CONDEMNATION

 

We live a century after Caryll Houselander, and yet our times parallel hers. We know war, and we know a world of unrest, especially in our own country. I am sure if she were alive today, she would encourage us, plead with us, to enter into this Lent with the compassion of Jesus in His last hours.  

"There in Him are all the martyrs of all times; those of our own time with every detail of their martyrdom, including those which their persecutors try to hide, shown to the whole world: the trickery, the utter injustice, the faked evidence, the verdict decided before the trial; and the things that have been done in secret to prepare the victim – if possible to break Him! – the mental torture (a veritable crowning with thorns), the long nights without sleep; cruelest of all, the attempt to make Him a stumbling block to His own people."

"It is significant that everything contributing to that condemnation is parallel with everything that contributes to the passion of the martyrs of our own times: the intrigues and the fears of politicians, the hatred of fanatics, mass hysteria; the unstable crowds swayed by paid agitators, the popular craving for sensation – and those many Pilates of our day who wash their hands of the responsibility of knowing, “What is truth?”, who shut their eyes to Christ in man and try to escape from their own uneasiness by evasions: “I am innocent of the blood of this just man – look you to it!  In any case, there is nothing that I could do about it!”

"Neither is it by chance that those who will carry out the sentence will be the young and ignorant soldiers of an army of occupation, lads brought up like the soldiers of the Red Army, deprived of the knowledge of the one God, obeying their orders without question because they are conditioned to obey orders without questioning, or thinking." 

“Father, forgive them; they do not know what it is they are doing.”

“Behold the man.” 

 Yes, and behold in Him yourself.  Each one of us can recognize himself, a sinner, in the disfiguring, the bruising, the ugliness, hiding the beauty of the fairest of the sons of men.  And there can be few who do not recognize themselves, too, in the utter loneliness of this man in the midst of the crowd that lately spread their garments to be trodden by the little ass He rode on, and now clamor for His blood." 

“Behold we have seen Him disfigured and without beauty; His aspect is gone from Him; He has borne our sins, and suffers for us; and He was wounded for our iniquities, and by his stripes we are healed.”

Art: Ivanka Demchuk- Ukraine