Passion Sunday, Year B
First reading: Is 50:4-7
Second reading: Phil 2:6-11
Gospel reading: Mk 14, 15
In Eucharistic Prayer 2, the Church calls Jesus’ death something “he freely accepted,” not just something “he had freely accepted.” He had accepted death at his incarnation, but he continued to accept it freely right to the end.
Only days before, when a woman anointed him with perfume, Jesus said, “She has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.” Knowing what was coming, he remained where he was: in Bethany, close to Jerusalem, where the danger was greatest.
In Jerusalem, the night he was betrayed, he announced, “One of you will betray me, one who is eating with me,” but still he did not flee. In fact, he went on to anticipate his death sacramentally: “This is my body, which is being given for you”; “This is the cup of my blood, which is being shed for you.”
After supper, having become thoroughly infected with sin by letting his apostles share his body and blood, he became so grieved at being separated from his Father that he prayed to be spared. However, even though he knew his Father would send him “legions of angels,” he added, “Not my will, but yours.”
When Judas arrived with the soldiers, he said, “See, my betrayer is at hand,” and stood still while Judas identified him with a kiss.
Then he was subjected to a pre-trial before the Sanhedrin, the Jews’ supreme court, which comprised 71 of the chief priests, elders, and scribes, presided over by the high priest.
According to Jewish law, the Sanhedrin had to meet in the Hall of Hewn Stone, in the Temple precincts. It could not meet at night or on any great feast. Witnesses had to be examined separately, and their evidence had to agree in every detail. Each Sanhedrin member had to give his verdict separately, starting with the youngest. If the sentence was death, a night had to elapse before it could be carried out.
“On point after point the Sanhedrin broke its own rules,” says Scripture scholar William Barclay. “It was not meeting in its own building. It was meeting at night. There is no word of individually given verdicts. A night was not allowed to elapse before the penalty of death was inflicted. In their eagerness to eliminate Jesus, the Jewish authorities did not hesitate to break their own laws.” Nevertheless, Jesus made no protest.
In fact, when the witnesses could not agree (for they had had no time for rehearsal), the high priest took the matter into his own hands. “He asked the very kind of question that the law completely forbade,” Barclay notes. “No man could be asked to condemn himself.”
Nevertheless, the high priest asked Jesus, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” And Jesus, who had remained silent throughout the whole irregular trial and who later amazed the Roman governor Pontius Pilate by refusing to answer him, replied clearly, “I am.”
“I am” was the name God had given himself in speaking to Moses. By his answer, Jesus was confirming the very point on which the court wanted (but had not been able) to find him guilty. No wonder the high priest cried out, “Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy!”
On the cross, Jesus refused the mixture of wine and myrrh that would have eased his pain. Even in the face of taunts, he who had “slipped” away from those who had tried to kill him earlier refused to come down from the cross but bore the agony to the bitter end.
As we hear the Passion this weekend, then, we should have no shadow of doubt that Jesus “gave himself up” to “a death he freely accepted.” He did it out of his immense love for us: the very ones who, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “crucified Him and crucify Him still” by our “vices and sins.”
Father Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English.” All the materials (video and print) are available online free of charge at www.beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 28, “Holy Week,” will be available March 28.