Fifth Gospel (40 page)

He let the thought of it sink into his mettle and sensing the eye of Claudia Procula on the b
ack of his head he made a grunt and took himself through the court and onward to his duty.

But not before he found Abenader
and told him what he must do.

WATER OF LIFE

M
agdalena
had been
with the Mother of her Lord throughout the ordeal of the morning. The various proceedings, the noise and hatred of the crowds, the humiliation and the mockery had wrung from her soul so many woes that she did not think herself capable of feeling more. She recalled to her mind the Mother’s words, that they must remain awake and that they must endure all that he was enduring. But was it possible to do so? Had he asked too much? How could she bear to hear the imprecations and curses of those executioners when she could feel each blow of those instruments of torture as if they were tearing her own flesh?

She looked at the short, burly men, blunt of head and broad of shoulders
. They wore a mix of hatred and pleasure on their faces as they struck her Lord. They tired easily, due to the ferocity of their blows and were soon replaced by others who were no less like animals.

Roman soldiers
were stationed at the perimeter of the forum to keep the crowds from advancing on the broken pillar at the centre to which her Lord was strapped. Others called out their encouragement from the guardhouse to those doing their bloody job. The more her Lord’s blood fell on the forum flags the more the world turned inward and she had to dig her nails into the flesh of her arm to stop her soul from seeking solace out of her body.

When finally a centurion made the men pause in their butchering and
her Lord was dragged away all that was left of him were pools of his blood, which flowed now into those channels between the stones. The Mother of her Lord ventured out to the centre of the forum now and knelt on the ground to put her hands to the blood, so red and life-full, sinless and divine. She began then to wipe it with her skirts, and trembling at the knees, Magdalena joined her.

All around them
the dulled sounds of the crowds dimmed to nothing. Magdalena was numb, parched of lips and drained of tears, and yet here, with her knees on the killing floor, tears came again from some undisclosed wellspring. She looked up to forestall them. The sky was streaked with clouds the colour of blood, blood all around, on her hands and on her skirts. She remembered her master’s words to those Pharisees,

‘You read the face of the sky and of the earth
, but you have not recognised that the one who is before you is the Messiah…you do not know how to read this moment!’

She wondered how many could read
it now?

Som
ething caught her eye – an angel? No! A woman! A Roman woman dressed in white was carrying a bolt of white cotton cloth. Some of it had come loose and was picked up by a breeze. Having unwound, the cloth floated now behind her as through the crowds the woman came. In the middle of the blood soaked forum she knelt and her eyes found Magdalena’s eyes, and the moment was stood still.

Magdalena recognised her. She was Pilate’s wife, the people talked of her as a kind woman. Without speaking she held out the bolt of cotton and offered
it to the Mother who seemed not to understand what to do with it. By way of instruction the woman set it down upon the blood soaked ground, letting the cloth take up the precious red pools.

Full of sorrow
she wiped the abundant tears that tracked over her face with her bloodied hand, and the three women, kneeling together, understood – differences lived only in the world of men. They were women woven into the same moment and spun together by the thoughts of angels and so they knew:

This world is old…but His blood is the
Water of Life that will make all things new again.

ECCE HOMO

E
ven
before Cassius had reached the guardhouse adjacent to the pr
ae
torium, he could hear the chants of the guards.

‘Hail Jesus, hail the
King of the Jews!’

This was accompanied by much laughter. When he came closer he saw with his poor eyes the tortures to which the man had been subjected and the result of the abuses t
hat the soldiers had inflicted.

The animals had made Jesus
put on his muddied loincloth over his nakedness and had thrown over his shoulders a scarlet military cloak, a
Sagum
, as a gesture of mockery. On his head they had placed a platted crown made from thorny acacia, this they had pushed down hard on his head so that its thorns had dug deep holes into the skin to make channels of blood run over his face. All of him was a mass of blood and mangled flesh from what he could see.

Cassius was struck by
this spectacle for it recalled to his mind the mysteries of Mithras, in which an initiate was required to withstand not only pain, but also humiliation. It recalled to his mind his failed initiation and the cloak and crown that he had received though he had not deserved them. To this was added what he had heard before from the Jews that Jesus had told them to drink of his blood and to eat of his flesh. The mingling of these seemingly disparate things came together in his head and it was disturbing!

Was this an initiation made public? For t
his man Jesus seemed to be manifesting the mysteries of Mithras outwardly for everyone to see!

Cassius
flew into a rage and yelled and kicked and pulled those drunken tormentors from the man. Picking out a number of the more sober archers he ordered Jesus taken out and escorted to the pr
ae
torium.

When they arrived
the square was now so crowded that his guards had to push the people away from the steps with shields and staves to keep them at bay. Here, on the portico of the pavement, half leaning, half standing, dripping blood and fettered with chains, dressed in the colours of royal majesty
,
Jesus waited, looking as if at any moment he would fall.

When Pilate came out
, he said in Latin, ‘Who was it that put that robe on him?’

‘The guards,’ Cassius answered.

‘He looks like an initiate of Mithras, take it off!’

Cassius
did as he was ordered and the sight of the man disrobed caused even the crowds to gasp.

‘
What man could want more vengeance than this?’ Pilate said, and turning to the crowds, yelled out, ‘
Ecce Homo
!’ Then in Aramaic, so that all the people might hear it, not only the priests, ‘Behold! The man! Here is his body and his blood transformed for you!’ he said, ‘Now are you satisfied?’

Ananias shouted, ‘NO! He has made himself a Son of God and must be condemned!’

Cassius frowned. What strange day was this? A Son of God! To claim openly the title of Son of God, a God incarnate, was to rival Tiberias who also claimed this title.

Pilate went through the arch and gestured for Cassius to bring Jesus to him. Pilate paced the floors
, pausing before the figure of the broken, bloodied man.

‘Iesus Nazarenus, tell me this…from whence do you come?
Is it true that you say you are the Son of God?’

The prisoner was silent.

‘Why do you not answer? Don’t you understand that those filthy priests are accusing you of rivalling Tiberias?’

Jesus of Nazareth, leaning as he was and clinging to his life
, said nothing.

‘I have the power to crucify you or to set you free…but you must first deny it!’

When Jesus finally spoke it seemed to Cassius that the voice was not the voice of a man torn and battered. It was a voice strong and full of authority, ‘You can have no power over me unless that power is given to you from above. Those outside…those who delivered me to you, they have said that I am the Son of God, they say it because they know from whence comes the power in me and to Whom they are responsible. Because of this they have a greater sin than you.’

Pilate made a gesture of the hand, which Cassius could see meant they
should go.

When they were once more upon the Pavement, the cries for crucifixion rose u
pwards with greater fierceness.

The day was low hung and that oppressive heat made breathing difficult
under the darkening sky.

Pilate took himself to the raised throne, the official marble seat.
Cassius knew he would now make a judgement,
ex cathedra
, that is, he would judge as a representative of Caesar. Whatever judgment was made, it would be as if Caesar had made it. The people knew it also and they grew silent, so excited were they at the prospect of what he would say.

‘See this, your king! He is the Son of God
, your Messiah!’ he said to them.

Now the court
broke out into a great clamour.

Pilate had made a royal proclamation! Had the infernal heat caused him to lose a wit?

‘This man is the enemy of Caesar!’ Caiaphas shrieked, outraged, ‘We renounce him!’

‘Rome has no quarrel with
this
Messiah!’ Pilate gave back, ‘His kingdom, he freely admits, is not of this world, and we are not concerned with him as long as he gives dignity to the name of Caesar!

‘We renounce him!’ echoed the people.

‘Does this mean you will never demand liberation from Rome?’ he sat forward on his seat. ‘Does this mean that you will renounce all those who call for a Messiah, a King of Israel in future times? Think carefully!’

Gloom fell over the court.

Caiaphas yelled out, ‘We have no king but Caesar!’

Uncertainty moved over the faces of the people
. Cassius himself could not believe that a Jew, let alone a high priest had spoken these words. This was indeed the strangest of days!

‘
And so you have spoken!’ shouted Pilate. ‘This means, therefore, that I am not responsible for your madness!’

Ananias answered it, ‘
No…let the responsibility lie with us, let the blood of this man be on our own heads, and on the heads of our children!’

Pilate called to an attendant
. ‘So it shall be!’ he said, ‘You have spoken not only for your own, sorry selves, but also for those Jews who love him and have no part in this, and are outside this square only because they would not take your money! Well then! I wash my hands of it…bring me water!’

The attendant brought water in a pitcher, which was p
oured over the Governor’s hands, as was his custom. When he had wiped them clean with a towel he stood and said to the crowds, ‘I pronounce myself innocent of the blood of this just man!’ Then to his scribes, ‘Write this down…
having been compelled, for fear of an insurrection, to yield to the wishes of the high priest of the Sanhedrin and the people who demanded the death of Jesus of Nazareth, I have handed him over to the guards for crucifixion; and upon his titulus will be written, in all three languages of the land, in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, his crime
: INRI…
Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaerum
– Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews!’

A great shouting now came from the priests.

‘You cannot name him thus! You have no right to give him that title!’

‘
What is written is written!’ Pilate dismissed and ordered Cassius to take Jesus away.

Cassius felt dreariness in his soul as he took the man through the crowds
but he had not a moment to dwell on it, since a great clamour and uproar now broke out over the titulus and all his thoughts turned to keeping the peace.

VIA DOLOROSA

W
earing the seamless robe she had made him those years ago her son, bounded by four soldiers and led by a centurion, was taken to his death through the streets of Jerusalem carrying the
patibulum
, or crosspiece, to which his arms were tied. It rested on his shoulders and the weight of it combined with his wounds, his thirst and his exhaustion, made him lose his balance.

People lined the narrow streets, shouting obscenities and jeering, and beyond these
shadows of evil she stood with Magdalena, Lazarus-John, and her sister-in-law Mary of Cleophas. The procession headed north from the pr
ae
torium to the place of execution outside the city walls and so it descended through the streets until it came through the gate of the first wall.

Here
, she did not hear the people taunting him, she did not hear the lament of the women, she did not see the Romans whipping his body and making all his wounds deeper, she saw only her son, and her God, and they saw her. His eyes asked:

Where
is Simon-Peter, why has he not come to help me carry my cross? Where are my disciples? Where are my followers? Are they still asleep?

She could not answer him, for she knew not
where they were. Instead she took upon herself his suffering, so that she knew how heavy was the wood that tore at the ligaments of his lacerated shoulders, how hard was the way over the stones with his bare feet full of cuts and sores and gashes, she felt how his head throbbed from the thorns that continued to pierce it, how great was his thirst, which made his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth, how the chills of fever shook him to his very centre, and how his entire being screamed with hurts because his wounds, both physical and spiritual, made inroads into his heart.

She understood now that t
his passion had begun the moment the God had entered into Jesus at his baptism, and that is was culminating in this dolorous way to his voluntary sacrifice.

His petition to her at
the cenacle had never seemed more difficult than now. How was she to rise above her suffering in order to transform it into love? Love even for those Romans who called out abuse and dragged him by his weeping arms, scraping his skinless knees to raise him, love for the centurion who carried the
titulus
which would be nailed to his cross, love for his judges and executioners, love for those who were full of hate, who abused him for his alleged profanity from the rooftops and threw stones and rubbish at him.

The last gate out of the city was s
ituated in the busy suburb of Akra and it opened onto the road that led to the place of execution. Here he fell and could not get up no matter how many times he was whipped. This forced a halt in the cohort of Romans headed by Pilate that came from behind escorting two more malefactors also destined for crucifixion.

O
utside the first gate, in this suburb, those who loved her son outnumbered those who were swayed by the hate of the Sanhedrin and those who were paid to taunt him. They begged the Romans to stop beating and kicking him. But the Romans returned the supplications of the people with blows from their staves and whips. This commotion diverted the soldiers long enough to allow her a space in which to come near to him. Leaving the others behind her she went down on her knees and crawled to where he lay on the cobbles with his arms pinned down by the cross piece. She put her face to the ground so that he might see her and put a hand to his hair, matted and bloodied, to remove it from his disfigured eyes.

From somewhere came the smell of roses.

He looked at her and her heart trembled. She gasped for breath and in that gasp a window in time was opened and held still. This was the last moment between them and when this meeting flew away she would not come so close again, until he was dead.

‘I thirst!’ he said
, and there was the trace of a smile in his misshapen face.

‘You are always thirsty!’ she
answered, smiling through the tears, ‘But I have no water that tastes of wine to give you my son!’

She could say nothing more
for there were no wise and useful words left to her only sorrow-filled ones and these were held back for fear of breaking the enchantment of the moment.

‘Get up woman!’ a voice said, and she felt herself dragged away from him, away from those eyes.

‘Leave her be Abenader! That is the mother!’ she recognised this voice, ‘See to him, or he will die before he gets to his execution! It will not do to lose him now after he has come so far! Find someone to help him!’ It was the same centurion from the night before, the one upon his horse, his voice and words recalled to her mind that moment at the gates of Jerusalem those many years ago. He ordered a guard to take a pagan Greek from the crowd.

‘
Tu!
Imbecile! Adiuvo!
Sic! Tu! Imbecile! Adi-u-vo!
’ Then he shouted in Greek, ‘
Arêxis!
You’re not a Jew, I know who you are, you’re the Greek stonemason…lift him up, you Greek bag of dung!’

He pushed him towards her son and after some further coaxing the man took him by an arm and lifted him to his feet.

Her son gave her one last look before the man helped him onwards.

She was taken with dizziness then, and Lazarus-John held her as the procession moved on
.

A
nd for a small time she did not see him.