Darwin Leon's Mona Lisa 
www.darwinleon.com

GOD’S VIRGIN

The divinity of Mary’s motherhood was declared during the 431 Council at Ephesus, formalizing in regards to Jesus the Christ the ancient euphemistic parlance that identified an illegitimate boy as a “son of God” instead of a bastard, a child ordinarily despised by a patriarchal prejudice predisposed by holy commandment to stoning adulterous mothers to death. Now it was said of Roman custom that if a soldier visited a man’s house, leaving his weapons outside, it was a common courtesy for the man to share his wife with the soldier; perhaps the existence of such a custom was the basis for a speculative insult to Jewry, that Jesus was actually the son of a Roman centurion. In any case, any faithful husband would surely be blessed if no less than the Lord Almighty wanted to make God’s Cuckold out of him. Of course we should never say never to virgin human conception, no matter how scientifically improbable such an event might have been. In April 2004, scientists at Tokyo University of Agriculture used parthenogenesis to successfully create fatherless mice in April of 2004. Theoretically, the process could be used to reproduce humans. Or a virgin birth might occur as a freak of nature, or, if you please, as an act of God, a self-creation we might call a Divine Parthenogen. The Gospel According to Matthew provides this sacred rationale:

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary was your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.’ Now all this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, ‘Behold, the Virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which translated means, ‘God with us’.”

Of course the prophet referred to is Isaiah, whose prophecy given in the Old Testament at Isaiah 7:14 is conveniently taken out of context according to the practice of Pharisee scribes taken up by Christian ministers to prove their points. Immanuel, we are further informed, “will eat curds and honey at the time He knows enough to refuse evil and choose good.” And the Lord in those days will “whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt, and the bee that is in the land of Assyria, and they will all come and settle on the steep ravines, on the ledges of the cliffs, on all the thorn bushes, and on all the watering places. In that day the Lord will shave with a razor, hired from the regions beyond the Euphrates, the head and the hair of the legs; and it will also remove the beard. Now it will come about in that day that a man will keep alive a heifer and a pair of sheep: and it will happen that because of the abundance of the milk produced he will eat curds, for everyone that is left within the land will eat curds and honey. And it will come about in that day, that every place where there used to be a thousand vines, valued at a thousand shekels of silver, will become briars and thorns. People will come there with bows and arrows because all the land will be briars and thorns. And as for all the hills which used to be cultivated with the hoe, you will not go there for fear of briars and thorns; but they will become a place for pasturing oxen and for sheep to trample.”

When the true messiah appears, a totalitarian theocracy shall be established under this King of Jews: “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.” (Isaiah 8:6-7)

We do not find a historical record that the Lord actually, as foretold, whistled for the flies or shaved the hairs and such in the days of Jesus, the savior claimed to be the Immanuel prophesied of old. No doubt Origen, the mystical symbolist of the Alexandrian theological school, would have no difficulty reconciling that pretext with the text in a state of “sober drunkenness,” for he intended his allegorical devices to craft a familial relationship between Judaism and Christianity; after all, the thriving city founded by Alexander the Great was teeming with Christians and Jews who had best get along well for their trade to prosper. The city was renowned for its intellectual exchanges as well.

THE GREEK WAY

The philosopher Celsus, in the first great attack on Christian thinking, took Origen to task for his hermeneutics. Origen, in Philocalia, a compilation of passages from Origen’s works made by St. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. Basil of Ceasarea, we find Origen’s complaint to Ambrose that “Greek philosophers… allege that the noble truths of Christianity have been better expressed among the Greeks.” For example, Celsus pointed out that the precept calling for turning the other cheek instead of striking back “is an old saw” better expressed by Plato in Crito when he makes Socrates say, “Then we must do no wrong. Certainly not. Nor when injured injure in return, as the many imagine; for we must injure no one at all. Clearly not….” Indeed, in respect to the Golden Rule, we might add that it is better expressed platonically, that it is better to suffer an injury than to do one, and so on, and to therefore lay down our lives for peace instead of saying that a life worth living is worth killing for.

In his 2006 speech at Regensberg University, Pope Benedict XVI seemed to be in harmony with the very Hellenic prejudice Origen criticized: “I believe that there is a profound harmony,” declared Benedict, “between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God…. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria…is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, and encounter with genuine enlightenment and religion.” Pope Benedict recounted the dehellenization of Christianity, and claimed it had reduced Jesus the Christ to the simply historical personage of the humanists, which simply would not do for those Christians, apparently like him, who believe they must love their Platonic definitions of god above humanity. Dehellenization has given people of different cultures the notion that they can dispose of the Catholic inculturalization of Christianity and go directly to the biblical text: “This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision,” proclaimed the man liberationists call God’s Rotweiller. “The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed.”

So much for the vulgar language read by vulgar people, and hurrah for fine speechmakers – the Pope’s speech on Church politics cannot be undone and is now immortalized in written form for the rest of history. As Plato had Socrates say to Phaedrus, Does not the speechwriter whether Greek or Persian think of himself as a god? Phaedrus had remarked that the greatest and most influential statesmen were ashamed of leaving speeches in written form lest they be abused by being called Sophists, yet Socrates rejoined that there is nothing more that politicians are so fond of as writing speeches and bequeathing them to posterity. The disgrace, he said, is in bad authorship, and asked Phaedrus if we need to inquire of other speakers as to the difference between good and bad speech. “Need we?” responded Phaedrus. “For what should a man live if not for the pleasures of discourse? Surely not for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have previous pain as a condition of them, and are therefore called slavish.”

In the introduction to his translation of Phaedrus, Benjamin Jowett reminds us that the profession of rhetoric was “necessary to a man’s salvation” in Athens, but Plato found nothing wholesome in it, for it appeared to him as a “veritable ‘sham,’ having no relation to fact, or to truth of any kind…. The spirit of rhetoric was soon to overspread all Hellas; and Plato with prophetic insight may have seen, from afar, the great literary waste or dead level, or interminable marsh, in which Greek literature was soon to disappear…. The dreary waste…spreads over much more than a thousand years. And from this decline the Greek language and literature, unlike Latin, which has come to life in new forms and been developed into the great European languages, never recovered. This monotony of literature, without merit, without genius and without character, is a phenomenon which deserves more attention than it has hitherto received; it is a phenomenon unique in the literary history of the world. How could there have been so much cultivation, so much diligence in writing, and so little mind or real creative power?” The Greek literature, he writes, provides “a sham philosophy, which was the bastard progeny of the union between Hellas and the East.” He asks, “Why did history degenerate into fable? Why did words lose their power of expression? Why were ages of external greatness and magnificence attended by all the sign of decay in the human mind which are possible?” He notes by way of answer the want of criticism in history and the lack of the political freedom that is necessary for the true atmosphere of pubic speaking. “Philosophy had become extravagant, eclectic, abstract, devoid of any real content. At length it ceased to exist. It had spread words like plaster over the whole field of knowledge. It had grown ascetic on one side, mystical on the other….  No one had anything new to say…. The Catholic faith had degenerated into dogma and controversy.” And our culture suffers to this very day from the decay and dreary waste that began with the Alexandrian writers. Ironically, the only thing we can do about it is to plunder it for good ideas, or at least peruse it at length lest we get puffed up by our own nonsense, thinking it to be original.

The Alexandrian theological school had been influenced by the pagan Philo Judaeus’ fusion of Greek philosophy and Jewish literature with pagan mysticism. Origen, the foremost father of that theological school, was steeped in Plato, whose thoughts he could spin well against the Greek philosophers themselves. But he was incensed by Celsus’ treatise against Christianity, and engaged in a bit of so-called dehellenization of his own at that early date. Again, he noted that Celsus had “quoted numerous passages, mainly from Plato,” alleging that the substance of the sacred scriptures had been “better expressed by Greeks, and without the violent expedient of a message supposed to come from God or from the Son of God.” Origen’s rebuttal asserted that the moral improvement seen in the audience who perused the Judeo-Christian interpretations was proof enough of the divinity of its presumably logical approach to the Logos.

Using Greek philosophy against Greek philosophy, Origen’s argument is standard Socratic technique, whereby a dialectical reversal was pioneered in the name of the greatest sophist who ever lived against the sophisticated sophists who taught the art of rhetoric. Indeed, Origen’s ‘Philocalia’ against Greek rhetoric is a piece of Platonic rhetoric in its own right. We are reminded of how Plato denounced the glib rhetoric in one breath, only to give a course in rhetoric in the next. And we recollect the great mistake of Socrates’ chief disciple, Plato, that of attributing substantial reality to abstract conceptions; namely, to universals in name only, devoid of particular contents. We might take pleasure here in some abuse of Aristophanes’ satire on sophistry, Clouds, that we might venture into Socrates’ thinking-shop and find him suspended in a basket, celebrating his own epiphenomena: “I should not have rightly discovered things celestial,” said Socrates, who knows the elemental structuralism of Heraclitus well, “if I had no suspended the intellect, and mixed the thought in a subtle form with its kindred air. But if, being on the ground, I speculated from below on things above, I should never have discovered them. For the earth forcibly attracts to itself the meditative moisture.”

Now could it be that our own conservative pope, having heard the bowels thunder, converses with the moist air rising from the fundament, mistaking the clouds for gods? Has he been taken in by the sweet-sounding siren of the “rain-bringing virgins?”

“Tell me, O Socrates,” Strepsiades pleads, “who are these that have uttered this grand song? Are they some heroines?” Socrates replies: “By no means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension.” And he asks, “Did you not, however, know, nor yet consider, these to be goddesses?” Strepsiades: “No, by Jupiter! But I thought them to be mist, and dew, and smoke.” To which Socrates rejoins: “For you do not know, by Jupiter, that these feed very many sophists, Thurian soothsayers, practisers of medicine, lazy, long-hair, onyx-ring-wearers, song-twisters for the cyclic dances, and meteorological quacks. They feed idle people who do nothing, because men celebrate them in verse.”

“We maintain,” asserted Origen in Alexandria, “that if the aim of those who represent the truth is to do as much good as possible to as many as possible, and out of love for men to win over to the truth, as far as may be, every single man…it is obvious that a speaker must cultivate a style both popular and profitable, and such as will win everybody’s ear…. Men who…pay attention only to hearers who have a literary and scientific brining up…reduce the fellowship of the Gospel to narrow limits…. Our Prophets, and Jesus and His Apostles had the insight to adopt a mode of delivery which not only conveys the truth, but can win the many, until they are drawn to be Catechumens and then, every one so far as he can, rise to the ineffable mysteries contained in the seemingly poor language. And if I may dare say so, the ornate and polished style of Plato and his imitators benefits only a few…while the style of those who have taught and written less elegantly…has benefited many…. There is a demonstration of the Word, all its own, more Divine than the dialectic of the Greeks, which the Apostle calls ‘a demonstration of the Spirit and of power’…. The divine Word…is not itself sufficient to reach man’s soul, unless a certain power from God be given to the speaker and grace be shed over his words, and effective speakers cannot have this grace without God’s help…. Granting, then, that in some cases the Greeks have the same doctrines as ours, it by no means flows that even the same doctrines avail for winning souls…. Hence it is that the disciples of Jesus, unlearned and ignorant men as regards Greek philosophy, compassed many nations of the world, impressing each individual hearer….”

And what is this “grace” shed over the words of the charismatic speaker presumably empowered by his own tribal god and not by his Grecian muse? Samuel Butler for one wondered at the power of such a speaker in his autobiographical novel, Ernest Pontifex or The Way Of All Flesh. Samuel Butler the author was struck by the revelation of the world’s hypocrisy when he was twenty-three years of age. He had studied at Cambridge and took up working with the poor in Piccadilly in preparation for ordination, which he refused when he saw the hypocrisy of the church. His father had wanted him to be a clergyman all along, but he took up art and writing, and was duly banned from the family home. After being summoned to his mother’s deathbed, his father accused him of killing her with his writing.

Butler’s protagonist in The Way of All Flesh, Ernest Pontifex was a divinity student at Cambridge who “had never doubted the truth of anything he had been told about Christianity. He had never seen anyone who doubted, nor read anything that raised a suspicion in his mind as to the historical character of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament.”  He was destined to become alienated a few years hence, an apotheosis of individuality withdrawn from yet hidden within the Victorian middle class that if destroyed would have taken him, its mortal enemy, along with it. Having lost his faith while working with the poor, whom he discovered he did not much like, he was to become an isolated writer of independent means who could care less what the present generation of readers, a society for whom he had an “unconquerable aversion,” thought about his books. In fact he became a writer because “there are a lot of things that want saying which no one dares to say – a lot of shams which want attacking, and yet no one attacks them. It seems to me that I can say things which not another man in England except myself will venture to say, and yet which are crying to be said.” His publisher soon lost all faith in him, remarking,: “He is in a very solitary position, he has formed no alliances, and has made enemies not only of the religious world but of the literary and scientific brotherhood as well. This will not do nowadays. If a man wished to get on he must belong to a set, and Mr. Pontifex belongs to no set – not even to a club.”

The evangelic power appears in the novel in the person of one Rev. Gideon Hawke, “a well-known London Evangelical preacher” who happened to be a vestige of the Evangelic Revival sect first led by Charles Ernest Simeon (1759-1836); the Simeonites interpreted the Bible themselves and preached instead of celebrating High Church rituals. The young Simeonites at Cambridge thought they were called by God to the ministry, and believed ordination would provide them with social status to preach. They were given to distributing religious tracts about the college, which usually got burnt instead of read, if not worse: “They were themselves also treated with the ridicule which they reflected proudly had been the lot of true followers of Christ…. Ernest’s friends thought his dislike for the Simeonites…rose from an unconscious sympathy with them, which, as in Paul’s case, in the end drew him into the ranks of those whom he most despised and hated.” Ernest and his friends at Cambridge, who got together furtively from time to time to study the New Testament in Greek, accepted an invitation to hear Mr. Hawke preach. He delivered a quote ordinary sermon in terms of the biblical text, as anyone who reads the dull text of his speech in Samuel Butler’s book can see for themselves. “They had heard nothing but what they had been hearing all their lives; how was it, then. That they were so dumbfounded by it?”

Mr. Hawke proceeded with a call to kneel for prayer, which the young clergy students complied with although they did not like the humiliating procedure. When they had finished with the Lord’s Prayer and had sat down, Mr. Hawke proceeded with “Saul, Saul, why kickest thou against the pricks?” He eventually reminded the boys that each would die and would therefore be judged, so would they not now choose eternal life?

“If, knowing what you know, you have not yet begun to act according to the immensity of the knowledge that is in you, then he who builds his house and lays up his treasure on the edge of a crater of molten lava is a sane sensible person in comparison with yourselves.” Up to that point Mr. Hawke had spoken quietly, but then he warmed up and called upon them to respond to Christ’s call. “If there is even one here who has heeded me,” concluded Mr. Hawke, “I shall know that it was not for nothing that I felt the call of the Lord, and heard, as I thought, a voice by night that bade me come hither quickly, for there was a chosen vessel who had need of me,’ the evangelist had concluded, letting his eye fall for an instant on each of all his hearers.”  

“Here Mr. Hawke ended rather abruptly; his earnest manner, striking countenance and excellent delivery had produced an effect greater than the actual words I have given can convey to the reader; the virtue lay in the man more than in what he said; as for the last few words about his having heard a voice in the night, their effect was magical; there was not one who did not look down to the ground, nor who did not half believe that he was the chosen vessel on whose especial behalf God had sent Mr. Hawke down to Cambridge.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a minor American newspaper poet and pithy personal adviser, enormously popular towards the end of the Victorian Age, declared, when her work was described as platitudinous by the aristocratically inclined males whose poetry failed them when they became the critics known as the New Critics, that morality and what we call wisdom is based on a few perennial platitudes. The sin, then, of not being original, is in the lack of affectation and dearth of supplemental embellishments that refresh the same old stories. People eventually tire of repetition and fall asleep at the ritual wheel; hypnotized by counting sheep, they become sheep to be sheared again and again. But Christianity has never entirely lacked people who decided for themselves even when their decisions did not gibe with the orthodox (right opinion) dogma, in which case they were called dissenters and heretics (choosers). Since they read the same pages glossed over by authority, their dissent was revolutionary in the sense that it was based on the radical historical roots of the faith, in material poverty and spiritual wealth. Success puts people to sleep as they rest on their laurels; they are unaware of the bear in the buckwheat, the lion in the scrub, the wolf at their door, the terrorist in their very midst. As every persuasive preacher and politician knows, if people can be awaken to the fear of imminent death, they can be converted, at least temporarily, to almost any cause.

Mr. Hawke’s preaching was rather tame and dignified although it had its effect. Ernest Pontifex gave up tobacco until he found theological reasons for partaking again a few hours later. He would go on to deliver salvation to the poor at their homes after his ordination, despite the fact that there were plenty of churches in the city for the poor to attend if interested. The poor would have none of his salvation; in fact, they saved Ernest from his faith: a tinker by the name of Mr. Shaw did the most damage, convincing him that the Resurrection, upon which the faith hinged, as described by scripture was simply nonsense. His friend and fellow curate, Pryor, an Anglican Romanist of the Oxford Movement, with whom he planned to open a college of Spiritual Pathology, had warned him about reading the Bible too closely: “If you begin with the Bible you are three parts gone on the road to infidelity…. The Bible is not without value to us the clergy, but for the laity it is a stumbling block…. A more unreliable book was never put upon paper; take my advice, and don’t read it….” Well, then, asked Ernest, how could Pryor believe in the Bible? To which Pryor replied that he did not believe that Christ died and rose, he actually knew it. How then, did he know it if Bible testimony fails? “Oh, that of the living voice of the church, which I know to be infallible, and to be informed of Christ himself.”

Perchance a passionate fire-and-brimstone prophet or preacher might better wake people up in time; an orthodox priest might simply usher them to the grave. Jonathan Edwards’s seminal sermon, ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ might do the trick; the text is hardly dull, and in the right hands the fear of God might convert thousands of credulous people. Edward’s theme was from Deuteronomy: Their foot shall slide in due time.

“In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites…. Under the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit…. They were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction…. ‘There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.’ By mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, His arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation…. They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God’s using His power at any moment to destroy them…. They are already under a sentence of condemnation…so that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell…. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them…. It is no security to natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances…. Eccles. 2.26 ‘How dieth the wise man? As the fool.’ …’Til he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal damnation….There are black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads…. The floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing…. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath towards you burns like fire…. O sinner ! Consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God…. Now God stands ready to pity you…. But when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain…. If you cry to God to pity you, He will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favour, that instead of that, He will only tread you underfoot…. He will crush you under His feet without mercy; He will crush out your blood, and make it fly…. He will not only hate you….”

No, Christianity has not lacked great awakeners – the results were mixed, from good to evil. Take Luther, for example, whose vulgar or populist method was much admired by the charismatic (divinely gifted) Hitler, the frustrated Catholic who inherited the remnant of the Holy Roman Empire; who hated Jews like many German Catholics; who turned pagan, but still gave the Vatican the best concord it had ever had in Germany – the German clergy took the stage, gave the Nazi salute, and pronounced “Seig Heil.” Pope Benedict, then a member of the Nazi Youth, saw it all, gave the same salute and hailing, and manned the guns over the slave camp; but Mr. Ratzinger and the Church have made ample amends since then: forgive them, Father, for they knew not what they did. America had more than its fair share of inspired preachers long before Billy Graham was born. To speak of obscure examples, few people recall that President James Garfield fell under the spell of revival preaching in his youth, and was no mean speaker himself, and for a good civil cause. Another powerful preacher, Gerald K. Smith, worked for Huey Long and inspired the poor with his socialist evangelism; but he became a rabid, anti-Jewish bigot, and earned the title ‘The Greatest Hypocrite in America’ – he still has his admirers. We could go on and on, but the founders are more significant:

Now many American citizens think their nation is inherently Christian; quite to the contrary: it was founded on secular principles by highly educated people who were Deists if not atheists enthused by the Enlightenment – which was to say the same thing as far as many Christians were concerned. But there was in fact a Great Awakening before the Revolution. The Colonists had seen so much of the Light that their faith was reduced to ceremonial squinting in the glare. The preachers knew that only fear of the consequences, obtained by a wide-eyed vision of hellfire, could stir them from religious lethargy. John Wesley, who was called a Methodist in its derogative sense of resort to vain methods, came over from England and did his best to wake Americans up to heaven by reference to hell. At age 63 he wrote that he was an unbeliever; never mind: he did a great job. Iain H. Murray, in his biography of Jonathan Edwards, said that the preaching of the Great Awakening was intentionally alarming because lack of fear was humankind’s ruination. Run-of-the-mill preaching, albeit it spoke the truth, would not suffice to wake them up to the Light. The fact of God’s awesome presence had somehow to be made conscious, and then the final judgment would not be doubted. A young fellow, who heard Jonathan Edwards preach in 1739, had this to say: “I fully supposed that as soon as Mr. Edwards should close his discourse, the Judge would descend and the final separation take place.”

Jonathan Edwards and other preachers had set the stage. Young George Whitefield came over from London in 1740 and set America ablaze. Whitefield cited the same old Bible, yet great numbers of apathetic New Englanders, who had always had a liking for powerful speakers and messages, were enthused by his persuasive rhetoric and mannerisms. Whitefield stared them down, ranted and raved, beat his chest, put on a really great shew for throngs of thousands who rode and ran at breakneck speeds to his appearances. The crowds reportedly cried almost all the while he sang his sermons, laughing and crying public tears to boot. This was not careful Scholastic logic emanating from Logos; it was sheer drama; the critic said his powers were stage powers, and that his messages, when written down, were as dull as ministerial disputation. Whitefield, in fine, was a wizard of oratory. Jonathan’s wife Sarah Edwards, a charming and witty divine in her own right, was duly impressed: “It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience by proclaiming the simplest truths of the Bible…. He impressed the ignorant, and not less the advanced and refined…. He speaks from a heart all aglow of love, and pours out a torrent of eloquence which is almost irresistible.”

We must observe that Jonathan Edwards, albeit a Great Awakener, was a different sort of preacher than George Whitefield, or rather he used different devices. He was a careful observer of nature; his youthful study of spiders was of some interest to scientists for years. And he was a cogent reasoner steeped in the rational philosophy of John Locke. But in the final analysis, and in accord with the Puritan Convenant Theology that influenced his youth, God only requires faith in the Redeemer – works are not required for salvation. The one and only reason Man was put on Earth was to glorify God, and deviance from that Cause is the sin of selfishness.

As a young man, Jonathan had found some cause to object to God’s choice of who shall be saved and who shall burn in hellfire forever, but, as we can see from the excerpt from the heretofore quoted sermon, somehow the contradictions were reasonable resolved for him: “Now I say further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it…. There has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to God’s sovereignty, from that day to this; so that I scarce ever have found so much as a rising of an objection against God’s sovereignty, in the most absolute sense, in showing mercy to whom He shall show mercy, and hardening and eternally damning whom He will.” Alas, how often shall Reason forget that reasoning is another passion if not the dog dragged behind the cart?

After the final analysis, one is left with a choice, and not to choose, to suspend judgment is its own choice, and maybe the truest religion if peace is wanted. And in the final analysis, we can see little difference between the naked truth and the trappings spun by Pope Benedict out of Greek wool.

Many Greek sophists, the itinerant teachers who taught the art of rhetoric, did not believe that the power of words was in the words themselves or even in the truthful correspondence of their propositions to evidence, but rather in the powerful manner of delivery. What counts is success; only the successful way is the right way; the highway of winning is paved with conventional opinions of what is right and wrong, and does not wind up at universal standards for the good, the true, and the beautiful. The truth of a speech matters not; what matters is who speaks it, so let him speak powerfully. The art of persuasion if not brute might is what wins the day, and that art of old was governed by the gradual development of logic. Unfortunately for those who did not know better, sound logic proves nothing true, although it is useful for uncovering fallacies. Furthermore, although there might be a single Logos, there are several logics, and at least one of them seems as absurd as the Logos itself. Sensible facts or natural events might serve to publicly disprove a fine argument, but human events are to a great extent manmade, so it would seem that the persuasive force of argument might win the day and make the speaker’s dreams, of having godly power over people and forging ideal outcomes, come true. Such it seems is the mission of Origen, a sophisticated speaker despite his derogation of so-called Greek sophistry, and at heart a mystic whose intuited Summum Bonum or Chief Good on Earth was the Christian Apollo. That is not to say that he was a confounded hypocrite or did not believe what he repeated; one must start somewhere: should not good have its persuasive dogma as well as evil?

Furthermore, “if the enunciators of the truth are outside the Faith,” declared Origen, “we are studious not to vie with them, nor seek to upset sound sense.” He subtly implies that non-Christians who might enunciate the truth are hypocrites because they most likely do not practice it; for at that point Origen cites Paul, that “knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man…. They who wrote such things concerning the Chief Good nevertheless go down to the Piraeus that they may offer up a prayer to the goddess Artemis…. After so finely discussing the soul…they forsake the greatness of the things which God manifested to them.” This raises our eyebrows, for is not man the image of God, and is not his only begotten-man-son his perfect incarnation? We are warned not to “exchange the truth of God for a lie, and worship the creature more than the Creator.”

No doubt, then, the Son was with the Father in the beginning or even before the beginning. If we like some of the Greek philosophers say this is so much nonsense and foolishness, then we are undoubtedly in error in respect to our own religion, and should therefore return to self-righteousness by calling wise men fools and foolish men wise: “God chose the foolish things of the world that he might shame them that are wise; and the base things of the world, and the weak things, and the things that are despised, and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are; and that truly no one may glory before God.” That is to say that the values of wise men and women are worthless, their wisdom foolishness; and conversely our own values are worthwhile, our foolishness wisdom itself.

Given these contradictions on all fronts, one might as well, then, worship Nothing. That Nothing exists as Supreme Being is plain for the blind to see in their pure hearts; if we do not accept this mystery, we are impure, for as Jesus said, as quoted by Origen, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see their God.” And thanks to Origen’s way of thinking and manner of speaking, they shall understand such mysteries as the Eucharist, knowing well that it is not merely symbolic of the incorporation of the divine power of the sacrificed but is in fact, in prehistoric cannibalism rites led by the Head Chef,  the engorgement of the flesh and blood of the best man in the world that we could possibly murder and feast on. We can always argue that our victim was not wholly a man, and thus cleanse our minds with sophistries. To that end we might obtain the credentials required for high offices, baskets suspended from hot-air balloons or metaphysical dirigibles.

Wherefore Pope Benedict might keep these words of Origen in mind when he presides over the mess pseudo-conservative men, who would have the lion’s portion for themselves and leave the scraps to the most faithful hounds of heaven, have made of communitarian religion: “Consider whether Plato and the wise men of the Greeks do not in their choice dicta resemble physicians who attend only better-class patients, while they despise the bulk of men. But the Jewish Prophets and the disciples of Jesus, bidding a long farewell to the embroidery of diction, and, as the Scripture terms it, ‘the wisdom of men’ and ‘wisdom after the flesh’, would be like the cooks who take care, the quality of the food remaining the same, to prepare it the most wholesome way….”

THAT WOMAN

Origen was reputedly the first Father of the Church to press Mary’s virginity although he did not believe Mary herself was a perfect woman. In fact the Gospel of Mark does not treat Mary that well. Her alleged virginity or illegitimate birth is unmentioned. Jesus’ family apparently thought he had gone mad and wanted to take him into their custody. When the crowd informed him that his mother and brothers had arrived where he was preaching and were looking for him, he said, “Who are my mothers and my brothers?” Then he looked at those gathered around him and said, “Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whosoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” Furthermore, according to the Gospel of Mark, he disassociates himself from his own people when he returns to his home town and people there are taken aback by his peculiar behavior: “A prophet is not without honor except in his home town and among his own relatives and in his own household.”

Paul’s letters do not mention Mary by name; but we find this in Galatians, “But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying ‘Father!’” Some Christians believe that Jesus is the son of man, in the highest sense, that of Man as God, hence all men are brothers and sons of God descended from Adam, not to mention females. The Gospel of Luke identifies Mary in the highest sense, as a virgin – i.e. unstained by men – who will be overshadowed and impregnated by the Most High with the Son of God. “How can this be, since I am a woman?” she asked the angel Gabriel, who responds that nothing is impossible with God. We further note that Luke states that Jesus is “supposedly the son of Joseph, the son of Eli… the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

“The Gospel of John does not refer to the virgin birth, and Mary is not mentioned by name, but as “the mother of Jesus.” For Jesus himself to call his own mother “woman” instead of “mother” seems rather unflattering today. The Fathers of the church often asserted the inferiority of woman in general, rendering specious interpretations of Eve’s creation from Adam’s rib and her part in his fall to justify their misogyny; the Fathers associated woman with bodiliness, pettiness, sensuality, vanity, maliciousness, while of course the man stands for the spiritual domination. Only man was made in God’s image. Woman does her damnedest to drag man down from his divine exaltation. Only a man can truly represent the Father in Heaven and his only begotten Son, for both are male. Besides, if the Church is to be the pure, unadulterated virgin, only a male can play the role of husband. In any case the purest woman, the chaste virgin, must rid herself of femininity, eschew adornment, wear unshapely clothing, veil her face, hide her limbs, and gaze either at heaven or at the ground. We have this word on woman and her dress from no less a Church Father than Tertullian:

‘If there dwelt upon earth a faith as great as is the reward of faith which is expected in the heavens, no one of you at all, best beloved sisters, from the time that she had first "known the Lord," and learned (the truth) concerning her own (that is, woman's) condition, would have desired too gladsome (not to say too ostentatious) a style of dress; so as not rather to go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve,--the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition. "In pains and in anxieties dost thou bear (children), woman; and toward thine husband thy inclination, and he lords It over thee." And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert--that is, death--even the Son of God had to die. And do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins? Come, now; if from the beginning of the world the Milesians sheared sheep, and the Serians spun trees, and the Tyrians dyed, and the Phrygians embroidered with the needle, and the Babylonians with the loom, and pearls gleamed, and onyx-stones flashed; if gold itself also had already issued, with the cupidity (which accompanies it), from the ground; if the mirror, too, already had licence to lie so largely, Eve, expelled from paradise, (Eve) already dead, would also have coveted these things, I imagine! No more, then, ought she now to crave, or be acquainted with (if she desires to live again), what, when she was living, she had neither had nor known. Accordingly these things are all the baggage of woman in her condemned and dead state, instituted as if to swell the pomp of her funeral.’

But it is said that Jesus himself was a revolutionary who viewed woman as an equal and rejected the customary patriarchal subjection of women, as his beloved disciple John knew very well, and it was Paul who was the reactionary, but only to win over converts by conceding woman’s inferiority for the time being. However that might be, if the virgin birth of Logos (Christ) had been allowed to appear in the Gospel of John by its editors, it would be at odds with the preexistent Word that was platonically interpolated as the beginning of the text: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Of course accomplished metaphysicians would debate Christological paradoxes and resolve the mysteries into dogmatic formulae several centuries after the birth of God on Earth in human form. Mary appears as the foot of the cross with John: “When Jesus therefore saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, he said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your son!’ Legend has it that Mary and John ventured to the city of Ephesus after the crucifixion.

THE DOLOROUS PASSION OF CHRIST

Seventeen centuries later, the German mystic nun, Anna Katharine Emmerick (1774-1824) envisioned the life of Mary and Jesus from her bed in Westphalia. One Clemens Brentano, a world-wearied, German romantic poet  and novelist whose early works were published under the pseudonym, Maria, an author given to fantastic imagery and bizarre expressions, became her secretary, kept her dictated journal, then edited and published, with the encouragement of German bishops, the product in a book entitled The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich (1833), referred to now as The Passions of the Christ. Brentano also prepared The Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary for publication, which did not appear until 1852. Father Karl Schmoger took Brentano’s manuscripts, and published a three-volume work The Life of Our Lord (Ratisbon, 1858-81).

Anna Katharine Emmerick reportedly recognized Brentano at first glance as the man who would enable her to accomplish God’s commands to convey her revelations for the salvation of souls. Brentano was convinced that Anna was the “bride of Christ.” She enjoyed visions of Mary and conversed with Jesus from early childhood, and communed with suffering souls, chasing after them to save them from Purgatory. God eventually blessed her with painful stigmata, including wounds from a crown of thorns and crosses on her chest. She could not keep food down, and it was said that she survived on Holy Eucharist and water. She was bedridden by illness for twelve years. Doctors examined her and thought she bore the marks of a genuinely pious person – the symptoms described indicate cancer.

Anna, a peasant girl through and through, had worked hard in the fields and the garden: “When I was working in the garden, the birds would come and rest on my head and shoulders, and we would together sing the praises of God. I always beheld my angel-guardian at my side, and although the devil used frequently to assault and terrify me in various ways, he was never permitted to do me much harm.” She attended to the poor and nursed the sick when able, going so far as to suck the putrefaction from their sores. She was a “Victim Soul” who desired most of all to be crucified with Christ. “Repose in suffering has always appeared to me the most desirable condition possible. The angels themselves would envy us, were envy not an imperfection. But for sufferings to be really meritorious we must patiently and gratefully accept unsuitable remedies and comforts, and all other additional trials.” The Catholic authorities did not take kindly to her behavior at once. She was declared Venerable at the end of the nineteenth century; her cause was recently taken up again on account of a miracle she performed, and she was beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 3, 2004.

 Let us first taste this small portion of the extensive Passion that Anna viewed, as if in a dream, and then dictated to her secretary:

“The executioners did not allow him to rest long, but bade him rise and place himself on the cross that they might nail him to it. Then seizing his right arm they dragged it to the hole prepared for the nail, and having tied it tightly down with a cord, one of them knelt upon his sacred chest, a second held his hand flat, and a third taking a long thick nail, pressed it on the open palm of that adorable hand, which had ever been open to bestow blessings and favours on the ungrateful Jews, and with a great iron hammer drove it through the flesh, and far into the wood of the cross. Our Lord uttered one deep but suppressed groan, and his blood gushed forth and sprinkled the arms of the archers. I counted the blows of the hammer, but my extreme grief made me forget their number. The nails were very large, the heads about the size of a crown piece, and the thickness that of a man's thumb, while the points came through at the back of the cross. The Blessed Virgin stood motionless; from time to time you might distinguish her plaintive moans; she appeared as if almost fainting from grief, and Magdalen was quite beside herself. When the executioners had nailed the right hand of our Lord, they perceived that his left hand did not reach the hole they had bored to receive the nail, therefore they tied ropes to his left arm, and having steadied their feet against the cross, pulled the left hand violently until it reached the place prepared for it. This dreadful process caused our Lord indescribable agony, his breast heaved, and his legs were quite contracted. They again knelt upon him, tied down his arms, and drove the second nail into his left hand; his blood flowed afresh, and his feeble groans were once more heard between the blows of the hammer, but nothing could move the hard-hearted executioners to the slightest pity. The arms of Jesus, thus unnaturally stretched out, no longer covered the arms of the cross, which were sloped; there was a wide space between them and his armpits. Each additional torture and insult inflicted on our Lord caused a fresh pang in the heart of his Blessed Mother; she became white as a corpse, but as the Pharisees endeavoured to increase her pain by insulting words and gestures, the disciples led her to a group of pious women who were standing a little farther off.”

Here is more for good measure: “His body was entirely covered with black, blue, and red marks; the blood was trickling down on the ground, and yet the furious cries which issued from among the assembled Jews showed that their cruelty was far from being satiated. The night had been extremely cold, and the morning was dark and cloudy; a little hail had fallen, which surprised everyone, but towards twelve o'clock the day became brighter, and the sun shone forth. The two fresh executioners commenced scourging Jesus with the greatest possible fury; they made use of a different kind of rod, a species of thorny stick, covered with knots and splinters. The blows from these sticks tore his flesh to pieces; his blood spouted out so as to stain their arms, and he groaned, prayed, and shuddered. At this moment, some strangers mounted on camels passed through the forum; they stopped for a moment, and were quite overcome with pity and horror at the scene before them, upon which some of the bystanders explained the cause of what they witnessed. Some of these travellers had been baptised by John, and others had heard the sermon of Jesus on the mountain.”

Mel Gibson has admitted that Anna’s visions were the basis for his extremely popular movie, Passion of Christ, a film denounced by some critics as a self-righteous exercise in sadomasochistic anti-Semitism. In 1965 the Roman Church had issued a sort of apology, refuting the longstanding belief that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus; furthermore, the phrase “unbelieving Jews” was deleted from the Good Friday liturgy as part of an effort to purge the Church of its anti-Jewish bigotry. In any case, the document Nostra Aetate states that: "Neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time...or today...can be charged with the crimes committed during his Passion...Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from Holy Scripture." Shortly before the opening of Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, the US Catholic Bishops further repudiated the Church’s anti-Semitic past, citing documents advising Catholics to: "...avoid absolutely any [contemporary applications] of the New Testament which could provoke or reinforce unfavourable attitudes toward the Jewish people.” And, "Scriptural interpretation should refer to contemporary scholarship and avoid any representations of avarice, bloodthirstiness or enemies of the Christ."

In this context we remember well that Jesus was a Jew and that the bitter denunciation of Jews found in the Gospel, only excelled in sacred literature by the Quran, is a form of objectified self-contempt; and we further speculate that only a son of a strange god, say the alien-god or Stranger of Marcion’s heresy, instead of the old tribal god thought to actually be Satan by the Gnostics, could be truly objective. But Jesus was a Jew; the Marcionite heresy, which further posited Jesus as a phantasm, or a benevolent collective delusion projected by the Alien, was stamped out and the Catholic Church embraced Christianity as a Jewish cult whose self-love was often hate-Jews-based-love. Anna Katharine Emmerick most often described the Jews as “cruel Jews.”

“As soon as Pilate was seated, he again addressed the enemies of Jesus, in these words, 'Behold your King!' But the cries of 'Crucify him! Crucify him!' resounded on all sides. 'Shall I crucify your King?' said Pilate. 'We have no King but Caesar!' responded the High Priests. Pilate found it was utterly hopeless to say anything more, and therefore commenced his preparations for passing sentence. The two thieves had received their sentence of crucifixion some time before; but the High Priests had obtained a respite for them, in order that our Lord might suffer the additional ignominy of being executed with two criminals of the most infamous description. The crosses of the two thieves were by their sides; that intended fro our Lord was not brought, because he was not as yet sentenced to death. The Blessed Virgin, who had retired to some distance after the scourging of Jesus, again approached to hear the sentence of death pronounced upon her Son and her God. Jesus stood in the midst of the archers, at the foot of the staircase leading up to the tribunal. The trumpet was sounded to demand silence, and then the cowardly, the base judge, in a tremulous undecided voice, pronounced the sentence of death on the Just Man. The sight of the cowardice and duplicity of this despicable being [Pontius Pilate], who was nevertheless puffed up with pride at his important position, almost overcame me, and the ferocious joy of the executioners--the triumphant countenances of the High Priests, added to the deplorable condition to which our loving Saviour was reduced, and the agonizing grief of his beloved Mother--still further increased my pain. I looked up again, and saw the cruel Jews almost devouring their victim with their eyes, the soldiers standing coldly by, and multitudes of horrible demons passing to and fro and mixing in the crowd. I felt that I ought to have been in the place of Jesus, my beloved Spouse, for the sentence would not then have been unjust; but I was so overcome with anguish, and my sufferings were so intense, that I cannot exactly remember all that I did see. However, I will relate all as nearly as I can….”

The Lord’s beloved Mother and subsidiary holy women are maltreated when the wander the streets in search of information: “The news came unexpectedly upon them; for some time they doubted the truth of the report, and wavered between hope and fear; but the sight of their Master, their Benefactor, their Consoler, dragged through the streets, torn, bruised, and ill-treated in every imaginable way, filled them with horror; and their grief was still farther increased by beholding his afflicted Mother wandering about from street to street, accompanied by the holy women, and endeavouring to obtain some intelligence concerning her Divine Son. These holy women were often obliged to hide in corners and under door-ways for fear of being seen by the enemies of Jesus; but even with these precautions they were oftentimes insulted, and taken for women of bad character--their feelings were frequently harrowed by hearing the malignant words and triumphant expressions of the cruel Jews, and seldom, very seldom, did a word of kindness or pity strike their ears.”

Although Pilate is referred to as a “despicable being,” the author, and Mel Gibson who followed suit, have been charged with being to kind to his memory. Anna Katharine Emmerick at least had kind words for Pilate’s wife:

“Whilst the Jews were leading Jesus to Herod, I saw Pilate go to his wife, Claudia Procles. She hastened to meet him, and they went together into a small garden-house which was on one of the terraces behind the palace. Claudia appeared to be much excited, and under the influence of fear. She was a tall, fine-looking woman, although extremely pale. Her hair was plaited and slightly ornamented, but partly covered by a long veil which fell gracefully over her shoulders. She wore earrings, a necklace, and her flowing dress was drawn together and held up by a species of clasp. She conversed with Pilate for a long time, and entreated him by all that he held sacred not to injure Jesus, that Prophet, that saint of saints; and she related the extraordinary dreams or visions which she had had on the previous night concerning him. Whilst she was speaking I saw the greatest part of these visions: the following were the most striking. In the first place, the principal events in the life of our Lord--the annunciation, the nativity, the adoration of the shepherds and that of the kings, the prophecy of Simeon and that of Anna, the flight into Egypt, the massacre of the Innocents, and our Lord's temptation in the wilderness. She had likewise been shown in her sleep the most striking features of the public life of Jesus. He always appeared to her environed with a resplendent light, but his malicious and cruel enemies were under the most horrible and disgusting forms imaginable. She saw his intense sufferings, his patience, and his inexhaustible love, likewise the anguish of his Mother, and her perfect resignation. These visions filled the wife of Pilate with the greatest anxiety and terror, particularly as they were accompanied by symbols which made her comprehend their meaning, and her tender feelings were harrowed by the sight of such dreadful scenes. She had suffered from them during the whole of the night; they were sometimes obscure, but more often clear and distinct; and when morning dawned and she was roused by the noise of the tumultuous mob who were dragging Jesus to be judged, she glanced at the procession and instantly saw that the unresisting victim in the midst of the crows, bound, suffering, and so inhumanely treated as to be scarcely recognizable, was no other than that bright and glorious being who had been so often brought before her eyes in the visions of the past night. She was greatly affected by this sight, and immediately sent for Pilate, and gave him an account of all that had happened to her. She spoke with much vehemence and emotion; and although there was a great deal in what she had seen which she could not understand, much less express, yet she entreated and implored her husband in the most touching terms to grant her request. Pilate was both astonished and troubled by the words of his wife. He compared the narration with all he had previously heard concerning Jesus; and reflected on the hatred of the Jews, the majestic silence of our Saviour, and the mysterious answers he had given to all his questions. He hesitated for some time, but was at last overcome by the entreaties of his wife, and told her that he had already declared his conviction of the innocence of Jesus, and that he would not condemn him, because he saw that the accusations were mere fabrications of his enemies. He spoke of the words of Jesus to himself, promised his wife that nothing should induce him to condemn this just man, and even gave her a ring before they parted as a pledge of his promise.” Furthermore: “When Jesus fell down at the foot of the pillar, after the flagellation, I saw Claudia Procles, the wife of Pilate, sent some large pieces of linen to the Mother of God. I know not whether she thought that Jesus would be set free, and that his Mother would then require linen to dress his wounds, or whether this compassionate lady was aware of the use which would be made of her present.” It was put to good use later: “Mary knelt down by the head of Jesus, and placed beneath it a piece of very fine linen which had been given her by Pilate's wife, and which she had worn round her neck under her cloak.”

Linen, by the way, plays an important part in the Passion; Anna gives this account of the Shroud of Jesus: “The Blessed Virgin, the holy women, the men--all were kneeling round the body of Jesus to take their farewell of it, when a most touching miracle took place before them. The sacred body of Jesus, with all its wounds, appeared imprinted upon the cloth which covered it, as though he had been pleased to reward their care and their love, and leave them a portrait of himself through all the veils with which he was enwrapped.” Moreover, “The sacred body of Jesus, with all its wounds, appeared imprinted upon the cloth which covered it, as though he had been pleased to reward their care and their love, and leave them a portrait of himself through all the veils with which he was enwrapped. With tears they embraced the adorable body, and then reverently kissed the wonderful impression which it had left. Their astonishment increased when, on lifting up the sheet, they saw that all the bands which surrounded the body had remained white as before, and that the upper cloth alone had been marked in this wonderful manner. It was not a mark made by the bleeding wounds, since the whole body was wrapped up and covered with sweet spices, but it was a supernatural portrait, bearing testimony to the divine creative power ever abiding in the body of Jesus. I have seen many things relative to the subsequent history of this piece of linen, but I could not describe them coherently. After the resurrection it remained in the possession of the friends of Jesus, but fell twice into the hands of the Jews, and later was honoured in several different places. I have seen it in a city of Asia, in the possession of some Christians, who were not Catholics. I have forgotten the name of the town, which is situated in a province near the country of the Three Kings.”

Pilate reiterated the guilt of the cruel Jews: “The rabble assembled before Pilate's house, and instead of the cry of 'Crucify him, crucify him!' which had resounded in the morning, you might have heard vociferations of 'Down with the iniquitous judge!' 'May the blood of the just man fall upon his murderers!' Pilate was much alarmed; he sent for additional guards, and endeavoured to cast all the blame upon the Jews. He again declared that the crime was not his; that he was no subject of this Jesus, whom they had put to death unjustly, and who was their king, their prophet, their Holy One; that they alone were guilty, as it must be evident to all that he condemned Jesus solely from compulsion. The Temple was thronged with Jews, who were intent on the immolation of the Paschal lamb; but when the darkness increased to such a degree that it was impossible to distinguish the countenance of one from that of the other, they were seized with fear, horror, and dread, which they expressed by mournful cries and lamentations.”

Anna’s passionate vision informed her that “The Blessed Virgin was ever united to her Divine Son by interior spiritual communications.” Wherefore, “Mary was with Jesus in spirit, and Jesus was with her; but this loving Mother wished to hear with her own ear the voice of her Divine Son. She listened and heard not only his moans, but also the abusive language of those around him. It was impossible for the holy women to remain in the court any longer without attracting attention. The grief of Magdalen was so violent that she was unable to conceal it; and although the Blessed Virgin, by a special grace from Almighty God, maintained a calm and dignified exterior in the midst of her sufferings, yet even she was recognized, and overheard harsh words, such as these: 'Is not that the Mother of the Galilean? Her Son will most certainly be executed, but not before the festival, unless, indeed, he is the greatest of criminals.' The Blessed Virgin left the court, and went up to the fireplace in the vestibule, where a certain number of persons were still standing. When she reached the spot where Jesus had said that he was the Son of God, and the wicked Jews cried out, 'He is guilty of death,' she again fainted, and John and the holy women carried her away, in appearance more like a corpse than a living person.”

And this from the Crucifixion scene: “Magdalen, Mary of Cleophas, and John stood near the Cross of our Lord and looked at him, while the Blessed Virgin, filled with intense feelings of motherly love, entreated her Son to permit her to die with him; but he, casting a look of ineffable tenderness upon her, turned to John and said, 'Woman, behold thy son;' then he said to John, 'Behold thy mother.' John looked at his dying Redeemer, and saluted this beloved mother (whom he henceforth considered as his own) in the most respectful manner. The Blessed Virgin was so overcome by grief at these words of Jesus that she almost fainted, and was carried to a short distance from the Cross by the holy women. I do not know whether Jesus really pronounced these words, but I felt interiorly that he gave Mary to John as a mother, and John to Mary as a son. In similar visions a person is often conscious of things which are not written, and words can only express a portion of them, although to the individual to whom they are shown they are so clear as not to require explanation. For this reason it did not appear to me in the least surprising that Jesus should call the Blessed Virgin 'Woman,' instead of 'Mother.' I felt that he intended to demonstrate that she was that woman spoken of in Scripture who was to crush the head of the serpent, and that then was the moment in which that promise was accomplished in the death of her Son…. The Blessed Virgin knelt down frequently and kissed the ground where her Son had fallen, while Magdalen wrung her hands in bitter grief, and John, although he could not restrain his own tears, endeavoured to console his companions, supported and led them on. Thus was the holy devotion of the 'Way of the Cross' first practiced; thus were the Mysteries of the Passion of Jesus first honoured, even before that Passion was accomplished, and the Blessed Virgin, that model of spotless purity, was the first to show forth the deep veneration felt by the Church for our dear Lord. How sweet and consoling to follow this Immaculate Mother, passing to and fro, and bedewing the sacred spots with her tears. But, ah! Who can describe the sharp, sharp sword of grief which then transfixed her tender soul? She who had once borne the Saviour of the world in her chaste womb, and suckled him for so long,--she who had truly conceived him who was the Word of God, in God from all eternity, and truly God,--she beneath whose heart, full of grace, he had deigned to dwell nine months, who had felt him living within her before he appeared among men to impart the blessing of salvation and teach them his heavenly doctrines; she suffered with Jesus, sharing with him not only the sufferings of his bitter Passion, but likewise that ardent desire of redeeming fallen man by an ignominious death, which consumed him. In this touching manner did the most pure and holy Virgin lay the foundation of the devotion called the Way of the Cross; thus at each station, marked by the sufferings of her Son, did she lay up in her heart the inexhaustible merits of his Passion, and gather them up as precious stones or sweet-scented flowers to be presented as a choice offering to the Eternal Father in behalf of all true believers.”

-DECONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS-