Retreat For Lay People by Fr. Ronald Knox

Author:Fr. Ronald Knox [Knox, Fr. Ronald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586175924
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-09-30T05:00:00+00:00

XIII

THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING

The prophet Isaiah, in the great passage in which he foretells most clearly the death and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, makes use of one phrase in particular which gives the key to any right Christian understanding of the whole story—I mean the phrase “he was offered because he willed it”. From first to last, you have to remember, there is one Accomplice who co-operates more effectively with the plans of our Lord’s persecutors than any other, and that is our Lord himself.

It is extraordinary how that comes out, even if you think of our Lord’s actions, at the time of his betrayal and his judgement, merely as human actions. Those scholars who approach the story of the Gospels with the assumption that our Lord was only a man, and that the significance of his death was merely the significance which attaches to the death of a great religious thinker or a great moral reformer, are ludicrously unsuccessful when they try to find any reason why our Lord was put to death at all. Consider: Jerusalem was full of our Lord’s friends and partisans at the time of the feast. He could have been perfectly safe if he had been content to sleep the Thursday night away from Jerusalem; and there was nothing to prevent him from doing so; Thursday was not the actual day of the feast. Instead, he remained in Jerusalem and laid himself open to an attack by night. He knew that Judas was going to betray him—knew, therefore, that it would be safest to avoid the places which were his familiar walks; instead, he went straight out to Gethsemani, as if he had had an appointment with Judas there. He took swords with him, but he would not allow them to be used in his defence. He spent the evening praying that he might be spared from the fate which he foresaw; but if he foresaw it and wanted to escape it, why did he not leave Gethsemani and take refuge in the friendly darkness? At his trial it is the same; before the high priest, where silence might have saved him, he speaks; before Pilate, where he had only to speak, he remains silent. More than once he had refused to let his fellow-countrymen make a king of him; now, when he is bound hand and foot before the Roman governor, he will not disown the royal title. There is only one explanation of it; he wants to die.

But of course we know that that isn’t all; we know that he did not merely behave, as man, in such a way as to prejudice his chances of reprieve; he was, all the time, Omnipotent God, and could order the course of things as he would. Twelve legions of angels, he told Saint Peter, were ready to spring to his defence if he had willed it; they stand there, hand on scabbard, and he waves them back. How easily the story might

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