St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER VIII: The first fruit to be derived from the consideration of the fifth Word spoken by Christ upon the Cross.

The Scriptures of the Old Testament are often to be interpreted by the Scriptures of the New Testament, but as regards this mystery of our Lord’s thirst the words of the sixty-eighth Psalm may be regarded as a commentary of the Gospel. For we cannot absolutely decide from the words of the Gospel whether those who offered our thirsting Lord vinegar did so for the purpose of affording relief, or for the sake of aggravating His pain, that is whether they did so from a motive of love or hatred. With St. Cyril we are inclined to believe that they did so in the latter sense, because the words of the Psalmist are too clear to require any explanation; and from these words we may draw this lesson, to learn to thirst with Christ after those things, for which we may thirst with profit. This is what the Psalmist says: “And I looked for one that would grieve together with Me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort Me, and I found none. And they gave Me gall for My food, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink.”[1] And so those, who a little before His Crucifixion gave our Lord wine mixed with gall as well as those who offered our crucified Lord vinegar only, represent those of whom He complains when He says: “I looked for one that would grieve together with Me, but there was none; and for one that would comfort Me, and I found none.”

But perhaps some one may ask: Did not His Blessed Virgin Mother, and His Mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene, and the Apostle St. John who stood near the Cross truly and heartily grieve together with Him? Did not those holy women who followed our Lord to Mount Calvary, bewailing His lot, truly grieve together with Him? Were not the Apostles, during the whole time of His Passion, in a state of sorrow, according to that prediction of Christ–“Amen, amen, I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice?”[2] All these grieved and truly grieved, but they did not grieve together with Christ, because the cause and reason of their sorrow was quite different from the cause and reason of Christ’s sorrow. Our Lord says; “I looked for one that would grieve together with me, and there was none, and for one that would comfort me, and I found none.” They grieved for Christ’s corporal suffering and death; but He did not grieve for this except for a short time in the garden to prove that He really was Man. Did He not say: “With desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you before I suffer,”[3] and again: “If you loved Me, you would indeed be glad, because I go to the Father?”[4] What then was the cause of that sorrow of our Lord in which He found none to grieve together with Him? It was the loss of souls for whom He was suffering. And what was the source of that comfort which He could find none to offer Him, but cooperating with Him for the salvation of souls after which He so ardently longed? This was the one comfort He sought after, this He desired, this He hungered for, this He thirsted for; but they gave Him gall for His food, and vinegar for His drink. Sin is signified by the bitterness of the gall, than which nothing can be more bitter to one who has the sense of taste; and obstinacy in sin is shown by the sharpness and pungency of the vinegar. Christ, then, had a real cause for sorrow when He saw for the thief who was converted, not only another remain in his obstinacy but countless others besides; when He saw that all His Apostles were scandalized at His Passion, that Peter had denied Him, that Judas had betrayed Him.

If then any one desires to comfort and console Christ hungering and thirsting on the Cross, and full of sorrow and grief, let him in the first place show himself truly penitent; let him detest his own sins, and then along with Christ let him conceive a great sorrow in his heart, because so great a number of souls daily perish, though all could so easily be saved would they but use the grace He has purchased for them in redeeming them. St. Paul was one of those who grieved together with Christ, when in His Epistle to the Romans he says; “I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongeth the adoption as of children,” &c.[5] The Apostle could not more closely show his longing desire for the salvation of souls than by this climax; “For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ.” He means, according to what St. John Chrysostom says in his work on Compunction of Heart, that he was so exceedingly afflicted at the damnation of the Jews as to wish, if it were possible, to be separated from Christ, for the sake of the glory of Christ.[6] He did not desire to be separated from the love of Christ, as that would be contradictory to what he elsewhere states in the same epistle; “Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ?”[7] but from the glory of Christ, preferring to be deprived of a participation in the glory of his Saviour rather than that his Lord should be deprived of the additional fruit of His Passion, which would accrue from the conversion of so many thousands of Jews. He truly grieved together with Christ and solaced the grief of his Divine Master. But how few imitators has the great Apostle now-adays? In the first place, many pastors of souls are more afflicted if the revenues of the Church are diminished or lost than if a great number of souls perished through their absence or neglect. “We bear,” says St. Bernard, speaking of some, “we bear the detriment which Christ suffers with more equanimity than we should bear our own loss. We balance our daily expenses by a daily entrance of our gains, and we know nothing of the daily loss which happens to the flock of Christ.”[8] It is not enough for a bishop to lead a holy life, and endeavour in his private conduct to imitate the virtues of Christ, unless he endeavours to make his subjects, or rather his children, holy, and tries to lead them, by making them follow in the footsteps of Christ, to eternal joy. Let those, then, who desire to suffer with Christ, to mourn with Him and to compassionate Him in His sorrows, ever watch over His flock, never forsake His lambs, but direct them by their words, and lead them by their example.

Of the laity too might Christ reasonably complain, for neither sorrowing with Him, nor affording Him any relief in His sorrow. And if when hanging on the Cross He complained of the perfidy and obstinacy of the Jews, on whom His labours were lost, by whom His sorrows were ridiculed, and, as on so many madmen, the precious medicine of His Blood was wasted, how might He complain now at beholding, not from the Cross, but from heaven itself, those who believe in Him, profit nothing by His Passion, tread His precious Blood under foot, and offer Him gall and vinegar by daily increasing their sins, without a thought of the Divine judgment or a fear of the fire of hell! “There shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance.”[9] But is not this joy turned into sorrow, milk into gall, and wine into vinegar, when he who by faith and baptism has been born as it were in Christ, and who by the Sacrament of Penance has been resuscitated from death to life, within a short while after again kills his soul by a relapse into mortal sin?” A woman when she is in labour hath sorrow, but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.”[10] But is not the mother afflicted with a two-fold grief if the child dies immediately after birth, or is still- born? So many work for their salvation by confessing their sins, perhaps even by fasting and alms-deeds, but their labour is in vain and they never obtain pardon for their sins, because they have a false conscience or are guilty of a culpable ignorance. Do not these labour, and labour uselessly, and afflict both themselves and their confessors with a double grief? Such people are like a sick man who accelerates his death by the use of a bitter medicine which he hoped would cure him; or like a gardener who bestows great pains on his vinery and grounds, and loses the whole fruit of his care by a sudden storm. These then are the evils we ought to deplore, and whosoever mourns and is afflicted thereat really grieves with Christ on the Cross, and whosoever labours according to his strength in lessening them, alleviates the sorrows and grief of his crucified Lord, and shall participate with Him in the joys of heaven, and shall reign for ever with Him in the kingdom of His heavenly Father.


ENDNOTES

1. Psalm lxviii. 21, 22.
2. St. John xvi. 20.
3. St. Luke xxii. 15.
4. St. John xiv. 28.
5. Romans ix. 1, 2, 3.
6. Lib. i. hom. 18.
7. Rom. viii. 35.
8. “De Consider.” lib. iv. cap. 9.
9. St. Luke xv. 10.
10. St. John xvi. 21.