thou tell us whether Thou be the 
Christ, the Son of God" (Matthew 26:63), This 
was a most solemn adjuration: it juridically coerced 
the accused to swear by the living God to the truth 
of His answer. Should Jesus remain silent now, 
His enemies could say that He failed to affirm His 
Divinity at a most critical moment, and the basic 
truth of Christianity would have been weakened. 
Jesus therefore solemnly declared Himself to be 
the Son of God in the^ sense of equality and consub-
stantiality with the Father. Hardly had Jesus pro-
fessed- this divine Sonship when the Jews forthwith 
condemned Him to death for blasphemy. 

Although the Jews could condemn Jesus to 
death, mock and maltreat Him, they could not put 
Him to death. History shows that at this time the 
power of capital punishment had been taken away 
from Israel. The murder of St. Stephen and St. 
James the Less by the Jews does-not disprove this 



32' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
fact, since the killing of these two men was nbt a 
legal act but mob violence. The Jews themselves 
openly admitted to Pilate : "It is not lawful for us 
to put any man to death" (John 18:31). They knew, 
moreover, that Jesus was innocent and were unwill-
ing to be responsible for His execution. They longed 
for Christ's death, but in their fear of the con-
sequences of such an unjust act, they wished to 
transfer the responsibility of it on Pilate. 

Judea was at this time a Roman province and 
Pontius Pilate was its governor. Pilate's habitual 
residence was at Caesarea on the sea coast. But 
during the Paschal season, because of the riots in 
the Holy City, Pilate was wont to come to Jerusalem 
and take up his abode in the castle of Antonia. In 
the province under his jurisdiction the governor 
represented the Roman emperor. Among other re-
sponsibilities it was his duty to judge criminal cases. 
He could decree capital punishment but if he did so, 
he had to report the "cause" of thè condemnation to 
the emperor. 

Before the Sanhedrin the Jews charged Christ 
with blasphemy because He declared Himself to be 
the Son of God. But they well knew that Pilate 
would care naught for such a charge. For in all 
offenses against the Jewish law the Romans dis-
claimed any wish to interfere. The Sanhedrin was 
left free to deal with these, provided it did not 
violate a man's civil rights. Hence the Jews laid 
aside the religious question, and quickly invented 
new charges—accusations which would impress the 
timid and weak-spined Pilate. They now bring 
forth three civil charges and accuse Jesus 1) of 
stirring up sedition and perverting the nation; 2) of 



THE CONDEMNATION OF CHRIST 33 
refusing to pay tribute; and 3) of claiming to be 
king. 

Pilate notices that Jesus- is making no defense 
before the Jews, and hence takes Him aside private-
ly and asks Him directly the question: "Art Thou 
the King of the Jews?" Jesus then explains that 
His kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and that it in 
no way conflicts with the earthly powers of the 
Caesars or any earthly rulers. Christ's kingdom 
is the kingdom of heaven into which man enters by 
embracing truth and justice. Pilate now clearly 
understands that there is no reason for condemning 
Christ, as the Jews are urging him to do. 

//.—The Great Alternative 
Utterly convinced that Jesus is innocent, Pilate 

is now confronted with a dilemna: on the one hand 
he does not wish to condemn an innocent man and 
deliver him to the unjust and the bloodthirsty rab-
ble ; on the other hand, he does not wish to displease 
the Jews for fear that they might report him to 
Rome. Six times does Pilate seek to shift the bur-
den and avoid the issue—each successive time man-
ifesting a greater weakness and a more pronounced 
lack of courage and determination. 

1. At Pilate's words, "I find no cause in this 
man," the crowd broke out more vehemently, say-
ing: "He stirreth up the people, teaching through-
out Judea, beginning from Galilee to this place" 
(Luke 23:5). The mention of Galilee opened up 
the way for Pilate to shift the responsibility upon 
Herod, who was prince of that section of the Roman 
province. Though Pilate exercised supreme juris-
diction also over Galilee, yet there was left to its 



34' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
tetrarch a certain autonomy, and Pilate wished /it 
to appear that he deferred to Herod's authority by 
sending Jesus, a citizen of Nazareth in Galilee, to 
him. For Herod was also in Jerusalem for the Pas-
chal feast. This action seemed courteous, and Herod 
and Pilate who had been at enmity—probably be-
cause Pilate massacred some Galilean pilgrims 
(Luke 13:1)—became friends again. But the real 
motive of Pilate was to shift the burden on Herod. 
Legally, Pilate had no right to send Christ to Herod. 
According to Roman law, a case could be sent from 
one court to another provided it had not been settled; 
whereas Pilate as supreme judge had examined 
Christ's case and declared Him innocent. Like 
Pilate, Herod did not condemn Christ and thereby 
declared Him innocent. 

2. Pilate now makes a second effort to gratify 
the Jews' hatred of Jesus by something less than 
capital punishment. He proposes—yet by what 
right?—to scourge Him and let Him go (Luke 23: 
16, 22). The Evangelists merely mention the fact 
that Jesus was finally scourged, but do not indicate 
the details of the punishment. The Jewish mode of 
scourging limited the number of blows to 40, and 
the Pharisees, for fear that the number might be 
exceeded, placed the number at 39. Jesus was 
scourged according to the Roman law which placed 
no limit on the number of blows. An apparently 
extravagent estimate places the number of blows 
inflicted upon Christ above 5,000. The terms used 
by the Evangelists give evidence that Christ was 
punished with the leathern scourge. Very often the 
scourge's thongs terminated with hooks or were 
knotted with bones or pieces of brass and hard wood. 



THE CONDEMNATION OF CHRIST 37 
In this punishment the person was stripped and 
bound to a post of some kind. 

3. Pilate's proposal to scourge Christ was met 
with a wild cry of disapproval on the part of the 
Jews, who insisted on the extreme penalty. Hence 
Pilate was forced to try some other expedient. At 
the time of the Passover it was customary for the 
Roman governor to pardon one of the criminals in 
the fortress of Antonia. This custom, which by now 
had almost the force of law, was very likely of Jew-
ish origin and was intended to commemorate the 
deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian bondage. 
Although the Jews had the right to choose the prison-
er, Pilate seems to have limited the choice to two 
individuals, Christ and Barabbas. There is a design 
in Pilate's action: he selects the wickedest prisoner 
available, to compel the Jews to ask for Christ. But 
he has not fully estimated the malice of the Jews, 
especially of the chief priests. They ask for the 
release of him who was really guilty of the crime of 
which they have been falsely accusing Christ. 

4. After Christ has been scourged, and mocked, 
and crowned with thorns, Pilate brings Him forth 
and presents Him to the multitude with these signi-
ficant words, "Behold the Man" (John 19:5). Pilate 
hopes that the Jews will be softened by the spectacle 
of suffering to which Jesus has been reduced, and 
again protests that he finds no crime in Him. Again 
he hears the same answer of the chief piiests, 
"Crucify Him." 

5. Pilate now challenges the Jews to assume 
responsibility for Jesus' death and directly empowers 
them to inflict capital punishment (John 19:6). At 
this point the Jews stop. They recognize that their 



36' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
civil charges against Jesus have failed. On the other 
hand, they are not willing to bear responsibility for 
the foul deed which they wish done. Hence they 
return to their first, religious accusation against 
Christ: By claiming to be "Son of God," Christ has 
transgressed the Jewish law which even Pilate is 
bound to respect and uphold. When Pilate, a poly-
theist in his religious life, hears that Christ is the 
"Son of God," he fears that by acting against Him, 
he may draw down on himself the wrath of some 
pagan divinity. Again he endeavors to procure 
Jesus' release. The Jews now meet him with the 
greatest of all threats: By declaring Himself a king, 
Jesus committed treason: if Pilate releases Him, it is 
evident that Pilate is not faithful to Caesar. 

6. Pilate will make one more despairing appeal 
to the Jews. He will awaken their national feelings 
in favor of Jesus. He will hold out to them the pros-
pect of the glory of having a religious king. Will the 
Jews allow one of their race—one who gives such 
good evidence that He is a religious king—to be put 
to death by crucifixion? "Shall I crucify your 
king?" But all his efforts are in vain. The chief 
priests answer: "We have no king but Caesar" 
John 19:15). The cunning hyocrites, who hate 
Caesar and all the Romans, now profess great loyalty 
to Caesar to accomplish the death of Christ. This 
last cry of the Jews is decisive. Pilate sides with 
self-interest against justice and truth, and delivers 
Jesus to the wishes of the Jews, to be crucified. 

III. Pilate in History 
In order to impress upon the Jews that he was 

convinced of the innocence of Jesus and that he 
desired to place on them the responsibility of Jesus' 



THE CONDEMNATION OF CHRIST 37 
death, Pilate employed a symbolical action. He 
washed his hands before the multitude and declared: 
"I am innocent of the blood of this just man, look 
you to it." (Matthew 27:24). This action of Pilate 
was one of the rites ordained in Deuteronomy 
(21 :l-8) to attest that one was guiltless of a man's 
blood. Before God, of course, Pilate was not cleared 
of guilt and responsibility, and could well have 
exclaimed with Macbeth: 
"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash the blood 
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green one red." 2 
The Jews reassuringly accepted the responsibility 
of Christ's death, and gave utterance to the fearful 
imprecation: "His blood be on us and on our chil-
dren!" And these awful words were not without 
their fulfillment in the course of history. 

A tendency has arisen in a recent class of litera-
ture to palliate the crime of the Jews and to place 
the responsibility for Jesus' death on Pilate and on 
the Roman authorities. This view, however, seems 
hardly justifiable. The Evangelists, alluding to the 
Jews who had finally obtained the ratification of 
their death decree, say that the procurator "deliver-
ed Him unto them to be crucified, (Matthew 27:26) 
or that.he decreed that "Jesus be delivered up to their 
will" (Luke 23:25); thus signifying that in this 
great judicial crime the Jews had by f a r the greater 
part—that, as our Lord says, they committed "the 
greater sin" (John 19:11). Pilate, it is true, had 
I®) Act II, Scene II, 



38' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
been their sinister accomplice, and like them would 
not escape the judgment of Heaven. 

Pilate's period of office (26-36 A.D.) comprised 
the entire active ministery of both St. John the 
Baptist and of our Lord. When history begins to 
close upon Pilate, we find him in trouble with the 
Samaritans who appeal to Vitellus, the legate in 
Syria, and complain of Pilate's whole administra-
tion. Pilate is summoned to Rome to answer their 
charges. Before he could reach the city, Tiberius 
had died. This is the last we know of Pilate from 
historical sources. 

From this point on legend elaborates two ac-
counts—one unfavorable, the other favorable— 
about Pilate. On one hand, he is represented as con-
stantly encountering bad luck and as finally com-
mitting suicide. His body was first thrown into 
the Tiber, but the waters were so disturbed that the 
body was taken to Vienne and sunk in the Rhone. 
The Rhone also refused to absorb him, and hence he 
was sunk in a like at Lausanne. The final disposi-
tion of the body was in a deep pool on a mountain 
still «ailed Pilatus, near Lucerne. 

On the other hand, Christian legend began to 
regard him in a sympathtic way. It was thankful 
to him for having repeatedly and clearly proclaim-
ed the Saviour's innocence and for having made 
efforts to save His life. The writer Tertullian 
claims that at heart Pilate was a Christian, and some 
of the apocryphal gospels incline to the view that 
Pilate eventually became a Christian. The Abyssin-
ian Church reckons Pilate and his wife, Claudia Pro-
cula, as saints, and assigns June 25 as their feast. 
The belief that Claudia became a Christian goes 



THE CONDEMNATION OF CHRIST 39 
back to the second century, and may be found in 
Origen. The Greek Church assigns her a feast on 
October 27. 

Discussion Aids 
1. Of what crime was Our Lord accused in 

the court of the high priest? 
2. Did the Jews have the power to inflict 

capital punishment? 
3. Could Pilate decree capital punishment? 
4. What charges against Our Lord did the 

Jews press before Pilate? Why? 
5. Was Christ's kingdom a temporal king-

dom? 
6. What dilemma now confronted Pilate? 
7. In what six ways did Pilate try to avoid 

the issue and shift the burden? 
8. What was the symbolism of Pilate's wash-

ing his hands? Did it have any efficacy? 
9. Who was responsible for Our Lord's death, 

the Jews or Pilate? 
10. What is the last allusion to Pilate in 

history? 
11. What two accounts of Pilate have b~en 

elaborated by legend? 
12. What was Pilate's outstanding weakness? 

What class of Catholics may be likened 
unto Pilate? 

13. Why did the people, whom Christ so often 
befriended, turn so quickly against Him 
and demand His death? 

Religious 'Practices 
1. I will always uphold what is true and 

righteous no matter what the consequences 
may be. 



40 BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
2. I will never permit self-interest to prevail 

against justice. 
3. When I am humiliated I will recall the 

patience of Our Lord when Barabbas was 
preferred to Him. 



Chapter I V 

The Crucifixion 
1. Way of The Cross. 

The cross (from crux, meaning "torment") as 
an instrument of punishment is of Oriental origin. 
It was transmitted by the Persians, Assyrians and 
Chaldeans to the Greeks, Cathaginians, Egyptians 
and Romans. Crucifixion was not a Jewish mode 
of punishment, nor was it employed by the Romans 
till after the time of Caesar, when with the increas-
ing cruelty of punishment it became very common. 
Especially did it characterize the Roman domination 
in Judea under every governor. During the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., hundreds of crosses 
rose daily, till there seemed to be insuffcient room 
and wood for them, and the soldiers diversified their 
awful amusement by new modes of crucifixion. The 
Jewish appeal to Rome for the crucifixion of Christ 
came back in hundredfold eches. 

In the course of its evolution as a mode of pun-
ishment the cross took on different forms. At first 
it was a simple stake to which the condemned per-
son was fastened. Later a forklike addition was 
fastened to the top of the stake. The cross again 
assumed a new aspect by the addition of a transverse 
arm. According to the manner in which this arm 
was fastened to the original pillar, there arose three 
kinds of crosses; that in the form of an X (St. 
Andrew's cross); that in the form of a T (Anthony's 
cross); and the Latin cross, which differed from 



42' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
the second by having the pillar of the cross extend 
slightly above the transverse arm. It is almost cer-
tain that the Saviour's cross was of this form. It 
is the only one favored by early tradition and by 
the universal testimony of those who were nearest 
to Christ's time and who had only too much occasion 
to learn what the crucifixion meant. This form 
would admit most readily of affixing the board with 
the three-fold inscription which we know Christ's 
cross bore. The inscription written by Pilate was 
placed over His head. Some writers maintain that 
Christ carried only the transverse section which 
was to be nailed to a tree. Had this been the case, 
Christ would not have needed Simon's help. Be-
sides, St. John expressly says that Christ bore His 
cross (19:17). 

St. Luke tells that as they led Christ away, 
"they laid hold of one Simon of Cyrene, coming from 
the country, and they laid the cross on him to carry 
after Jesus (23:26). Simon Who probably had some 
rural occupation, was from Cyrene in Libya, which 
was in Northern Africa between Carthage and 
Alexandria. He was one of the many pilgrims of 
the Dispersion who came toi Jerusalem for the Jew-
ish feast (Acts 2:10). Simon did not carry the 
cross willingly; St. Matthew tells us that "they 
forced him to take up His cross (27:32). Nor was 
it for pity that the executioners relieved Christ of 
the load of the cross, but they were eager to finish 
the awful act. Just in what way did Simon carry 
the cross "after Christ"? The theologian Cajetan 
understood St. Luke to say that Simon carried the 
cross together with Christ. Some painters, too 
represent the burden as remaining upon the 



THE CRUCIFIXION 43 
Saviour's shoulders and Simon as merely lifting up 
the lower end of the vertical beam. But this does 
not seem to be a natural interpretation of the pass-
age. St. Luke's statement implies that the cross 
was removed from Jesus and placed on Simon; and 
that Jesus was led first, and Simon followed with the 
cross. But what about the seventh and ninth sta-
tions? Christ, no doubt, fell three or more times 
but this probably occurred before Simon was drawn 
into service. Probably, too, Christ reassumed the 
cross and fell under its load. The Stations of the 
Cross, we must remember, were fixed only in the 
Middle Ages. 

According to the law of Moses the criminal 
was to be executed outside of the camp, (Numbers 
15:35). When all preparations had been completed, 
the procession set out. The composition of the way 
of the cross was as follows: 1) a mounted cen-
turion in charge of the crucifixion; 2) soldiers 
marching in rank, whose office was to prevent riots 
and disturbances; 3) a herald next, proclaiming the 
crimes of the accused and his sentence; 4) finally 
the cruciarius—the classical term applied to those 
condemned to this punishment—bearing his heavy 
cross. Suspended around his neck was a tablet on 
which was inscribed the "cause" of the condemna-
tion. This tablet was later nailed to the cross above 
the head of the crucified. The cruciarius was sur-
rounded by four soldiers (Acts 12:4), who were to 
exercise the office of executioners and afterward to 
keep guard at the cross, until the body would be 
taken down after his death. In return for their 
services these four soldiers divided among them-
selves the articles of clothing of the crucified. 5) 



44' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
On the occasion of our Lord's crucifixion, two rob-
bers—rioters who probably belonged to the band of 
Barabbas, and who had been condemned to be cruci-
fied on the same day—followed behind Christ, carry-
ing their crosses and accompanied by their execu-
tioners. 6) At the end of the procession came the 
crowd of friends and foes. 

Can we find today in Jerusalem the road follow-
ed by Christ and marked with His blood during His 
Passion? The traditions regarding the "Way of the 
Cross" are not much earlier than modern times. 
The "Stations" designed as such today were not 
fixed till the Middle Ages. Of the fourteen Stations, 
the first nine are actually in the streets of Jeru-
salem, the rest are inside the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre. The general route is from east to west, 
the distance about 3,000 feet. The places histor-
ically certain are the pretorium, located in the An-
tonia Tower, Calvary and the Sepulchre. 

BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
2. The Crucifixion 

Christ was crucified on Calvary. The Latin 
term Calvaria and the Hebrew word Golgotha mean 
"Skull"—a name derived from the fact that the hill 
was imagined to resumble a human skull. This 
practice of designing places for their real or fancied 
resemblance to well-known objects, wafe common 
among the ancients. The ground of Calvary was 
rocky, and as executions took place there, it is 
probable that holes were already cut in the rocks to 
receive the crosses. An ancient tradition tells us 
that the cross of Christ was reared over the sepul-



THE CRUCIFIXION 45 
chre of Adam, arid that it stood exactly over his 
skull. This is the origin of the custom of placing 
a skull and crossbones on crucifixes just under the 
feet of the image of Christ. Whatever may be said 
about this tradition, it is certain that Christ by His 
death on the cross destroyed death which Adam by 
his fall brought into the world. 

The place of execution was always a raised spot 
near a thronged highway, so that the sight of the 
criminals might inspire horror and in the case of 
our Lord's death, so that the mob might mock Him. 
Hence it is that Christ was crucified outside of the 
walls of Jerusalem. The Calvary which Christians 
have always identified with the Calvary of the Gos-
pels is today enclose within the city walls. In this 
connection, some recent writers have raised the point 
whether our Calvary is actually the historical one 
(Hebrews 13:12). Certain commentators have re-
jected the old site and proposed a new one (designat-
ed as "Gordon's Calvary")—the elevation over 
Jeremias' grotto, not f a r from and outside the 
Damascus gate. This site, however, lack^ all histori-
cal basis. The two outstanding archeologists in Pale-
stine, Father Vincent and Abel, tell us that the 
"archeological security" of the present Calvary is 
"complete." 

How was Christ attached to the cross? It is 
probable that the cross was first erected and there-
after His body was elevated and nailed to it. This 
seems to be the common teaching of the Fathers 
of the Church. It would be f a r easier to raise a 
man up and bind Him to a cross already fixed in 
position than to raise a cross on which a man was 
bound. Besides, we must remember that it was not 



46' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
customary among the Romans to raise the body to 
any considerable height above the ground. Christ's 
crucifixion, then, took place in about the following 
manner: A long rope was tied to the arms of 
Christ and thrown over the transverse arm of the 
cross. Christ was partly drawn up by that rope 
and partly raised by the hands of the soldiers. Then 
one of the executioners climbed on a ladder or a 
stone and attached the hands to the transverse beam 
and then the feet to the vertical beam. However, 
the opinion that Christ was nailed to the cross 
lying on the ground, though not probable, is not 
to be condemned. 

According to the general method of crucifixion 
of the time, our Lord's hands and feet were first 
tied to the cross by ropes. The crucified person 
would certainly writhe and struggle in the agony 
caused by the crucifixion, and without additional 
fastenings the body would be thrown sidewise from 
its vertical position and torn from the cross. The 
support under the middle of the body would not be 
sufficient. 

Our Lord's hands and feet were then pierced 
by nails. That's Christ's hands were pierced is 
clear from the words of the Apostle Thomas record-
ed by St. John: "Except I shall see in His hands 
the print of the nails, and put my finger into the 
place of the nails, and put my hands into His side, 
I will not believe (20:25)." Christian tradition 
has universally taught the piercing of the feet, in 
connection with the prophecy in Psalm 21:17, which 
is understood literally: "They have dug My hands 
and feet." And when the Apostles were troubled 
and frightened at the sudden appearance of the 



THE CRUCIFIXION 47 

risen Christ He—to assure them that it was He— 
"showed them His hands and feet (Luke 24:40.)" 

Our Lord was nailed to the cross by four nails, 
one being driven into each hand, and one into each 
foot. The most ancient images always represent 
Christ's feet as pierced separately. St. Helena, ac-
cording to the testimony of the Father, found four 
nails ; and none of the ancient writers mention that 
one foot was placed on top of the other, both then 
being pierced by one nail. It is only in the thir-
teenth century that this conception appears. Cima-
bue and Giotto adopted this manner of representing 
Christ, and all subsequent painters'imitated them. 
This conception may have originated in the wish to 
accentuate Christ's sufferings. 

According to ancient writers, a support was 
placed under the middle of Christ's body, this being 
necessary to sustain its weight. This support was 
of the form of a peg or wooden horn projecting 
from the cross, and would have been hidden by the 
linen cloth around our Lord's loins. In some scenes 
of the crucifixion a rest is fastened to the cross 
under the feet of our Lord, but there is no evidence 
for this among the ancient writers. 

The feet of our Lord were not more than two or 
three feet above the ground. Thus could the com-
munication described in the Gospels take place be-
tween Him and others. Thus also might His sacred 
lips be moistened with the sponge attached to a 
short stalk of hyssop. Sometimes "the crucified 
body was so near the ground that wild beasts could 
devour it. 

Our Lord very probably wore a covering about 
His loins. When ancient, writers say that a man 



48' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
is naked they do not mean that he is without some 
such covering as this. The Latin writer Cicero 
says that "actors had this respect for the ancient 
disciples, that no one dared go forth before the 
people without a loin-cloth." In the tract of the 
Mischna, De Synedriis, it was ordered that the per-
son who was stoned should not be entirely naked. 

Ancient writers also teach generally that Christ 
wore the crown of thorns on the cross. It is difficult 
to determine the species of thornbush from which 
the crown was taken. Relics of the crown of thorns 
are preserved-at P'aris, Pisa and Treves, but they 
are doubtful, and all cannot be genuine because they 
are quite different in character. Botanists find it 
hard to determine the species of any of them. All 
through Palestine thorn bushes flourished, and it 
would not have been difficult for the soldiers to ob-
tain a branch of a thorn bush for their cruel pur-
pose. In this connection we might add that it is 
equally impossible to ascertain the species of reed 
used as the mock sceptre of Christ. 

The Evangelist tell us that darkness was over 
the earth from the sixth hour (12 M.) until the 
ninth hour (3 P.M.). This darkness did not en-
velop the whole earth, for at that hour it was night 
in the other hemisphere of the globe, and consequ-
ently such part could not be subject to a miraculous 
darkening of the sun. Many exegetes understand 
the word "earth" to mean the whole hemisphere in 
which it was then day: If the darkness was due to 
an obscuring of the sun it ought to affect the whole 
hemisphere. The darkness was not due to an or-
dinary eclipse, because it occurred at the time of 
the full moon (the 14th of the lunar month Nisan) 



THE CRUCIFIXION 49 
when such a phenonenon could not take place na-
turally; moreover, the darkness lasted for three 
hours, whereas a total eclipse of the sun can last 
only fifteen minutes. Some Scripturist think that 
God, by withholding His' sustaining power or by 
changing the photosphere, prevented the sun's rays 
from reaching the earth. Although the darkness 
was quite dense, it was not as thick as that of the 
middle of night. The miracle was a testimony to 
the Divinity of Jesus when His weakness seemed the 
greatest. It was nature's testimony of the sorrow-
ful event that sin had made necessary. Finally, it 
was a testimony to the Jews of the crime they had 
committed. 

A difficulty exists in regard to the hours of the 
Crucifixion. In Mark 15:25 we read: "And it was 
the third hour, and they crucified Him," whereas 
John 19:14, says: "And it was the parasceve of 
the Pasch, about the sixth hour, and Pilate saith 
to the Jews: Behold your king." How could Christ 
be crucified at the third hour (9 A. M.), if about 
the sixth hour (12 M.) He was still standing before 
Pilate? In approaching this problem, we must 
remember that we are dealing with a people not 
furnished with clocks and watches. The Hebrews 
divided the day into four parts called respectively 
the first. (6 A. M.), the third (9 A. M.), the sixth 
(12 M.) and the ninth hour (3 P. M.). They grouped 
the twelve hours of the day into four periods which 
they denominated from the number of the hour with 
which they began. A man determining time by 
the position of the sun in the heavens cannot accur-
ately assign the hours, but he can with considerable 
certainty ascertain the four great divisions. St. 



50' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
Mark's expression declares that Jesus was crucified 
in that division of the day whose beginning was 
called the third hour. St. John describes the cruci-
fixion in its relation to the sixth hour. 

3. Pierced With a Lance 
Crucifixion did not of itself usually cause imme-

diate death. Hence recourse was had to a barbarous 
method of hastening death—the crurifragium, the 
breaking of the bones of the legs with a club or 
hammer. The inflicting of death by breaking the 
legs was a common Roman punishment. All things 
point to the fact that it was a means of torture to 
make the death of a condemned man more painful. 
The breaking of the bones was followed by a thrust 
of a lance in the side. This thrust of a spear or 
sword ended the agony, and was known as a "mercy 
stroke." 

The Roman soldiers were very careful to certify 
the death of executed men. When they arrived at 
the Saviour's cross, to do the same to Him as to 
the robbers, they saw that He was already dead. 
One of them by way of precaution gave our Lord the 
"mercy stroke." He plunged the spear into Christ's 
side so that all doubt about death was removed. 

It is often asked, which side of our Lord was 
pierced? Since the thrust was to bring certain and 
instantaneous death, one would naturally expect 
that the left side should have been pierced. The 
apocryphal gospels of Nicodemus and of the Infancy, 
however, as well as the Ethiopian version, tell us 
that Christ's right side was pierced. This early 
belief, since it recedes from the customary manner 
of procedure, seems to rest on a historical basis. 
From the gospel of Nicodemus we also learn that 



THE CRUCIFIXION 51 

the name of the penitent thief was Dysmas, that 
of the other robber Gistas, and that of the piercing 
soldier Longinus. The last-named is not to be 
identified with the centurion: it is incredible that 
he who exclaimed, "Truly this is the Son of God," 
would have dare to pierce the Saviour's side. Some-
times this soldier is depicted as sitting on a horse 
and thrusting a long lance into the side of the 
Crucified. But since, as we have already pointed 
out,^ the cross was not very high, the wielder of 
the lance was very likely a foot-soldier. 

St. John tells us that after the soldier pierced 
ChristV side, "immediately there came out blood 
and water (19:34). Whether the blood preceded 
the water is not absolutely certain. | It is clear, 
however, that the two did not flovy at the same 
time, since it would have been impossible to dis-
cern the water. St. John's words plainly declare 
that the blood and the water were distinct. 

Writers have advanced many explanations of the 
flow of blood and water from the Saviour's side. 
Some think that after the death of Jesus there was 
a partial separation of the corpuscles of the blood 
from the serum, and that the latter is what St. John 
calls water. This opinion is hardly tenable. In 
the first place, serum is not water; it is a pale 
yellowish liquid which separates from the clot in 
the coagulation of the blood. Physiologists are 
agreed that this separation does not take place until 
at least four hours after death, whereas Christ's 
side was pierced very soon after His death. 

Even less tenable is the view that the water 
witnessed by St. John was the fluid contained in 
the pericardium. This fluid is a viscous humor, 



52' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
small in quantity, which could not flow forth as 
water. 

Equally objectionable is the theory that Christ's 
heart broke on the cross, and that the water seen 
by St. John was the serum which resulted from the 
subsequent coagulation. A healthy heart never 
breaks of itself. Our Lord's heart was not diseased 
but physically perfect. For the same reason the 
heart of Jesus cannot be said to have broken be-
cause of grief over man's sins. Christ's conscious-
ness of His exact mission and the fullness of His 
knowledge precluded all despair. 

The most acceptable interpretation seems to 
be the following: The blood flowed naturally from 
the pierced side and pierced heart of Christ; the 
water was wrought by a miracle and symbolized 
the washing away of our sins by Christ's blood. 
The water was the figure of the sacrament of re-
generation, namely Baptism. The blood flowing 
forth from Christ's side shows the source whence 
the efficacy of Baptism and man's Redemption come. 

In this connection it is well to note that devo-
tion to the Sacred Heart—though securely founded 
on the fact that Christ's human nature belonged 
to a Divine Person—took its origin from Christ's 
open side. During the first ten centuries we find in 
the Church devotion to the love of God and love of 
Christ, but no worship was rendered the Sacred 
Heart as a symbol of love. In the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries we find unmistakable indications 
of devotions to the Sacred Heart. Through the 
devotion to Christ's opened side the pierced Heart 
was gradually reached. 



THE CRUCIFIXION 
Discussion Aids 

53 

Set I 
Ì. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 

7. 

8. 

Set II 

2. 

3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 

Give a brief history of the cross as an 
instrument of punishment. 
Give a brief history of the development of 
the form of the cross. 
Describe the three forms of the cross. 
On what kind of a cross was Our Lord 
crucified ? 
In what way did Simon of Cyrene carry 
the cross after Our Lord? 
Explain the composition of the way of the 
cross. 
What is the meaning of the letter I.N.R.I. 
above the head of Our Lord on the Cross? 
How did these letter come to be placed 
there? 
Can we find in Jerusalem today the road 
followed by Christ to Calvary? 

Where was Christ crucified? What is the 
meaning of the word Calvary? 
Why are crossbones and a skull placed 
under the image of Christ on crucifixes? 
Why was Christ crucified outside the wall 
of Jerusalem? 
In what manner was Christ attached to 
the cross? 
Were His hands and feet first tied to the 
cross ? 
Were His hands and feet pierced by nails ? 
Was Our Lord attached to the cross by 
four nails? 



54' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
8. Was a support placed under His body? 

Under His feet? 
9. How high above the ground were the feet 

of the crucified Christ? 
10. Did Christ on the cross wear a covering 

about His loins? A crown of thorns on 
His Head? 

11. What was the nature and extent of the 
darkening of the sun at the crucifixion? 

12. At what hour was Christ crucified? 
Set III 

1. What was the "crurifragium?" The 
"mercy stroke"? 

2. Which side of Our Lord was pierced? 
3. What was the name of the piercing soldier? 

Did he pierce Our Lord's side from the 
ground or seated on a horse? 

4. What was the water which flowed from 
Our Lord's side? Give the four explana-
tions ? 

5. What did the water symbolize? 
6. How did devotion to the Sacred Heart 

originate ? 
Religious Practices 

1. I will make the Stations of the Cross 
frequently during Lent. 

2. I will say the sorrowful mysteries of the 
Rosary every Friday. 

3. I will try to appreciate more fully that 
the Sacrifice of the Mass is a repetition of 
the Sacrifice of Calvary. 



Chapter V 

Our Lord Forlorn 
Since the days of the Reformation the torments 

of Christ's Passion have, in certain cases, received 
such undue emphasis that not only the beauty and 
harmony but the essence itself of the Redemption 
have been obscured. Because certain ideas lend 
themselves to oratorical extravagance or strike the 
imagination forcibly, Catholic preachers occasionally 
make use of expressions which are Lutheran in 
origin, and which traditional Catholic theology has 
always disowned. Christ in His Passion and death 
is said to have become an object of God's anger, a 
malediction and an outcast from God, an object 
repulsive to the heavenly court, the universal sinner, 
and anathema in the real sense of the word. He is 
represented as suffering the pains of the damned, 
as abandoned and persecuted by the Father, as dying 
only after God had discharged against Him all His 
wrath. 

Luther unshrinkingly identified Christ with -sin-
ners and transferred our sins upon Him: "All the 
prophets saw this in the Spirit, that Christ woilld 
be of all men the greatest robber, murder, adulterer, 
thief, sacrilegious person, blasphemer, etc., than 
whom none greater ever was in the world, because 
He Who is a sacrifice for the sins of the whole 
world now is not an innocent person, and without 
sin, is not the Son of God born of the Virgin, but 
a sinner who has and bjears the sin of Paul who was 
a blasphemer, a persecutor and violent, of Peter 



56' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
who denied Christ, of David who was an adulterer, 
a murderer, and made the Gentile blaspheme the 
name of the Lord . . . If, indeed, it is not absurd 
to confess and believe that Christ was crucified 
between robbers, neither is it absurd to say that 
He was accursed and a sinner of sinners' 1 '. It is 
to be noted that Luther's conception of the Redemp-
tion followed logically from his doctrine on original 
sin; if man is radically incapable of doing good, if 
all his actions, performed under the influence of 
concupiscence, are necessarily evil, if man can at 
best only cloak himself externally with Christ's 
merits, it is natural that Christ should Himself have 
been cursed and punished in the place of the guilty. 

The famous French orators are fond of certain 
expressions which are exaggerated and justly de-
serving of the strictures which they have received 
from Catholic theologians. Bossuet speaks of an 
open war waged against Christ by a vengeful God 
Whose justice bursts like a storm over His Son and 
dies down gradually as the pent-up energy is dis-
persed in the flood. "I see a vengeful God," he 
s a y s ' 2 ' , "Who exacts from His Son the whole debt 
that is due." And again, "Divine Justice looks at His 
Son with flaming eyes, with a glance darting fire— 
He looks on Him as a sinner and strides against Him 
with all the adjuncts of Justice Divine."' 3 ' 
Elsewhere he adds: "It is an. unheard of thing 
that a God should persecute a God, that a God 
should abandon a God, and that the abandoner 
should turn a deaf ear to the plaints of the aban-
doned ; yet this is what we behold on the cross. The 
<i> Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians 3:13. (2) Oeuvres Oratoires (ed. Labarq III, p. 416). 
'3> Ibid. p. 416. 



OUR LORD FORLORN 57 
blessed soul of our Saviour trembles with the fear 
of God's wrath, and when it would fain seek refuges 
in the arms of its Father, it sees His face averted 
and itself abandoned and delivered over bound hand 
and foot as a prey to the f u r y of outraged Divine 
Justice." ( 4 ) 

Bourdaloue imagines a sort of a conflict in the 
bosom of the Divine Being between God's Justice 
and Mercy; when one is about to strike, the other 
holds back the threatening sword. Since Christ took 
upon Himself our sins, it is on Him that Divine 
Justice will be exercised: "Clothed in the leprosy of 
sin God's Justice looks on Him as an object worthy 
of every punishment, wherefore it takes up arms 
against Him, and sword in hand pursues H i m . " < 5 ) 
Forgetful of His Fatherhood, God looks upon His 
Son as His foe, and declares Himself His persecu-
tor, or rather the chief of His persecutors. Com-
menting on Christ's dereliction on the cross, Bour-
daloue says that "this rejection by God is in a sense 
the pain of loss, which it behooved Christ to experi-
ence for us a l l . " ( 6 ) 

According to Monsabre, Christ in His Passion 
is the universal man substituted for sinners of all 
places and times, the man-humanity. At the sight 
of Him, Divine Justice forgets the common herd 
of men, and sees only this strange and monstrous 
phenomenon on which it will satisfy itself. "Spare 
Him, 0 Lord, spare Him, it is Your Son—No, no 
it is sin, He must be punished." ( 7 ) God will have 
none of Him, He humiliates Him, strikes Him, 
<4> IV, p. 286. 
W Oeuvres completes, IX, p. 161 ff. (») Ibid. X, p. 157 ff. <7> Conferences, Careme, 1881, p. 24. 



58' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
wounds Him, and crushes Him. "Go, poor leper, 
deliver yourself of all shame and wounds, go and be 
banished from the land of the living. ( 8 ) 

Statements such as these may lend themselves to 
good oratory, but make exceedingly poor theology. 
The God which such conceptions imply—a cruel and 
sanguinary God, full of f u r y and vengeance—is, 
needless to say, the God neither of reason nor of 
Revelation. The New Testament writers never attri-
bute Christ's sufferings and death to Divine anger, 
even in passages where the line of argument might 
tend to culminate in such a thought. In fact, it 
seems that the sacred authors deliberately refrained 
from any language that might suggest that the Son 
became the object of the Father's anger, or that His 
death was due to an ebullition of God's wrath. 
Descriptions are given implying that Jesus bore sin 
through a profound realization of what the Divine 
attitude toward it really is, but in these very des-
criptions, phrases which might lead to inferences 
regarding the anger of God being endured by the 
Son of His love are carefully avoided. Christian 
faith is always directed to One Who was the Son of 
God, in Whom the Father was well pleased, Who 
hung upon the Cross in fulfillment of the mission 
to which His Father summoned Him, and Who must 
therefore have been in that hour the object of the 
Father's deepest satisfaction and most tender love. 
As Second Person of the Blessed Trinity Christ is 
coequal with the Father and with Him breathes 
forth the Holy Ghost, the bond, as it were, of Their 
mutual love. Besides, we must remember that all 
such terms as "anger," "wrath," "vengenance," etc., 
i 8 ) Conferences, Careme, 1879, p. 217. 



OUR LORD FORLORN 59 
when applied to God are anthropomorphic and must 
not, under pain of error, be applied to Him in the 
same way as to us. 

The exponents of the exaggerated and extra-
vagant descriptions of Christ's sufferings usually 
rely on one or another of the following Scriptural 
texts: "My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?" 
(Mark 15:34) "Christ hath redeemed us from 
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us" 
(Galatians 3:13). "Him Who knew no sin, He 
(God) hath made sin for us" (II Corinthians 5:21). 
"He spared not even His own Son, but delivered 
Him up for us all" Romans 8:32). 

The painful cry of our Lord—"My God, why 
hast Thou forsaken Me?"—cannot be understood as 
implying a cessation of loving communion between 
the Son and Father. These words, it must be re-
membered, are a quotation from Psalm 21:1, and 
in uttering them, our Lord was no doubt animated 
by the same sentiments of confidence and trust as 
the psalmist. The phrase came to the lips of Jesus 
in His agony not as an isolated cry of utter despair 
but charged with the meaning of the whole poem 
from which it is taken. 

The Reverend Dr. G. Jouassard of Lyons, 
France, who has made an exhaustive study of this 
passage in Tradition, tells us that Patristic writers 
never interpreted the text in the sense of a true 
abandonment of Christ by the Father. Some of 
them, following St. Augustine, explain the passage 
in terms of Christ's solidarity with the human race; 
Christ is not speaking here on His own account but 
as the interpreter of a fallen humanity in its utter 
helpfulness and abandonment. At any rate, the 



60' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
words, "My God," and "Father, into Thy hands I 
commend My spirit," (Luke 23:46), clearly show 
that communion between the Father and the Son 
was not interrupted. The Father abandoned the 
Son only in a relative and restricted sense, says St. 
Thomas Aquinas'9» in that He did not protect Him 
against the cruel tortures but exposed Him to suf-
fering and death. 

Some compare Christ's dereliction on the Cross 
to the "passive night" of the soul in contemplation. 
The German mystics, as Suso, Tauler and Ruys-
broeck, were perhaps the first to explain the for-
lorness of the dying Christ in this way. In this 
mystical state the soul is stricken with the terrible 
thought that she is cast off and abandoned by God 
forever, and that she shall never see His face. So 
utterly terrible is the anguish, and so awful the 
darkness, that the mind is scarcely able to maintain 
its balance under this tremendous trial. In her 
memory she suffers great agony, for look where she 
will she sees only sin. Her every thought and desire 
appear to be tainted. Her will seems paralyzed and 
helpless in the midst of this fearful conflict. In her 
intellect the soul finds only darkness. She cannot 
pray; she strives for spiritual utterance, and seems 
held as in a vise so that no touch of sweetness and 
no ray of light comes to relieve the inexpressible 
misery of her complete dereliction. 

While such a state as this is intelligible in the 
case of saintly men who ordinarily do not have ab-
solute certitude of God's friendship, it is not attri-
butable to Christ Who was sinless and Who enjoyed 
even on earth the Beatific Vision. Christ could 
( 9 > Summa Theologica, III a, q. 47, a. 3. 



OUR LORD FORLORN 61 
suffer because of physical pain, or because of the 
experimental or infused knowledge of the evils which 
awaited Him, or because of sin which dominated 
mankind. But He could not be deprived of the 
Beatific Vision which Scripture and Tradition attrib-
ute to Him from the first moment of His conception. 

Others compare the Redeemer's suffering to 
those mystical states in which the soul enjoys a 
great spiritual peace and joy, and at the same time 
suffers intensely because of the consciousness of 
the consequences of sin or because of physical pain. 
But this analogy is deficient since there could be 
no remains of sin in the sinless Christ, and since His 
sufferings were absolutely disinterested. It is true, 
however, that during the agony and Passion our 
Lord's intuitive vision did not in any way lessen the 
intensity of His moral and physical sufferings or 
impede the spontaneous movements of fear and sad-
ness. The contemplation of saints, since it is not 
entirely free from sensible activity, diminishes some-
what their physical and moral sufferings. The 
Beatific Vision of Jesus, being independent of the 
senses and of the activity of the soul in so f a r as 
it animates the body, did not exercise this moderat-
ing influence. 

St. Paul's statements that Christ was made 
"sin" and a "curse" for us do not imply that Christ 
became an outcast from God. Since Christ's Person 
was Divine, since our Lord was sinless and im-
peccable, He could not become a sinner personally 
nor identify Himself with sin or with a curse. The 
Pauline passages are to be interpreted in the light 
of a principle so characteristic of his doctrine— 
namely, the law of solidarity. Christ became man 



62' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
in order to save man. He was clad in the "likeness 
of sinful flesh" in order to vanquish the flesh 
(Romans 8:3). He was born under the Law in 
order to redeem those who were under the law 
(Galatians 4:4). He became a member of the sin-
ful human family in order to save the guilty (II 
Corinthians 5:21). He took upon Himself the male-
diction of the Law in order to save the Jews from 
the curse of the Law (Galatians 3:13). Christ, 
then, became "sin" in the sense that He became a 
member of the sinful human race whose cause He 
espoused and whose interests He embraced. He 
became a "curse for us" in so f a r as He placed Him-
self in a state which the Law declared accursed; 
for the Law—though in itself good and just and 
holy—in reality cursed all men because it did not 
give the strength and energy necessary for the 
fulfillment of what it commanded (Galatians 3:10). 

But does not the Pauline assertion that "God did 
not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for 
us all" (Romans 8:32) imply that the Father dealt 
very severely with Christ? According to St. Thomas 
Aquinas'1 0» God "delivered up" His*Son in a three-
fold sense; by preordaining from all eternity 
Christ's Passion for the liberation of the human 
race; by inspiring Christ with the will and love to 
suffer for us; and by not protecting Him against 
suffering but exposing Him to His torturers. This 
interpretation of the Angelic Doctor, which is based 
on the teaching of the Fathers, clearly shows that 
the Pauline text cannot be adduced in support of the 
exaggerated penal theories. 

Others pretend to catch an echo of a struggle 
( 1 0 > Summa Theologica, III, a. q. 18, a. 5, 6. 



OUR LORD FORLORN 63 
between the Father and the Son in the agonizing cry 
of the Saviour; "Father, if it be possible, let this 
chalice pass from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will 
but as Thou wilt" (Matthew 26:39). In attempting 
to determine thè precise meaning of this passage it 
is important to keep in mind basic dogmatic prin-
ciples. Since Christ had two complete and perfect 
natures, He also had two wills—the Divine and the 
human. A conflict between the Divine and human 
wills of Christ would be admissible only if there 
were in Him also two persons, a human person and 
a Divine Person. But in Christ there was only one 
Person which operated through the two wills. Since 
a person is one ani indivisible, it cannot be in con-
tradiction with itself at one and the same time and 
in regard to the same object. 

Besides the rational will, which determines 
itself by deliberating and by comparing one thing 
with another, St. T h o m a s ' 1 1 ' posits in Christ an-
other will—namely, the "natural" will. The "nat-
ural" will is the rational will in so f a r as it spon-
taneously and instinctively tends toward the 
desirable and recoils and flees from everything 
disagreeable and contrary to human nature. 
The sensitive nature may be considered as 
a participation of the "natural" will, with 
which it equivalently constitutes the law of self-
preservation. Christ by the fullness of His human 
knowledge saw all the sufferings which awaited 
Him ; He saw the heinousness of sin and the punish-
ments due to i t ; He saw the future ingratitude of 
men for whom His sacred Passion would be of no 
avail. Now, because of the substantial union of the 
(11) gumma Theologica, I l i a , q.18, a.5, 6. 



64' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
soul and body, there is no internal idea or emotion 
which is not accompanied by a physical reaction, no 
psychosis without a corresponding neurosis. Since 
Christ's human nature was absolutely perfect, it 
was more sensitive than ours, and its reaction to 
the knowledge of His mind took the form of a bloody 
sweat, of great sadness and fear. The words, "Let 
this chalice pass from Me," are an articulate ex-
pression of His sensitive nature spontaneously re-
coiling from all these sufferings. 

There was no conflict, however, between 
Christ's "natural" will and sensitive nature, on the 
one hand, and Christ's Divine'will—with which His 
rational will was in full conformity—on the other. 
"Not My will ("natural" will) but Thine (Divine) 
be done (Luke 22:42). By His "natural" will and 
sensitive nature Christ fled death inefficaciously 
("if it be possible") as an evil of nature. By the 
Divine will—which is common to the Three Persons 
—and His rational will Christ willed His death effi-
caciously for the salvation of men. 

The problem may be illustrated by an analogy. 
A martyr for example, deliberately and joyfully de-
termines to lay down his life for the faith. Yet 
when the instruments of torture are applied to his 
body, his sensitive nature immediately and spontan-
eously recoils from them. This phenomenon does not 
indicate that the martyr is faltering in his faith or 
weakening in his resolve, but merely exemplifies a 
law governing human nature as such. 

In conclusion, let us point out a few principles 
which are fundamental in a doctrine of the Re-
demption : 

In the first place, the whole work of the Re-



OUR LORD FORLORN 65 
demption was a work of love—a work of all the 
Three Persons in the God-head, cooperating in 
blessed harmony. It is the revelation of the infinite 
love of Three Persons in one God. The Father in love 
gives His Son; the Son in love gives Himself; the 
Holy Ghost in love cooperates at every stage. By 
His Passion—which in its inception as well as in its 
consummation was a work of love—Christ satisfied 
Divine Justice. Some theologians excuse the ex-
aggerations of the French preachers on the ground 
that these statements were oratorical descriptions of 
Christ's expiation of sin and satisfaction of Divine 
Justice. 

Secondly, there was no schism in the Divine 
Nature, no conflict between the .Divine attributes. 
God's justice and mercy did not need to be com-
posed by the cross, since they had never fallen out. 
On the contrary, the Redemption manifested the 
harmonious working of God's mercy and justice. 
Since the Redeemer was God-Man, His offering had 
an infinite value and safeguarded fully the rights of 
Divine Justice. Since He was at the same time Head 
of the human-race, He freed us from undergoing 
personally the penalty of our sins, and thereby satis-
fied the claims of Divine Mercy. 

Thirdly, Christ may be said to have borne our 
sins and experienced the pains of the damned in the 
sense that He fully understood what sin means. His 
lively sentiment of the Divine Holiness and His 
great love of . men intensified the impression which 
moral evil produced upon His most pure conscience. 

Finally, Christ was not punished in the real 
sense of the word, nor did He become an object of 
Divine wrath. For punishment implies guilt, and 



66' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
guilt attaches to the sin committed and to the will 
and person who commits sin. Punishment would be 
an injustice where there is no guilt. If Christ—Who 
was Innocence and Holiness itself—suffered, it was 
on our behalf. However, there was not a substitu-
tion of persons but of effects; the meritorious suf-
ferings of Christ the Head were substituted for the 
punishment due to our sins. 

Discussion Aids 
1. What statements should we avoid as ex-

aggerated and objectionable in speaking of 
the Passion and Death of Christ? 

2. Is it correct to say that God was angry at 
Christ? 

3. How are we to explain the passage, "My 
God, why hast Thou forsaken me"? 

4. May we compare Christ's dereliction on 
the cross to the "passive night" of the 
soul in contemplation? 

5. May we compare it to other mystical states 
of the saints? 

6. May we say that Christ became a "sin" 
and a "curse" for us? 

7. How are we to interpret the following two 
Scriptural passages: 

a) "God did not spare His own Son 
but delivered Him up for us all" 
(Romans 8:32). 

b) "Father, if it be possible let this 
chalice pass from me. Neverthe-
less, not as I will but as thou wilt" 
(Matthew 26:39)? 

8. Show that the Redemption was a 
a) work of love 



OUR LORD FORLORN 67 
b) a manifestation of the harmonious 

workings of God's mercy and justice. 
9. May we say that Christ 

a) suffered the pains of the damned? 
b) was punished for our sins? 

Religious Practices 
1. I will not only abstain from meat on 

Friday but I shall also at the same time 
gratefully recall the Passion and Death of 
Christ. 

2. I will meditate devoutly during the Holy 
Hour on the Passion and Death of Christ. 

3. I will express my love for God by suffer-
ing, that is, by denying myself and mor-
tifying my evil inclinations. 



Chapter X 

" H e Descended Into Hell" 
Several passages in the Old Testament have 

been understood by the Fathers of the Church as 
referring, in a veiled and typical manner, to Christ's 
descent into hell. Here are a few of these texts 
found in the Psalms: "Lift up your gates, 0 ye 
princes, and be lifted up, 0 eternal gates, and the 
king of glory shall enter in" (Psalm 23:7, 9 ) ; 
"Thou hast brought forth, 0 Lord, my soul from 
hell; thou hast saved me from them that go down 
into the pit" (Psalm 29:4); "God will redeem my 
soul from the hand of hell, when He shall receive 
me" (Psalm 48:16); "Thou hast delivered my soul 
out of the lower hell" (Psalm 85:13). The following 
three passages have likewise been considered as pre-
figuring Christ's descent into the lower regions: "I 
will penetrate to all the lower parts of the earth, and 
will behold all that sleep and will enlighten all that 
hope in the Lord" (Eccli. 24:45); "Thou also by 
the blood of Thy testament hast sent forth Thy 
prisoners out of the pit" (Zachary 9:11); "I will 
deliver them out of the hand of death. I will redeem 
them from death. 0 death, I will be thy death ; 0 
hell, I will be thy bite" (Osee 13:14). 

The decisive tests are found principally in the 
New Testament. In his sermon to the people after 
the Ascension, St. Peter quotes Psalm 15:10 and 
applies the text directly to Christ: "Thou wilt not 
leave My soul in hell, nor wilt Thou give Thy Holy 
One to see corruption . , . Forseeing this, he (David) 



"HE DESCENDED INTO HELL" 69 
spoke of the Resurrection of Christ. For neither 
was He left in hell, neither did His Flesh see corrup-
tion" (Acts 2:27, 31: 13:35; 2:24). In this passage 
the term "hell" cannot refer to the grave because 
the soul was not buried; it cannot mean "death" 
because Christ's soul did not die; it must, therefore, 
denote an abode in which our Lord's soul sojourned 
until it was reunited to the "uncorrupted" flesh. 

In his First Epistle St. Peter tells us that after 
His death Christ applied the fruits of the Redemp-
tion to the spirits detained in prison: "Because 
Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the 
unjust; that He might offer us to God, being put to 
death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the 
spirit, in which also coming He preached to those 
spirits that were in prison, which had been some 
time incredulous, when they waited for the patience 
of God in the days of Noe when the ark was a build-
ing, wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved 
by water" (I Peter 3:18-20); the men who remained 
incredulous while Noe was building the ark, sin-
cerely repented when the waters of the deluge came 
upon them and after the purgatorial purification 
were admitted into the abode into which Christ de-
scended. Further on the Apostle adds: "For this 
cause was the Gospel preached also to the dead, 
that they might be judged indeed according to men, 
in the flesh, but may live according to God in the 
spirit" (I Peter 4:6). This doctrine of Christ's 
descent into hell is based not only on these Scrip-
tural passages but also on the unmistakable teach-
ing of the Fathers and the infallible authority of the 
Church. 

What was the nature of the "hell" or "prison" 



70' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
into which Christ descended? In the teaching of the 
Old Testament the term "hell" (Sheol, Hades, in-
fernum) may denote any one of the following four 
abodes, its specific meaning in each case being de-
termined by the context: 1) hell in the strict sense 
of the term, the abode of the reprobate and the 
demons; 2) the purgatory of the faithful, that is of 
those who believed in the future Redeemer, but who 
died with venial sin or with unexpiated temporal 
penalties—such as the soldiers of Judas Machabeus 
(II Machabees 12: 43-46); 3) the pagan limbo; 4) 
the limbo of the just or of the Fathers—as Jeremias 
(II Machabees 15:14) and Onias—who by their 
prayers can aid the living. The Limbo of the Fath-
ers is identical with the "bosom of Abraham" 
(Luke 16:19) and with the "Paradise" of the peni-
tent thief (Luke 23:43). The phrase, "bosom of 
Abraham," was employed by the rabbis as a figura-
tive expression to denote the sojourn of the blessed. 
The ancestor of the chosen race and the father of 
all believers is pictured as receiving on his knees 
and in his bosom all the faithful children and admit-
ting them to a participation of his bliss. In this 
abode the just—and those who had finished their 
purgatorial sufferings—enjoyed repose, consolation, 
refreshment and an imperfect bliss which consisted 
principally in the immunity from pain and the 
assured expectation of heavenly glory. Their so-
journ in this place was only provisional; they 
awaited Christ, Who would introduce them into the 
bosom of perfect happiness. 

Now, into which one of these four abodes—and 
in what manner—did Christ descend after His 
death on the Cross? 



"HE DESCENDED INTO HELL" 71 
Did Christ's soul descend into the hell of the 

damned? According to St. Thomas, ( 1 ) Christ after 
His death could sojourn in a place in two 
ways: first, in the inseparable unity of the 
Divine Person with the soul, and, secondly, 
by the mere exercise of His Divine power; 
the first is called in theology a "substantial" pres-
ence, the second, a "virtual" of "dynamic" presence. 
It is certain that Christ did not descend substan-
tially into hell. A personal sojourn in hell would 
have been repugnant to the dignity of the God-
Man. The opinion of Calvin and other heretics that 
Christ descended into hell to experience the penal-
ties of the damned, is sheer blasphemy, since it pre-
supposes that His soul was sinful and did not always 
enjoy the Beatific Vision. Besides, the souls in hell 
were absolutely irredeemable, as were the demons 
themselves; it would have been useless for Christ to 
"preach" (I Peter 3:18-20) to them or try to con-
sole them. Christ's descent into the hell of the 
damned was only virtual and consisted in His re-
proaching of the damned with their bad faith and 
their malice. The triumph over hell which the 
Church celebrates in her Easter liturgy, is suffi-
ciently explained by this exercise of Christ's Divine 
power in hell. Although Christ did not descend into 
hell, did He, nevertheless, snatch one or another of 
the souls from its just tortures? St. Thomas and 
St. Robert Bellarmine answer decidedly in the nega-
tive: the penalties of hell are eternal; secondly,.no 
soul can attain the Beatific Vision unless it be first 
endowed with faith and sanctifying grace. 

Christ did not descend into the pagan limbo. 
(i> Summa Theologica, I l i a . q. 52. 



72' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
In fact, it is uncertain whether Christ exercised in 
this abode any influence whatsoever. The lot of these 
souls is definitely fixed for all eternity. They have 
once for all arrived at their destination. Having had 
neither faith nor sanctifying grace, they are in-
capable of receiving the Beatific Vision. On the 
other hand, Christ could not have desired to triumph 
over these souls since their sojourn in this place is 
not due to any malice on their part, but simply and 
solely to original sin contracted by physical descent 
from Adam. 

Did Christ descend substantially into purga-
tory? And if so, did He liberate unconditionally all 
the souls there detained? Did He grant them a sort 
of plenary indulgence in commemoration of His 
Redemption? St. Thomas holds that Christ's pres-
ence in purgatory was only virtual and consisted in 
granting the souls temporarily imprisoned there 
"the hope of early Beatitude." It is a law of Divine 
justice that the faithful who have failed to render 
complete satisfaction in this life must suffer in pur-
gatory. Revelation supplies no evidence for assum-
ing that an exception was made in this instance. 
Nor is there any warrant for believing that the in-
tensity of the pains compensated for and supplied 
what was lacking to the expiation. The Passion of 
Christ operated then with the same manner of effi-
cacy as it does now. On the other hand, it is not 
very probable that all the inmates of purgatory 
finished their expiation at exactly the same moment. 
Hence it is commonly held, with the Angelic Doctor, 
that at the time of the descent only those souls were 
liberated who had fully finished their purification, 
or who—because of a special faith in and devotion 



"HE DESCENDED INTO HELL" 73 
to the death of Christ during their lifetime—merited 
the favor of being released from the temporal suf-
ferings of purgatory on the occasion of His 
descent. 

Christ descended into the Limbo of the Fathers, 
that is into the place where the patriarchs and just 
men of the Old Testament, together with those 
pagans who had died in the state of grace after 
having been cleansed from all stain of sin in purga-
tory, were awaiting the Beatific Vision. Since, 
according to Revelation, the purpose of Christ's de-
scent was the deliverance of the just, it seems neces-
sary to restrict His substantial descent to the Limbo 
of the Fathers. Christ's soul remained in Limbo as 
long as His body was dead and remained in the 
tomb. Christ descended into this abode not merely 
by the exercise of His power but in His Divine 
Person substantially united to His soul. St. Peter 
says that Christ "preached" the "Gospel" to the 
spirits that were in "prison." What and why did He 
preach to them? Did He wish to evangelize and 
convert them? This was impossible since the souls 
in this state were fully converted to God. The 
"Gospel" which Christ as triumphant Victor de-
scended to preach to the inmates of Limbo was the 
glad tidings that their imprisonment was at an 
end. 

These souls had truly been in "prison." Under 
the influence of Satan, Adam, the head of the 
human race, committed a universal offense, that is 
an offense affecting all men. With the universal 
offense was indissolubly connected a racial penalty, 
namely, exclusion from heaven. An individual's re-
pentance, although it removed his personal offenses 



76' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
and placed him in a state of grace, did not repair 
the universal offense or atone for the universal 
penalty. From this viewpoint the just in Limbo 
were still in Satan's clutches, forced to remain in 
Limbo until the death of Christ Who, as second 
racial Head, expiated the universal offense and 
penalty. Christ descended into Limbo to apply to 
these souls the fruits of His Redemption, to deliver 
them from prison by conferring upon them the 
Beatific Vision, and thereby to triumph over Satan. 
From the moment of Christ's entrance into Limbo 
these souls were flooded' with Beatific light and 
began to enjoy the bliss which is its consequence. 
During the forty days of Christ's sojourn upon 
earth, these souls remained His invisible compan-
ions, and on Ascension Day formed His triumphant 
cortege into heaven. 

Discussion Aids 
1. What old Testament passages prefigure 

Christ's descent into "hell"? 
2. What New Testament passages prove 

Christ's descent into "hell"? 
3. What four abodes may the word "hell" 

denote? 
4. What is meant by "Abraham's bosom"? 
5. Into which one of these four did Christ 

descend ? 
6. In what two ways could Christ sojourn in 

a place? 
7. Did Christ descend substantially into 

hell? Why? 
8. Did He liberate some souls from hell? 
9. Did Christ exercise any influence on the 



"HE DESCENDED INTO HELL" 75 
souls in the pagan limbo? 

10. Did He descend substantially into purga-
tory? 

11. Did Christ grant a sort of a plenary indul-
gence to the souls in purgatory? 

12. What message did Christ bring to the souls 
in the Limbo of the Fathers? 

13. In what sense were these souls the cap-
tives of Satan? 

14. When did they enter heaven? 
Religious Practices 

1. On Holy Saturday I will meditate de-
voutly on Christ's sojourn in the Limbo of 
the Fathers. 

2. I will nourish my love of Christ by re-
flecting frequently on the loving kindness 
with which He visited the souls in Limbo 
immediately after His death. 

3. On Ascension Day I will recall the glory 
and the triumph of the souls of Limbo as 
they accompanied Our Lord to heaven. 



Chapter V I I 

The Redemption 
The Redemption may be defined as follows: 

"The God-Man's or second Adam's loving obedience, 
expressed amid sufferings and death, meriting 
graces which are distributed to us by the risen 
Christ, and which restore to us—though not entirely 
in the same form—the gifts lost by the first Adam." 

We admit that this definition is somewhat long 
and involved. But it is not easy to express in one 
sentence a dogma which is so rich in content, so 
manifold in its aspects and so detailed in its implica-
tions. At any rate, the definition is intended to 
emphasize the essential elements in the doctrine of 
the Redemption, namely: 

1) The dignity of the Person of the Re-
deemer, Who is the "God-Man"; 2) the Redeemer's 
headship of the human race as the "second Adam"; 
3) the moral or formal element of the Redemption 
—Christ's love and obedience; 4) the penal or 
material element—Christ's Passion and death; 
5) the Resurrection, which is the necessary com-
plement of the Redemption; and 6) the restoration 
—through a participation in Christ's merits—of the 
heritage which the race lost in Adam. 

THE PERSON OF THE REDEEMER 
1. We have already assembled in another 

chapter the numerous Scriptural passages which 
show clearly and explicity that Christ is God. In 
the present chapter we shall touch on Christ's 
Divinity only in so f a r as it bears upon the Re-



THE REDEMPTION 77 
demption. Had Christ been mere man, He could 
not have rendered to God an equivalent satisfaction 
for the sins of men. For the offense committed 
against God is morally infinite. In explaining the 
character of mortal sin the great theologians of the 
Middle Ages appealed to the following philosophical 
principle: "The injury is in the person injured." In 
other words, an injury is proportionate to and grows 
with the dignity of the person injured. The same 
injury committed successively, for example, against 
a priest, a bishop, archbishop, cardinal and Pope—or 
against the mayor of a city, governor of a state and 
president of a nation—becomes correspondingly 
greater with each higher personage. Yet in all these 
instances we are within the domain of the human 
and finite. What shall we say of an offense against 
an Infinite Being, against Him upon Whom we 
essentially depend, against Him Who is our Crea-
tor, Conserver and Last End, and Who has a strict 
right to our obedience ? It is morally infinite. 

Man of himself can do nothing to repair this 
morally infinite offense which he committed against 
God by mortal sin. For, as the same mediaeval 
theologians say, "Honor is in the person honoring," 
that is, its value is measured by the dignity of its 
author. Now, God is nowise dependent on us nor 
does He need our praises. If He deigns to accept 
them as meritorious, He nevertheless takes them 
at their intrinsic worth, namely, as something 
human and finite. 

Who then can bridge the gap or abyss between 
an Infinite God and finite man? Only the God-Man, 
Christ. As Man, Christ can speak and make satis-
faction in our name; as God and equal in all things 



78' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
to the Father, His voice penetrates to the throne of 
the Almighty. His actions have an infinite value, 
are infinitely pleasing to God, and blot out the 
offense caused by our sins. 

2. As God-Man, Christ verifies in Himself all 
the characteristics of a mediator. In the physical 
order He binds together in the unity of His Person 
the Divine and human natures. This union exists,, 
however, only with a view to the reconciliation of 
sinful man with an offended God. St. Paul preg-
nantly sums up this natural and moral mediation in 
the following passage: "For there is one God, and 
one Mediator of God arid men, the Man Jesus 
Christ, Who gave Himself a redemption for all." 
(I Timothy 2:5, 6). Elsewhere the Apostle bases 
Christ's universal and unique moral mediation upon 
His natural mediatorship: "In Him it hath well 
pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell, 
and through Him to reconcile all things unto Him-
self, making peace through the blood of His cross, 
both as to the things that are on earth, and the 
things that are in heaven" (Colossians 1:19). 
Paul's dpctrine of the Redemption turns, as it were, 
on the pivotal concept of the mediatorship to Christ: 
"God indeed was in Christ reconciling the world to 
Himself" (II Corinthians 5:19). Christ's media-
tion began at His conception and was consummated 
by His Passion and death; it comprised all the ac-
tions of His life on earth, from the manger to the 
cross. 

CHRIST AS "SECOND ADAM" 
When St. Paul reflected in the light of Divine 

Revelation on the series of stupendous events of 
which Christ was the cause, when he pondered over 



THE REDEMPTION 79 
the incalculable blessings which His brief presence 
effected in the life of mankind, there gradually 
arose in the Apostle's mind a grand antithesis be-
tween the first and last heads of mankind, between 
the author of sin and death and the Author of jus-
tice and life. He saw a clear relation between un-
regenerate humanity and its natural head, Adam, 
on the one hand, and between the new spiritual hu-
manity and its Head, Jesus Christ, on the other. As 
sinful humanity was in some way present at and 
partook of Adam's transgression, so redeemed hu-
manity was similarly present at and partook of 
Christ's death, burial and Resurrection. In a pas-
sage which is rightly considered as classical, St. Paul 
has pointed out with unmistakable clearness that 
Adam is the head of the human race in respect to its 
sinfulness, Christ the Head of humanity in regard 
to its redemption: 

"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into 
this world, and by sin death; and so death passed 
upon all men, in whom all have sinned. But not as 
the offense, so also the gift. For if by the offense 
of one, many died; much more the grace of God, 
and the gift, by the grace of one Man, Jesus Christ, 
hath abounded unto many. 

"And not as it was by one sin, so also is the 
gift. For judgment indeed was by one unto con-
demnation; but grace is of many offenses, unto jus-
tification. 

"For if by one man's offense death reigned 
through one; much more they who receive abun-
dance of grace, and of the gift, and of justice, shall 
reign in life through One, Jesus Christ. 

"Therefore, as by the offense of one, unto all 



80' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
men to condemnation; so also by the justice of One, 
unto all men to justification of life. 

"For as by the obedience of one man, many 
were made sinners; so also by the obedience of One, 
many shall be made just" (Roman 5:12-19). 

Adam and Christ, then, stand in analogous re-
lations to mankind, and it is the aim of the Apostle 
to show that "where sin abounded, grace did more 
abound" (Roman 5:20). 

In another pregnant formula St. Paul again 
tells us that the fall as well as the redemption of 
humanity take place according to the law of solidar-
ity; "For by a man came death, and by a Man the 
resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so 
also in Christ all shall be made alive" (I Corin-
thians 15:21, 22). At no time does St. Paul separ-
ate the Christians from Christ, the human race 
from its Representative and Head. At every stage 
in the economy of Redemption, the acts of the Sav-
iour are done in our name and for our advantage, 
or, more precisely, they profit us because they are 
accomplished in a certain way by us in the Person 
of our Head. In our Chief we expiate our sins and 
satisfy Divine Justice, in Him we are reconciled to 
God and God to us. In close union with its Head and 
Representative mankind repairs its faults and coop-
erates in the restoration of its supernatural life. 
The Son of God, consubstantial with the Father, be-
came man to render us, by His participation of 
human nature, partakers of the Divine Nature and a 
blessed immortality. 

For the sake of clarity, let us recall that Christ 
is our Head under a three-fold title. Christ is Head 
of the human race, first of all, by reason of the 



THE REDEMPTION 81 
Incarnation; in the Incarnate Christ the whole 
human race was—in the words of St. Irenaeus— 
"summed up." Christ is our Head, secondly, by 
reason of conquest; since Christ Himself was sin-
less, His victory over Satan, sin and the flesh was 
merited in behalf of His mystic members. Finally, 
Christ becomes our Head actually when we come to 
participate in His atoning merits. While Christ is— 
or at one time was—Head of every man under the 
first two titles, He becomes Head of men under the 
third title only after they have received the Sacra-
ment of Baptism. 

MORAL ELEMENT 
The Passion of Christ was not a mere material 

endurance of pain. The immolated Christ of Cal-
vary was not an inert victim. The Redemption was 
the divinely ordained remedy for the evil of sin. 
Just as sin consists of a twofold element, the guilt 
and the obligation to undergo punishment, so 
Christ's death involves a moral and a penal phase. 
The moral element is Christ's self-oblation to God, 
His obedience to God's will and command, and His 
great love of God and men; the penal element is 
His Passion and death. In the Redemption, as it 
took place historically, the two elements were indis-
solubly united: Christ's loving self-oblation and 
obedience took the form of and expressed itself in 
sufferings and death. For the present we shall 
study only the formal or moral element. 

The self-oblation of the suffering servant of 
Jahve and its reward are beautifully described by 
the prophet Isaias: "He was offered because it was 
his own will, and he opened not his mouth. He shall 
be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb 



82' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
as a lalnb before his shearer, and he shall not open 
his mouth . . . If he shall lay down his life for sin, 
he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the 
Lord shall be prosperous in his hand" (Isaias 
53:7, 10). 

The Redemption was a work of love. God gave 
His Son in love: "For God so loved the world as to 
give His only-begotten Son; that whosoever believ-
eth in Him may not perish but may have life ever-
lasting" (John 3:16), (John 4:10). God com-
mandeth His charity towards us," says St. Paul, 
"because when as yet we were sinners, according to 
the time, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8, 9). 

Christ gave Himself in love: "And that I live 
now in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of 
God Who loved me, and delivered Himself for me" 
(Galatians 2:20). "Walk in love," says St. Paul, "as 
Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered Him-
self for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an 
odor of sweetness" (Ephesians 5 : 2 ) ; "Husbands, 
love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and 
delivered Himself up for it" (Ephesians 5:25). In 
this we have known the charity of God," writes St. 
John, "because He hath laid down His life for us" 
(I John 3:16). 

The Redeemer's death was not only a proof of 
the greatest love but also of a magnanimous obe-
dience. This latter point is developed in the Epistle 
to the Romans (Chapter 5), where the Apostle is 
comparing the work of the first and the second 
Adam, the two heads of humanity. Against the 
transgressions of Adam, who introduced sin and 
death into this world, the Apostle places the act of 
Christ Who brought justification and life. The 



THE REDEMPTION 83 
Apostle calls this salvific and justifying act of the 
new Adam an act of obedience: "For as by the dis-
obedience of one man, many were made sinners, so 
also by the obedience of One, many shall be made 
just" (Romans 5:19). It was likewise the obedience 
of the God-Man, the Saviour, which was the cause 
of His personal exaltation: "Let this mind be in 
you, which was also in Christ Jesus, Who being in 
the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal 
with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of 
a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in 
habit found as a man, He humbled Himself, becom-
ing obedient unto death, even to the death of the 
cross; for which cause God also hath exalted Him, 
and hath given Him a name which is above all 
names" (Philippians 2:5-9). 

A generous love and a perfect obedience cul-
minating in a voluntary sacrifice—this is what St. 
Paul emphasizes in the redeeming work. From the 
bosom of humanity to which He came to restore the 
supernatural life which it had lost, the well-beloved 
Son in Whom the Father is well pleased causes to 
rise toward God greater honor than that of which 
original sin and all sins had robbed Him. The obe-
dience and love which animated our Head from His 
entrance into the world until His death on the 
cross, constitute an act of immense reparation, 
which re-establishes the supernatural order broken 
by the transgression of Adam. 

The love and obedience of the second Adam 
consisted principally in the acceptance of death, the 
penalty of sin. Christ freely accepted humiliations, 
sufferings and death—"proposito sibi gaudeoi, sus-
tinuit crucem." Since the consequence and penalty 



84' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
of Adam's sinful act, which was a refusal of obe-
dience, was death, one can readily understand how 
reparation should indeed consist in love and obe-
dience, but in love and obedience taking the form 
of sufferings and death. Sin, which had condemned 
man to eternal death leads the Son of God—Whom 
love had made Son of Man—to death, that we might 
become adopted sons in eternal life. The moral and 
penal elements are both essential and inseparable in 
Christ's redeeming work. It is by the two indis-
solubly united that man was redeemed. 

PENAL ELEMENT 
The penal element permeates the whole New 

Testament and finds its fullest statement in the re-
citations of the Passion of our Lord. The Old Testa-
ment, however, is not without its prophetic images. 
According to Christ's own words, the brazen serpent 
in the desert was a figure of His cross: "as Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of 
Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him, 
may have life everlasting" (John 3:14, 15; Num-
bers 21:9). The penal element in Christ's Redemp-
tion is also prefigured in the exodus from Egypt. 
Just as the Jews were liberated from bondage and 
protected against the devastating angel by the blood 
of the P&schal lamb, in order that they might there-
after enter as the chosen race into the promised land, 
so, too the human race was liberated from the cap-
tivity of Satan by the blood of the true Paschal 
Lamb and restored to its heavenly heritage (Exodus 
12:3, 51). In Isaias the Messiah is represented as 
the humble servant of Jahve who would save His 
people, not by crushing the enemy, by undergoing 
an ignominious death: "He was wounded for our 



THE REDEMPTION 85 
iniquities, he was bruised for our sins; the chastise-
ment of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises 
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, 
every one hath turned aside into his own way; and 
the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" 
(Isaias 53:5, 6). 

The Synoptic Gospels indicate the purpose of 
Christ's descent upon earth and explain how His 
death entered in an essential manner into His re-
deeming mission. St. Luke tells us that "the Son of 
man is come to seek and to save that which was 
lost" (Luke 19:10) and illustrates this doctrine by 
the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son. 
In the beginning Christ hints only remotely at His 
death: He asserts that the bridegroom cannot 
always remain with the children (Matthew 9:15). 
But after St. Peter's confession in the quarters of 
Caesarea Philippi, "Jesus began to show His dis-
ciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer 
many things from the ancients and scribes and 
chief priests, and be put to death, and the third day 
rise again" (Matthew 16:21). Toward the close of 
His earthly career, Christ declared that His Passion 
and death will be the cause of our liberation from 
sin: "For the Son of Man also is not come to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life 
as redemption for many" (Mark 10:45). Finally 
at the Last Supper He affirms that His blood "shall 
be shed for many unto remission of sins" (Matthew 
26:28). 

St. Peter tells us that the once erring sheep 
have now become the chosen people of acquisition. 
This marvelous restoration was wrought "by the 
Passion and death of Christ. "You were not re-



86' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
deemed with corruptible things as gold or silver 
but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb 
unspotted and undefiled . . . Who His own self bore 
our sins in His body upon the tree; t h a t we, being 
dead to sins, should live to justice; by Whose 
stripes you were healed" (I Peter 1:18-19; 2:24). 
St. John likewise writes that we were liberated from 
sin and darkness and transferred into light by the 
death of Christ. The Good Shepherd gave His life 
that the children who were dispersed might be 
gathered together. Christ is the Lamb, standing as 
it were slain, by Whose blood all were washed and 
made citizens of God's kingdom (John 3:19-21-
10:10-18; Apocalypse 5:6-10). 

St. Paul represents the redeeming death of 
Christ under various aspects. At times the instru-
ment of this death is put by metonymy for the death 
itself, and salvation is then said to be by the cross 
It was "by the cross" that Christ reconciled both 
Jews and Gentiles to God "in one body, killing the 
enmities in Himself" (Ephesians 2:16) that He 
"blotted out the hand-writing of the decree that was 
against us, which was contrary to us, and hath taken 
the same out of the way, fastening it to the cross" 
(Colossians 2:14). It was the same image-of Christ 
on the cross that the Apostle depicted in vivid 
colors before the eyes of his Galatian converts 
(Galatians 3:1). 

At other times the Apostle emphasizes the shed-
ding of the Redeemer's blood: "It hath well pleased 
the Father through Him to reconcile all things unto 
Himself, making peace through the blood of His 
cross" (Colossians 1:19, 20). God hath proposed 
Christ to be a propitiation through faith in His 



THE REDEMPTION 87 
blood (Romans 3:25) and "when as yet we were 
sinners Christ died for us; much more, therefore, 
being now justified by His blood, shall we be saved 
from wrath through Him" (Romans 5:8, 9). In 
Christ "we have redemption through His blood, the 
remission of sins, according to the riches of His 
grace" (Ephesians 1:7). In Him those "who some 
time were afar off, are made nigh by His blood" 
(Ephesians 2:13). 

From Calvary—where the penal element 
reaches its highest point of intensity—flow all the 
blessings of the new dispensation. On Calvary was 
verified the antithesis between the first Adam, "by 
whose disobedience many were made sinners," and 
the second Adam, "by Whose obedience—even unto 
the death of the Cross (Philippiaris 2:5-8)—many 
shall be made just (Romans 5:19). There all hu-
manity was concentrated in Christ as in the terres-
trial Paradise it was concentrated in our first par-
ents : "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall 
be made alive" (I Corinthians 15:22). On Calvary 
was wrought the great reconciliation between God 
and man, between heaven and earth, and between 
men themselves (Colossians 1:20). On Calvary 
Christ became the supreme and eternal Pontiff, the 
Paschal Lamb, the expiatory and propitiatory Sac-
rifice, the Immolation which seals the alliance. I t is 
there that Christ conquers Satan, sin and the flesh, 
and strikes a mortal blow at death. It is there that 
He assumes preeminence over the angels and be-
comes the Master of the spirit powers who hence-
forth are powerless to overcome man by their in-
sidious onslaughts. 



§8 BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
Discussion Aids 

1. Define the Redemption. 
2. Show how each one of the following is re-

lated to the Redemption: 
a) Divinity of Christ. 
b) Christ's physical and moral media-

tion; 
c) Christ's headship of the human race. 

3. Under what three titles is Christ our 
Head? 

4. What are the two essential elements of sin? 
5. What are the two essential elements of the 

Redemption ? 
6. In what ways were the moral elements 

exemplified in Christ's work? 
7. In what way is the penal element prefig-

ured in the Old Testament? 
8. In what ways is the penal element pre-

sented in the New Testament? 
9. What is the relation of the moral and 

penal-elements? 
Religious Practices 

1. I will have a special devotion to the 
Sacred Heart, the symbol of Christ's love, 
meekness and obedience. 

2. I will frequently pray that the five glor-
ious wounds of the Risen Christ will 
plead for me in the presence of the Blessed 
Trinity. 

3. In honor of Christ's death on the Cross I 
will always make the Sign of the Cross 
reverently and thoughtfully. 



Chapter V I I I 

The Redemption Continued 
THE RESURRECTION 

The Resurrection is intimately connected with 
the Redemption. The Resurrection shows that 
Christ is God. When the Jews pressed our Lord on 
the question of His Divinity,. when they demanded 
a proof or a sign of His Divine mission, He, to 
convince their minds and confound their incredulity, 
always referred them to His future Resurrection. 
"An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a 
sign; and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign 
of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was in the 
whale's belly three days and three nights, so shall 
the Son of Man be in the heart of "the earth three 
days and three nights" (Matthew 12:39, 40). And 
again, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will 
raise it up" (John 2:19). If Christ after His death 
had not risen, belief in His Divinity would have 
been destroyed by the word of His mouth; His 
Divinity destroyed, His other miracles would lose 
their force, His words would become a falsehood, 
and Christian faith a phantom. God never performs 
a miracle to confirm a falsehood. Hence if after this 
prophecy Christ did rise, it follows that what He 
said is true, that He is God and one with the 
Father. 

The Resurrection is thus the Father's seal of 
approval on Christ's completed mission; it is the 
Father's public declaration of His acceptance of the 
Saviour's work. If Christ remained a prey to death, 



90' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
where would be our full knowledge, certainty and 
assurance that complete atonement has been made, 
that the Father had accepted Christ's redeeming 
work in behalf of our sinful race, and that the found-
ation of perfect reconciliation between God and man 
had been laid? "If Christ be not risen again, your 
faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins. Then they 
also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished" 
(I Corinthians 15:17, 18). The joyful confidence 
that the work of the Redeemer has accomplished its 
purposed effect comes from the Resurrection. 

The Resurrection, however, did more than 
place the stamp of God's approval on Christ's re-
deeming work. The Resurrection is an essential 
complement of the Redemption. St. Paul tells us 
that Christ was "delivered up for our sins, and rose 
again for our justification" (Romans 4:25). At the 
Resurrection Christ became a quickening spirit 
(I Corinthians 15:45) both for Himself and for us; 
for Himself, because the glory of which He pos-
sessed the plenitude overflowed, as it were, on His 
body and made it spiritual; for us, because He com-
municates to us the gifts of the Holy Ghost and the 
Holy Spirit Himself. Before the Resurrection 
Christ had indeed possessed the Spirit in its pleni-
tude, but He was not as yet free to communicate 
this fullness of life to others because of the limita-
tions inherent in the economy of Redemption. This 
privilege had as a preliminary condition His death 
and Resurrection, so that it is only in His glorified 
state that Christ becomes a life-giving principle. As 
"quickening spirit" the Lord is the Depositor as well 
as the Dispenser of the spirit (John 14:17 18-
16:7). 



THE REDEMPTION, CONTINUED 91 
The risen Christ, then, is for us the Source of 

all supernatural graces and blessings. We usually 
associate grace and merits with the Christ of Geth-
semani, or the Christ of Calvary, or the Christ 
hanging upon the Cross and dying for us. But the 
risen Christ is not a new Christ. The five glorious 
wounds are a most certain link between Good Friday 
and Easter Sunday. Though we did not live in 
Christ's time nor stand beneath the Cross on Cal-
vary's hill, though a drop of Christ's precious blood 
did not fall on our bowed and sinful head, we know 
that the inexhaustible, infinite merits of Calvary 
are stored up for us in the risen Christ to Whom we 
are now united as to our Head. Like a captain re-
turning triumphantly with the spoils of victory, the 
risen Christ brings with Him the graces which He 
won for us during His Passion and Death. Every 
time we receive a grace of illumination for the 
mind or of inspiration for the will, it is the risen 
Christ Who is strengthening us. Into the channels 
of the sacraments the five glorious stigmata are 
continually distilling supernatural life. Everyone 
who is in a state of sanctifying grace adheres to the 
risen Christ as a branch to a vine. 

The penalty which God decreed against sin 
after Adam's fall was death. This death the second 
Adam endured for us on the cross, and triumphed 
over in His Resurrection. But though death was 
conquered by Jesus Christ, it was not completely 
annihilated. It still retains some of its former 
power and men continue to die even after the Pas-
sion. But though the body is still mortal, the "law" 
of death is neutralized by a superior force, by "the 
law of the spirit and of life" (Romans 8:2)—by 



92' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
sanctifying grace. This life of grace in the soul will 
eventually culminate in the life of glory. When at 
the general resurrection this glorified soul will be 
reunited to its body, the latter will come to share 
in the glory of the former. When in the hour of 
the resurrection the last hostile power, death, shall 
be swallowed up in the supreme triumph of the 
Redeemer (I Corinthians 15:16), and "when this 
mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to 
pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed 
up in victory. 0 death, where is thy victory? 0 
death, where is thy sting?" (I Corinthians 15; 54-
55). 

Of this, our future resurrection, Christ's own 
Resurrection is the model. Christ remained on earth 
forty days after His Resurrection and frequently 
manifested His glorified humanity to His Apostles 
and disciples, in order to make us see what we our-
selves ought to and can become, to make us contem-
plate the blessed state to which we ourselves can be 
elevated. St. Paul calls Christ the "first-born of the 
dead" (Colossians 1:18), and the "first fruits of 
them that sleep" (I Corinthians 15:20). The earth 
is, as it were, a vast field in which our bodies are 
planted like seed, and since the "first f r u i t s " have 
already appeared, the harvest also will follow. God 
will reassemble from the dust of the earth the ele-
ments of the body to which the glorified soul will 
be reunited. For if God could create our bodies out 
of nothing, He can also form them a second time 
out of their own proper matter. Who can prevent 
Him from reestablishing what once was, Who once 
created what never was? If Christ by His omnipo-
tence raised Himself, why should He not do for 



THE REDEMPTION, CONTINUED 93 
others what He did for himself? If by His own 
power He rose in a flesh like ours, is this not an evi-
dent sign that we shall also one day be raised by 
Him? Are we to say that Christ is less powerful in 
our regard than in His own? Is not that power 
which is always the same in Him capable of pro-
ducing the same miracles? 

BAPTISM 
The atoning merits of Christ's Redemption are 

communicated to men for the first time in the Sac-
rament of Baptism. This initial sacrament is viewed 
by .St. Paul wholly with reference to Christ's Death 
and Resurrection: "Know you not that all we who 
are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in His 
death? For we are buried together with Him in 
Baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from 
the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may 
walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted 
together in the likeness of death, we shall be also in 
the likeness of His Resurrection. Knowing this, that 
our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of 
sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve 
sin no longer" (Romans 6:3-6). 

The immersion and submersion in the water as 
practised in the early days of Christianity was an 
image of Christ's death and burial. The total sub-
mersion of the Christian was a fitting representa-
tion of Christ's envelopment in the tomb. 

Baptism "into the death" of Christ is Baptism 
into the dying Christ, incorporation into Christ at 
the very moment that He saved us, a mystical union 
with the second Adam suffering death in the name 
of'and for the profit of all. In Baptism our "old 
man," that is, our sinful nature inherited from the 



94' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
first Adam, is nailed to the cross of Christ. But as 
Christ died and was buried only to be raised from 
the dead by the power of His Father, so also we are 
immersed and submerged in the waters of Baptism 
only to emerge and rise to the new spiritual life of 
sanctifying grace; and we are to continue in t h a t 
new life as Christ continues in His glorious risen 
state. The baptismal rite has equal efficacy in sym-
bolizing and reproducing the Death and the Resur-
rection. 

Faith, which St. Paul frequently correlates 
with Baptism, is likewise directed to Christ's Death 
and Resurrection as to its primary object (I Thes-
solonians 4:13). The Eucharist, the supernatural 
food of the members of Christ's Mystic Body, is 
truly a "memorial of Christ's death": "As often as 
you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you 
shall show the death of the Lord" (I Corinthians 
11:26). 

ASPECTS AND EFFECTS OF THE 
REDEMPTION 

Christ's redeeming work is depicted in the 
Scriptures with a great variety and richness of 
detail. Since Christ was the second Adam, since He 
was our Head, Mediator and Representative, the re-
lation of His works to His mystic members is sim-
ilar to that of the works of a just man to himself. 
What Christ did, He did for those whom He repre-
sented and in whose name He acted. His life and 
death were worthy of a recompense involving the 
whole human race of which He was Chief. Viewed 
from this aspect, Christ's "work" has the character 
of "merit." Because of Christ's merits, supernatural 
blessings were conferred upon us as if we had 



THE REDEMPTION, CONTINUED 95 
merited them ourselves. However, that which is 
communicated to us is not the meritorious actions 
themselves but the f r u i t of these actions: from the 
viewpoint of the effects obtained, the merits of 
Christ, our Head and Representative, have replaced 
ours. 

Since the merit of Christ had reference to the 
offense against God, it was, more specifically, vicar-
ious satisfaction. This second aspect of Christ's re-
deeming work is taught in all those passages where 
it is said that Christ was crucified and died for us, 
and that Christ is our propitiation, justification and 
reconciliation. The doctrine of vicarious satisfac-
tion is proved by the preposition "for" as well as 
by the general movement of St. Paul's thought and 
by the place which he assigns to Christ in human-
ity. The same doctrine may be stated in another 
way. The penalty of sin is death. Since Christ was 
sinless, He did not need to undergo death. If He 
submitted to it, His death was "vicarious," that is, 
endured in our favor and in our behalf. 

Since this satisfaction of our Lord took-place 
through penal sufferings and an immolation of Him-
self to God, it was a sacrifice. The sacrificial char-
acter of Christ's death—the idea of a blood sacrifice 
—is clearly insinuated in those texts which attribute 
the effects of the Redemption to the Blood of Christ. 
More specifically, the immolation of Christ is assimi-
lated to the sacrifice which seals the new alliance: 
"This chalice is the new testament in My blood" 
(I Corinthians 11:25). Christ is also the true Pas-
chal sacrifice of which the Paschal lamb of the 
Jews was only a figure: "For Christ our Pasch is 
sacrificed" (I Corinthians 5:7). Again, the sacri-



96' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
fice of the cross is for Christians what the sacrifice 
of propitiation on the solemn day of the atonement 
was for the Jews: "God hath proposed Christ 
Jesus to be a propitiation, through faith in His 
blood" (Romans 3:25). Unlike the sacrifices of the 
Old Law, Jesus Christ on Calvary is not only the 
victim but also the willing offerer: "Christ loved 
us and hath delivered Himself for us, an oblation 
and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness" 
(Ephesians 5:12). 

The first effect of Christ's sacrifical death is 
the appeasing of God's wrath against the sinner 
and the reconciliation of humanity with God. In 
its strict sense, reconciliation denotes deliverance 
from present wrath; deliverance from final wrath is 
usually denoted by the term "salvation." Both 
terms are used in their exact meaning in the fol-
lowing passage: "For if, when we were enemies, we 
were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, 
much more, being reconciled shall we be saved by 
His life. And not only so, but also we glory in God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ by Whom we have 
now received reconciliation" (Romans 5:10, 11). 
Closely related to these terms are the words pro-
pitiation and expiation. Christ's redeeming work 
was a propitiation and expiation. Christ's redeem-
ing work was a propitiation because it repaired the 
offense done to God; it was an expiation because the 
penalty due to sin was borne by the God-Man. 

St. Paul frequently represents the redeeming 
work as a "redemption" or "ranson." These two 
terms are derived from the Oriental customs of 
slave-liberation. The master would conduct the 
slave to the temple, sell him to the diety, and re-



THE REDEMPTION, CONTINUED 97 
ceive from the temple treasury the purchase money. 
The whole process was called "redemption" and the 
purchase money was referred to as the "ransom" or 
"price." St. Paul no doubt had these conditions 
in mind when he announced to his Corinthian con-
verts a new redemption—a liberation from the 
bondage of sin, of death and of Satan. From these 
oppressive powers we were ransomed by Christ: 
"You are bought with a great price" (I Corinthians 
6:20; 7:23). This ransoming was procured by 
Christ's blood and is identified with "the remission 
of sins" (Ephesians 1:7); Colossians 1:13,14). The 
ransoming act of Christ liberates us from the guilt 
and penal consequences of sin, and through this re-
lief secures for us liberation from Satan and death. 

The Pauline doctrine of man's slavery to Satan 
needs an additional word of explanation. By in-
ducing Adam, the head of the human race, to com-
mit sin, the devil gained a victory over man's will 
and turned him from his Last End. Through Satan's 
instigation the whole human race thus fell into a 
state from which it sannot rise of its own powers 
and in which it remains Satan's captive. God, how-
ever, always remained true Master of fallen man. In 
holding men under his control, Satan was merely 
acting—with God's permission—as an executor of 
Divine justice. Satan still tempts us, but with the 
aid of actual grace, merited for us by the Redeemer, 
we can overcome all his onslaughts. 

Even the just in Limbo were to a certain extent 
in Satan's clutches and power. Under the influence 
of the tempter, Adam, the head of the human race, 
committed a universal offense—that is, an offense 
affecting all men. With this racial offense was 



98' BIBLICAL QUESTIONS 
indissolubly connected a racial penalty, namely, 
exclusion from heaven. An individual's repentance, 
although it removed his personal offenses and placed 
him in a state of grace, did not repair the univer-
sal offense or atone for the universal penalty. Hence 
the just had to remain in Limbo until the death of 
Christ Who, as second racial Head, expiated the uni-
versal offense and penalty. Christ's Redemption 
was truly universal: "He is a propitiation for our 
sins, not for ours only, but also for those of the 
whole world" (I John 2:2). Nay more, it was 
superabundant: "Where sin abounded, grace did 
more abound" (Roman 5 :20). 

Let us again note here, in conclusion, that all 
these effects and blessings of Christ's Redemption 
become the individual's actual possession only in 
the Sacrament of Baptist. The gifts lost by Adam, 
however, are not restored to us in the same form. 
The sacrament of regeneration blots out all sins 
and all penalties due to sin, and places Us directly 
and immediately in a state of grace and of friend-
ship with God. Concupiscence is not eradicated but 
is neutralized by its antidote—Christ's actual graces. 
Death finds an antidote in sanctifying grace and 
will be completely annihilated at the final resurrec-
tion. 

Discussion Aids 
1. Prove that the Resurrection is 

a) a proof of Christ's Divinity 
b) the Father's seal of approval on 

Christ's work 
2. What is the relation of the Redemption and 

ths Resurrection? 
3. Whence do all graces come to us at present? 



THE REDEMPTION, CONTINUED 99 
4. 
5. 
6. 

8. 

9. 
10. 

1. 

2. 

3 . 

In what sense did Christ conquer death? 
Show that Christ's Resurrection is a 
model of our own future resurrection. 
What is the relation of Christ's Death and 
Resurrection to 

a) Baptism 
b) Faith 
c) the Eucharist? 

Explain Christ's redeeming work as 
a) merit tion 
b) vicarious e) salvation 

satisfaction f ) redemption 
' c) sacrifice g) propitiation 

d) reconcilia- h) expiation? 
In what sense was Satan the master of 

a) the fallen human race 
b) the souls in the Limbo of the 

Father? 
Prove that Christ's Redemption is univer-
sal arid superabundant. 
Did Christ restore to us the gifts lost in 
Adam in the same form in which man 
possessed them before the Fall? 

Religious Practices 
When confronted with a temptation to 
overcome or a difficult action to perform 
I will turn to the Risen Christ and ask Him 
to aid me by His actual grace. 
I will maintain myself in living union with 
the Risen Christ by avoiding all serious 
sins. 
I will frequently adore and worship the 
Risen Christ really present in the Blessed 
Sacrament. 





" M O D E R N Q U E S T I O N S " 
A Manual for High School and College Students and for Young 

People's and Adult Discussion Clubs 
By The Rev. Rudolph G. Bandas 

S E R I E S I S E R I E S IV 
1. Religious I n d i f f e r e n c e a n d U n - 1. E u t h a n a s i a o r Mercy K i l l i n c belief 2. C r e m a t i o n 
2. Materialism . 3. P r i v a t e P r o p e r t y 
3. Evolution 4. A L i v i n g W a g e 
4. Religious Broadmindedness S. L a b o r U n i o n s 
5. T h e Index of F o r b i d d e n Book» 6 . T h e Morality of S t r i k e s 
6. Secret a n d F o r b i d d e n Societies 7. T h e Social Apostolate 
7. T h e T w o ' T V — O r g a n i s a t i o n 

a n d A i m 
8. O u r Civic Duties 

8. The T w o " Y ' s " — A n A p p r e c i a -
t i o n S E R I E S V 
The T w o " Y ' s " — A n A p p r e c i a -
t i o n 1. S p i r i t i s m 

S E R I E S I I t . F o r e t e l l i n g t h e F u t u r e 
1. T h e I n q u i s i t i o n 3. T h e L i q u o r T r a f f i c a n d D r u n k -
2. T h e Orthodox Churches enness 
3. The A n g l i c a n Church 4. Salacious L i t e r a t u r e 
4 . C h r i s t i a n Science 6. T h e Movies 
S. T h e W i t n e s s e s of J e h o v a h 6 . D a n c i n g 
6. T h e O x f o r d Group Movement 7. Gambling 
7. 
8. 

T h e S a l v a t i o n of Non-Catholics 8. Activities of Catholic Youth 7. 
8. Scandals a n d a Holy Church 

S E R I E S I I I 
O r g a n i s a t i o n s 

S E R I E S V I 
1. T h e Encyclicals 1 . Vocation t o t h e Priesthood 

"2. Social J u s t i c e 2. Vocation t o Catholic Action 
3. Racism—Exposition 8 . Vocation t o t h e Sisterhood 
4 . Racism—Criticism 4 . Vocation t o t h e Married L i f e 
5. T o t a l i t a r i a n i s m — E x p o s i t i o n 5 . M a r r i a g e , a C o n t r a c t a n d a 
6. T o t a l i t a r i a n i s m — C r i t i c i s m S a c r a m e n t 
n C o m m u n i s m «. Mixed M a r r i a g e s 
8. Communism—Causes a n d Reme-

dies CD 
pi T h e F a m i l y 

T h e E d u c a t i o n of Children