CHAPTER LVIII.

CONSPIRACY AGAINST JESUS.-JUDAS MAKES HIS CONTRACT.-PASCHAL SUPPER.— WASHING OF THE FEET.-TREASON FORETOLD.

(a) "Now the feast of unleavened bread, which is called the pasch, was at hand; the feast was after two days. And it came to pass when Jesus had ended all these words, he said to his disciples: You know that after two days (1) shall be the pasch, and the Son of man

(a) St. Luke, xxii. 1-46; St. Mark, xiv. 1; St. Matthew, xxvi. 1, 3, 5, 15, 16.

(1) This was on a Tuesday, whence it follows that the passover must have fallen on the Thursday evening; and it was then, in reality, that Jesus celebrated this feast. But one great difficulty here is, that Saint John says clearly that the passover of the Jews was not to be made until the Friday evening. Among the several answers which have been given to this difficulty, we select those which have appeared the most satisfactory. According to some interpreters, the Galileans eat the passover one day before the Jews of Judea proper, and of Jerusalem. The reason of this was, that the paschal lamb, before it was eaten, should be immolated by the priests. Now, as the priests could not serve all in a single day, it became necessary to take two days for the purpose. In like manner, several days have been given for the performance of the Christian paschal solemnity, because Easter Sunday, which is properly the day for it, would not suffice. According to others, the Jews, after their return from the captivity of Babylon, had made a regulation, that when the passover fell upon a Thursday evening, it was lawful to transfer it to the Friday. The reason of this toleration is, that the day of the passover, commencing with the evening when it was celebrated, was to be a festival day. Now this day being followed by Saturday, which occurred every time the passover fell upon a Thursday evening, occasioned two consecutive days of rest, which became a very troublesome observance, on account of the extreme strictness with which this rest was observed. However, as this custom was merely tolerated, those who did not wish to observe it were not obliged to do so, and the Saviour was of this class; but it must be said that the majority of the nation availed themselves of it without any scruple..

Here is a third explanation. Jesus Christ and all the Jews eat the passover on the Thursday evening, which was the beginning of the fourteenth day of the moon. It is well known that the days, amongst the Hebrews, commenced in the evening at sunset. The solemnity commenced only at the close of the fourteenth, which coincided with the commencement of the fifteenth. This is conformable to these words of Leviticus, chap. xxiii., the fifteenth day of the same month is the solemnity of the unleavened bread, which words plainly signify that between the eating of the paschal lamb, which was fixed for the fourteenth, and the solemnity appointed to take place on the fifteenth, there intervened one day which belonged to no festival. Then the Jews were, moreover, obliged

shall be delivered up to be crucified." We have already said that the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how they might put Jesus to death. "Then (2) were gathered together the chief priests and the ancients of the people into the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiphas, and they consulted together that by subtilty they might apprehend Jesus, and put him to death. But they feared the people, [therefore] they said: Not on the festival-day, lest there should be a tumult among the people. And Satan entered into Judas, who was named Iscariot (3), one of the twelve, and he went and discoursed with the chief priests and the magistrates how he might

by the law to offer various sacrifices of the immolation of the paschal lamb, and it was a matter of custom, and even of obligation, to eat the flesh of the immolated victims. The circumstance of time caused this act to be also styled the eating of the passover. This explanation smooths away every difficulty, and answers every objection. For although the paschal lamb was eaten on Thursday evening, which was the commencement of the fourteenth day, Saint John might have said at that time: Before the festival day of the pasch, because the festival, properly speaking, should only commence on the next day, the fifteenth. He might also say that the Jews did not wish to enter into the judgment-hall of Pilate, for fear of contracting legal impurity, which would have hindered them from eating the passover, because, although they had already eaten the paschal lamb, they would still have to eat the victims which were immolated at the commencement of the solemnity, and they very naturally called this eating the passover. We cannot here go further into this explanation, which is to be found, with the proofs which establish it, and the answer to the objections, in a treatise by a Spanish Theologian named Louis Léon, of the order of Saint Augustine. This little work deserves to be read. It has been translated into French by Père Daniel, and published in the works of that father, tome 3, page 449.

(2) Then, to wit, the next day, which was Wednesday. It was on account of this consultation, at which they took decisive measures for putting the Saviour to death, that it was formerly the custom to fast on Wednesday. Some interpreters confound this consultation with that which was held four days earlier, and which we have reported page 373, Part II. It appears that there were two consultations; it was resolved, at the first, that the just man should be put to death; at the second consultation, which is that here alluded to, the only subject for deliberation was the manner in which they should proceed, in order to carry the prior resolution into effect.

(3) That is to say, that Judas then gave full and entire consent to the design which Satan had suggested to him of delivering up the Saviour. Thus did Satan enter into the traitor, in order to possess, not his body, but his soul-two very different sorts of possession. The possession of the body is by no means free, either in itself or in its effects; wherefore it is nowise criminal in either of these respects. The possession of the soul is criminal in itself; for the devil possesses the soul of those only who are willing to admit him. It is also criminal in its effects, because, although Satan acquires great sway over the soul which he possesses, his dominion does not go so far as doing violence to the will.

betray him to them. He said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? Who hearing it were glad, and they appointed him thirty pieces of silver (4). And he promised; and from thenceforth he sought opportunity to betray him, in the absence of the multitude."

The remainder of the day, which was Wednesday, was spent in waiting for this opportunity. (a)" And on the first day of the Azymes, on which it was necessary that the pasch should be killed, the disciples came to Jesus, saying: Whither wilt thou that we go and prepare for thee to eat the pasch? He sendeth two of his disciples, Peter and John, saying: Go and prepare for us the pasch, that we may eat. But they said: Where wilt thou that we prepare? He said to them: Go ye into the city; there shall meet you a man carrying a pitcher of water. Follow him into the house where he entereth in, and whithersoever he shall go in, say to the master of the house, the Master saith: My time is near at hand (5); I will keep the pasch at thy house with my disciples; where is my refectory, where I may eat the pasch with my disciples? And he will show you a large dining-room, furnished. There prepare ye for us. His disciples went their way, and came into the city, and they found as he had told them (6), and they prepared the pasch. And when (a) St. Matthew, xxvi. 17, 18; St. Luke, xxii. 7-11, 14-18; St. Mark, xiv. 12-17.

(4) We read in Exodus, chap. xxi., that if any one wilfully caused the death of a free person, he was punished with death. If it was the death of a slave he had occasioned, he paid thirty shekels of silver, the same price for which the king of angels and of men consents to be sold. We make this remark for grateful hearts, who do not wish to be ignorant of any circumstance of the opprobrium which the Man-God has endured for their salvation.

(5) The time of my death. Jesus Christ wishes to convey to him by these words. that he desires to give him this evidence of his affection; for it was a very signal proof thereof to give his house the preference, for the purpose of celebrating there his last passover, which was only to precede his death by a single day. It appears that this man was one of his disciples, since Jesus Christ makes them say to him simply: The Master saith to thee. To enter into a disquisition as to why he is not named would be superfluous. What would it avail us to know the reason why? Jesus speaks of his passion as his time, because it was principally for this passion that he came into the world; and also because it was the time wherein he resolved to die, his death being a perfectly free act as well in itself as in the time, the place, and the manner thereof.

(6) Prophecy and power are alike visible on this occasion. The reader may remem

evening was come, he cometh with the twelve. And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him, and he said to them: With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you, before I suffer (7). For I say to you, that from this time I will not eat it, till it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God (8). And having taken the chalice, he gave thanks, and said: Take and divide it among you. For I say to you, that I will not drink of the fruit of the vine till the kingdom of God come" (9).

If we should consider the wine in the same light as the passover, since the latter was as yet only the eating of the paschal lamb, we must believe that the wine of which the Saviour here spoke was not as yet that which he had changed into his blood. When the Jews celebrated the passover, the father of the family, or he who presided at the feast, blessed the first and the last cup. He drank of it the first, and then presented it to all the guests, who drank of it, each according to his rank. One of the evangelists, who mentions expressly the two chalices, places immediately after the first the words which have just been read, and it is only the second chalice which was distributed after the repast, that he speaks of as the chalice of the Lord's blood. Nevertheless, two evangelists place these same words after the consecrated chalice. Perhaps, also, the two sacred authors, who speak only of the second chalice, take advantage of this opportunity, which was the only one they had, in order to record these words, which were far too interesting to be omitted.

ber with reference to this subject, what we have said of the meeting the ass and the foal, Part II., page 397, note 11.

(7) Because in this passover he was to communicate himself wholly and entirely to men by means of the divine Eucharist. A great desire of receiving him therein is the best manner in which we can acknowledge the great desire which the Saviour had to give himself to us.

(8) We find in the mysteries of the new law the reality of what was only shadowed forth and prefigured by the old law. Both the mysteries and the figures shall be perfectly accomplished and wholly unveiled in heaven. The dawn follows the night, and ushers in the clear light of day.

(9) Heaven and the Church are called indiscriminately the kingdom of God. We should here understand the expression as referring to heaven, because Saint Matthew, when recording the same discourse, makes the Saviour say: I will not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father. Now, what is termed in Scripture the kingdom of the Father, is always Heaven, and never the Church.

Now reality is going to succeed figures, and to the eating of the paschal lamb the eating of the flesh of the Man-God; a mystery equally beyond our conceptions and our hopes. Here the power and the love of a God are displayed in their infinity, plainly showing that he alone could be the author of this mystery, in whom every thing is infinite, and who is infinite in every thing. But a prodigy of humiliation was to precede this prodigy of power; and, in order to place his body in a condition to be present on every altar, it was ordained that Jesus should begin by annihilating this same body at the feet of his disciples. We are now about to consider him in this humiliating posture, after having explained the order in which these actions were all performed, on that evening so full of mysteries and of wonders.

The first of these acts was the eating of the paschal lamb, in which Jesus Christ, always a punctual observer of the law, fulfilled all the prescribed formalities. He ate it, therefore, in a standing posture; and if it be alleged that he then sat or reclined, inasmuch as the Gospel represents him to us in either of these two positions, that would be to confound the first repast with the second. The latter was served up immediately after the eating of the paschal lamb, when that alone was not sufficient to appease the hunger of all those who had partaken of it. And this was the case here, since Jesus Christ had with him his twelve apostles; then followed the repast in which the guests were not limited in the choice of meats, with the exception of the unleavened bread, nor were they bound to any ceremony. This repast, the only one which the evangelists properly call the Supper, or the Lord's Supper, was finished as they expressly state, when the Saviour, having risen from the table, washed the feet of his disciples, after which he resumed his seat, for the purpose instituting the adorable Eucharist.

of

(a) "Jesus knowing that his hour was come, that he should pass out of this world to his Father (10), having loved his own who were

(a) St. John, xiii. 1–20.

(10) This departure deprived the earth of his visible presence only; for the Word, who is everywhere present in his immensity, has never ceased to fill the earth, and his humanity has remained really present thereon in the adorable Eucharist.