The Threefold Garland by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [von Balthasar, Hans Urs]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898700152
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2012-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

2

And blessed is the fruit of your womb

JESUS

who was scourged for us

THE IMPRISONMENT, the hearings and the condemnation have already taken place when Jesus is led to the whipping post. The consequences of the greatest misjudgment in human history begin to take effect. For here all of mankind is gathered. First of all, the Christians—those who know what is at stake: Judas betrayed him and in this way triggered the Passion; Peter denied him contrary to his promise, and that of all the others, to follow him to the point of death; most of them have fled cowardly. The Jews to whom Jesus was handed over want to know nothing of such a Messiah; he does not correspond to the chimera of worldly power they envision; unlike Abraham, they are no longer open to being led by God but have carved for themselves an idol out of their own wishful thinking: “We have no king but Caesar.” Thus Jesus is cast out to the pagans, who cannot possibly know his being and his mission: “What is truth?”

And all want to disentangle themselves from the clinging guilt. Judas gives back the blood money. The Jews hesitate to put it in the temple treasury. Pilate washes his hands in innocence. No one wants to be the one. No one thinks of God; all fling his fatherly goodness back in his face precisely when he offers men his most precious possession with open hands. The stroke against God’s hand hits what it contains, hits it with a shower of blows by which mankind lets God know what it thinks of him. This is man’s memorandum to God.

Why was Jesus scourged? Certainly not because Pilate was making one last effort to soften the Jews. And also not in order to extort from Jesus a confession by means of torture: he had already confessed. Rather, this is a preparatory measure for the crucifixion. The Jews scourged with a certain restraint: forty strokes less one—out of compassion. Pagan soldiers (scourging was primarily a military punishment) often thrashed their victim to death, with sophisticated instruments whose straps were provided with bits of bone or lead which often succeeded in exposing the internal organs. It is possible that a company of Syrians—whose particular hatred for the Jews was known—was charged with the ordeal, during which they were free to vent their mockery on Jesus.

What God the Father is holding in his hand is the Lamb of God, which takes upon itself the sin of the world, truly and bodily. What is involved here is a kind of perverse sacrament that effects interiorly what it signifies in the external image: the sufferings which are being driven into the body of Jesus are in truth the sins of the world, knocked forcibly into his total divine and human person. It is not only man who is a whole: his spirit feels what is done to his body. The God-man, too, is indivisible: in his humanity God experiences what the sin of the world is.

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