St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER I: The literal explanation of the first Word, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Christ Jesus, the Word of the Eternal Father, of Whom the Father Himself hath spoken, “Hear ye Him,”[1] and Who hath said of Himself, “For One is your Master, Christ,”[2] in order to perform the task He had undertaken, never ceased from instructing us. Not only during His life, but even in the arms of death, from the pulpit of the Cross, He preached to us words few in number, but burning with love, most useful and efficacious, and in every way worthy to be engraven on the heart of every Christian, to be preserved there, meditated upon, and fulfilled literally and in deed. His first word is this, “And Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”[3] Which prayer, as though it were altogether new and unheard of before, the Holy Spirit wished to be foretold by the Prophet Isaias in these words: “And He prayed for the evil doers.”[4] And the petitions of our Lord on the Cross prove how truly the Apostle St. Paul spoke when he said: ” Charity seeketh not her own,”[5] for of the seven words our Redeemer spoke three were for the good of others, three for His own good, and one was common both to Himself and to us. His first care, however, was for others. He thought of Himself last.

Of the first three words which He spoke, the first was for His enemies, the second for His friends, the third for His relations. Now, the reason why He thus prayed, is that the first demand of charity is to succour those who are in want: and those who were then most in want of spiritual succour were His enemies; and what we also, the disciples of so great a Master, stand most in need of is to love our enemies, a virtue which we know is most difficult to be obtained and rarely to be met with, whereas the love of our friends and relations is easy and natural, increases with our years, and often predominates more than it ought. Wherefore the Evangelist wrote, “And Jesus said:”[6] where the word and shows the time and the occasion of this prayer for His enemies, and places in contrast the words of the Sufferer and the words of the executioners, His works and their works; as though the Evangelist would explain himself more fully thus: they were crucifying the Lord, and in His very presence were dividing His garments amongst them, they mocked and defamed Him as a seducer and a liar; whilst He, seeing what they were doing, hearing what they were saying, and suffering the most acute pains in His Hands and Feet, returned good for evil and prayed; ” Father, forgive them.”

He calls Him “Father,” not God or Lord, because He wished Him to exercise the benignity of a Father and not the severity of a Judge; and as He desired to avert the anger of God, which He knew was aroused at their enormous crimes, He uses the tender name of Father. The word Father appears to contain in itself this request: I, Thy Son, in the midst of all My torments have pardoned them; do you likewise, My Father, extend your pardon to them. Although they deserve it not, still pardon them for the sake of Me, your Son. Remember, too, that you are their Father, since you have created them, and made them to your own image and likeness. Show them therefore a Father’s love, for although they are wicked, they are nevertheless your children.

“Forgive.” This word contains the chief petition which the Son of God, as the advocate for His enemies, made to His Father. The word Forgive may be referred both to the punishment due to the crime, and also to the crime itself. If it be referred to the punishment due to the crime, then was the prayer heard: for since this sin of the Jews demanded that its perpetrators should be instantly and condignly made to feel the wrath of God, by either being consumed with fire from heaven, or drowned in a second deluge, or extirpated with famine and the sword, still the infliction of this punishment was postponed for forty years, during which period, if the Jewish people had done penance they would have been saved and their city preserved, but because they did not perform penance, God sent against them the Roman army, which, in the reign of Vespasian, destroyed their metropolis, and partly by famine during the siege, and partly by the sword in the sack of the city, slew a vast multitude of its inhabitants, whilst the survivors w ere sold into slavery and scattered throughout the world. All these misfortunes were foretold by our Lord in the parables of the householder who hired labourers for his vineyard; of the king who made a marriage for his son; of the barren fig-tree; and more clearly when He wept over the city on Palm Sunday. Our Lord’s prayer was also heard if it had reference to the crime of the Jews, since it obtained for many the grace of compunction and reformation of life. There were some who ” returned striking their breasts.”[7] There was the Centurion, who said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”[8] And there were many who a few weeks afterwards were converted by the preaching of the Apostles, and confessed Him Whom they denied, adored Him Whom they had despised. But the reason why the grace of conversion was not granted to all is that the will of Christ was conformable to the wisdom and the will of God, which St. Luke shows us when he says in the Acts of the Apostles, “As many as were ordained to life everlasting, believed.”[9]

“Them.” This word applied to all for whose pardon Christ prayed. In the first place it is applied to those who really nailed Christ to the Cross, and cast lots for His garments. It may also be extended to all who were the cause of our Lord’s Passion: to Pilate who pronounced the sentence; to the people who cried out, ” Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him;”[10] to the chief priests and the scribes who falsely accused Him; and, to proceed still farther, to the first man and all his posterity who by their sins occasioned Christ’s death. And thus from His Cross our Lord prayed for the forgiveness of all His enemies. Each one, however, may reckon himself amongst the enemies of Christ according to the words of the Apostle, ” When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.[11] Therefore our High Priest Christ made a commemoration for all of us, even before our birth, in that most holy “Memento,” if I may so speak, which He made in the first Sacrifice of the Mass which He celebrated on the altar of the Cross. What return then, O my soul, wilt thou make to the Lord for all that He hath done for thee, even before thou hadst a being? Our dear Lord saw that thou also wouldst one day rank thyself with His enemies, and though thou askedst not, nor besoughtest Him, He prayed for thee to His Father not to lay to thy charge the fault of folly. Does it not therefore behove thee to bear in mind so sweet a Patron, and to make every effort to serve Him faithfully in all things? Is it not just that with such an example before thee thou shouldst learn not only to pardon thy enemies with ease, and to pray for them, but even bring as many as thou canst to do the same? It is just, and this I desire and purpose to do, provided that He Who has set me so brilliant an example would also in His goodness give me sufficient help to accomplish so great a work.

For they know not what they do. In order that His prayer might be reasonable, Christ extenuates, or rather gives what excuse He could for the sins of His enemies. He certainly could not excuse either the injustice of Pilate, or the cruelty of the soldiers, or the ingratitude of the people, or the false testimony of those who perjured themselves. It only remained for Him then to excuse their fault on the plea of ignorance. For with truth does the Apostle observe, “If they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.”[12] Neither Pilate, nor the chief priests, nor the people knew that Christ was the Lord of glory, still Pilate knew Him to be a just and holy man, Who had been delivered up through the envy of the chief priests; and the chief priests knew Him to be the promised Christ, as St. Thomas teaches, because they neither could nor did they deny that He had wrought many of the miracles which the prophets foretold the Messias would work. In fine, the people knew that Christ had been unjustly condemned, since Pilate publicly told them, “I find no cause in this Man:”[13] and, “I am innocent of the Blood of this just Man.”[14]

But although the Jews, both priests and people, knew not the fact that Christ was the Lord of glory, nevertheless, they would not have remained in this state of ignorance if their malice had not blinded them. According to the words of St. John: “And whereas He had done so many miracles before them, they believed not in Him, because Isaias said: He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”[15] Blindness is no excuse for a blind man, because it is voluntary, accompanying, not preceding, the evil he does. Similarly those who sin in the malice of their hearts may always plead their ignorance, which is nevertheless not an excuse for their sin since it does not precede it but accompanies it. Wherefore the Wise Man says, ” They err who work iniquity.”[16] The Philosopher likewise with truth proclaims every evil-doer to be ignorant of what he does, and consequently it may ingeniously be said of sinners in general, “They know not what they do.” For no one can desire that which is wicked on the ground of its wickedness, because the will of man does not tend to what is bad as well as what is good, but solely to what is good, and for this reason those who make choice of what is bad do so because the object is presented to them under the aspect of something good, and may thus be chosen. This results from the disquietude of the inferior part of the soul which blinds the reason and renders it incapable of distinguishing anything but what is good in the object it seeks. Thus the man who commits adultery or is guilty of a theft perpetrates these crimes because he looks only to the pleasure or the gain which may result, and he would not perpetrate them if his passions had not blinded him to the shameful infamy of the one and the injustice of the other. Hence a sinner is like to a man who wishes to throw himself from an eminence into a river; he first shuts his eyes and then casts himself headlong; so he who does an evil act hates the light, and labours under a voluntary ignorance which does not exculpate him, because it is voluntary. But if voluntary ignorance does not exculpate the sinner, why did our Lord pray, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do?” To this I answer that the most straightforward interpretation to be put to our Lord’s words is that they were spoken for His executioners, who were probably entirely ignorant not only of our Lord’s Divinity, but even of His innocence, and simply performed the hangman’s duty. For those, therefore, our Lord most truly said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Again, if our Lord’s prayer be interpreted as applicable to ourselves who had not then a being, or to that multitude of sinners who were His contemporaries, but had no knowledge of what was being enacted in Jerusalem, then did our Lord most truly say, “They know not what they do.” Lastly, if He addressed His Father in behalf of those who were present, and knew that Christ was the Messias and an innocent Man, then must we confess the charity of Christ to be such as to wish to palliate as far as possible the sin of His enemies. If ignorance cannot justify a fault, it may nevertheless serve as a partial excuse, and the deicide of the Jews would have worn a more heinous aspect had they known the character of their Victim. Although our Lord was aware that this was not so much an excuse as a shadow of an excuse, He urged it, forsooth, to show us how kindly He feels towards the sinner, and how eagerly He would have used a better defence even for Caiphas and Pilate, had a better and more reasonable apology presented itself.



ENDNOTES

1. St. Matt. xvii. 5.
2. St. Matt. xxiii. 10.
3. St. Luke xxiii. 34.
4. Isaias liii. 12.
5. I Cor. xiii. 5.
6. St. Luke xxiii. 34.
7. St. Luke xxiii. 48.
8. St. Matt. xxvii. 54.
9. Acts xiii. 48.
10. St. Matt. xxvii. 22.
11. Rom. v. 10.
12. I Cor. ii. 8.
13. St. Luke xxiii. 14.
14. St. Matt. xxvii. 24.
15. St. John xii. 37-40.
16. Prov. iv. 22.