Christ's Last Agony

Us s>ewr?

By
REV. HENRY E. O'KEEFFE, C.S.P.

Guido Reni

ECCE HOMO

Thirty-second Thousand

New York
THE PAULIST PRESS
401 West 59th Street
JSttnl tetat:
Arthur J. Scanxan, S.T.D.,
Censor Librorum.

Smprtntatur:
Hh Patrick J. Hayes, D.D.,
Archbishop of New York.

New York, January 30, 1922.

Copyright, 1922, by "The Missionary Society of St. Paul thi

Apostle in the State of New York
CHRIST'S LAST AGONY

His Seven Words

Meditative Sermons for Public and

Private Devotion

By
REV. HENRY E. O'KEEFFE
of the Paulist Fathers

New York
THE PAULIST PRESS
401 West 59th Street
Deacidftfed
 Cijrisst'si lag* Hgonp
"Then therefore Pilate delivered Him to them to be crucified. And
they took Jesus, and led Him forth. And bearing His own Cross, He
went forth to that place which is called Calvary, but in Hebrew
Golgotha. Where they crucified Him, and with Him two others, one
on each side, and Jesus in the midst. And Pilate wrote a title also,
and he put it upon the Cross. And the writing was: Jesus of
Nazareth, the Kino of the Jews. This title, therefore, many of the
Jews did read: because the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh
to the city. And it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin."
(John xix. 16-20.)

TN Christ's Last Agony, there is the agony of every dying

* man. Hence it has a moral value for contemplation
for every man that lives and will die. Christianity is the
only creed that attempts to lend succor to suffering hu-
manity, because it holds up the virtue of dignified com-
posure even in the grasp of torture, manifested in Christ
Who is both Eternal and Divine. It shows Him endowed
with the virtue of courage at the crucial moment of the
soul's struggle. When the tide of desolation reached the
breaking point, He did not morally break, even though
physically and literally He died of a broken Heart when
the soldier plunged a spear in His Side: "They shall
look upon Me Whom they have pierced."
This fact, although it gives no thorough reason for the
existence of suffering, at least manifests the comforting
truth that Christ in some unthinkable and preeminent
manner has suffered to the final degree of dereliction.
He has shown us that there must be something sweet and
meritorious even in the bitterness and indignity of human
suffering. There is, moreover, solace in the thought,
especially for the abandoned, the sick, the sorrowing and
the lonely, that Christ, the Manifestation of God, has suf-
fered and suffers with every suffering soul: "I will draw
all things to Myself."
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
Therefore His Death is not merely unique in its expres-
sion of the profoundest suffering, but it is living and uni-
versal in its moral application. Unless we begin our
meditation on Christ's Last Agony with the knowledge of
this truth, our devotions may be, if not futile in deep spir-
itual results, certainly not radical nor vital enough to re-
construct our lives with this new and meritorious aspect
of human misery.
If a sharp pain mercilessly shoots from head to foot
through my trembling body, my first impulse is to revolt
and fight against it. But if at the period of my keenest
misery I unite my suffering with the suffering of Christ,
immediately its very harshness has been put under moral
control, and takes on a serviceable merit which of itself
it
it could never possess: "I fill up those things that are
wanting of the sufferings of Christ."
Moreover, we are allowed to believe from the most ap-
proved teaching that He Who was Light as well as Truth,
passed not only through all the harrowing processes of
sorrow, but likewise through the more subtle disintegra-
tion of doubt. He suffered that more terrific agony of
mind not only in the Garden of Gethsemane, but on the
Hill of Calvary. Since He came out of the fire unscathed,
He is for us, indeed, "the Light which enlighteneth every
man that cometh into the world," when we grope in the
obscurity of doubt or are harassed by difficulties or temp-
tations against Faith.
Christ's Passion is a personal concern for each sufferer
because Christ is in the sufferer, whether his sufferings
arise from moral or even intellectual causes. In the night
of such darkness not only love but hope see the light in
His Light, for "he who followeth Me, walketh not in
darkness."
Therefore Christ's Agony has a vital and personal value
for every man born into the world and attacked by every
species of moral and intellectual disorder. The tragedy
of man's life, intellectual and moral, is deeply rooted in
the crowning horror of all the horrors of history the
Death of Christ. In contemplating this noble Death we
are not considering merely the Supreme Hero of historv,
4
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
but we aremaking a norm by which to measure both the
injustice and confusion of the world and the deaths of
all heroes that have died for a holy cause. Doubtless
when I behold the naked arms of St. Stephen outstretched
to the open heavens and the flying shower of stones beat-
ing his trembling body to the ground, I am touched with
reverence and compassion. The effect is exciting and
inspiring, but not personal to me as are the outstretched
arms of the Lord Jesus on the arms of the Cross: "All
day long have I stretched forth Mine arms to a foolish
and a gainsaying people."
I kneel as a pilgrim on the bloody stones of Canterbury
Cathedral, where St. Thomas a Becket gave his life not
only for England, but for the Universal Church. I am
stirred and I kiss the spot where his feet have trod, but
his death is only remotely of service to me, whereas the
Death of Christ is my very life. The tragedy of Caesar's
treacherous death at the foot of Pompey's statue is stir-
ring, but the tragedy of Jesus Christ is the tragedy of my
life.He Who was crucified on Calvary, is forever sacri-
ficedon the Golgotha of men's souls: "They have dug
My hands and feet; they have numbered all My bones."
One may kiss the Image on His crucifix for ten or even
twenty years, and yet the Crucified may not speak. Let
us hold it once again before our eyes and hearken.

Perhaps He will speak to you perhaps to me! The
Voice of the Redeemer is ever speaking, but alas! where
is there one who will hearken? We must be silent and lis-
ten. A man makes himself within himself, not without
himself. We must be honest, plain, genuine, true and
even brutal with ourselves when under the shadow of the
Cross. To meditate on the Three Holy Hours of
Christ's Agony we must exclude the noise of the busy
world from our minds; all undue intensity must be re-
laxed, and hushed all the strife of tongues: "Behold I will
lead her into the wilderness and there I will speak to her
heart." In this intimacy we shall discover a bewildering
wealth of gifts, for Our Divine Lord is a King with the
badge of royalty on His Sacred Heart. He is the Eternal
Priest, the Victim to be destroyed and consumed by sin.
5
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
He is our Elder Brother with all human tenderness, the
one Mediator between God and men, the Man, Christ
Jesus.
When dying seven sentences broke from His pallid lips.
Each word of each sentence has ten thousand lessons for
you and for me. Each Word will tell its own story, in
its own language to you and to me. What is it?
 W& Jftntf OTorb
"And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary,
they crucified Him there; and the robbers, one on the right hand,
and the other on the left. And Jesus said: 'Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do.'
" (Luke xxiii. 33, 34.)

QOME scholars familiar with the genius of the Hebrew

^ language think that these words were expressed in
such wise as to mean in the English translation: "He
kept on repeating: 'Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do.' " Whether or not it be a literal ren-
dition of the text, it is indeed true that these same words
have been repeated, and repeated by Our Saviour ever
since the first Good Friday. They have echoed across our
unhappy world down through time, else destruction would
long since have overtaken us.
Christ has dragged His emaciated and exhausted body
with the heavy Cross on His Shoulders up to the Hill of
the Skulls. It is a bleak spot surrounded by bare, sharp
rocks. It overlooks Jerusalem. A curious tradition tells
that Adam was buried upon the brow of it. Here Jesus
Christ now stands with His Face toward the Holy City.
He is looking at it; through the mist of His tears, He must
once again have thought: "If thou didst but know, in
this thy day, the things that are for thy peace, but now
they are hidden from thine eyes."
Jesus is shamelessly stripped of His raiment, piece by
piece. His fair Body trembles as it shook in Gethsemane
when He felt the chill of the Passion creep over His Soul.
He is laid on His Cross which He has carried from the
Praetorium. Then He is lifted up that He may draw all
men unto Himself.
His outlook is upon the whole world which He beholds
with one glance. His fixed gaze sweeps the whole dura-
tion of time. He sees all things, the present, the past and
the future as present, since His Mind is the historic ex-
pression of the Divine Mind. All men pass before Him,
civilization after civilization, the rise and the ruins of
governments, the struggles and failures and the blasted
hopes of all mankind.
1
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
It is meet that a cry of mercy for us should issue from
His lips. St. Teresa's favorite text was: "I will sing
forever of the mercy of the Lord." From the fountain
of pardon which Jesus opened upon Calvary all the re-
sources for man's hopefulness and final salvation are con-
sistently derived. His cry to the Father that we might
be forgiven was not strained, it was sincere and profound.
Behind all our badness the Eternal Father saw Christ's
goodness. Behind the justice of the Eternal Father, there
was Christ's mercy. The reckless behavior of the rabble
at that moment before Christ, represented the fleeting and
fickle sentiment of the whole world. His prayer to the
Father for mercy, is His Eternal prayer for forgiveness
for all the sins of history, past, present and future. His
Words have made it possible for Infinite and Divine Char-
ity to act consistently and to bring together mercy and
justice in the same embrace. This gives us heart of hope
when facing the mistakes of our own lives and the appar-
ently insoluble difficulties in the present state of the
world. We presume upon nothing, yet we are confident
of everything when considering this utterance of Christ
from the Cross. His Atonement and Propitiation have
harmonized the two principles of Divine Justice and
Mercy. Our forgiveness is wrought through Christ's for-
giveness. He has bestowed upon us the highest degree of
confidence at the moment when we are encompassed with
the lowest degree of humility. His cry of forgiveness for
the supreme folly of the world, is the crowning climax
of Everlasting Mercy. The very mercilessness of the mob
on Calvary, has perfected the most eloquent exposition of
the boundlessness of God's mercy toward man.
We shall never know the full extent of the horror of the
Passion because we can never perceive the area and
depth and the far-reaching moral deterioration wrought
by the malignity of sin. Hence we shall never fully un-

derstand the supreme climax of all mercies the Divine
Mercy. Yet we know we have sinned and we know the
thousands of opportunities for good we have refused.
Had we not refused, what would have been the result?

8
 fje feecoub IfflioriJ
"And one of those robbers who were hanged blasphemed Him, say-
ing: 'If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us.' But the other an-
swering, rebuked him, saying: 'Neither dost thou fear God, seeing
thou art under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for
we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man hath done no
evil.' And he said to Jesus: 'Lord, remember me when Thou
shalt come into Thy kingdom.' And Jesus said to him: 'Amen 1
say to thee: this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.'
" (Luke
xxiii. 39-43.)

A T first the thieves crucified on either side of the Master

*"*"were stupified by the potion they had imbibed. It
was a mock tradition of Roman penal procedure to dull
the consciousness of the suffering criminal. In feeble-
ness and desperation the thieves drank the potion. Jesus
did not. The effect of the drink passed, at least from the
penitent thief. The howls and the blasphemies of the
mob died away. The moans and gasps of the two mal-
efactors changed to the dread silence which usually
precedes death. In this broken mood of utter exhaustion
God's grace is subtly, mysteriously working in the heart
of one of the thieves. He is not dead, but he has re-
lapsed into silence. There is meditation in his silence,
for his darkened mind is breaking open to that Truth,
which the intelligence of the whole world had overlooked.
Its first acknowledgment is from the abandoned criminal
on Golgotha. That spark of faith hidden in a mass of
ignorance and vice, has waxed strong and illumined the
weakness of poor human nature with flashes of glory.
The thief when all, even the faithful, were tempted to be-
lieve that Jesus of Nazareth was dead and done for, pro-
claimed his vivid faith in the Resurrection "Lord, re-
:

member me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom!"

We now gather from the screams and curses of the
other thief that the stimulation and relief from the liquid
drug administered by the executioner, is passing away; he
is absorbed and writhing in his agony. He is in revolt at
the relentless fury of his torture. Alas! poor wretch, he
does not see the Magnificent Sufferer by his side; least of
all does he see the composed and sanctified pain of his
brother in crime.
9
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
The good thief beheld with his blood-shot and blinded
eyes, through the veil of his surging tears, that Another
suffered beside himself. Through the lowering darkness
in the skies and the clouds of dust provoked by the hoofs
of the horses and the tumult of the crowd, he perceives
the Hero Who has touched the acme of all suffering and
gathered every note of melancholy within the inner folds
of His Heart. But mark, he had to turn and look before
he could discover that it is Jesus Who really suffers. It
is His suffering which is ultimately behind our suffering.
The good thief forgot, for the moment, his suffering at
the sight of Christ's suffering. He forgot for the moment,
self. When self goes out, Jesus Christ comes in. Grace
begins its work of transfiguration when self is subor-
dinated. The transformation of self brought to the pale
and trembling lips of the thief the faint and muffled but
sincere prayer: "Lord, remember me when Thou shalt
come into Thy kingdom."
It behooves us, then, to subdue self. It is not a facile
warfare, for all the powers of nature and the principalities
of evil will rebel and fight. Strange, bewildering para-
dox! that unless a man loseth his life, he shall not find
it; that, not until man parts with his life, can he possess it

for eternity. The mighty must be brought low that their

lowliness may be regarded and exalted. The seed must
fall into the ground and die, before it can bear fruit. It
is the law of all spiritual life and progress. It is the proc-
ess of gestation: first, dissolution to effect production,
generation and new birth: "For unless a man be born
again he shall not enter into life." We shall attempt, then,
through our future career, to slough off self and totally
and unreservedly surrender ourselves to the Divine Will.
We shall open out every faculty of our being, mind, heart
and will, to the Holy Spirit's influence as the vine-leaf to
the drops of the dew. The process must begin with the
crucifixion and the death of self. This is not the
annihilation of self as in Buddhism, for in authentic Chris-
tianity, the personal and the individual self is always re-
tained, but the spring of its operation is rooted in the
Divine Will, to gain a holy rest and peace at the last.
10
 W$t OTrirb OTorb
"Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother and His Mother's
sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus, there-
fore, had seen His Mother and the disciple standing whom He loved,
He saith to His Mother: 'Woman, behold thy son.' After that He
saith to the disciple: 'Behold thy Mother.'" (John xix. 25-27.)

rpHE Mother of Jesus emerged from a garden near the

*- highroad and made her way to the foot of His Cross.
The dark clouds were growing blacker. But through the
gloom Jesus recognized His Mother at once and the vir-
gin disciple whom He loved. "Woman," He said, "behold
thy son!" Since His Hands were nailed to the limbs of
the wooden Cross, He could not indicate with a gesture,
to whom, precisely, He was pointing. So He was forced
to turn His drooping Head and Eyes toward John and
exclaim: "Behold thy Mother!"
Our dear Victim has been hanging for about an hour
on the infamous gibbet. At its base stand two supreme

personages two preeminent types of transfigured love.
When Our Lady looked up at the bruised and emaciated
Body of her Son, she shook with horror. Every particle
of that fair Body (blood, bone, muscle, tissue, sinew, all)
was part of her body, since according to Faith, Christ had
no natural father. We
see at once, how close she has
brought Our Saviour and bound Him to us with the cords
of Adam. The covenant is, indeed, in the flesh. Small
wonder then that Our Lord should call upon redeemed
humanity to look to His Mother. Through His beaten and
broken flesh, our flesh, which is the instrument of humili-
ation, has become the condition of our sanctification and
rehabilitation into the new life of grace. Furthermore,
the Blessed Mary loved her Son humanly and with all the
strength of the maternal instinct. Yet He Whom she
loved was Divine. So that human and divine love meet
in the Woman. The term and object of her love were
Divine, but the instrument and performance were human.
It is a new revelation of love. Christ, the Mediator, would
have us behold this vision of moral beauty by directing
our thought to the mediatrix: "Son, behold thy mother!"
11
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
In the economy of the Incarnation we have been re-
deemed through the flesh. St. John, the Beloved, typifies
virginity- a virtue so irresistible in its charm that even
the moral excesses of pagan civilizations could not with-
stand it. Inviolate chastity can only thrive under the
sheltering wings of the Cross. Its gentle patroness is the
Ever-Blessed Virgin: "Woman, behold thy son!" This
glorious handmaiden, the personal fulfillment of prophecy,
from Isaias to the Apocalypse, has combined the virginal
and the maternal estate in their essential unity and per-
fection. She is not only the symbol of the comeliest love,
but she is its sublimation. She went from virginity to
maternity as from innocence unto innocence. She missed
the imperfections of both estates. From serene waters to
the more turbulent, she moved with the soft dignity of
the swan. The placid heart of the virgin within its zone
was encompassed by the fervid heart of the matron.
The disciple whom Jesus loved, deemed it prudent to
lead Mary to his own home. Around these two are gath-
ered the high and serviceable friendships and loves of all
times. "Blessed is the man who has found a true friend,"
says the author of The Imitation. "Son, behold thy
mother." Fine love is perfected in restraint, transfigured
in its sorrows and crowned in death. Only the virginal
ardor of John could have provoked him to lay his head
upon the breast of Jesus. The intimacy is unspeakable
in its beauty and ingenuousness. When our loves and
friendships are safeguarded by Jesus, then we are morally
secure. When our loves and friendships are united with
Christ, the Source, principle and expression of God's love
for man, then they take on a perfection and merit, which
of themselves they could never possess. "The final per-
fection of everything whatsoever," says St. Thomas
Aquinas, "lies in the attainment of its end. The ultimate
perfection to which anything can attain is this, that it be
united with its principle." The concluding words of
Dante's poem express the same thought: "It is love that
moves the sun in heaven and all the stars."

12


rje Jf ourtf) OTorb

"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth,
until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a
loud voice, saying: 'Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?' that is: 'My God,

My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' " (Matt, xxvii. 45, 46.)

/\UR strong Son of God has gone down into the deepest
" depths of obscurity and desolation. His cry which
pierces the very walls of heaven is shrouded with in-
scrutable darkness. It is one of the most difficult pas-
sages in Holy Scripture, not merely to the scholar for its
philological significance, but to the saint and mystic who
have struggled to break through and discern its inner
meaning.
But speculation is futile, unless we go up to the hill of
Calvary and kneel at the foot of the Gross. Everything
is reduced to prayer. We are so helpless in all things.
How little can we know of the simple and profound es-
sence of the Divine Nature. That Jesus should voluntar-
ily drop a veil over His own Eyes, so that His Eternal
Father should deliberately withdraw His Presence from
Christ's sight is no less a mystery than that this illimitable
transcendental Being Whom we call God should suffer as
Christ in the form of Human Flesh and Blood Manet
immota Fides.
This isindeed a gigantic wonder, but not a miracle,
for a miracle would suppose the suspension of a law.
How in this case, at least, can we say a law has been sus-
pended since we know little or nothing of the laws of the
Divine Being and more especially when the Divinity ut-
ters a cry which echoes the abject helplessness of all hu-
manity? Ancient and modern philosophy are ever prov-
ing how increasingly complex and mysterious is man's
nature. Infinitely more so is Christ's. In confusion of
thought we are sometimes bewildered at what seems to
be an alternating personality and a disincarnate spirit in
man. Why then should we marvel at the bewildering
Personality of Christ?
"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
13
 :

CHRIST'S LAST AGONY

An infidel now somewhat discredited,
commentator,
saw in these of Jesus an evidence of momentary
words
moral weakness. It was his opinion (which he seemed
to retract more than once) that as the cloud hid Jesus
from the Face of His Father He bore an agony of despair
more acute a thousand times than all His torments, and
that He perhaps repented His suffering for a vile race.
Such a belief quenches at once the serene fire and glory
of the Atonement and Intercession. It finds a flaw in
the stupendous structure of the Redemption, which would
let it crumble to earth. It detects a vein of clay in the
statue not of a Greek god, but of a God Whose failure

would shatter the hopes of man a God Who would thus
become a mockery to man's heart and a libel to man's in-
satiable love. The darkness of night which has now
fallen on Golgotha, would then envelop forever the tumul-
tuous problem of life and the inner folds of man's spirit.
Be it said however of the honesty of this same infidel
that he pictures Jesus in His fit of dereliction as being
sustained once again by heavenly strength and by the
Divine Light which for the moment seemed to be flicker-
ing out of His Soul.
But is not that the approved and traditional teaching?
Was it not in the visions of the seers and the reproaches
of the prophets that a sea of desolation would overwhelm
for an instant the serene spirit of our dear Redeemer?
These prophetic cries concerning the Messiah are ex-
pressed in such words as these
"Save Me, O God for the waters are come in even unto
:

My Soul." "All Thy waves and storms are gone over Me."
"Thou hast laid Me in the lowest pit, in a place of dark-
ness and in the deep."
The hidden meaning of the prophets is revealed to us
by the sublime message of the Prophet: "He hath laid
on Him the iniquity of us all."
It is not irreverent to say that the same God Who laid
the Cross of life upon the shoulders of suffering humanity
could out of love for us suffer solitary distress and in a
preeminent degree. The calm impassable Divine Nature
would not be disturbed if Divinity should assume the sus-
14
 THE FOURTH WORD
ceptibilities for unfathomable woe in the being of man.
It is terrible and inexplicable, but
it is not impossible or

incredible.
We shall learn more of this mystery only when we put
our fingers to our lips, bow our heads and kneel within
the shadow of the Cross until the fretful storm overhang-
ing Calvary passes by.
Difficulties are difficulties, but they are not doubts. No
finite mind can even remotely follow into the deep re-
cesses of the Infinite Mind and Will. We cannot predicate
except in the terms of human expression what happened
to the Divine and Human Nature of Christ when He be-
held the undrawn veil which shut out from Him tempor-
arily the Face of God. This overwhelming human dis-
appointment of Christ rivets the wondering sympathy
and opens a ceaseless stream of tears for deathless ages.
This manifestation of the Human in the High Priest of
the Eternal Sacrifice makes the Mediatorship between God
and Man totally complete.
Beside being the Eternal Priest, Christ was a King with
prophetic office. His badge of royalty He carried upon
His wounded Breast. So with the regal step of a King
He marched to the borderland of a domain beyond which
our limited human ken could not reach. When He ut-
tered the wail: "My God, My God, why hast Thou for-
saken Me," He entered a land unknown to us. If it be
true that the higher a nature is, the more manifold and

simple it is if that deep law (which runs through all
life) makes manifest that the profound natures have at
the same time a unity and complexity, then this same law
is applicable to the highest of all natures
The Divine.
Dante sings that as his sight became purified he entered
more and more inis the rays "of the High Light which
of itself is True."
Language is faint and inadequate to express the tran-
scendent glory of the Divine Being. To assert this does
not signify skepticism, but a state of mind which humbly
and prayerfully acknowledges its limitations.
All we know of Christ's Passion is enough for us to
know. It is enough for us to know that He gives us a
15
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
proof of His Love which alone makes tolerable this pitiful
life of ours. It is enough for us to know in the expres-
sion of St. Paul that He chose to "taste death for us all"
and to learn "obedience by the things which He suf-
fered."
"He mourned," says Arnaud de Chartres, "that the fruit
of His struggles should be torn from Him; He cried aloud
that His sweat, His toils and His Death were thus bereft
of their reward; since those for whom He had suffered so
much were abandoned to everlasting perdition." This
wrung from Him that mournful cry.
The blood-red sun hanging in the sky over Calvary was
a faint shadow of the light which if not withdrawn was
certainly darkened to the ever-alert vision of Jesus. In
this darkness we hear His groan from the Cross. Blinded
with our tears and overcome with pity, we struggle to
find His pallid and emaciated Face. To lose God even for
a moment is the death of deaths. Jesus in this hour has
gone down into the deepest depth. He has lost the
Beatific Vision. In this sad plight all comfort has gone,
human and Divine. "I looked for one that would grieve
together with Me, but there was none for one that would
:

comfort Me, and I found none."

The apparent replacement of the human for the Divine

and the Divine for the human in the Person of our dear
Lord is confusing to us because our minds are too small
to fathom the abysmal deeps of His Life and Love or the
terrible far-reaching malignity of sin, for which He is
making Atonement. We can but hold our breath and bow
our heads at this Ineffable Love. It is the most romantic
tragedy that has existed since the beginning of history.
Our difficulty is in trying to contemplate how any being
could be sustained without the constant and all-pervading
support of the Creator. We know that it is in God we
have our being, and if He seems to withdraw from us, it
is only a subjective or seeming abandonment. This tor-
tuous and loud moan of our Strong Lover from the Cross
proves that at the critical moment when we think our-
selves utterly forsaken of God, then we are nearest to the
inner folds of the Divine Heart. In this crisis it is futile
16
 "

THE FOURTH WORD

to turn to creatures. They are helpless. God will even-
tually assert Himself. The victory and merit is in hold-
ing fast to Him even in bitter desolation:"Though Thou
slayest me yet will I trust in Thee."
"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud
lamma sabacthani?' that is to say:
voice, saying: 'Eli, Eli,
'M/ God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'

He Who was dying that others might live He Who was

agonizing to wash man's sin away He is overlooked by
God. We cannot believe it. This was what the Sufferer
seemed to think for the moment. He appears to be de-
feated by the principalities of darkness. Rut in the fail-
ure He manifests the triumphant glory of the Father.
We cannot conjecture further. The universal miasma
of sin which overshadows and oppresses the earth drops
a mighty veil between man and the Face of God. It is
that overpowering Stygian blackness which makes our
eyes so blind when looking into the inner and essential
recesses of being where lurks the secret of the mystery
of moral evil.
Meanwhile we throw ourselves upon our knees and
humbly and sincerely pray for the light of Faith in our
hours of obscurity and desolation.
Dante in his vision of the Paradiso sings:
"Recause into the Faith which maketh souls
Known of God, 'twas there I entered."
When St. John led our Rlessed Lady away from the
Cross the last bond Him to our earthly life was
that held
utterly broken but
when God apparently broke from

Him, then All was gone human and Divine. With the
Lord Christ (as with us at death) human solace had failed.
We are alone in death. Human affection may come down
with us to the very edge of the mists and boding shadows
of the valley of death. Rut we go down into the black
night at last, alone.
Rlessed Lord! Thou Who hast tasted this dread loneli-
ness, be with us when the green scene of earth has gone
dark in an instant, and the glisten of love has faded from
the eyes that watched us to the end!
17
 : :

CHRIST'S LAST AGONY

While our Beloved Christ is hanging on the Cross,
nature sympathizes with that cry which was never heard
before or since on land or sea. The dimming of a mid-
day light like a threatening shadow has enveloped that
Hill which is called Calvary.
In the distance lies the Holy City. Its stone towers
and bright domes are scarcely visible for the mantle of
doom is quickly wrapping itself around it. It will soon
pass from our sight and also the bleak hills beyond the
Jordan. An awful pall will rest over the bosom of nature
at least for the Three Hours of Christ's Agony. It is
the ardent sympathy of creation for the Creator.
The Cross, whereon the Christ hung in death, was hid-
den in a thick, black cloud; all human noises were hushed
and died away, and the cry which antiquity has put into
the mouth of Dionysius the Areopagite expresses that
mighty fear which shook the souls of men
"Either the Divinity suffers, or He is moved to pity at
some great woe!" It is a tradition that when the bliss-
ful martyr St. Thomas a Becket was slaughtered in Canter-
bury Cathedral, there were sharp flashes of lightning
and loud peals of thunder. The sullen skies of England
bore protest to the bloody murder of the innocent Arch-
bishop.
That dense impenetrable darkness enshrouding the
spare Body of Jesus is related in other writings beside
the Sacred Scriptures. Tertullian refers to the national
archives in words such as these : "Examine your own
annals, and there you will find that in the days of Pilate,
when Christ suffered, the sun disappeared in full day
and the mid-day light was interrupted." Phlegon of
Tralles, a freedman of the Emperor Adrian, is quoted in
the writings of Eusebius, how, in the fourth year of the
two hundred and second Olympiad, there was a strange,
unnatural phenomenon in the sky, when "it became night
at noon-day."
In an ancient book of Meditations there are these quaint
and stirring lines
"Think then on the wonders that then befell; how
creatures that had no wit sorrowed at His death. The
18
 :

THE FOURTH WORD

sun withdrew his brightness and became all mirk, and
thus shewed that it sorrowed for Christ's death; the hard
rock was riven; the earth quaked; the graves opened, and
the dead men that were in them rose to life and witnessed
that He was very God that the Jews did to death, with
sighings and tears."
This lament of our Sufferer which pierced the gloom
was predicated of the Messiah in many places of the
Psalms and other sacred texts. His mental Agony is de-
picted in language which should rend our hearts with
horror and pity.
This lowermost depth of Christ's woe will at last bring
about the conversion of the Gentitles. The sacred author
speaks of it in this wise:

God my God, look upon me why hast Thou for-

:

saken me?
Far from my salvation are the words of my sins.
O my God, I shall cry by day, and Thou wilt not
hear: and by night, and it shall not be reputed as
folly inme.
Rut Thou dwellest in the holy place, the praise of
Israel.
In Thee have our fathers hoped: they have hoped,
and Thou hast delivered them.
They cried to Thee, and they were saved: they
trusted in Thee, and were not confounded.
Rut I am a worm, and no man the reproach of
:

men, and the outcast of the people.

All they that saw me have laughed me to scorn
they have spoken with the lips, and wagged the head.
He hoped in the Lord, let Him deliver him: let
Him save him, seeing he delighteth in Him.
For Thou art He that hast drawn me out of the
womb: my hope from the breasts of my mother. I
was cast upon Thee from the womb.
From my mother's womb Thou art my God, depart
not from me.
For tribulation is very near: for there is none to
help me.
Many calves have surrounded me: fat bulls have
besieged me.
19
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
They have opened their mouths against me, as a
lion ravening and roaring.
I am poured out like water; and all my bones are
scattered.
My heart is become like wax melting in the midst
of my bowels.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my
tongue hath cleaved to my jaws: and Thou hast
brought me down into the dust of death.
For many dogs have encompassed me: the council
of the malignant hath besieged me.
They have dug my hands and feet. They have
numbered all my bones.
And they have looked and stared upon me. They
parted my garments among them; and upon my
vesture they cast lots.
But Thou, Lord, remove not Thy help to a dis-
tance from me; look towards my defence.
Deliver, God, my soul from the sword: my only
one from the hand of the dog.
Save me from the lion's mouth; and my lowness
from the horns of the unicorns.
I will declare Thy name to my brethren in the:

midst of the church will I praise Thee.

Ye that fear the Lord, praise Him; all ye the seed
of Jacob, glorify Him.
Let all the seed of Israel fear Him: because He
hath not slighted nor despised the supplication of
the poor man.
Neither hath He turned away His face from me:
and when I cried to Him He heard me.
With Thee is my praise in a great church: I will
pay my vows in the sight of them that fear Him.
The poor shall eat and shall be filled: and they
shall praise the Lord that seek Him: their hearts
shall live forever and ever.
All the ends of the earth shall remember, and shall
be converted to the Lord:
And all the kindreds of the Gentiles shall adore in
His sight.
For the kingdom is the Lord's; and He shall have
dominion over the nations.

SO
 THE FOURTH WORD
All the fat ones of the earth have eaten and have
adored: all they that go down to the earth shall fall
before Him.
And to Him my soul shall live: and my seed shall
serve Him.
There shall be declared to the Lord a generation
to come: and the heaven shall shew forth His justice
to a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath
made.

In his commentary on this fourth of the last words of

Our Saviour on the Gross, the Abbe Constant Fouprd
writes these illuminating and beautiful thoughts:
"'My God! My God! dost Thou abandon Me?'
how can we make this moment of apparent despair
"But
to which Jesus yielded harmonize with the blessedness
essential to His divine personality? Herein again there
is involved an unfathomable mystery, the Mystery of the
Incarnation. To comprehend how the Son of God could
speak of Himself as forsaken by His Father, we should
first need to explain how the Infinite Being could take
upon Himself a finite nature; for between these two
humiliations there is only a difference of degree the
abandonment of Jesus upon the Cross only continued
what was first accomplished in the Incarnation, and in
these two Mysteries the Godhead remains equally inviol-
able. With the Christ in His anguish it was even as with
those mountain chains whose white crests pierce the
clouds. Often the tempests do havoc with their rugged
sides, strewing them with the wreckage of the storm;
yet naught can trouble the snowy peaks, which, far, far
above the whirlwind's reach, stand evermore serene and
crowned with light.
"In that same hour, the darkness disappearing, and
with it the mists of fear, forthwith the Jews found cour-

age to reecho those words of Jesus feigning to mistake
the divine Name of Eli for that of the Prophet.
" 'He is calling upon Elias,' they said.
"Yet even by this jibe they confessed to the throes of
terror they had just felt; for all Israel knew that the
awful Seer was to reappear upon a day of terror and blaz-
21
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
ing fire, beneath cloud-hung skies and a moon like blood,
when all the heavenly powers would tremble in their
spheres."
Although we can never fathom the full significance of
this dereliction of the Great Priest of our salvation, it is
worth noting that some of the most innocent and choice
spiritshave borne the same species of suffering, but, of
course, in an immeasurably fainter degree.
The Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, in his Ascent
to Mount Carmel, tries to formulate some norm by which
the highest contemplatives can measure their frightful
desolation so that despair may not overtake them. As in
Jesus, so in them, the superficial glance of the worldling
would see despair. In any other than Jesus and His
saints it could be despair, but we know that in them it is
not.
God withdraws His light sometimes from His elect.
There are times when the routine of religion is a weari-
ness even to those who have left all for the sake of Christ
when even the daily Communions are harsh and dry
and lacking in sensible sweetness
and even when the
desire of the heart is to swoon away with delight for very
love of Jesus. So we sometimes have saints plunged by
God into what is called the obscure night of the soul.
In token of Christ's Three Hours' Agony these sacrificial
souls have their three periods of terrible desolation.
Their terror passes from depth to depth, until purified
they begin to see more clearly the reason for their trial,
which is, that, they may be more closely knit in harmony
with the Divine Will.
Another lesson of solace is to be learned when we re-
member that our Redeemer had in His Mind and Heart all
the mental mishaps of our distracted humanity. He be-
held in vision on the Cross that wild and disheveled army
of creatures with broken minds who either under the
malign control of Satan or because of impaired cerebral
tissueimagine themselves to be forever utterly forsaken
by God. Religious melancholy has not even the assur-
ance of the heavenly homesickness of the saints. It is
black despair and the religiously insane have lost the will
22
 :

THE FOURTH WORD

power to shake off its mental control. Victimized by we
know not what, they imagine that their sins will never be
forgiven by God even when it is known that sins red as
scarlet and more numerous than the sands on the sea-
shore are washed away like snow in the face of the tor-
rent. It is the perpetual cry of St. Paul that Our Blessed
Lord took upon Himself all, all our misfortunes, and yet
while He did, He never lost balance in mind, heart or
will. He mentally suffered without losing His own men-
tal composure, all those cruel subjective memories which
overpower the innocently insane.
If the Blood-sweat in Gethsemane bore testimony to
poignant agony, its horror is now more acute, for He has
gathered up, in the suffering of His Mind, all the mental
sufferings of the world. Therefore the superstition that
insanity meant the ineradicable and ultimate curse of God
upon the victim and his family, is superstition of the most
ignorant kind. Out of love for Him we kiss our crucifix
and more tenderly His thorn-crowned Forehead, wherein
lodges the structure of His suffering Brain. According
to St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians, Christ suffered
as no human can tell. He saw hell as the home of never-

ending despair a cavern more terrible than Dante ever
pictured. The Apostle's words concerning Jesus are
"having become sin for our sake," He was made "a curse
and an execration."
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law
being made a curse for us: for it is written: Cursed is
everyone that hangeth on a tree. That the blessing of
Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Christ Jesus
that we may receive the promise of the Spirit by faith."
 Wfte Jftftf) OTiorb
"Afterwards Jesus, knowing that all things were now accom-
plished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said: 'I thirst.'"
(John xix. 28.)

IITE are told that in His desolation Jesus gave a loud cry,
" but now His Voice seems to be weak and languid.
Naturally so. He has lost a great quantity of Blood in the
sweat at Gethsemane, at the scourging and in the court-
yard when the soldiers pressed deep the thorns on His
bleeding Head. Medical experience assures us that the
agony of thirst from a parched body is so terrible as to
sometimes take away reason, especially in cases of
drowning. "My strength is dried up like a potsherd:
and My tongue hath cleaved to my jaws: and thou hast
brought Me down unto the dust of death."
It is the traditional interpretation of the Fathers, and
especially of St. Augustine and St. Bernard, that this thirst
of Christ represented the mighty fire of His Love for us.
It is a small word even in the Hebrew, but He has uttered
it and the force of its meaning must be tremendous. Of
course, He is suffering for every gluttonous excess of all
the luxurious civilizations. He had in mind our intem-
perance and the sins of every drunkard that will reel in
the streets of our city tonight. But the larger commentary
would be that of St. Gregory Nazianzen that "God is thirst-
ing to be thirsted for and desires to be desired and loves
to be loved."
We know but little of the nature of the Divine Being,
but this much is obvious, that there is something analogous
to passion in the great Heart of God. Much as we may
love Him, He loves us infinitely more. Such, too, is the
infinite activity of the Divine Mind and the boundless re-
ceptivity of the spirit of man, that the desire of God for
man and man for God is profound and constant. Hence

the seething restlessness of man for God even when he
does not know it. Herein lies the source of his melan-
the whole world cannot fill. God alone can fill it. He is
choly and discontent. There is a want in the heart which
24
 THE FIFTH WORD
our first beginning and our last end. We try to slake the
heart's thirst with the water that will never quench the
burning fever of life. Christ's thirst is deeper than the
mere chemical reaction on the dry tongue in His Mouth.
It ismore keen than the long fast in the wilderness. "My
soul hath thirsted for the Strong, the Living God."
There was a Levite living in exile in the Hermoniim, a
range of mountains, which ran east of the upper Jordan.
One day he spied a young deer clambering up the side
of the mountains in search of pools of water left by the
winter torrents. He is reminded of his own unappeased
longing for Him Who alone can satisfy the heart's thirst.
He exclaims: "As the hart panteth after the fountains
of water, so my soul panteth after Thee O God!" David's
prayer, under the pressure of a furious battle, is: "Oh!
that some man would give me to drink of the water out
of the cistern that is in Bethlehem." If prayer be an
interchange of confidences between God and man, as it
should be, then the prayers of King David and the Levite
poet are stirring and sincere.
It is this desire for God and the pain of loss which con-
stitute hell for all the damned souls: "They have for-
saken Me, the Fountain of Living Water, and have digged
to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no
water." We read that when the Apostles went into the
city of Sichar to buy meat, Our Lord did not go with
them. It was the sixth hour and He was weary. He sat
down by Jacob's well. A Samaritan woman came to draw
water. The Stranger asked that He might drink and
spoke of a living fountain. The woman knew of no such
water. The well before her was about ninety feet deep,
and there was a tradition among the peasantry that
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob had drunk of it and watered
there their camels and sheep. Intuition or grace or some-
thing impelled her to divine some unusual quality in the
Stranger. The stone pot was now lifted out of the well,
when she questioned Him: "Art Thou greater than our
Father Abraham?" With solemn self-assertiveness (an
indication of His Divinity), He exclaimed: "Amen,
Amen I say to you, if any man drink of the water that I
25
 CHRIST'S LAST AGONY
shall give him, he shall not thirst forever, for the water
that I shall give him, shall become in him a fountain of
water springing up into life everlasting." This is the
only water which will gratify the heart hunger and
quench the thirst of man's profound being. An old spir-
itual author, quoted by Lallement, avers that to try to
slake man's thirst with the finite, is, "as if one should take
a handful of water, and try to refill the empty bed of the
ocean."

26
 fje g>txtf) OTBorb
"Now there was a vessel set there full of vinegar. And they, putting
a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put it to His Mouth. Jesus
therefore, when He had taken the vinegar, said: 'It is consum-
mated.' "(John xix. 29, 30.)

rpHE Three Hours of Agony draw on apace and the work

* of mediation is now perfected. Christ's worn face,
of a thousand battles, lights up a little with ineffable bliss.
His tones bespeak a paean of victory: "It is consum-
mated." It is finished. What is finished? What is con-
summated? He Who has passed in some superhuman
manner through the grim obscurity of pessimism, has a
peal of ultimate triumph even in His dying Voice.
What is consummated? The greatest work of all.

Greater than the act of Divine design which builded the

immense architecture of the heavens and gilded with light
hundreds of millions of central suns and visible stars. It
is an act greater than that which flung these flaming
spheres into space and directs the courses of planets,
worlds, universes, systems and combinations of systems,
the vastness of which no stretch of fancy can comprehend.
We are overwhelmed with the mystery of the Divine
Energy behind the music in the leaping of the waters
from the solid rock, in the strength of the tornado and the
rain storm and the gentle motion of the zephyr and the
softly falling dew.
But there no comparative relationship between these
is
glories and the priceless moral worth of one immortal
soul. The world might shrivel up like a scroll, but the
soul of man lives on forever. Its value is unspeakable.
It was for the salvation of man's soul that the Veil of the
Temple was rent and the sun was wiped out of heaven and
the earth trembled and God was forsaken of God. It was
for the restoration of man's soul that Jesus Christ wrought
and finally consummated the work of Atonement, Propitia-
tion and Redemption. In the garden Satan tempted man.
Whatever may have been the nature of that primeval re-
volt, it is evident that man's whole being was put awry
27
 "

CHRIST'S LAST AGONY

and out of joint with the Divine purpose for which he
was created. Christ's work was consummated that man
might be born again and his faculties divinely directed.
Wespeak in dogmatic parlance of man's Fall, but this
is a feeble word for so radical and far-reaching a mis-
fortune. Even those who belittle dogma, cannot but per-
ceive the reality of moral evil. As in a garden Lucifer
triumphed, so in a garden God was tempted by God that
the principalities of evil might not possess man's soul.
This struggle still wages fiercely, but Christ has bent
man's undisciplined will toward God, and if man but
wish it, he shall move harmoniously and finally in God
forever. This is the state of beatitude, taught by the
Fathers, the saints and the spiritual masters and majes-
tically exploited in Dante's Paradiso as the crowning
glory of man. The total possession of one human soul is
of more concern to the Lord Jesus than all the stupendous
fabric and superlative grandeur of nature. It is more
precious than all the kingdoms, oligarchies, republics and
civilizations of the world. There is no comparison be-
tween spirit and matter. No wonder Our Saviour con-
summated His work for the moral security of man with
such majesty and perfection: "It is consummated."
"And I will pour out upon the house of David, and upon
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace, and of
prayers: and they shall look upon Me Whom they have
pierced; and they shall mourn for Him as one mourn eth
for an only son; and they shall grieve over Him, as the
manner is to grieve for the death of the first born. . . .

And they shall say to Him: 'What are these wounds in

the midst of Thy hands?' And He shall say : 'With these
I was wounded in the house of them that loved Me.'
(Zach. xii. 10; xiii. 6.)

28
 W$t g>ebentf) WLovb
"And it was almost the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all
the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the
veil of the Temple was rent in the midst; and Jesus, crying with a
loud voice, said: 'Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.'"
(Luke xxiii. 44-46.)

rpHE frail and spent limbs of our Mighty King and

A Priest are cold and relaxing. In spite of His thorny
Crown His rich, lustrous hair is disheveled and falls to
one side over His Face. His Lips are dry and drooping.
His Head is bowed down in death, as St. Augustine naively
remarks, "to give His parting Kiss to His beloved ones."
It is impossible to describe the species of sound, made
by the long-drawn breath and the short gasps of a dying
man. It may last for three hours or more. Silent friends
keep vigil, to watch and pray until the terrible struggle is
over. Then one more quick-witted and courageous than
the others, whispers: "He is dead." That shall be said
of us. Someone will draw the curtain, come out, and in
a hushed voice, say: "He is dead."
"Father, into Thy Hands I commend my spirit." May
our last words be these when the scene before us shall go
on the instant blind and all the world is receding from
our vision. Every Hebrew child knew these last words
of Jesus. As a child He probably lisped them every night
and morning at Mary's knee. He has uttered them for
the last time
Jesus Christ is dead.
I take my last look at Jesus. I have learned to die to
all, since I cannot forget that He has died for me. "For-
get not the kindness of thy Surety, for He hath given His
Life for thee."
I take my
look at Jesus and I know He is at rest
last
O Jesus, may our
souls, and the souls of those who have
gone before us with the sign of Faith, rest in Thee forever
and ever. Amen.

29
 Conclusion

"He humbled Himself, becoming 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: that in the Name of Jesus every knee
should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and
under the earth: and that every tongue should confess
that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the
Father." (Philip, ii. 8-11.)

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