What Our Saviour saw from the Cross

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)

This is the idea I wish to express in my engraving: a momentary lull has occurred in the midst of the shouts and insults of the spectators, who are alarmed by the threatening signs in the sky and by the ever-increasing darkness.  Now, from the top of the Cross on the summit of Golgotha, which dominates the town of Jerusalem, Jesus looks down on those beneath Him.  The eyes of all, those eyes which are the windows of the soul, are fixed on Him; He sees every one who has aided in His condemnation, including the Judge himself.  Down at His still bleeding feet He sees, as He bends His head, the weeping Magdalene, consumed with the fervour of her love and penitence; whilst beyond her stands His mother, gazing up at Him with an expression of ineffable tenderness; with Saint John, that most devoted have all the disciples, and Mary Salome, the latter weeping bitterly.

Farther away are the blasphemers, surfeited at last with the gratification of their manners, but on them, in the very midst of their triumph, has fallen fear and astonishment.  In some cases, perhaps, faith in the Redeemer may be already nascent, and stubborn hearts may be touched with the all-powerful grace of God.  Yet a little farther off, beyond the wall of the Garden of Joseph of Arimathæa, is the sepulchre which that same evening is to receive the body of the Saviour.  Beyond the trees, again, the dying Sufferer can make out groups of the more timid of His followers, the disciples who, in spite of their love for the Master, dare not approach any nearer until the darkness shall be so great that there will be no danger of their being recognized.

So profound is the silence that even the distant murmur of voices from the city and the blasts of the trumpets from the Temple can scarcely be heard. Far away down below rises up a great column of dense smoke from the Altar of Burnt Sacrifice.  The wind is in the East and comes from the direction of the Dead Sea, laden with the mixed fumes of incense, burning of meat and melting fat; the air is heavy and oppressive, whilst all around is wrapped in a mantle of the deepest gloom.

We have thus far refrained from relating certain legends about the wood of which the Cross was made.  There are a certain number of people who believe, but no one knows why, that the Cross was made of four different kinds of wood: Cyprus, cedar, pine and box.  This was, in fact, the opinion of the Venerable Bede, who thought that the title above the Cross was on box-wood, that the upright been consisted of cypress wood, whilst the piece above the intersection of the arms and on which the head of this Saviour rested, was of pine, and the arms themselves of cedar wood. Others, again, assert that the Cross was made of the wood of the Cyprus, the cedar, the olive, and the palm.  It would appear that Saint Bernard adopted the latter idea, although it is quite impossible to ascertain how it originated.  The cypress is supposed to form the base or foot, the cedar the shaft, the olive the upper part, or what would be called the capital if a column were in question,.  These various suppositions are, of course, altogether gratuitous and optional, but there is nothing absurd about them as there is about such idle imaginings as the final story, according to which the Queen of Sheba, when she went into the Palace of Solomon, which was called the House of the Forest of Lebanon, noticed a beam in it and predicted that that beam would be used in the execution of a man who would cause the ruin of all Israel.  Solomon, continues this strange legend, anxious to guard against the fulfilment of the sinister prophecy, had the beam buried in the very spot where the Troubled Pool, or Pool of Bethesda, (in chapter 5, verses2-4), was afterwards situated.  At the time of the Passion of Our Lord, this beam is said to have been discovered, dug up and used to form the Cross of the Saviour.

Here is another story of a similar kind and of about the same value: Seth, the third son of Adam, having obtained entrance to the terrestrial Paradise, from which his parents had been expelled, obtained from the angel who guarded the tree of life three of its seeds, which he planted on the grave of his father.  From these three seeds grew three small stems, which, being joined together, formed the beam just alluded to as having been used by Solomon and hidden by him.

Setting aside all these fables and legends, the probability on the face of it would appear to be that the Cross was made entirely of one kind of wood.  The idea that the instrument of this Saviour's death consisted of several different materials might form the text of many beautiful moral lessons to be drawn from the variety, but from an historical point of view it is not in the least tenable.  Who could imagine for one moment that the Jews would amuse themselves by fitting pieces of wood together cut from several different trees?  What really is difficult to determine is what was the one wood of which the whole Cross was made, for the very long period during which that sacred relic remained buried beneath the soil of Calvary did, of course, greatly modify its appearance.  We are justified in adding, however, that an examination under the microscope of sections cut from the various relics of the true Cross preserved at Florence, at Rome, at Pisa and had Paris, leaves no doubt that the tree which supplied the material belonged to the coniferous group and was probably a pine.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam