Peterborough Cathedral.
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The Scourging At The Pillar.
Date: 1880.
Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau
(1825-1905).
This File: 24 April 2005.
User: Thebrid
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 6.
Passion-Tide and Holy Week.
The past four weeks seem to have been but a preparation for the intense grief of The Church during these two weeks [Editor: Passion-Tide and Holy Week].
She [Editor: The Church] knows that men are in search of her Jesus, and that they are bent on His death. Before twelve days are over, she will see them lay their sacrilegeous hands upon Him.
She will have to follow Him up the hill of Calvary.
She will have to receive His last breath.
She must witness the stone placed against the sepulchre where His lifeless Body is laid.
“Compassion !”.
Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Date: 1897.
Current location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.
(Wikimedia Commons)
We cannot, therefore, be surprised at her inviting all her children to contemplate, during these weeks, Him Who is the object of all her love and all her sadness.
But our mother asks something more of us than compassion and tears; she would have us profit by the lessons we are to be taught by The Passion and Death of Our Redeemer.
He, Himself, when going up to Calvary, said to the holy women who had the courage to show their compassion even before His very executioners: “Weep not over Me; but weep for yourselves and for your children”.
It was not that He refused the tribute of their tears, for He was pleased with this proof of their affections; but it was His love for them that made Him speak thus.
He desired, above all, to see them appreciate the importance of what they were witnessing, and learn from it how inexorable is God’s justice against sin.
During the four weeks that have preceded, The Church has been leading the sinner to his conversion; so far, however, this conversion has been but begun: Now, she would perfect it.
Illustration:
It is no longer our Jesus, Fasting and Praying in the desert, that she offers to our consideration; it is this same Jesus, as the great Victim immolated for the World’s salvation.
The fatal hour is at hand.
The power of darkness is preparing to make use of the time that is still left.
The greatest of crimes is about to be perpetrated.
A few days hence, The Son of God is to be in the hands of sinners, and they will put Him to death.
She is all absorbed in the thought of the terrible event, which is to close the life of The God-Man on Earth; and, by expressing her thoughts through The Holy Liturgy, she teaches us what our own sentiments should be.
The pervading character, of the Prayers and Rites of these two weeks, is a profound grief at seeing The Just One persecuted by His enemies, even to death, and an energetic indignation against the Deicides.
The formulæ, expressive of these two feelings are, for the most part, taken from David and the Prophets. Here, it is Our Saviour, Himself, disclosing to us the anguish of His Soul; there, it is The Church pronouncing the most terrible anathemas upon the executioners of Jesus.
The chastisement that is to befall the Jewish nation is prophesied in all its frightful details; and, on the last three days, we shall hear the Prophet Jeremias uttering his lamentations.
The Church does not aim at exciting idle sentiment; what she principally seeks is to impress the hearts of her children with a salutary fear.
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