THE TEMPLE 
 OF HIS BODY 
 
 
 
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 LARRABEE 
 
DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
 
 

 
THE TEMPLE OF 
 HIS BODY 
 
 BEING GOOD FRIDAY ADDRESSES ON THE SEVEN 
 WORDS FROM THE CROSS 
 
 BY 
 EDWARD ALLAN LARRABEE, S.T.B. 
 
 MILWAUKEE 
 THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO, 
 MCMV 
 
INTRODUCTION - 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE SacRED Hanps - 
 Tue Lirs oF TRUTH - 
 THE ALL-SEEING EYES 
 Tue SINLEss SouL - 
 THE SUFFERING Bopy 
 THE Bopy MysticaL - 
 
 THE SANCTUARY OF THE SPIRIT 
 

 
PREFACE. 
 
 Turse Addresses embody the substance of 
 the Good Friday Meditations given in the Church 
 of the Ascension, Chicago, in 1904. They repre- 
 sent an attempt to draw somewhat away from 
 the more subjective line of thought usual in Good 
 Friday Addresses. 
 
 There is perhaps some ground for the question 
 that is beginning to be asked, whether the grow- 
 ing popularity of the Three Hours’ Service may 
 not contain in itself the danger of substituting de- 
 votions mainly subjective in their character for the 
 Liturgical Offices of the day? One may recognize 
 this danger, and yet feel reluctant to discourage 
 the use of a service which has done so much to 
 impress the lessons of the Passion upon our people. 
 
 213882 
 
6 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 The Three Hours give to the pastor an oppor- 
 tunity which he must feel unwilling indeed to 
 surrender. Not only is it an opportunity of bring- 
 ing home to his own people the teaching of the 
 Cross, on the day when all must be most disposed 
 to listen to this teaching and to be moved by it; 
 but of reaching many others less at home in the 
 stated services of the Church who are drawn to 
 these devotions and gladly take part in them. It 
 may even be that a deference to this latter class is 
 responsible for the subjective tone and somewhat 
 indefinite character of addresses given in the 
 Three Hours. Yet it would seem that the pres- 
 ence of so many who are unfamiliar with the dis- 
 tinctive teachings of the Church, ought rather to 
 incite one so to preach Christ Crucified as, if pos- 
 sible, to win souls to the love of the Chureh which 
 He purchased with His Blood. 
 
 The line of thought taken in these Addresses, 
 The Temple of Our Lord’s Body, seemed to lend 
 itself to the twofold purpose of turning the mind, 
 in the first place, away from self to the Person of 
 our Lord; and secondly, while doing this, of keep- 
 ing prominent the truth that He is now repre- 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 sented in the world by the Church which is His 
 Mystical Body. 
 
 The Addresses are printed as a humble effort 
 to do, what, when it shall be done successfully, will 
 perhaps turn a threatened danger into a positive 
 help. So far from detracting from the prescibed 
 Offices of the Church, the Three Hours’ devotion 
 ought in the end to minister to them. The love 
 and gratitude to the world’s Redeemer which such 
 a service fosters should lead to a deeper apprecia- 
 tion of the Church’s Liturgical system, as well as 
 to a worthier estimation of her Sacraments which 
 were purchased at so great a Price. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
 
 “He spake of the Temple of His Body” (St. John ii. 21). 
 
 As on this Good Friday we gather again, in 
 the mercy of God, for our watch beneath the 
 Cross, it will perhaps be helpful to follow in 
 our meditations a line of thought suggested by 
 words of our Lord, spoken at the very beginning 
 of His public ministry, and never forgotten by 
 the Jews: “Destroy this Temple, and in three 
 days I will raise it up.” 
 
 It was on the occasion of the first cleansing 
 of the Temple, recorded by St. John immediately 
 after the narrative of the Marriage Feast in 
 Cana, and following this “beginning of miracles” 
 by the interval of only a few days. 
 
 “The Jews’ Passover was at hand, and Jesus 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 9 
 
 went up to Jerusalem, and found in the Temple 
 those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the 
 changers of money sitting: And when He had 
 made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all 
 out of the Temple, and the sheep and the oxen; 
 and poured out the changers’ money, and over- 
 threw the tables; and said unto them that sold 
 doves, Take these things hence; make not My 
 Father’s house an house of merchandise. And 
 His disciples remembered that it was written, The 
 zeal of Thine house hath eaten Me up. Then an- 
 swered the Jews, and said unto Him, What sign 
 showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest 
 these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, 
 Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will 
 raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six 
 years was this Temple in building, and wilt Thou 
 rear it up in three days? But He spake of the 
 Temple of His Body. When therefore He was 
 risen from the dead, His disciples remembered 
 that He had said this unto them; and they be- 
 lieved in the Scripture, and the word which Jesus 
 had said” (St. John ii. 13-23). 
 
 The accusation made against our Lord in the 
 
10 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 judgment hall of Pilate by false witnesses, who 
 remembered, but perverted, His saying, “Destroy 
 this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” 
 connects these words significantly with His Pas- 
 sion. But besides this, we recall the earlier events 
 of this great week; the solemn entry of our Lord 
 into the Temple on Palm Sunday, His revisiting 
 it, and a second time cleansing it on Monday, His 
 spending the whole of Tuesday within its pre- 
 cincts in teaching and in answering questions. 
 Late in the afternoon of that day He left the 
 Temple for the last time, and while the disciples 
 spoke with admiration of the stones of which it 
 was built, foretold its utter ruin. Later still, He 
 surveyed it from the opposite slope of the Mount 
 of Olives, and spoke of His final judgment and of 
 the end of the world. 
 
 All these things connect the Temple, and there- 
 fore the analogy which our Lord borrows from it, 
 very pointedly with His Cross. 
 
 As we dwell upon this analogy, other sayings 
 of our Lord, or words spoken in Scripture con- 
 cerning His Passion, recur to us with a new force. 
 An example is that saying of the Psalms which 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 11 
 
 on this very occasion the disciples called to mind: 
 “The zeal of Thine house hath eaten Me up.” 
 Like others who did not perceive the hidden 
 reference of our Lord, they thought only of His 
 zeal for the Temple of Israel, but how the 
 prophecy grows in the depth of its significance as 
 we apply it to the Temple of His Body: that 
 Temple not made with hands, in which, for our 
 sakes, He sanctified Himself! 
 
 It is in this Temple of His Humanity, 
 “through the veil, that is to say, His Flesh” (Heb. 
 x. 20), that our great High Priest by the way of 
 His Passion is to enter the Holy of Holies, con- 
 summating the typical sacrifices of the ancient 
 law, and making full atonement for the sins of 
 the whole world. 
 
 We shall therefore try to use these most sol- 
 emn hours in which we are gathered about the 
 Cross of our Redeemer, in reverent and loving 
 contemplation of the Temple of His Humanity. 
 The sacred hands, the undefiled lips, the pure 
 and holy eyes of Jesus seem in a manner to asso- 
 ciate themselves respectively with the first three 
 Words uttered on the Cross. Under the Fourth 
 
12 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 Word, our hearts and minds will be directed to the 
 contemplation of the sufferings endured by our 
 Lord in His sinless soul. These words veil a 
 deep mystery, into which we cannot enter, but as 
 we stand without at the time of the Sacrifice, we 
 may at least learn to sympathize more deeply 
 with the unknown and unimagined sufferings of 
 the Holy One. The Fifth Word may well be 
 taken as putting before us all that the Temple of 
 His Body had to bear in physical pain as the sin- 
 less Victim was made perfect through suffering. 
 The Sixth Word, “It is finished,” has its bearing 
 upon the Eucharistic Sacrifice which in the spirit- 
 ual Temple of the Catholic Church, the Mystical 
 Body of Christ, perpetuates the Sacrifice of Cal- 
 vary, and ever prevails through the merits of our 
 Lord’s accomplished work. The Seventh and last 
 Word carries us into the Holy of Holies of our 
 Lord’s Spirit, which as the veil of the temple was 
 rent, He commends into His Father’s hands. 
 Thus listening to the dying words of our Re- 
 deemer, all the faculties ef our soul may be riy- 
 eted upon the Person of the Divine Sufferer. 
 Surely it is in some such exercise as this that we 
 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 13 
 
 shall best employ these sacred and most precious 
 moments. Other opportunities will recur through- 
 out the year for merely moral reflections, prac- 
 tical and necessary as these are. But now we 
 are at the death-bed of the Saviour of mankind, 
 and our own best and dearest Friend. As we 
 cherish the last precious moments of some earthly 
 loved one, and watch the fleeting life before it 
 goes forth, our last communings are not in the 
 nature of consecutive and coherent words. It is 
 through the silent pressure of the hand, the eager 
 watching of the lips, the unspoken language of 
 the eyes that we convey and receive the last mes- 
 sages of love. In like manner, but with in- 
 finitely greater tenderness and gratitude and love 
 let us now take our place at the Cross of Jesus, 
 and draw near to the Temple of His Body. 
 
FIRST WORD. 
 
 “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 
 (St. Luke xxiii. 34.) 
 
 THE SACRED HANDS. 
 
 Ovr Lorp has now traversed the Way of Sor- 
 rows. Calvary is reached, and the Cross is lifted 
 from His shoulders and laid upon the ground. 
 The air is rent with the din of angry shouts. 
 The multitude is pressing upon Jesus. It is with 
 difficulty that the Roman guard restrains the 
 crowd and forces it back, as the soldiers demand 
 space in which to execute their work. A clearing 
 is made. The implements of crucifixion are col- 
 lected and brought nearer. There is perhaps a 
 sudden hush, as Jesus deliberately lays Himself 
 down upon this hard bed upon which He is to die. 
 Without a murmur He surrenders Himself into 
 
FIRST WORD. 15 
 
 the cruel hands of His executioners. He straight- 
 ens His Body, as of His own act, upon the tree of 
 shame, He places His Feet together upon the 
 wood, and as giving Himself up for the sins of the 
 whole world, extends His arms upon the breadth 
 of the Cross. 
 
 Upon what now follows, we could not have 
 borne to look; nor can we now, even in imagina- 
 tion, dwell upon its terrible details. The Roman 
 soldiers have carried out their orders. The de 
 mand of the Jewish multitude in their cry of 
 “Crucify,” has been fulfilled. Jesus is nailed 
 to the Cross. 
 
 It was probably during these first moments of 
 the agony, and perhaps at the very instant when 
 the blows were struck that nailed the sacred Hands 
 to the Cross, that our Lord breathed forth the 
 prayer: “Father, forgive them, for they know 
 not what they do.” 
 
 The prayer and this supreme act of surrender 
 go together. 
 
 It is so that the Psalmist associates them: 
 “Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the 
 incense, and let the lifting up of my hands be an 
 
16 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 evening sacrifice.” And truly the word and the 
 act are suited to each other. It is as if He said: 
 “Behold, O Father, what I am receiving at the 
 hands of men, yet look not upon it to take ven- 
 geance upon their deed, but to forgive this and 
 every sin. They who do this with their cruel 
 hands, know not what they do. But I know 
 what I do, for I came to do Thy will, and there- 
 fore I lay My Hands upon this Cross, I stretch 
 them out of My own free will, that receiving in 
 them the price of sin, I may pay that price to 
 Thee, and by the lifting up of My Hands make 
 expiation for the sins of the whole world.” 
 
 We must keep therefore in mind throughout 
 all our watch by the Cross, the great truth that 
 our Lord is here making expiation for sin. Rey- 
 erently we have drawn near, that with hearts full 
 of gratitude and love we may look upon Him 
 “Who His Own Self bare our sins in His Own 
 Body on the Tree” (I. St. Peter ii. 24). And as 
 we connect these sayings from the Cross, with that 
 other saying of our Lord, in which He likened 
 His Body to the Temple, we shall be helped both 
 to realize our need of His expiation, and to under- 
 
FIRST WORD. 17 
 
 stand better how perfectly He has met and satis- 
 fied that need. Our hands, our lips, our eyes are, 
 as it were, the outer court of the temple of our 
 bodies. It is through these principal gates of the 
 senses that for good or evil, we have our conver- 
 sation in the world, and are brought into con- 
 tact with a multitude of human things both good 
 and bad that throng about our life, and press 
 within the avenues of our senses. It was in like 
 manner that a promiscuous crowd habitually 
 mingled within the outer court of the temple, and 
 streamed back and forth through its gates, so that 
 the worship was disturbed by the noise of the 
 traffickers. Our Lord whose zeal twice purged 
 His Father’s House of this abuse, and which even 
 went so far as to forbid that one should carry a 
 vessel through the Temple, cannot be indifferent 
 to what takes place in the temples of our bodies. 
 In the Sermon on the Mount, words are spoken 
 by Him which, as we listen to them, make us real- 
 ize how strict is the scrutiny of His all-seeing eye. 
 It is as if He entered these temples of ours, and, 
 as once in the Temple of Jerusalem, paused and 
 “looked round about upon all things” (St. Mark 
 
18 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 xi. 11). As He does so, our eyes, our lips, our 
 hands, all come under His scrutiny. He notes 
 the words of our lips, and He who elsewhere 
 warns us that “every idle word that men speak, 
 they shall give account thereof in the day of judg- 
 ment” (St. Matt. xii. 36), admonishes us, “Let 
 your communication be Yea, yea, Nay, nay; for 
 whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (St. 
 Matt. v. 37). He looks into our eyes and notes 
 whatever defiles them, or turns them away from 
 God. ‘The light of the body is the eye: if there- 
 fore thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full 
 of light. But if thine eye be evil thy whole body 
 shall be full of darkness” (St. Matt. vi. 22). “If 
 thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it 
 from thee” (St. Matt. v. 29). 
 
 And He looks also upon our hands. 
 
 Ah! there is One to whom our hands indeed 
 reveal a history. Think of Jesus, as if taking 
 your hand within His most pure and holy Hands, 
 He said: “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it 
 off and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for 
 thee that one of thy members should perish, and 
 
FIRST WORD. 19 
 
 not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” 
 (St. Matt. v. 30). 
 
 As He now stretches forth these holy Hands 
 of His upon the Cross, we are present to His Mind 
 as truly as if for us alone all these sufferings were 
 borne. All our misdeeds He foresaw. He be- 
 held the long series of sinful acts which we should 
 commit against His holy will. Nor was it only 
 as far off that He knew them. He felt them as 
 in their power to hurt they were made present by 
 the hands of the wicked men into which He was 
 contented to be betrayed, and whose work it was 
 to nail Him to the Cross. Alas! with what awful 
 fidelity our guilty hands were there represented. 
 An officer of the Chief Priest with his hand struck 
 Jesus, and others smote Him with the palms of 
 their hands. Hands of men blindfolded Him, 
 buffeted Him, entwined the crown of thorns and 
 pressed it upon His Head, bound Him, scourged 
 Him, led Him forth to Death, and, as we saw just 
 now, nailed Him to the Cross. In every such act 
 our sins were present. Our lust, our anger, our 
 grasping selfishness, were all there, and the malice 
 
20 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 of our sin was felt in the wounds inflicted in the 
 sinless holy Hands of the Son of God. 
 
 And yet it was for this He came. Long be- 
 fore this, His Voice had spoken through the 
 Prophet Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her suck- 
 ing child that she should not have compassion on 
 the son of her womb? Yea, she may forget, yet will 
 I not forget thee.” And then, as the proof of that 
 love which time should reveal, “Behold, I have 
 graven thee upon the palms of My Hands” 
 (Isaiah xlix. 15, 16). He had looked upon the 
 flood of sin increasing upon the earth, and over- 
 whelming in its tide such multitudes of men, and 
 had foretold the salvation His Cross should bring: 
 “He shall spread out His Hands in the midst of 
 them as He that spreadeth out His Hands to 
 swim” (Isaiah xxv. 11). He had anticipated the 
 surprise with which men should behold the strange 
 contradiction of the Cross, “One shall say unto 
 Him, What are these wounds in Thine Hands? 
 Then shall He answer, Those with which I was 
 wounded in the House of My friends” (Zech. 
 xiii. 6). 
 
 As then we behold Him on the Cross, where 
 
FIRST WORD. 21 
 
 our sins have nailed Him, let us consider wherein 
 lies the efficacy of this perfect Sacrifice, and how 
 it is that these Hands have made Atonement for 
 the sins of the world. 
 
 First, He who bears this punishment is Him- 
 self innocent. The Hands laid upon the Cross 
 for us are unstained by any touch of sin. The 
 earthly priest before going to the altar has need to 
 wash his hands in token of his sense of defilement, 
 and of his need of cleansing before he presumes 
 to handle holy things. “I will wash my hands in 
 innocency and so will I go to Thine Altar” (Psalm 
 xxvi. 6). But the great High Priest who here 
 goes up to the Altar of the Cross, needs for Him- 
 self no cleansing. He who ascends the hill of the 
 Lord, who shall afterwards, His Sacrifice com- 
 pleted, rise up to intercede for us in the Holy 
 Place, has the clean Hands and the pure Heart 
 of the God-Man. 
 
 These holy and venerable Hands now made 
 fast upon the wood, never offended. Instruments 
 of His mercy as He stretched them forth in the 
 days of His ministry in healing and blessing 
 upon the sick and afflicted, their last work for us 
 
22 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 is to suffer without resistance during these hours 
 of the Passion, that so they may be stretched forth 
 for evermore in mercy and forgiveness upon all 
 who turn to Him for pardon. 
 
 But what is chiefly to be remembered, since 
 everything depends upon this, they are the Hands 
 of God. ‘The hand of the Lord.” How often 
 is the expression used in Holy Scripture! These 
 are the Hands that created the world. And yet 
 their work in creation was not so wonderful as 
 their work here. It cost these Hands no effort 
 to make the world, but what do they not suffer 
 in order to redeem it! It was by these Hands 
 that the Almighty showed His wonders of old, 
 when He redeemed His people Israel leading them 
 through the Red Sea and through the wilderness 
 and with His mighty Hand and His stretched-out 
 Arm brought them into their inheritance. In 
 these Hands “He bare them and He carried them 
 all the days of old” (Isaiah lxiii. 9). Be it re- 
 membered, then, that no mere creature, however 
 exalted, or however holy, could have wrought sal- 
 vation for us. He who suffered on the Cross, 
 though He suffered in man’s nature, was not a 
 
FIRST WORD. 23 
 
 human person, but the Person of the Son of God 
 in human flesh. By sharing man’s nature, He is 
 able to suffer for man, and by laying human 
 Hands upon the Tree of the Cross to atone for the 
 transgression which began when in Eden human 
 hands reached forth in disobedience upon the for- 
 bidden tree. But while He suffers as Man, it is 
 His true Godhead which gives efficacy to His 
 Atonement, and obtains the answer to His prayer: 
 “Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do.” 
 
 Our watch by the Cross to-day should tighten 
 our grasp upon the blessed truth of our Lord’s 
 Atonement for sin. While the world goes on its 
 way, boasting its progress, and making light of 
 its sin, God forbid that we should glory save in 
 the Cross of Christ. We have a double reason 
 for spending these hours beneath the Cross. For, 
 first, what the Son of God, the Holy, the Innocent, 
 the Undefiled here suffers, He suffers at our hands. 
 This is the Prince of Glory whom we, by wicked 
 hands have crucified and slain. We come to la- 
 ment the work of our hands, as with the sons of 
 Jacob, we confess, “We are verily guilty concern- 
 
24 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 ing our Brother” (Gen. xlii. 21). But O, thanks 
 be to His infinite mercy and love, there is another 
 reason. The injuries He receives from us, conse- 
 crated by the touch of His sacred Hands, are 
 turned by Him into blessing. The cruel suffer- 
 ings our sins have inflicted upon His sacred Hu- 
 manity, the Power of His Godhead applies to the 
 Salvation of our souls. Truly He could say, 
 “They know not what they do.” They know not 
 the wrong they inflict upon Me. They know not 
 the miracle of My love, the chief manifestation 
 of My power in turning even this into their deliv- 
 erance from sin. 
 
SECOND WORD. 
 
 “Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in 
 Paradise” (St. Luke xxiii, 43). 
 
 THE LIPS OF TRUTH. 
 
 Tux Cross, with its precious weight, has been 
 raised into its place. Jesus is now lifted up and 
 exposed to the gaze of the multitude. It was the 
 occasion of a fresh outburst of calumnies. 
 
 “Then were there two thieves crucified with 
 Him, the one on the right hand, and the other on 
 the left. And they that passed by railed on Him, 
 wagging their heads and saying, Thou that de- 
 stroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, 
 save Thyself. If Thou be the Son of God, come 
 down from the Cross; Likewise also the chief 
 priests mocking Him with the scribes and elders, 
 said, He saved others, Himself He cannot save. 
 
26 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 If He be the King of Israel, let Him come down 
 from the Cross, and we will believe Him: for He 
 said I am the Son of God. The thieves also that 
 were crucified with Him, cast the same in His 
 teeth” (St. Matt. xxvii. 39-45). 
 
 ? with which our Lord in- 
 
 The “verily I say,’ 
 troduces this second utterance from the Cross, 
 calls attention to the Person and to the authority 
 of Him who speaks, and thus throws into bolder 
 relief the contrast between His most pure and 
 holy lips, and those words of blasphemy and false- 
 hood which the lips of wicked men were uttering 
 against Him. As then we behold Him who en- 
 dured such contradiction of sinners against Him- 
 self, it is as the Word of God, Truth Incarnate 
 that we contemplate Him. We mark the move- 
 ment of these dying lips, drawn with pain and 
 pallid from loss of blood, as they bestow upon pen- 
 itence the gracious promise of this Word, and we 
 reflect that they are the lips of Truth, nay of the 
 Truth itself and of the eternal Wisdom of God. 
 All that was ever spoken of old in the revelation of 
 the mind of God, through the Scriptures and the 
 Prophets, was the utterance of these lips, the lips 
 
SECOND WORD. 27 
 
 of Him who is by nature the Word of God. “The 
 lip of truth,” says the Proverb, “shall be estab- 
 lished forever” (Prov. xii. 19), and these lips 
 themselves have said, “Heaven and earth shall 
 pass away, but My Word shall not pass away” 
 (St. Matt. v. 35). And again, the Proverb says, 
 “A divine sentence is in the lips of the king” 
 (Prov. xvi. 10). But this is the King of kings 
 whose sentence shall be pronounced upon all men 
 at the last great day. 
 
 It is in the light of this consideration that we 
 must weigh what Jesus suffered and still suffers 
 from the lips of men. Our evil words, however 
 uttered, and to whomsoever addressed, are in 
 reality directed against the Person of Christ. The 
 wrong they inflict upon ourselves, and the injury 
 they work upon our neighbor, are nothing com- 
 pared with this, that they contradict Him who 
 is the Eternal Truth. In our falsehoods, our ir- 
 reverent speech, our unseemly conversation, we 
 take up the calumnies and contradictions of the 
 jeering multitude about the Cross, and we, like 
 the thieves, “cast the same in His teeth.” 
 
 Yet think of the patience with which the Word 
 
28 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 of God Himself submits to this outrage: before 
 Pilate, silent; before Herod, silent; before false 
 accusers, answering never a word. O the mys- 
 tery of that condescension, in which Truth Eternal 
 submits in silence to be thrice denied by St. Peter, 
 to bear with the “Hail, Master,” of Judas, as the 
 traitor’s lips are pressed against His cheek, to be 
 examined by the High Priest, to be made to listen 
 to the mockery of the soldiers as in the early morn- 
 ing of this day, to be impudently questioned by 
 Herod, to be asked by Pilate, “What is Truth?’ 
 to accept without question the sentence of His un- 
 just condemnation which the clamor of the angry 
 multitude have exacted from a cowardly judge. 
 
 Let us look into that Face, and as we consider 
 those lips so accustomed to silence under wrong, 
 let us mark how He makes reparation for our sins 
 of speech. “Woe is me, for I am undone because 
 I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the 
 midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah vi. 5). 
 O Jesus, patient and silent under wrong, be Thou 
 the atonement for my sins of word. 
 
 And now let us consider the legacy which the 
 lips of Jesus have left us. The Gospel contains 
 
SECOND WORD. 29 
 
 the record not only of His works, but of the words 
 of Him who spake as never man spake. At the 
 viry beginning of His public life, immediately 
 after the temptation in the wilderness, He goes 
 to His cwn city, Nazareth, and in the synagogue, 
 standing up to read, finds that place where it is 
 written in the Prophet Isaiah: “The. Spirit of 
 the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed 
 Me to preach the Gospel to the poor, He hath sent 
 Me to heal the broken-heatted, to preach deliver- 
 ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the 
 blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
 preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (St. Luke 
 iv. 18). And then, as sitting down, He applied 
 this prophecy to Himself; all bare Him witness 
 and wondered at the gracious words which pro- 
 ceeded out of His mouth. As He began His 
 earthly ministry, so now with like gracious words 
 He is closing it. Let us then, in this solemn 
 hour, call to memory all the holy doctrines which 
 He taught; the sublime precepts of the Sermon 
 on the Mount, the inexhaustible treasures of the 
 Parables, the simplicity of that wisdom in which 
 He gave meek answer to His adversaries, and laid 
 
30 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 bare their hypocrisy, the woes spoken in sternness, 
 yet in merciful warning against Scribe and Phar- 
 isee, the love in which He shrank not from de- 
 claring the eternal punishment which must over- 
 take the impenitent, all the high discourse con- 
 cerning the Kingdom of God, and the unflinching 
 and uncompromising enunciation of the nature 
 and the necessity of those Sacraments without 
 which we have no union with Him, and through 
 which alone we can share in His victory over 
 death, and be made partakers of His everlasting 
 life. 
 
 Truly was it said, ‘““Never man spake like this 
 man” (St. John vii. 46), nor is it wonderful that 
 outside the pale of the Church, and even outside 
 the number of those who call themselves by the 
 Christian name, the world itself recognizes in 
 Jesus the greatest and the most sublime of all 
 teachers, the supreme Master of the spiritual life, 
 who while He could challenge the world to convict 
 Him of the slightest moral fault, is still for man- 
 kind at large the only perfect model, the only in- 
 fallible interpreter of conscience. 
 
 Yet how much more is Christ than this! 
 
SECOND WORD. 31 
 
 Great as is this Teacher, if He were no more than 
 a teacher, the words here spoken to the dying thief 
 would have left him uncomforted, unabsolved. 
 Let us put ourselves in the place of this penitent 
 as St. Luke brings the scene before us. 
 
 “And one of the malefactors railed on Him, 
 saying, if Thou be the Christ, save Thyself and 
 us, but the other answering, rebuked him, saying, 
 dost thou not fear God ; seeing thou art in the same 
 condemnation, and we indeed justly for we receive 
 the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath 
 done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, 
 Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy 
 Kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I 
 say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with Me in 
 Paradise” (St. Luke xxiii. 39-44). 
 
 To this man, knowing his death to be so near, 
 his conscience now aroused so that he sees his sins 
 and the wretchedness of his wasted life, something 
 more is needed than moral teaching, even though 
 it were the most sublime that lips of man could 
 utter. Does he not confess it? ‘Lord, remember 
 me,” is his prayer. But what mere man could 
 have met this need? Which one of all the world’s 
 
32 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 teachers could have given the definite assurance 
 spoken by Christ: “Verily I say unto thee, to-day 
 shalt thou be with Me in Paradise” ? 
 
 Let us note well, for everything turns upon 
 this, the difference between Christ and every other 
 teacher. Others were at best seekers after Truth. 
 Christ 7s the Truth. Others professed themselves 
 learners of a truth greater than themselves. 
 Christ proclaims Himself the way, the truth, and 
 the life. Others proclaimed a message. Christ 
 proclaims His own Person. It is because Christ 
 is His own message that the dying thief finds in 
 Him all that he needs. His prayer is not, “Mas- 
 ter, instruct me,” but, “Lord, remember me.” 
 What he craves is a relationship to the Person of 
 Christ which shall abide to his endless happiness 
 in a Kingdom never to be destroyed. 
 
 And how completely this prayer is answered. 
 For, first, there is no place left for doubt or mis- 
 giving, but the promise is made to rest upon the 
 authority of His Godhead: “Verily, I say.” It 
 is not general, but definite and particular: “I say 
 unto thee.” It is not a remote prospect, a vague 
 and distant hope: “To-day’’ it shall be fulfilled. 
 
SECOND WORD. 33 
 
 It is not, finally, the mere sharing in the good 
 things of His Kingdom, but it is a personal union 
 with Himself: “thou shalt be with Me.” The 
 authority of God, the power of God, the love of 
 God, are all declared in this brief Word. 
 
 As we note, then, these words of authority 
 which fall from the dying lips of Jesus, let us 
 weigh well the difference between merely hearing 
 about the Truth, and being brought, as was the 
 penitent thief, under its power. ‘The Voice of 
 the Lord is mighty in operation” (Psalm xxix. 4). 
 That Voice, through which creation itself sprang 
 into being, is still active and operative. It lives 
 on in the Sacraments which it has created, and 
 through which, by the power of the Holy Ghost, 
 Jesus works the marvels of His will. It is one 
 thing to hear, as the Jews of old heard through 
 the lips of their prophets, revelations concerning 
 the power of Christ; it is another, and an infinite- 
 ly greater to be brought into contact with that 
 power as Christ Himself speaks His word of 
 authority. Surely there is but one attitude for us 
 sinners to-day, and that is the attitude in which we 
 place ourselves by the side of the penitent thief, 
 
34 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 and make his prayer our own. As we take this 
 position in lowly penitence, who but must long 
 for a word from the Crucified, bringing to the 
 soul the like definite and personal assurance to 
 that which He granted to this penitent at the 
 Cross? O perhaps to someone here there comes 
 to-day, for the first time, the knowledge of this 
 priceless legacy of our Saviour’s authoritative 
 word, still living, still operative through the min- 
 istry of His Church. What will be the joy of 
 such an one if before the Easter dawn, nay, if 
 “to-day” the word of pardon such as that which 
 gladdened the penitent thief shall be his. And 
 why should not this be? No sins are too great 
 for this absolving word. They were His own lips 
 which said: ‘Whosesoever sins ye remit they are 
 remitted.” O blessed word of reconciliation, 
 word of deliverance, word of power! O precious 
 word “I absolve thee,” whose efficacy is in the 
 Blood of Jesus Christ! ‘“O great and wonderful 
 Sacrament of pardon! What marvels hast thou 
 wrought, what evils rooted out, what good things 
 planted in their place! What wondrous changes 
 dost thou work! The lost thou recoverest, the 
 
SECOND WORD. 35 
 
 diseased thou healest, the dead thou quickenest, 
 thou restorest all things! O word of pardon, win- 
 ning back the favor of God, wiping out debts, 
 adorning the mind, treasuring merit, dispensing 
 peace, yielding the increase of glory! Of sinners 
 thou makest saints, entwining their crowns, and 
 placing palms in their hands! O Jesu, Saviour 
 of the perishing, Captain who leadest back the 
 erring, how tender and how mighty Thou art while 
 working these marvels in the most holy laver of 
 Thy Blood!” 
 
THIRD WORD. 
 
 “Woman, behold thy son! Behold thy Mother!” 
 (St. John xix. 26, 27.) 
 
 THE ALL-SEEING EYES. 
 
 Up tro this moment what a succession of sad 
 and sorrowful sights had confronted our Lord. 
 The senses have been called the gateways of the 
 soul, and through this gateway of the eyes there 
 had pressed upon His heart every spectacle of sin 
 that could afflict and weigh down His pure and 
 sinless soul. 
 
 As we meditate upon the sad and patient eyes 
 of Jesus, weary with looking upon sin, let us 
 remember that though now humbled and made 
 ashamed for us, they are in truth the eyes of the 
 Lord which are in every place, beholding the evil 
 and the good. St. John, who alone records this 
 
THIRD WORD. 37 
 
 Word from the Cross, was afterwards to behold 
 these eyes as flames of fire; and as he tells us in 
 the Revelation, to fall at His feet as dead. 
 
 -Yet now they have their sad share in the hu- 
 miliation and suffering of His Passion. LEarlier 
 this morning these eyes which search every heart, 
 and are to try all men at the last, were made to 
 look for the first time upon the actual implements 
 of the Passion. They rested upon the scourge 
 as it hung idle in the hands of a soldier, and 
 studied the cruel ingenuity of which He knew He 
 ~ was to make trial in streams of His Blood. They 
 looked steadily at the Cross, as the actual instru- 
 ment of the Passion was first brought to His view, 
 all unstained as yet with His Blood, and He 
 weighed in His perfect foreknowledge the suffer- 
 ing it should exact from His sinless Flesh. “In- 
 struments of cruelty are in their hands,” and as 
 these tender and loving eyes make acquaintance 
 with them, one by one, He reads in each the in- 
 gratitude of His chosen people, and of us who 
 have joined with them in preparing a Cross for 
 our Saviour. 
 
 Through the constantly changing scenes of last 
 
38 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 night and this morning He has been led from place 
 to place, and as one, and then another of the prin- 
 cipal figures in the Passion has passed before Him, 
 His eyes have looked into each face, and have 
 pierced down through every deceit to read the very 
 secrets of the heart. Everywhere He has encoun- 
 tered the enmity and the malice of sin. Before 
 these meek and patient eyes pass in turn the pride 
 and arrogancy of the Chief Priests, the envy and 
 craftiness of the Scribes and Pharisees, the moral 
 cowardice of Pilate, the sensuality of Herod. 
 
 And now, as He hangs uplifted what does He 
 behold in that sea of upturned faces? Men are 
 critically reading the title on the Cross, or noting 
 with heartless unconcern the lingering torture of 
 Crucifixion. The words of the Psalm are the 
 voicing of His complaint: “They stand staring 
 and looking upon Me” (Psalm xxii. 17). Pride 
 and hatred, envy and malice, lustful greed, and 
 cruel sensuality are all gathered here. “Many 
 oxen are come about Me, fat bulls of Basan close 
 Me in on every side” (Psalm xxii. 12). 
 
 As Noah looked forth from the Ark upon the 
 flood, and gazed afar upon the waste of waters 
 
THIRD WORD. 39 
 
 that had overwhelmed the world in its sin, so our 
 Lord looks down from the Cross upon the angry 
 multitude which gathers up and exhibits before 
 Him every type of wickedness and makes man- 
 ifest the malice of that world-wide, age-long tor- 
 rent of sin which He had come to atone. But yet 
 again, as from the waters of the Flood, the dove 
 afterwards brought back to Noah the olive leaf 
 plucked off, the pledge of safety, the promise of 
 peace, so with this third Word, there emerges as 
 it were from the deluge of sin which surges around 
 the Cross, the form of our Lord’s Blessed Mother, 
 the promise of a restored world, the earnest of a 
 new heaven and a new earth. 
 
 “Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus His 
 Mother, and His Mother’s sister, Mary the wife 
 of Cleophas and Mary Magdalene; when Jesus 
 therefore saw His Mother, and the disciple stand- 
 ing by whom He loved, He saith unto His Mother, 
 Woman, behold thy son! Then saith He to the 
 disciple, Behold thy Mother! And from that 
 hour that disciple took her unto his own home” 
 (St. John xix. 25-28). 
 
 “When Jesus therefore saw His Mother.” O 
 
40 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 how gladly we turn from the thought of the sin 
 which the eyes of Jesus here encountered, to their 
 resting for a time in the contemplation of His 
 Blessed Mother! True, there is a sense in which 
 the meeting of the eyes of Jesus and those of Mary 
 meant for them both a keener and deeper pang 
 of suffering, as in that bond of love which bound 
 together the immaculate Mother and her Divine 
 Son, He suffered in her, and she in Him. Yet 
 we listen to the brief narrative which accom- 
 panies this Word with a sense of relief and of 
 holy comfort. For here, the suffering however 
 great, is a suffering born of sympathy and love, 
 and the love which begets the suffering remains 
 as its consolation. And how patient have been 
 these eyes which now turn toward her whom He 
 loves as son never before loved mother! He has 
 prayed first for His murderers, then He has par- 
 doned and consoled the penitent, and last of all He 
 searches out His nearest and dearest. And in all 
 it is as ever looking unto His Father, and as ful- 
 filling His will. “I have been left unto Thee 
 ever since I was born: Thou art He that took Me 
 from My mother’s womb” (Psalm xxii. 10). 
 
THIRD WORD. 41 
 
 And on Mary’s part, how had she waited for 
 this moment, and for the word addressed to her! 
 Is there not a lesson here for those called into spe- 
 cial nearness to God, that like the Blessed Virgin 
 and St. John they may value above their own spir- 
 itual consolation the work that Jesus does for 
 those in special and urgent need of mercy and for- 
 giveness? How in St. John’s simple narrative 
 is it assumed, as a matter of course, that Jesus 
 must first minister to the needs of men, who, as 
 the world would say, had no claim upon Him, be- 
 fore He turns with this assurance of love and His 
 word of consolation to those nearest to Him. “I 
 came not to call the righteous, but sinners to re- 
 pentance.” 
 
 We may not fathom the mystery of that com- 
 munion in which the eyes of Jesus and of His 
 Mother meet, a communion too deep for words. 
 From those earliest years in Nazareth it must 
 have been thus that Mother and Son held com- 
 munion together, as heart spoke to heart in a depth 
 of spiritual understanding for the utterance of 
 which words would be at once unnecessary and in- 
 adequate. How few are the recorded words of 
 
42 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 Jesus to His Mother; while of Mary’s words after 
 her Magnificat, we have almost none. But from 
 the time that as a little Babe He lay in her arms, 
 and His eyes looked up into hers, what commun- 
 ings were theirs, and what depths of understand- 
 ing. 
 
 It is nothing strange, then, that here also it 
 should be less by spoken words than by His look 
 that our Lord addresses His mother. As inter- 
 preted in that look there is no lack of endearment 
 in the term “Woman.” It may be that He would 
 spare her the suffering which the use of the more 
 tender word Mother would have involved at such a 
 time, and there seems to be a purpose in our Lord’s 
 reserving this term to express her new relation to 
 St. John and through him to His whole Church. 
 Certain it is that the title “Woman” recalls to her 
 mind, as no other word could have done, the glory 
 and dignity of her vocation. At least once before, 
 at the marriage feast in Cana, He had used this 
 term in addressing her, and by using it had 
 pointed forward to this hour when He should no 
 longer say, “Woman, what have I to do with 
 thee?” (St. John ii. 4) ; but, His hour having now 
 
THIRD WORD. 43 
 
 come for the making perfect His Sacrifice, should 
 call upon her to take her part with Him, and to 
 unite her will to His in the oblation He would 
 make. How in this word must she have recalled 
 Cana, and how must the title ““‘Woman” have sum- 
 moned her to that supreme surrender in which 
 even this holiest and dearest of all earthly ties 
 should be swallowed up in that holier relation 
 still, as she unites her will to His in the Sacrifice 
 He offers for the sins of the world. 
 
 And further back still her memory must have 
 gone to that moment when, after losing the joy of 
 her eyes, she had found Him after three days in 
 the Temple. O the gladness of beholding Him, 
 and the love with which His eyes had then met 
 hers after this first separation between them! 
 But now as these same eyes look upon her from the 
 Cross, with what new depth of meaning is borne 
 upon her memory the saying of Jesus when but 
 twelve years old, “Wist ye not that I must be 
 about My Father’s business?’ Yes, this is that 
 business, for which even then He was preparing 
 both Himself and her. How mercifully had His 
 loving Providence led her on, that parting with 
 
d4 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 Him willingly at the Cross she may find Him on 
 the third day in the Temple of His Risen Body. 
 
 And then her memory goes back to the sacred 
 Infancy of her Son and Lord. She remembers 
 how she had had her part to fulfil as in her arms 
 He was carried to the Temple, there to be offered 
 in His Father’s House. The suffering of this pres- 
 ent hour is only in fulfilment of what she then 
 undertook when so long ago she had given Him 
 back to God. How had this lesson, that what 
 God gives is in order to sacrifice, been impressed 
 upon her from the beginning! When He was 
 but eight days old she had learned it in the shed- 
 ding of the first drops of His precious Blood. 
 And now, as in the completion of His Sacrifice, 
 He is shedding the last drops of that Blood, she 
 learns at once the unity of His work, and the con- 
 sistency of that vocation which has bound up her 
 life with His. Simeon’s prophecy of the sword 
 that should pierce her own heart also, is remem- 
 bered with deep inward exultation, as she realizes 
 now its fulfilment in a suffering which binds her 
 indissolubly to her Divine Son. 
 
 It is with His eyes, even more than with His 
 
THIRD WORD. 45 
 
 lips that our Lord addresses His beloved Disciple. 
 He does not here call that disciple by name. St. 
 John marks the movement by which the eyes of 
 Jesus turn from His Mother to rest upon him. 
 “Woman, behold thy son,” He had said; and 
 then looking into the eyes of His disciple, but 
 without addressing him by name, “Behold thy 
 mother.” “I will guide thee with Mine eye.” 
 Those who live close to God are directed and ruled 
 wonderfully and secretly by His Holy Spirit. Our 
 Lord has purposes for us which it is His will we 
 
 should learn without their distinct enunciation 
 ; by a word of command; but as we grow more and 
 more into the knowledge of His will through the 
 sacramental life. “If it were not so I would not 
 have told you” (St. John xiv. 2). It is St. John 
 himself who tells us, “Ye have an unction from 
 the Holy One, and ye know all things.” “The 
 anointing which ye have received of Him abideth 
 in you, and ye need not that any man teach you, 
 but as that same anointing teacheth you all things, 
 and is truth and is no lie, and even as it hath 
 taught you ye shall abide in Him” (I. St. John ii. 
 20, 27). 
 
46 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 And now let us consider what it is that Jesus 
 here accomplishes. He draws the eyes of His 
 Mother and of this disciple to Himself to meet 
 His gaze, and then He bids them turn their eyes 
 upon each other. “Behold thy son: Behold thy 
 mother.” He is teaching us that in every tie of 
 kindred, and in every bond of holy friendship we 
 are to see Him. Our loved ones are His gift to 
 us. The loved ones who received and sheltered 
 us when we came helpless into the world, and every 
 pure friendship which has come into our lives 
 since, are alike from Him. And as they came 
 from Him so are they meant to lead back to Him. 
 O how blessed and happy may such ties become if 
 this is remembered, and if we let Him hallow them 
 and consecrate them to Himself as He offers to 
 do. As at Cana He changed the water into wine, 
 so will He, as we ask His blessing on those ties of 
 kindred or friendship which we cherish in His 
 fear and love, change what is weak and unstable 
 into the wine of His grace, purifying, strengthen- 
 ing, and consecrating forever the ties which bind 
 us to each other in Him. 
 
 To-day, then, as we behold Him, Mary’s Son, 
 
THIRD WORD. 47 
 
 and the Son of God, in the midst of mortal agony, 
 consoling His Blessed Mother and His beloved 
 disciple, let us commend to Him our loved ones. 
 Let our gratitude ascend to Him for every gift of 
 love with which He has enriched our lives. May 
 His Presenee and His grace guard us from all 
 selfishness, teach us the beauty of self-sacrifice, 
 and enable us to fulfil every responsibility to 
 which He has annexed the consolations of earthly 
 friendship. And so as we have received these 
 dear ones from Him, may we love them in Him 
 and for Him, and may we with perfect resigna- 
 tion, whenever He may require it, surrender them 
 back to Him. 
 
 And then shall we not see in this bond created 
 at the Cross between the Blessed Mother and St. 
 John the beginning and the ideal of the Com- 
 munion of Saints? In that wider fellowship 
 which binds together in one all the people of God, 
 here is the pattern from which we are to learn. 
 He who looks from the Cross upon His loved ones 
 and bids them look upon each other, is the Center 
 and the Source of the Communion of Saints. Let 
 us not fear to enjoy what He has blessed. Death 
 
48 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 does not interrupt this communion, for He who 
 established it has Himself triumphed over death. 
 He would have us remember our blessed departed. 
 He loves to hear the prayers which witness to the 
 enduring after death of the ties which He created, 
 and has promised to bless. And in regard to those 
 holy ones, His blessed saints now glorified and in 
 His Presence, His will is that we should turn our 
 eyes often upon them. Since communion with 
 them honors His victory over death, and since we 
 cannot speak to them without speaking of Him, 
 He would leave us free in this blessed intercourse. 
 As bound to Him, we are bound to each other in 
 the fellowship of Saints. In giving His Blessed 
 Mother to St. John, He gave her to us all, and 
 has charged her to remember us with more than 
 mother’s love. For each of us He said, “Woman, 
 behold thy son,” and to each of us His eye is 
 turned as He adds, “Behold thy mother.” 
 
FOURTH WORD. 
 
 “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” 
 (St. Matt. xxvii. 46.) 
 
 THE SINLESS SOUL. 
 
 Tue three sayings of our Lord that have now 
 been considered were spoken at intervals in the 
 earlier moments of the Saviour’s Agony. Those 
 which follow must have been uttered almost 
 consecutively at its very close. There would thus 
 be a long period of silence, as far as any recorded 
 word of our Lord is concerned, between these 
 earlier and later utterances, and as we compare 
 these sayings themselves we notice a marked dif- 
 ference in the character and purpose of the two 
 groups into which they fall. 
 
 In the earlier words we see our Lord actively 
 ministering to others. His own sufferings are 
 
50 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 kept in the background while He intercedes for 
 His murderers, pardons the penitent thief, con- 
 soles His Blessed Mother and St. John. These 
 sayings show us the Tree of Life in the fruitage 
 of its actual graces, the medicine of those leaves 
 which are “for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 
 xxli. 2). But in the later words, beginning with 
 this upon which we are now to meditate, our Lord 
 speaks of Himself. His last special offices for 
 others are over. His Blessed Mother, it has been 
 thought, had now been taken by St. John away 
 from the scene of the Passion. Our Lord, as far 
 as we are told, gives no further word of recognition 
 to those about the Cross, but as He retires into 
 the depths of His Passion He invites the world to 
 the contemplation of His suffering. In His re- 
 maining words He speaks of the sorrow of His 
 Soul, the suffering of His Body, the consumma- 
 tion of His work, the surrender of His Spirit. 
 Here we are viewing the Cross on its passive side 
 while its Divine Victim appeals to us in words 
 like to those in which the prophet Jeremiah fore- 
 told the Passion. “Is it nothing to you, all ye that 
 pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow 
 
FOURTH WORD. 51 
 
 like unto My sorrow which is done unto Me, 
 wherewith the Lord hath afflicted Me in His fierce 
 anger” (Lam. i. 12). 
 
 And so, if we keep to the analogy which we 
 have chosen as a guide to our thoughts to-day, we 
 have in our considerations thus far been lingering 
 in the outer courts of the Temple of our Lord’s 
 sacred Humanity. 
 
 But, as in the temple of the Jews, a veil sep- 
 arated the outer court from the Holy Place into 
 which the Priest alone could enter, so here our 
 Lord retires within the secret solitude of His Soul, 
 and as He passes within the veil of His unknown 
 sufferings leaves us as it were standing without, 
 and unable to follow Him. So Zacharias the 
 Priest went within the veil at the time of the 
 offering of the incense, and the people stood with- 
 out, waiting for his return. Or as when one we 
 love is borne away from us in the vessel that is 
 to carry him across the seas: the last handelasp is 
 over, the last words are exchanged as the vessel 
 slowly moves from its dock, our eyes are strained 
 to catch one more sight of the loved face as the 
 ship now glides into the stream, and then it passes 
 
52 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 on its way, and leaves us with only the treasures of 
 our memory. 
 
 Here, then, in this strange cry, “My God, My 
 God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ our Lord 
 is shrouded as it were from our sight, by a dark- 
 ness like that which ere this Word was spoken, 
 had come up over all the land, as if nature her- 
 self would remind us of the veil of mystery beyond 
 which we may not venture to pass. 
 
 It is enough for us to know that our Lord goes 
 behind this veil for us, as our great High Priest 
 to carry to completion the work of His Atonement. 
 He is the great Minister of the Sanctuary who at 
 the beginning of His Office has been looking to- 
 ward the people, but now turns His Face toward 
 the Altar of His Sacrifice, and lifts up His Hands 
 in silence to God. Thus it is in the Celebration 
 of those Holy Mysteries which perpetuate the me- 
 morial of this Sacrifice. We listen first to those 
 portions of the Liturgy which are addressed to the 
 people for their instruction and preparation, and 
 then the Priest begins the solemn Action itself 
 in which is mystically shown forth the Lord’s 
 Death, for the pleading of His Sacrifice, and 
 
FOURTH WORD. 53 
 
 which accomplished, He again lifts up His voice 
 in an ascription of praise to God. So, in the 
 midst of the supernatural darkness enveloping the 
 Cross, our Lord has long been suffering in silence, 
 accomplishing in the agony of His Soul His all- 
 atoning Sacrifice. Then, as the Sacrifice is fin- 
 ished, He utters this ery to God, and of what has 
 taken place we learn what little we can under- 
 stand only when all is over. 
 
 What then may we, without presumption, seek 
 to gather from this word ? 
 
 First, let it be said, that these words are not to 
 be taken in a strictly literal sense. In the truest 
 sense it was impossible for God to forsake Him 
 who is ever the Son of God, as the Father is ever 
 the Father. In that perfect union whereby in 
 the mystery of the Holy Trinity the Father and 
 the Son are, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, One 
 Essence, there could not, of course, be a moment’s 
 breach. Nor could our Lord’s Manhood be sep- 
 arated from His Godhead for the twinkling of an 
 eye. Men in their false systems of religious 
 thought have imported into the doctrine of the 
 Atonement a sort of antagonism between the Di- 
 
54 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 vine Persons of the Holy Trinity, as if on one 
 hand our Lord did not share the Father’s right- 
 eous indignation against sin, and would be less 
 strict than the Father to exact the full penalty due 
 to man’s transgression; and as if, on the other 
 hand the Eternal Father who in His infinite love 
 for mankind freely gave His only Begotten Son, 
 could not share that tenderness for man which 
 made it the joy of the Son to seek and to save that 
 which is lost. It were a strange way to approach 
 the doctrine of the Atonement, the At-one-ment, 
 to begin by imagining discord in the councils of 
 the Godhead Itself, as if there were disagreement 
 between the Persons of the Blessed Trinity on 
 the subject of man’s fall. 
 
 Certainly these words do not mean that our 
 Lord was deprived of that which belongs to Him 
 by Nature as the Son of God. They do not mean 
 that either as God or as man He forfeited for an 
 instant His Father’s love. When men have gone 
 so far as to say not only that our Lord was liter- 
 ally God-forsaken, but that He was the only hu- 
 man being who ever was God-forsaken, we see the 
 need of holding fast the well-known definitions 
 
FOURTH WORD. 55 
 
 of Faith which protect the Catholic Doctrine of 
 God. 
 
 As to the meaning, then, of these words, it will 
 help us if we remember that our Lord is quoting 
 them exactly as they stand at the beginning of the 
 Twenty-second Psalm. Not only are the Psalms 
 like the rest of the Holy Scriptures, His own 
 Word, but by His use of them both in the regular 
 course of the Jewish Services, and in His own sol- 
 itary communings with God, they are interwoven 
 into every scene of His earthly life. While un- 
 doubtedly the whole Psalter was thus constantly 
 on His lips, it is evident that there are many ex- 
 pressions in the Psalms which would be inappro- 
 priate in the mouth of our Lord, if He spoke of 
 Himself apart from His relation to us. In what 
 sense, for example, could He use the Penitential 
 Psalms? How could He say, “Behold I was 
 shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath my mother 
 conceived me” ? (Psalm li. 5). 
 
 The answer is, that our Lord made Himself 
 one with us, in order to do penance for our sins; 
 and moreover He was by a Sacramental union so 
 to incorporate us into Himself, that we should be 
 
56 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 made one with Him. Thus, taking upon Him the 
 burden of our sin, He speaks as our Mouthpiece. 
 In the words just quoted, He who is Himself 
 sinless, takes upon Him the confession of our de- 
 filement from our very birth. So it is in all the 
 expressions of deep penitence of which the Psalms 
 are full, and which are of course inapplicable to 
 our Lord’s sinless Humanity. And it is the same 
 here. In this ery, “My God, My God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken Me?” our Lord is precenting, as 
 it were, for His whole Church this Twenty-second 
 Psalm. He, the sinless, has identified Himself 
 with the sinful. ‘He hath made Him to be sin 
 for us who knew no sin” (II. Cor. v. 21). He 
 whose Humanity was bathed constantly in the 
 radiance of the Godhead from which it could not 
 be separated, speaks in behalf of us whom He has 
 made His brethren, and to whom the words of 
 Isaiah apply, “Your iniquities have separated be- 
 tween you and your God, and your sins have hid 
 His face from you that He will not hear” 
 (Isaiah lix. 2). 
 
 Ah, no! It is precisely because He is ever 
 One with God, because He never could, in a lit- 
 
FOURTH WORD. 57 
 
 eral sense, be forsaken of God,that He was able 
 to make perfect this Atonement for us. While, 
 then, we may not penetrate the mystery of this 
 Word, or fathom the suffering which lies beneath 
 it, we know that one chief part of our Lord’s work 
 was to do penance for our sin. Now the first part 
 of penance is to take the measure of sin, to see it in 
 its true light, to lay it bare in all its shameful out- 
 rage upon the Father’s love. No one of us, no 
 mere man could possibly make this estimate of 
 sin; partly because one effect of our being con- 
 ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity is to render 
 us blind to the very nature of the malady, and 
 further, because we do not know, and never can 
 fully know, what that love is against which we 
 have sinned. There has been but one Human 
 Heart that could feel the full enormity of man’s 
 sin, and adequately suffer for it, and that is the 
 Heart which, while it bore upon the Cross the 
 conscious weight of the sins of the whole world, 
 was not forsaken by the Father, but was pressed 
 close to His Bosom that as it was enfolded in the 
 Father’s love, it might measure the ingratitude 
 of the sin by which that love is rejected. 
 
58 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 Yes, we must indeed stand without the veil. 
 For who of all flesh may accompany Him as He 
 enters into His own Heart, as He fathoms the 
 depths of His own Soul, and with full knowledge 
 of all the sins which needed, or should need, His 
 Atonement, bears their weight in a Soul which 
 from the moment of its creation was united to the 
 Godhead. “I have trodden the wine-press Alone, 
 and of the people there was none with Me” (Isaiah 
 lxiii. 3). 
 
 And yet our sins were there, yours and mine; 
 the sins which eyes have seen, the sins which no 
 eye but God’s has witnessed; the sins of thought, 
 the sins of word, the sins of deed, the sins of 
 omission, the sins for which we make such poor 
 and inadequate repentance, all were there. And 
 while He made for them such full and perfect sat- 
 isfaction, He felt the shame, and the humiliation, 
 and the sorrow which is their due, and which, 
 alas! in our blindness and insensibility we cannot 
 feel. 
 
 One part of Repentance is Confession. But 
 Confession implies more than the bare enumera- 
 tion of our sins, however truthful and exact this 
 
FOURTH WORD. 59 
 
 may be. It should be accompanied by a keen 
 sense of shame for the guilt incurred, and by a 
 loving sorrow for having offended God. As a 
 matter of fact, a good Confession usually both 
 quickens our perception of the evil of sin, and in- 
 creases that genuine sorrow which flows from the 
 love of God. Yet confessions may. be made 
 formally and mechanically, with little either of 
 love or of sorrow. There is an anxiety sometimes 
 to spare one’s self that sense of shame and that 
 confusion of face which sin has so justly deserved, 
 and which it is the very purpose of Confession to 
 intensify, and there may be the temptation to 
 glide rapidly over matters that call for the deepest 
 penitence, perhaps even putting a better face on 
 their statement than is quite consistent with truth. 
 But even when there is no intentional fault or 
 omission, how poor at best must be our confessions 
 of sin! How little we realize the love that has been 
 outraged, or the cost at which our pardon was 
 bought with the precious Blood of the Son of God! 
 Now it is to supply this lack on our part, that our 
 Lord suffers here an intolerable sense of shame, as 
 He feels the weight of our sins as if they were 
 
60 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 His own. He is making our general Confession 
 for us, forgetting nothing, leaving out nothing, 
 slurring over nothing; but fully, and with all the 
 circumstances that aggravated the sin, taking the 
 shame upon Himself. 
 
 As we listen then to that heart-breaking ery, 
 “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me ?” 
 let us think of Him as having made with broken 
 and penitent heart for each one of us the full con- 
 fession of our sins, so many of which we have for- 
 gotten or never knew; and since we who were once 
 afar, off are now, by the Blood of His Covenant, 
 made nigh to God, pray we that He will never for- 
 sake us, or suffer us to be separated from Him. 
 
FIFTH WORD. 
 “IT thirst” (St. John xix. 28). 
 
 THE SUFFERING BODY. 
 
 In tue Word last considered we were left, as 
 we saw, standing without the Holy Place, within 
 which our Lord had passed to endure in solitude 
 the unimagined suffering of His sinless Soul. 
 But while we have stood in reverent wonder be- 
 fore that mystery in which His Soul was made 
 an offering for sin, the sacred Body has still 
 hung in silent agony upon the Cross. Unable 
 to penetrate the mystery of the great interior sor- 
 row of the Passion, our eyes rest again upon the 
 sacred Form which, pallid and white, stands out 
 against the clouds of the now retreating darkness. 
 In all that has taken place within the hidden cham- 
 bers of the Soul, the physical sufferings of the 
 
62 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 Passion have not abated. Their very climax is 
 reached in the agony of thirst to which the fever 
 of His Wounds, and the awful weariness of the 
 Cross have reduced Him. The thirst of the Pas- 
 sion follows as of necessity upon the Passion’s 
 immeasurable expenditure. Our Lord had spent 
 all that He had. He is shedding now the last 
 drops of His Blood. In the pouring out of His 
 love for us, He thirsts for the requital of that love. 
 “T am poured out like water, all my bones are out 
 of joint. My heart also in the midst of My Body 
 is even like melting wax. My strength is dried 
 up like a potsherd, and Thou shalt bring Me into 
 the dust of death” (Psalm xxii. 14, 15). 
 
 A prophecy in the Sixty-ninth Psalm had 
 spoken of vinegar being given Him to drink in this 
 hour of His humiliation. As if to invite its ful- 
 filment, Jesus utters these words, “I thirst”; and 
 one of the soldiers made haste, and dipping a 
 sponge in a vessel of sour wine, he raises it upon 
 the stem of hyssop to our Saviour’s lips. It is 
 suggestive that this saying of our Lord, like the 
 preceding one which it has quickly followed, is 
 connected with a prophecy of the Psalms. Spoken 
 
FIFTH WORD. 63 
 
 thus together after a long period of silent suffer- 
 ing, these two sayings sum up better than 
 other words could, the double agony of Mind and 
 Body which our Lord had to feel. And in both 
 sayings He is applying the measuring rod of the 
 Cross. We have seen Him applying it to the di- 
 mensions of man’s sin in its outrage against God. 
 In this Word He applies it as the measure of 
 God’s love to the sinner. We cannot do better 
 then, than to take this, our Lord’s solitary confes- 
 sion of physical suffering, as revealing to us His 
 purpose in the mystery of pain. 
 
 The world has always been baffled by the prob- 
 lem of pain. In different ways it has tried to 
 meet it, but never, until our Lord came with the 
 key of His Cross, was there any to unlock this 
 secret, and solve the mystery of suffering. 
 
 Some had opposed to pain a proud, unyielding 
 spirit. They had sought by means of a stern phil- 
 esophy to show themselves superior to what they 
 regarded as the necessity of a blind, remorseless 
 fate. Such could see no purpose in the trials and 
 sorrows of life, but viewing them only as inevitable 
 evils, they sought to steel themselves against 
 
64 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 them, relying in this solely upon the pride of their 
 unaided will. If they must needs suffer they 
 would demean themselves as who should say be- 
 fore his tormentors, “Afflict me if you will, but 
 know that you shall never wring from me a recog- 
 nition of your power.” Bravely some have per- 
 severed in acting out this difficult part which, 
 when most successfully achieved, leaves the spirit 
 only the harder and less God-like for the struggle. 
 But the human heart cannot for long sustain this 
 role. It must be honest with itself. Sooner or 
 later, and in its own way, it must give expression 
 to its suffering, and seek for sympathy. It can 
 indeed suffer, and suffer in patience. But it can- 
 not suffer alone. Our Lord gave expression to the 
 great need of the heart when in the Psalm, in the 
 dread apprehension of His Passion, He cries: “O 
 go not from Me, for trouble is nigh at hand, and 
 there is none to help Me” (Psalm xxii. 11). He 
 does the same here, when he utters the ery, “I 
 thirst,” and invites our sympathy in what He is 
 yet so willing to bear. 
 
 But another method of dealing with the prob- 
 lem of pain is the very opposite of that just con- 
 
FIFTH WORD. 65 
 
 sidered. Since sorrow is ever dogging the foot- 
 steps of the children of men, some have made it 
 the one great end of existence to elude its touch, 
 and by every means possible to cheat it of its pur- 
 pose. This is that materialism which makes 
 pleasure the end of life, and consults the senses 
 rather than the reason or conscience as its guide to 
 happiness. It makes the demands of the body 
 paramount, while it smothers the nobler aspira- 
 tions of the soul. And this was the philosophy 
 dominant in the world, when with parched lips 
 our Lord utters from His Cross the ery “TI thirst.” 
 We may depend upon it, nothing short of the Pas- 
 sion of the Son of God, with its consecration of 
 physical pain, could have wrought the miracle 
 by which, in the space of a few years, millions 
 were to be rescued from shameful degradation of 
 the body, to the self-mastery, and purity and holi- 
 ness of the religion of Christ. 
 
 And once more this cry of physical pain was 
 perhaps necessary to refute an error which while _ 
 old enough to have disturbed the Church in the 
 early days of her history, has in our own day been 
 revived and taught with the saddest havoe of souls. 
 
66 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 There were those in an early age who taught that 
 Christ did not truly suffer; that it was not a body 
 of veritable flesh and blood which hung upon the 
 Cross, but a phantasm which, though it appeared 
 to suffer, in reality knew no pain. In like manner 
 there are those to-day who, while professing the 
 Name of Him who said on the Cross, “I thirst,” 
 tell us that there is no such thing as pain. We 
 need not pause at such a time as this to do more 
 than note the contradiction. On Good Friday, 
 at least, few will contend for a Christianity whose 
 cross is a fable. 
 
 No, as our Lord had a true Human Soul, so 
 He had also a real Human Body; and as His 
 pure Soul felt the weight of our sin, so His Sa- 
 cred Body truly suffered, and truly died for our 
 sin. And because He once suffered Who now 
 lives forevermore triumphant over death, pain is 
 not for us Christians the evil the world has so long 
 regarded it. Even were it possible for us by one 
 prayer to have all pain and sorrow taken out of 
 the world, it would be an act of folly to utter that 
 prayer. Sin being what it is, the one great evil, 
 and the world what it is, as it lies dead in sin, pain 
 
FIFTH WORD. 67 
 
 is the indispensable antidote of a moral corrup- 
 tion which but for this restraint would have passed 
 all bounds. Pain is necessary to sober us in our 
 pleasures, to teach us detachment, to recall us 
 when forgetful to the true meaning of life. Pain 
 is left in the world as its stern but merciful 
 purifier, and any sufferer whom it summons to 
 bear his part in that which is so necessary, may, 
 if he will, suffer along with Christ, and fulfil a 
 mission at least as glorious as any which makes 
 demand upon active and energetic toil. Whether 
 or not we have ourselves had our part in this 
 vocation of suffering, we are all the time partak- 
 ing of benefits ministered at the hands of suffer- 
 ers whose hearts are sorrowing, or whose bodies 
 are in pain. And how many of such blessed min- 
 istrants to our life there are! When some stub- 
 born spirit of pride takes possession of the heart, 
 or some baneful stress of passion lays hold upon 
 the senses, how sweet, how wholesome is the re- 
 buke that comes from some bed of sickness, it 
 may be from some little child who folds his tiny 
 hands patiently, as he lies in pain upon his cot, 
 and from his little white pulpit preaches to us 
 
68 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 silently, but so eloquently, of the humility and 
 purity of the Cross of Christ. How often has it 
 been the example of some sufferer that has taught 
 us that there is something better and higher in 
 this life than the following of our own way, the 
 seeking of our own pleasure! 
 
 But then, besides, the suffering in the world 
 is love’s great opportunity, the invitation to un- 
 selfishness, the call for heroic self-surrender. Sad 
 indeed would this world be if the dreary spectacle 
 of its selfishness and lust and greed were not often 
 relieved by the moral beauty of self-sacrifice. 
 Yet it is the presence of pain that makes these 
 virtues possible. And how manifold and how 
 beautiful are the ministries which it is ever calling 
 into exercise! How little in comparison should we 
 know of the love of our very dearest but for the 
 unselfish manifestations of sympathy which 
 trouble or pain have called forth, and caused them 
 to lavish upon us. How imperfect would be even 
 the knowledge of a mother’s love, did the child’s 
 tears never need her sympathy! Out of the suf- 
 ferings of humanity have sprung up the many 
 noble charities established for their relief, which 
 
FIFTH WORD. 69 
 
 are enduring monuments of the sympathy and 
 love which the Cross has brought into the world! 
 To these sufferings we owe the gentle patience of 
 Sisters of Mercy, the tender care which follows 
 armies in battle, the heroic devotion to duty of 
 many a faithful priest, and of many a good physi- 
 cian, and indeed every self-sacrificing act which 
 enriches and ennobles life. How purifying, how 
 uplifting, and how necessary to the welfare of our 
 spiritual life are these examples of self-sacrifice ! 
 Ever and again when the world seems settling 
 down into its groove of selfish monotony, there 
 arises even though it be out of some cruel disaster, 
 the deed of heroic self-sacrifice, in which someone 
 unknown by name, who thought he was but doing 
 his duty, has laid down his life for others, and 
 pointed us all again to the beauty of the Cross. 
 For after all there is nothing which so appeals to 
 the heart, or holds it under so mighty a spell, as 
 the beauty of self-sacrifice. 
 
 Let us turn then again to the Temple of our 
 Lord’s Body as the law of suffering is fulfilled 
 in It. That suffering had been typified by the 
 blood shedding of the countless victims of the 
 
70 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 earthly temple. But it was not possible that the 
 blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin. 
 “Wherefore when He cometh into the world He 
 saith, Sacrifice and offerings thou wouldest not, 
 but a Body hast Thou prepared for Me” (Heb. 
 x. 4, 5).In that Body which is both the Temple of 
 His Ministry, and the material of His Sacrifice, 
 we behold Him as He utters this complaint of 
 physical pain. Since we could not enter with 
 Him into the secret sorrow of His Soul, let us look 
 upon this. Lo! here He speaks plainly, and 
 speaks no proverb. In His sacred Body, racked 
 upon the Cross and tormented with thirst, He 
 speaks a language which all can understand. In 
 nothing could He so commend His love to us, as 
 by what He suffered for our sakes. 
 
 Pain was no new thing in the world when He 
 came into the world to redeem it. Men fled from 
 pain or vainly mocked it, but until He came and 
 laid His Hands upon it, none knew how to use 
 it, nor understood why it should be so plentiful 
 on the earth. Far from spurning it, He made 
 choice of it as of inestimable worth in the purpose 
 for which He had come. That purpose was to 
 
FIFTH WORD. 71 
 
 declare His Father’s love to a fallen world, and 
 to redeem it from its sin. But how shall He make 
 men believe that love? By His miracles? “TI 
 have wrought many wonderful works among you, 
 for which of those works do ye stone Me?” By 
 His words? “If I say the truth, why do ye not 
 believe Me?’ Ah! there is still one language 
 of love when every other fails, and that is the lan- 
 guage which is uttered from the Cross, whether 
 in spoken word, or still more wonderful silence— 
 _the language of suffering. We might still have 
 had the treasures of our Lord’s teaching, we might 
 still have had the example of His most holy life, 
 but never could we have learned His love for us 
 except as He translated it into the language of 
 pain. “Greater love hath no man than this, that 
 a man lay down his life for his friends” (St. John 
 xv. 13). “TI, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
 draw all men unto Me” (St. John xii. 32). It is 
 the measure of the Cross which demonstrates to 
 us the height and depth, the length and breadth 
 of the love of Christ. 
 
 Let us then learn the wisdom of the Cross. 
 Let us not foolishly mock at pain, let us not in 
 
72 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 terror and dismay flee from it; but when, by the 
 will of God it comes to us, let us go forth to meet 
 it. Let us dare to embrace it, and make it our 
 friend, for it will be to us a friend in very deed. 
 With it as our companion, let us lift up our eyes to 
 Him who hung upon the Cross, and by uniting our 
 will to His let us sanctify our suffering. By such 
 a proof of our love shall we give drink to Him, 
 who in draining the cup of sorrow for us, said “I 
 thirst.” 
 
SIXTH WORD. 
 
 “Tt is finished” (St. John xix. 30). 
 THE BODY MYSTICAL. 
 
 Tue two words that remain for our consid- 
 eration are recorded, the one by St. John, and the 
 other by St. Luke, as having been spoken in the 
 very moment when, bowing His sacred Head, our 
 Lord gave up the Ghost. They must have been 
 uttered in the same breath. Notwithstanding the 
 fact that they were spoken in this moment of our 
 Saviour’s deepest humiliation, they are words of 
 triumph and of joy. 
 
 Our Lord ever associated joy with the Cross. 
 He went forward to embrace His Cross with the 
 confidence and courage of a Conqueror. When 
 He foretells His coming Passion, and holding up 
 the Cross before the startled vision of his disciples 
 
74 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 announces in detail the cireumstances of the Cruci- 
 fixion, He does not fail to couple with this an- 
 nouncement, the promise of the glory which should 
 follow: “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all 
 things that are written by the Prophets concern- 
 ing the Son of. Man shall be accomplished. For 
 He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall 
 be mocked, and spitefully entreated and spitted 
 on: and they shall scourge Him, and put Him to 
 death: and the third day He shall rise again” (St. 
 Luke xviii. 31-34). “All things that are written 
 concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.” 
 It is the same word as that used here when He 
 says “It is finished.” And because all is now ac- 
 complished, He rejoices as in a work done, a 
 victory achieved. He had spoken before of a 
 Baptism that He should be baptized with, and had 
 looked forward day by day with patient yearn- 
 ing for its fulfilment. “How am [I straitened, 
 until it be accomplished!” (St. Luke xii. 50). 
 All through His suffering the glorious issue of 
 His Passion was before Him, and the anticipation 
 of the victory in which it should end sustained 
 Him. Even before He left the upper room where 
 
SIXTH WORD. 75 
 
 He had kept the Passover with His disciples, and 
 while Gethsemane and the Praetorium and Cal- 
 vary were still awaiting Him, He had spoken of 
 His victory as if it were already an accomplished 
 fact. They are His last words of instruction to 
 His disciples before going forth to die: “In the 
 world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good 
 cheer, I have overcome the world” (St. John xvi. 
 33). We shall not rightly learn the lesson of the 
 Cross unless we learn also the confidence of its 
 certain triumph, and hasten to accept it with Him 
 “Who for the joy set before Him endured the 
 Cross, despising the shame.” 
 
 It is not then simply as having reached the 
 end of His suffering, and as having drained to the 
 dregs the cup of His Passion, that our Lord cries, 
 “Tt is finished.” The meaning of this cry is not 
 exhausted when we refer it to the fulfilment of all 
 that Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms spake 
 concerning Him, or that was predicted by the 
 ceremonial types and shadows of the older law. 
 Even the blessed truth that in filling up His suffer- 
 ings He had paid the full price of our Redemp- 
 tion, making perfect and complete His satisfaction 
 
76 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 for the sins of the world, leaves the true import 
 of the cry “It is finished” still unexplained. As 
 we have seen, the word used here is elsewhere 
 translated by “accomplish” or “fulfil.” Perhaps 
 the Latin version, “Consuwmmatum est,” is a still 
 better equivalent. For it is precisely the con- 
 summation of the Divine purpose which is now 
 realized in the moment of death, as distinct from 
 the filling up of the measure, whether of suffer- 
 ing or of work which that purpose involved, that 
 constitutes the deep underlying joy of this Word. 
 
 Here the Twenty-second Psalm comes again 
 to our aid, that Psalm to which we have recurred 
 so often in these meditations, and which has been 
 well called the Programme of the Crucifixion. 
 Not only does this Psalm, so sad in its beginning, 
 culminate in a strain of joy, but its last ten verses 
 may be said to afford a commentary upon the 
 Word we are considering. 
 
 And what is to be especially noted is, that He 
 who speaks throughout the Psalm, and who in its 
 beginning cries out in the mysterious loneliness 
 of His sorrows, is now no longer Alone. The 
 Solitary Sufferer of the earlier verses is now en- 
 
SIXTH WORD. 77 
 
 compassed by His brethren; standing up in the 
 midst of the redeemed, He is the Leader in the 
 praise of the great congregation. All the ends 
 of the world, all kindreds and nations worship 
 with Him. He is the Head of a great Family, 
 the Father of a mighty posterity. ‘My seed shall 
 serve Him, they shall be counted unto the Lord for 
 a generation. They shall come and the Heaven 
 shall declare His righteousness, unto a people that 
 shall be born, whom the Lord hath made” (Psalm 
 xxii. 31, 32). 
 
 “Consummatum est.” The joy of our Lord in 
 this ery is the accomplishment at last, and at so 
 great a cost, of that which makes it possible to 
 incorporate men into a mystical union with His 
 own Flesh. The sanctified Manhood in which 
 He dies in expiation for sin, is, because of this 
 expiation, to diffuse itself as a life-giving seed 
 through the mass of humanity. “Except a corn 
 of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
 alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” 
 (St. John xii. 24). It is the exulting of our 
 Lord’s natural Body in the increase that shall be 
 His in His Mystical Body. It is the Temple 
 
78 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 which enshrined the Godhead, rejoicing in its ex- 
 pansion to embrace all of mankind who come to 
 Him for sanctuary. As He cries, “It is finished” 
 our Lord is thinking of the millions upon millions 
 of the Baptized who shall be united to Him by the 
 new Birth, and made bone of His bone, and flesh 
 of His Flesh. ‘When Thou shalt make His Soul 
 an Offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He 
 shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the 
 Lord shall prosper in His Hand” (Isaiah liii. 10). 
 
 The truth which lies at the foundation of this 
 joy, is the converse of that considered under the 
 Fourth Word. There we saw Christ identifying 
 Himself with us, making Himself the Penitent 
 for the sins of the world. Here the meaning is, 
 that through the work consummated on the Cross, 
 we are identified with Him. It is simply a matter 
 of fact that the New Testament makes all our 
 participation in the Merits of Christ to depend 
 upon union with Him through His Mystical Body. 
 So truly are we by Baptism identified with His 
 Body, that St. Paul says of the baptized, “Ye are 
 the Temple of the living God” (II. Cor. xvi. 6). 
 Our inability to explain the mystery must not 
 
SIXTH WORD. 79 
 
 deter us from confessing the truth that the Church 
 and the Body of Christ are identical, “Jesus 
 Christ being the chief Corner Stone in whom all 
 the building fitly framed together groweth unto an 
 holy Temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are 
 builded together for an habitation of God through 
 the Spirit” (Ephesians ii. 20-22). As members 
 thus of the Body of Christ we died with Him, 
 we were buried with Him, we rose in Him, in 
 heavenly places even now we sit with Him. O that 
 on this day at least, in which the great work was 
 consummated, many might be brought to lay 
 hold upon a truth, which, though it is presented 
 in the New Testament so constantly, and with such 
 a wealth and variety of illustration that it seems 
 to burn in the fervor and insistence of its enun- 
 ciation, is by thousands overlooked with an open 
 Bible in their hands! 
 
 It is Christ Himself who speaks of His Body 
 under the figure of the Temple. His Jewish 
 hearers, though they did not perceive His hidden 
 reference, would have the clearest notion as to 
 the meaning of the term itself. For what to them 
 was the Temple? It was the place where the 
 
80 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 Almighty had recorded His Name, the dwelling 
 which He was pleased to make His habitation, 
 the House in which His people should be gathered 
 together, where His Presence and His Power were 
 manifested, and where alone acceptable sacrifice 
 and worship could be offered. 
 
 What the Temple foreshadowed under the fig- 
 urative and preparatory system of the older law, 
 was to be realized in the fulness and perfection 
 of the substance in the Body of Christ. 
 
 This Temple He entered when He took our 
 flesh of the substance of the Virgin Mary His 
 Mother, and in it for evermore it pleases Him to 
 dwell. In this Temple the Almighty recorded His 
 Name, when the Name of Jesus was received, a 
 pledge of the work now finished in which He saves 
 us from our sins. But it is more especially of our 
 part in this Temple, as it is the House of God 
 for all nations that our Lord speaks in this ery 
 “Tt is finished.” It is by the work here accom- 
 plished that His Mystical Body shall gather into 
 itself of all people. In this Temple of His Body, 
 His Holy Catholic Church, His all-atoning Sac- 
 rifice is to live on, and He Himself in that same 
 
SIXTH WORD. 81 
 
 Body which hung upon the Cross is to be ever pres- 
 ent, our one means of access to the Father, and of 
 true and acceptable worship, as by His Eucharistic 
 Presence He shall make good the word of the 
 Psalm, “In the midst of the congregation will I 
 praise Thee” (Psalm xxii. 22). And yet once 
 more, and above all, in this Temple He Himself 
 is to be made our Food, that so by eating His Flesh 
 and drinking His Blood we may more and more be 
 made partakers of His sacred and life-giving 
 Humanity. 
 
 Well may we see in this Word the fulfilment 
 of a prophecy spoken a thousand years before: 
 “Wisdom hath builded her House, she hath hewn 
 out her seven pillars, she hath killed her beasts, 
 she hath mingled her wine, she hath furnished her 
 table” (Proverbs ix. 1, 2). 
 
 “Consummatum est.” “A certain man made 
 a great supper and bade many, and sent His ser- 
 vant at supper time to say to them that were 
 bidden, Come; for all things are now ready” (St. 
 Luke xiv. 16, 17). Surely none can meditate as 
 we do to-day upon the Sacrifice of the Death of 
 Christ, and not long to lay hold upon His work of 
 
82 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 Atonement, and that by some means so definite 
 and tangible that there can be no doubt of his 
 identification with the sacrifice, and intimate per- 
 sonal union with his Lord. Who that knows the 
 meaning of the work now accomplished but must 
 long to receive worthily the Sacrament of His 
 love. ‘“O sacred Banquet, in which Christ is re- 
 ceived, the memory of His Passion renewed, the 
 mind filled with grace, and the pledge of future 
 glory given unto us!”” Here we have been engaged 
 in thinking about the Passion. As well as we 
 could we have brought the scene before us 
 and have meditated upon its blessed fruits. 
 But in the Holy Eucharist we are in the actual 
 Presence of Him who through so great suffering 
 consummated His work. And the crowning bless- 
 ing won for us by His Passion is this, that He has 
 made possible for us a personal union with Him- 
 self- so real, so intimate, that not His Blessed 
 Mother or St. John, as they stood by His Cross, 
 came so near Him as we can come when by com- 
 munion we receive Him into ourselves. O then, 
 as we have dwelt already upon the measure of His 
 love for us, let us see in this triumphant Word 
 
SIXTH WORD. 83 
 
 which announces the completion of His work, 
 His longing to draw all men unto Himself. Long 
 has He hung with wide extended arms that He 
 may embrace all who come to Him. His work is 
 now done. “All is now ready.” 
 
 O may we accomplish our part by codperating 
 with Him in what He has so graciously and so 
 lovingly prepared for us, and may we so gratify 
 the yearning of His sacred Heart, that He may 
 see of the travail of His Soul and be satisfied 
 with it. 
 
SEVENTH WORD. 
 
 “Father, into Thy Hands I commend My Spirit.” 
 (St. Luke xxiii. 46.) 
 
 THE SANCTUARY OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 Wuen our Lord, in figurative language said, 
 “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will 
 raise it up,” He was not instituting a merely cas- 
 ual and fanciful analogy. It had been a part of 
 His purpose of old in the minute instructions con- 
 cerning every detail of the Tabernacle, that it 
 should, in a symbolical way, represent His Hu- 
 manity. The analogy had existed in fact from the 
 time that the Tabernacle was set up in the wilder- 
 ness. “See that thou make all things according 
 to the pattern shewed thee in the Mount,” was the 
 command given to Moses. In the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, reference is made to this in a passage in 
 
SEVENTH WORD. 85 
 
 which our Lord is expressly called “A Minister of 
 the Sanctuary and of the true Tabernacle which 
 the Lord pitched and not man” (viii. 1-5). The 
 analogy was perpetuated in the Temple as the 
 permanent form of the Tabernacle, and it shall 
 live on forever in the Heavenly J erusalem, con- 
 cerning which St. John says: “I saw no temple 
 therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb 
 are the Temple of it” (Rev. xxi. 22). It was 
 therefore a part of the typical and educative pur- 
 pose which the Temple was to serve that it should 
 in the manner of its construction as well as in the 
 nature of its appointments figuratively represent 
 the Body of Christ. Its threefold divisions of 
 an outer court, the Holy place, and the Holy of 
 Holies, in which last enclosure was the Ark of 
 the Covenant where the cloud of glory over- 
 shadowed the Mercy Seat, may have been designed 
 to set before us the complex nature of our Human- 
 ity in which we pass from the body which links 
 man to the animal creation, to the innermost 
 shrine of his immortal spirit which allies him to 
 the angels. 
 
 While no exact theory as to the constitution of 
 
86 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 the inner nature of man can be based upon the use 
 made in Scripture of the words soul and spirit, 
 which are often employed interchangeably, there 
 is nevertheless to be recognized in Scripture a 
 certain discrimination in its preference of the 
 word spirit to indicate the deepest part of our 
 humanity, the point of contact between man and 
 God. The functions of the mind by which it lays 
 hold upon the things of God, and those which it 
 exercises in its relation with the things of sense 
 are governed by laws so distinct, and are exercised 
 in such separate spheres of our being, that they are 
 well symbolized by the two inner enclosures of the 
 Temple, under one roof, yet parted by a veil. St. 
 Paul recognizes the case in which these spiritual 
 faculties are keenly active under the operation of 
 the Holy Ghost, while at the same time the soul 
 is deprived of the distinct self-consciousness which 
 is in the province of the understanding (I. Cor. 
 xiv. 14). 
 
 And who does not know in the innermost ex- 
 
 periences of his own life the existence of spiritual — 
 
 depths which the soul itself cannot fathom? And 
 which the intellect, while recognizing their pres- 
 
SEVENTH WORD. 87 
 
 ence, is powerless to explain? Take the example 
 of Conscience. How wonderfully, by laws of its 
 own it works in the depths of our being! What 
 is this voice, so quiet, and yet so insistent, so 
 authoritative in its utterance that we must needs 
 obey it even though we do not understand the 
 reason of its commands? 
 
 Or again, have we not all discovered, after 
 certain experiences in our lives, deeps of spiritual 
 
 joy of which at the time we were only partially 
 conscious? The mind was at the time anxious 
 
 and perturbed, the soul and its faculties occupied 
 and troubled with the things that press upon the 
 outward life. It was only afterwards that we 
 were made aware how beneath all that ruffled the 
 surface of our being we had been truly and se- 
 renely happy in the interior peace of a deep spirit- 
 ual calm. 
 
 Now this may perhaps help us, not indeed to 
 explain, but more intelligently to accept the Mys- 
 tery implied in a previous Word. When our Lord 
 uttered the cry, “My God, My God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken Me?” He was still tarrying, if we 
 may so speak, outside that second veil of the Tem- 
 
88 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 ple of His Humanity, which shut off from Him 
 the conscious joy of the Beatific Vision, the glory 
 of which nevertheless filled the inner Sanctuary 
 of His Man’s Nature. Within the solitude of His 
 Soul, He was, for the tasting of His Passion, 
 alike excluded from the sympathy of man, and 
 deprived of the consolation of the Godhead from 
 which in fact His Manhood could not for a mo- 
 ment be separated. 
 
 There is, however, this great difference, ever 
 to be borne in mind, between our inner experiences 
 and those of our Lord. We are to a great meas- 
 ure acted upon without our consent, and are not 
 only passive, but often helpless under these expe- 
 riences. But Christ “as a Son over His own 
 House” (Heb. iii. 6) directs and rules all things 
 in the Temple of His Humanity. Every affection 
 of His Heart, as well as every thought of His 
 Mind, was perfectly under His control. Even in 
 His Passion He was perfectly free, and the Master 
 of all His sufferings whether of Soul or Body. 
 “THe was offered because He willed it.” He freely 
 surrendered His life. “No man taketh it from 
 Me. I lay it down of Myself” (St. John x. 18). 
 
SEVENTH WORD. 89 
 
 He who through the whole of His earthly life had, 
 in order to His experience of suffering and humil- 
 iation, exercised a miracle of restraint, made 
 necessary by the Personal union of His Manhood 
 with the Godhead, could still say in the climax of 
 His sufferings, “My Soul is alway in My Hand” 
 (Psalm exix. 109). He who regulates every de- 
 tail of His Passion, overruling the purposes of 
 men, and who Himself directs all the sad ritual 
 of the Cross, is Master also of every experience 
 of His Human Soul. 
 
 Now, therefore, when all has been accom- 
 plished, He deliberately and with a loud voice, 
 speaks the Word at the utterance of which the veil 
 in yonder temple is rent from top to the bottom. 
 May we not think of Him, as also in this same mo- 
 ment, and by a similar act of His will, rending the 
 veil which for the time had shut off from Him the 
 contemplation of that deep interior peace and joy 
 which were His by right, and while through the 
 
 parted veil the Beatific Vision, the true Shech- 
 inah of the glory of God streams forth and floods 
 
 with conscious joy every faculty of His Soul, en- 
 tering as it were the Holy of Holies of His Spirit, 
 
90 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 that from this deepest Sanctuary of the Temple of 
 His Humanity He may make the final Oblation of 
 that Humanity to God ? 
 
 As afterwards, when He was to carry our na- 
 ture up to heaven, He chose the Mount of Olivet, 
 that from an elevation of this earth He might 
 ascend up to God; so now, He retires as it were 
 to the mountain-top of that nature which He had 
 assumed, to that loftiest region from which it looks 
 off upon God, and which in the case of His sinless 
 Manhood was ever bathed in the sunlight of His 
 Divinity, and there He says: “Father, into Thy 
 Hands I commend My Spirit ?” 
 
 And O, the sweetness of that surrender as our 
 Lord turns from His accomplished work to meet 
 the embrace of that Eternal Father, the fulfilling 
 of whose will had been the single motive of His 
 life! This is preéminently the moment for us to 
 pause and again call to mind the tenderness of that 
 Bond of Love which unites the Father and the 
 Son. How constant had been our Lord’s appeal 
 to it throughout His Ministry! To recur only to 
 the words spoken on the eve of His Passion, how 
 full are they of His dependence upon the Father’s 
 
SEVENTH WORD. 91 
 
 Will as the one great sustaining motive of the Pas- 
 sion! To this He refers every word and every 
 work of His earthly life: “The words that I speak 
 unto you, I speak not of Myself: but the Father 
 that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works” (St. 
 John xiv. 10). “That the world may know that I 
 love the Father, and as the Father gave Me com- 
 mandment even so I do” (Ibid. ver. 31). “I have 
 not spoken of Myself, but the Father which sent 
 Me, He gave Me a commandment what I should 
 say and what I should speak” (Ibid. xii. 49). 
 While enduring the contradiction of sinners 
 against Himself it is their malice toward the 
 Father which grieves Him: “He that hateth Me, 
 hateth My Father also” (Ibid. xv. 23). Though 
 all should forsake Him in His Passion, this love 
 shall sustain Him: “Ye shall be scattered every 
 man to His own, and shall leave Me Alone; and 
 yet I am not Alone because the Father is with Me” 
 (Ibid. xvi. 32). The honor to be procured for 
 His Father’s Name is His compensation for 
 all His suffering: “Now is My soul troubled, 
 and what shall I say? Father, save Me from 
 this hour; but for this cause came I unto this 
 
92 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 hour. Father, glorify Thy Name” (Ibid. xii. 
 27, 28). Even in that sad moment when Judas 
 had gone out after the sop: “Now is the Son of 
 Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him” (Jbid. 
 xiii. 31). The Father’s love is the one, and all- 
 satisfying treasure in which He delights, and 
 which He holds out as the reward to those who 
 follow Him: “If ye keep My commandments ye 
 shall abide in My love, even as I keep My Father’s 
 commandments and abide in His love” (Ibid. 
 xv. 10). “If a man love Me, he will keep My 
 words, and My Father will love him, and we will 
 come unto him, and make our abode with him” 
 (Ibid. xiv. 23). 
 
 The whole of the seventeenth chapter of St. 
 John’s Gospel is but a paraphrase of the words, 
 “Father, into Thy Hands I commend My Spirit.” 
 Listen to Him as He prays in the upper room with 
 His disciples: “Father, the hour is come; glorify 
 Thy Son that He also may glorify Thee.” “I 
 have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished 
 the work which Thou gavest Me to do. And now, 
 O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own Self 
 with the glory which I had with Thee before the 
 
SEVENTH WORD. 93 
 
 world was” (ver. 1, 4, 5). Everywhere the 
 words of our Lord are full of His delight in His 
 Father’s love, of His obedience to His command, 
 of His zeal for His glory, His hunger and thirst 
 for the accomplishment of His will. 
 
 And how sweet are those manifestations of the 
 Father’s love for His Only Begotten Son! That 
 love reveals itself as it breaks forth like a 
 stream of sunlight through the riven rain clouds. 
 It answers the cry, “Father, glorify Thy Name” 
 with the response, “I have both glorified it, 
 and will glorify it again” (St. John xii. 28). 
 As Jesus went up out of the water after His 
 Baptism, and again at the Transfiguration of 
 our Lord in the Mount, the Father’s voice was 
 heard: “This is My Beloved Son in whom I am 
 well pleased” (St. Matt. iii. 17). “This is My 
 Beloved Son, hear Him” (St. Luke ix. 35). 
 
 What wonder, then, that the heart and mind 
 fail as we try to meditate upon the joy of this mo- 
 ment in which the Only Begotten of the Father’s 
 Love returns with His accomplished work, and 
 with His parting breath gives up His Spirit to 
 His Father’s embrace. The veil of the Temple is 
 
94 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 rent. The joy of the Father’s Presence from 
 which for our sakes He had for a time hidden His 
 Face is henceforth His forever. And this it is 
 His will to share with us. For us, too, the veil 
 is rent. “When Thou hadst overcome the sharp- 
 ness of death, Thou didst open the Kingdom of 
 Heaven to all believers.” Henceforth the light of 
 the glory of God fills the whole Temple of the 
 Catholic Church. “This is none other but the 
 House of God, and this is the gate of heaven” 
 (Gen. xxviii. 17). Here at earthly Altars He 
 still exercises His eternal Priesthood, and still 
 pleads His all-sufficient Sacrifice through minis- 
 ters whom He has appointed to act in His Name. 
 Here He gives as our spiritual Food that same 
 Humanity in which He suffered, and in which He 
 is alive forevermore. Here, through the ministry 
 of His Priests, He is present in the absolving 
 word as often as any sinner turns to Him in peni- 
 tent confession of sin. Here He takes us up into 
 union with Himself, and with His angels and 
 saints who in Him enjoy the vision of God. Here 
 it is that our souls are strengthened for the fellow- 
 ship of His sufferings, and our bodies as they bear 
 
SEVENTH WORD. 95 
 
 their burden of pain are hallowed by His Cross. 
 Here our spirits may drink in the fulness of all 
 that He has to give, and are satisfied with the liv- 
 ing water of His Salvation. Here, even the more 
 it may be when our souls are least conscious of 
 their blessing, He is near us, as He was with the 
 disciples on the way to Emmaus, whose eyes were 
 holden that they should not know Him, and whose 
 hearts nevertheless burned within them as He 
 opened to them the Scripture. 
 
 And then if we ask for what end in the Temple 
 of His Body all these helps and consolations are 
 ours, surely it is that we may follow the example 
 of His most holy Life. For we, too, as individual 
 members of Christ are temples of the Living God. 
 “Know ye not that your body is the temple of 
 the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of 
 God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought 
 with a price, therefore glorify God in your body, 
 and in your spirit which are God’s” (I. Cor. vi. 
 19, 20). 
 
 Let us then in this most solemn, most blessed 
 hour, renew that dedication by which we were in 
 our Baptism set apart as temples of the living 
 
96 THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY. 
 
 God. Let us purge those temples from sin, by a 
 worthy repentance, if in aught they have been de- 
 filed, and here beneath the shadow of His Cross 
 consecrate them again to His service. Ours it 
 may be, while He continues us in life to render to 
 Him as our grateful homage the labor of our 
 hands, the confession of our lips, the recollected- 
 ness of a life in which His perfect Pattern is ever 
 before the eyes. To Him we may consecrate every 
 sorrow, in His fellowship bear every suffering, by 
 the help of His grace finish the work He has given 
 us to do. And at last, as He Himself has taught 
 us, and relying solely on the merits of His most 
 holy Passion, with our parting breath unite our- 
 selves to His prayer, “Father, into Thy Hands 
 I commend My Spirit.” 
 
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