After having spent all the night, amidst the insults and the effronteries of the members and the servants of the Sanhedrin, as the day wears on Jesus is led before Pilate. Here takes place a second and more humiliating trial. Before a great crowd, stirred up into a rage against Him, face-to-face with the religious leaders who accuse Him of blasphemy and sacrilege, Jesus, meek as a lamb which silently allows itself to be led to the slaughter, assists in august silence throughout the entire un- folding of events.
The initial honesty of Pilate, who finds no guilt on his part; - 'If He were not guilty we would not have brought Him here before you!' - The incipient fear of the crowd; the doubt over the reality of his word: - 'Are You a King?'; - the attempt to save Him, proposing his liberation in the place of Barabbas; the fear caused by the cries of the people; the terror of the judgment of Rome: - 'If you set this fellow free, you are an enemy of Caesar.'- And thus, with cowardice, Pilate signs his condemnation to death.
He hands Jesus over to the soldiers to be scourged. His whole body becomes one deep, living wound, from the gashes which the terrible Roman scourges gouge in his immaculate flesh.
He is then crowned with thorns. The thorns open up on Him rivulets of blood, which run down from his head and disfigure his face; and they strike Him and cover Him with spittle and with insults. - 'We have looked upon Him, stricken and humiliated; his face no longer bore human semblance.'
The final and most wicked and cruel contrivance: they cover Him with a scarlet scrap of cloth as his royal robe; they put a reed in his hands as scepter; and they lead Him to Pilate who presents Him to the crowd: -'Behold ihe Man!' Behold the Man of all times. Upon Him, in Gethsemane, have been placed all the sins of the world. In the praetorium, there have been heaped on Him the sufferings, the humiliations, the abuses, the acts of exploitation and enslavement of all men.
He is the Man of all times. The men who went before Him have lived in the hope of seeing this, his day, and in Him they have found salvation. He is the One who, in Abel, was killed; in Isaac, was bound by the feet; in Jacob, walked as a pilgrim; in Joseph, was sold; in Moses, was exposed on the waters; in the lamb, was slaughtered; in David, was persecuted; and in the prophets, was dishonored.
He is the Man of all times. By the gift of his redemption, all men who have lived after Him have been called to live in communion of life with God. He has borne on his body the sufferings of all the victims of hatred, of violence, of wars; He has enclosed within his wounds the blood shed by millions of innocent babies, slaughtered while still in their mothers' wombs. He has been scourged by all the sufferings and the sicknesses, especially the incurable diseases that are spreading about; He has been crowned with thorns in those who succumb to the false ideologies and to the errors which lead far from the faith, to pride and to human conceit. He has been despised in the little, in the poor, in the marginalized, in those who are the last of all, in the exploited. He has been spit upon in those who are rejected and have given up hope. He has been exposed to derision in those who display as merchandise the dignity of their own bodies.
Behold the Man. Now He takes upon Himself the wood of the condemnation; He climbs toward Calvary; He meets me, his transfixed Mother; He is nailed to the gibbet; He is raised upon the Cross. The three anguishing hours of his agony, near me, his Mother, and John, the beloved apostle. And in the end, his act of complete abandonment to the Father and his death on the Cross, toward three o'clock of this day.
Behold truly the Man of all times. In Him is every man, - from the first, Adam, to the last who will find himself on the earth at the end of time, - who has lived and has been redeemed and saved. With the help of John, of Joseph of Arimathea and of the holy women, I bring Him to the sepulchre, where He is laid until the dawn of the first day after the Sabbath. His divine resurrection is the greatest proof that He alone is the Man of all times. He is the Man of the new times. Because only in Him will there rise all the men who have lived, have died, have been buried and have wasted away to dry dust. So then, even in the great desert of your time, live with me these hours of his Passion and of his death on the Cross.
Live them in silence, in recollection, in prayer, in sweet intimacy of life with your divine Crucified Brother. Because only in Him will the new times which await you be accomplished, when He will return to you in glory, and all the powers of heaven, of earth and of hell will prostrate themselves before Him, to the perfect glory of God the Father."
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