Saint Luke - Chapter 23
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| The Holy Women stood afar off, beholding these things. J-J Tissot |
And all his acquaintance, and the women that had followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things.
From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)
The crowd had now been driven away from the scene of the approaching Crucifixion by the soldiers on guard. The Cross was being made ready and had assumed its final form by the addition of the title set up above it, which had been carried thus far by the herald. The enemies of Jesus tried to cause the tumult on account of the tenor of this description: "Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews." They understood well enough that Pilate, in inscribing such a title as this, intended to mock them by an allusion to their dependence on Rome, and they had tried to make him alter it by saying " Write not the King of the Jews; but that he said: I am the King of the Jews"; to which Pilate had replied haughtily enough: "What I have written, I have written."
The holes for the nails were made beforehand by piercing the wood so as to save trouble at the end. The nails were, in fact, used like pegs, and of course preliminary measurements are to be taken, which occupied a good deal of time. Whilst the men whose duty it was to prepare the Cross were going to and fro, a cordon of sentinels, chosen from amongst the Roman soldiers, surrounded the little hill.
According to certain traditions which have come down to us, the legion then on duty at Jerusalem consisted of men from Switzerland and Gaul. They dispersed the spectators and kept them at a distance, so that Mary the Mother of Jesus and the other Holy Women were not able to approach near to Jesus. Amongst the Holy Women were Mary, the wife of Cleophas and sister of the Blessed Virgin; the mother of James the Less and of John Salome with Mary Magdalene.
From the distance they could only see the general stir of preparation for the execution; but no doubt Saint John, who, as already stated, could circulate freely amongst the authorities, came to them now and then within news of such details as he observed. The spot where the Holy Women are supposed to have waited is indicated in the church of the Holy Sepulchre by an iron grating. According to tradition, it was not until Jesus was laid upon the Cross and the first moans were wrung from Him by the anguish caused by the driving of the nails into His hands, that the loving watchers unable any longer to refrain themselves, forced their way onto the Mount Calvary, the sentinels letting the Mother of the condemned Victim pass, and with her her immediate attendants.
They are said to have taken up their stand at the edge of the platform, on the spot overlooking the rock above a natural excavation which had there been hollowed out. Later, Saint Helena, when she was superintending the preparation on Calvary of the site for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, raised that portion of the ground which overlooked the scene of the Crucifixion. The actual spot where the Virgin had stood was, however, venerated and indicated by a commemorative chapel.
Even now, 2000 years afterwards, we regret the changes made in the sacred sites by Saint Helena, but, at the time, no one gave any special care to the preservation intact of spots which have since become so celebrated. The Empress and her contemporaries were content if they marked the scene of any great event, and, for that point secured, the architects levelled or shored up the ground and built over it at their leisure. Porticoes rose up on every side, ornate basilicas enclose, with the columns upholding their roofs, the venerated sites always, alas, at the expense of the original appearance of those sites.
The Mussulmans, on the other hand have set us Christians an example we should have done well to follow in their Es-Sakhra Mosque, built on the site of an ancient temple, for in it we see to our surprise a great rough unhewn rock in exactly the same condition as it was at the time of Abraham, enshrined within one of the richest Muhammad places of worship in the world. The columns of the porphyry known as verd-antique come from the old Temple; they uphold a cupola adorned with mosaics in various shades of greenish blue and the whole sanctuary serves as the reliquary to these rude and primitive mass of rock, producing an effect of transcendental vitality.
There is nothing in the least resembling this in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; everything is over- laden and disguised by marble slabs, bas-reliefs and ornaments in gold repoussé work, which dazzle and bewilder the spectator. In spite of all this, however, the church is very impressive, and the memory of all that took place where it stands pierces, so to speak, through the marble and the gilding, and touches the believer to the heart.
What we have said with regard to the spot where the Virgin Mother prayed applies with equal force to the tomb which received the body of the Saviour. Originally it was hewn in the living rock, so that it was subterranean and was backed by a mass of rock which has since disappeared. Of the actual sepulchre nothing has been preserved but the stone trough in which the body was laid and part of the partition which formed the two chambers of the tomb with their contiguous entrances. This partition is faced with marble and is about five feet high. The actual tomb was cut away and replaced by a little monument in a court, which court gradually grew into a covered-in basilica.
As a matter of course the same fate befell Golgotha itself: it was cut about and levelled; the slopes were done away with and it was covered over by yet another monument, which was eventually joined on to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the same time, all the sites indicated by tradition as worthy of the veneration of Christians were covered over and protected. The well or system in which the crosses were found became a special chapel, and the vast agglomeration of monuments grew in the time of Saint Helena into a magnificent temple. After it had been burnt by Chosroes and the Persians it was rebuilt and gradually added to. The Muslims really did that Church of the Holy Sepulchre very little harm, and, though the Crusaders added various buildings, they did not change in any way the actual character of the venerated sanctuaries on the sacred sites, for they have remained much the same since their restoration.
All that was done when the domes of the buildings were burnt was to replace them with others, more or less in harmony with a taste of the day, so that at present this vast church is made up of the most diverse elements: lofty domes alternating with low cupolas, small chapels, dark passages, mysterious-looking staircases, gloomy crypts, nooks and corners dimly lit up by burning tapers; sanctuaries one blaze of decoration, all massed together and jostling each other in a manner so extraordinary, yet so wonderfully effective, that they make an indelible impression upon the mind of the Pilgrims whose privilege it is to visit them.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam
Ad Jesum per Mariam
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