“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
Our Holy Week Retreat for Beyond These Stone Walls
Each Holy Week since 2010 Fr Gordon MacRae has composed a special post based on the Scriptural events of the Way of the Cross. They now comprise a Holy Week retreat.
Each Holy Week since 2010 Fr Gordon MacRae has composed a special post based on the Scriptural events of the Way of the Cross. They now comprise a Holy Week retreat.
March 20, 2024 by Father Gordon MacRae
As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. Born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider instead its legacy. Many posts in my long Prison Journal since 2010 have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”
And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight to write a post about the Passion of the Christ. I compose a new Holy Week post every year since to present a different scene in the Way of the Cross. For me, this has become a sacred obligation as a priest to take part in my own unique way in the events that led to Calvary and beyond. And, yes, there IS a beyond.
Many readers, especially those who have also suffered in ways large or small, have found these posts to be inspiring. No one has been more surprised by this than me. So we have collected our Holy Week posts in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative to become an invitation for a personal retreat. We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance.
If any of them touches your heart and soul in some way, or gives you a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, then please also share a link to them with others. I hear from many newer readers who first came to this blog in just that way, and then found in these pages spiritual consolation and a path to peace.
We will add a new post on Wednesday of Holy Week this year and will make the title linked here, active at that time. We will retain these links at our “Special Post” feature until Pentecost, the conclusion of the Easter Season:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage (2020)
Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light (2020)
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane (2019)
The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.
The Apostle Falls: Simon Peter Denies Christ (2024)
The fall of Simon Peter was a scandal of biblical proportions. His three-time denial of Jesus is recounted in every Gospel, but all is not as it first seems to be.
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands (2014)
‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’ (2017)
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross (2023)
Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found (2012)
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Salvation.
To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell (2022)
The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, what happened to Jesus between the Cross and the Resurrection, is a mystery to be unveiled.
Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb (2015)
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.
Before the gates there sat, On either side a formidable Shape
One of Gustave Dore’s illustrations of the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton (Courtesy of University at Buffalo)
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross
Simon of Cyrene was just a man coming in from the country to Jerusalem for the Passover when his fated path intersected the Way of the Cross and Salvation History.
Simon of Cyrene was just a man coming in from the country to Jerusalem for the Passover when his fated path intersected the Way of the Cross and Salvation History.
Holy Week 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
I first wrote about Simon of Cyrene in Holy Week, 2010. While restoring that post, I ended up completely rewriting it. It led me almost immediately to a vivid example of the descent of this world at a time when faith invites us to ascend to Eternal Life. We are all going to die. It is an ordinary part of life. But don’t just die. Set out now for home. The only true path to life leads “To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate.”
A single sentence about Simon of Cyrene in each of the Synoptic Gospels conveys a wealth of meaning with a roadmap to the way home. Several readers told me privately and in comments that they were struck by these last few sentences in a recent post that mentioned Pornchai Moontri. In “God in the Dock: When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” I wrote,
“It was upon reading [a] passage from Pope Benedict that Pornchai made his decision to journey with me from the Exodus, through the desert, to the Promised Land toward which we, in hope, are destined. Faith never rescued us from our trials, but it taught us to carry one another's cross like Simon of Cyrene. That is the key to Heaven. Even in suffering and sorrow, it is the key to Heaven.”
Under the weight of Earthly Powers, this world loses sight of our true destiny while the great masses of people focus only on what they have stored up in this life. When a bank fails those whose treasury contains little more than money in life, people panic, some even commit suicide. It's a tragedy unfolding before our very eyes in the weeks leading up to Holy Week.
I turn 70 years old on Easter Sunday this year. It haunts me to reflect on how much the values of this world have changed in my lifetime. While researching this post about Simon of Cyrene, I came across a reference to The Greatest Story Ever Told, a 1960 United Artists film production of the life of Jesus from his birth to his Resurrection. Today, many of the woke denizens of Hollywood might shun such a project, but in 1960 it drew an enormous cast of Hollywood stars clamoring to be part of 'it.
Some of the film industry's most stellar actors were cast, some surprisingly in even minor roles: Max von Sydow portrayed Jesus, Dorothy McGuire was Mary, Claude Rains was Herod the Great, Jose Ferrer was Herod Antipas, Charlton Heston was John the Baptist, Telly Savalas was Pontius Pilate. He shaved his head for the role and never grew his hair back again. This is why he was bald when he played the famous NYPD detective, Kojak. David McCallum was Judas Iscariot. The list of Hollywood stars goes on and on.
The great John Wayne was cast as a captain of the Roman Centurions who professed his belief in Jesus at the foot of the Cross, as depicted in the top graphic on this post. John Wayne became a Catholic not long after this film. Today, his grandson is a Catholic priest in California.
Simon of Cyrene was portrayed by Sidney Poitier who three years later won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a drifter who became a handyman for a community of nuns in Lillies of the Field. He was an interesting choice to play Simon of Cyrene. In New Testament times, Cyrene was a major city in Northern Africa with a large Jewish population in what is present day Libya. It was the home of Lucius, a prophet and teacher of Antioch mentioned in Acts 13:1, and of Simon, a man who ventured to Jerusalem for the Passover but found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time or, depending on your perspective, in the right place at the right time.
Weep Not for Me, Jerusalem
My first inkling to learn about Simon of Cyrene was during Holy Week in 2000, nine years before this blog began. An old friend planning a visit to the Holy Land asked me to write a prayer that he promised to leave in a crevasse in the famous Western Wall. Known popularly as the “Wailing Wall,” it was built by Herod the Great (who was not so great, really!). That section of wall was all that remained standing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. Known in Hebrew as “ha-Kotel ha-Maaravi,” it is today one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land.
According to the Midrash, a collection of ancient rabbinic scholarship, the Wall survived the destruction of the Temple because the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, rests there. My friend left my handwritten prayer in a crevasse in that Wall. Just a day later, during a historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope John Paul II left his own prayer in that same place in the Wall. I recall hoping that his was not blocking mine!
On that same day, just beyond the city walls, my friend came upon a tourist area where a photographer was capitalizing on the presence of the Pope. He tried to coax my friend into picking up a mock cross and carrying it for a photograph. My friend was appalled by the disconnect between what happened at Calvary 2000 years earlier and what was happening in that present scene. He refused to pick up the cross.
Reflecting on the scene upon his return from Jerusalem, my friend wrote to me in prison asking, “What can you tell me about Simon of Cyrene?” His question took me to a single sentence in each of the Synoptic Gospels from which I felt compelled to unpack some hidden meaning. It turned out that there was much to unpack.
Jesus, denounced by the Chief Priests, tried and condemned before Pilate, was mercilessly scourged to the point of near death. Roman soldiers tasked with his crucifixion feared that he may die before the ascent of Golgotha while bearing history's heaviest cross. Roman law allowed soldiers to press Jews into service for Rome so they forced a passerby to assist the “King of the Jews” as recounted in all three of the Synoptic Gospels:
“As they went out, they came upon a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; this man they compelled to carry the cross.”
— Matthew 27:32
“And as they led [Jesus] away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus.”
— Luke 23:26
“And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.”
— Mark 15:21
Sidney Poitier as Simon of Cyrene in The Greatest Story Ever Told
He Was There When They Crucified My Lord
Crucifixion was entirely unknown in Jewish history until the Roman occupation of Palestine in 31 BC. Sacred Scripture, however, contained echoes of the sacrifice to come. Some 2,000 years before Jesus ascended Calvary bearing his Cross, Abraham was summoned by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac in the land of Moriah (Genesis 22).
Israelite tradition (2 Chronicles 3:1) identifies Moriah as the site of the future Jerusalem Temple. What became Golgotha or Calvary was one of its foothills. Obedient but brokenhearted, Abraham placed upon his son the wood for his sacrifice and together they climbed Mount Moriah.
Isaac asked his father, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered, “God will provide himself the lamb for the offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8). In the end, an Angel of the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand, and his obedience became the basis for God’s covenant with Israel. Two millennia later, in that same place, God Himself did provide the lamb for the sacrifice. Hence, in our Liturgy, Jesus is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Crucifixion was a common form of capital punishment among Persians, Egyptians, and Romans from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD. The punishment was ritualized under Roman law which required that a criminal be scourged before execution. The accused had to carry the entire cross or just the crossbeam from the place of scourging to the execution. Crucifixion was abolished in 337 AD by Emperor Constantine out of respect for the emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Jews carried out their own form of capital punishment by stoning, but the Romans forbade such executions when they occupied Palestine. This is why Jesus was handed over to Pilate for trial.
The gruesome punishment of crucifixion was reserved by the Romans for criminals, seditionists, and slaves. Roman law forbade the crucifixion of a citizen for any crime. Saint Paul, who was a Roman citizen, could not be crucified so he was martyred by Emperor Tertullian, likely by beheading, in 60 A.D.
When Pilate had Jesus scourged, he may have instructed his tormentors to go beyond the usual torture hoping to convince the Sanhedrin and the mob that scourging was punishment enough. That plan failed when the crowd, spurred on by the Chief Priests, shouted “Crucify Him!”
However Jesus had been beaten so severely that Roman soldiers doubted that he could carry his cross the entire distance to Calvary alone. Note that I use the terms “Golgotha” and “Calvary” interchangeably. They are one and the same place. Golgotha is a Greek translation from an Aramaic word meaning “Place of the Skull,” a name likely derived from the fact that many executions were carried out there. “Calvary” is derived from “calvaria,” the Latin translation of Golgotha.
A condemned man was then led through the crowds to the place of crucifixion. Just as today, most of the people in the crowds assumed that an all-powerful and righteous state has justly condemned a real criminal to punishment, so many joined in the mocking and humiliation even if they knew nothing of the accused or the alleged crime. It was part of the ritual. Along the way, the condemned was forced to carry his cross — or at least the crossbeam upon which his arms would be tied and his hands or wrists nailed (see John l9:l7).
In 1994, the year I was sent to prison, archeological remains of a crucified man were discovered intact near Jerusalem. It was the first evidence of what actually took place in a typical Roman crucifixion.
It is unclear from the Gospel passages above exactly what part of the Cross was imposed upon Simon of Cyrene. Luke’s Gospel refers to Simon carrying the Cross behind Jesus, a position which also came to be symbolic of discipleship. It is likely that Jesus, like other condemned, carried the crossbeam upon which he would be nailed, while Simon may have carried the vertical beam or the rear of the entire Cross.
I learned from Mel Gibson’s famous film, The Passion of the Christ, that Simon of Cyrene is the person in the Gospel to whom I can most relate. I did not pick my cross willingly, nor do I willingly carry it. I did not see it as a share in the Cross of Christ at first. Few of us ever do.
The Passion of the Christ portrayed with power what I have always imagined must have become of Simon of Cyrene. Something stirred within him compelling him to remain there. He became a part of the scene, setting his own journey aside. The lights went on in Simon’s soul and he became compelled not just from Roman force, but from deep within himself.
Note that Saint Mark alone mentions that Simon of Cyrene had two sons, Alexander and Rufus. The Gospel implies that both became well known to the early Church. Being the earliest of the Gospels to come into written form, Mark addressed his Gospel to Gentile Christians in Rome. So did Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans. Mark was with Paul at the time he was imprisoned in Rome so he was likely aware of Simon’s profound transformation as a witness to the Crucifixion and Saint Paul’s knowledge of his sons, Rufus and Alexander cited in Saint Mark’s Gospel.
Hence in the concluding verses of Paul’s Letter to the Romans Paul wrote: “Greet Rufus, eminent in the Lord, and also his mother who is a mother to me as well” (Romans 16:13).
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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post which is now on our list of Holy Week posts for our sponsored Holy Week Retreat. It is not too late to follow the Way of the Cross this week by pondering and sharing our
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
A Personal Holy Week Retreat at Beyond These Stone Walls
Each year since 2010, Fr Gordon MacRae composed from prison a special Holy Week post. These posts follow the Way of the Cross creating a personal Holy Week retreat.
Each year since 2010, Fr Gordon MacRae composed from prison a special Holy Week post. These posts follow the Way of the Cross creating a personal Holy Week retreat.
March 29, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
As many of our readers know, this blog began in controversy in 2009. It was born out of a challenge from the late Cardinal Avery Dulles to rise above suffering and consider its legacy. Many posts in this Prison Journal have been about the injustices that I and other priests have faced. But in the weeks before his death in December 2008, Cardinal Dulles sent a series of letters to me in prison. He challenged me to dig deeper into my own passion narrative. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
“Someone might want to add a new chapter to the volume of Christian literature from those unjustly in prison. In the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr Alfred Delp, Fr Walter Ciszek, and Saint Paul, your writing, which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound, will be a monument to your trials.”
And so in preparation for Holy Week in 2010, I began to make a concerted effort to set aside my own unjust plight for a time to write a post about the ascent to Calvary. Then I repeated that effort year after year, with each post presenting a different scene in the Passion of the Christ.
Taken as a whole, these Holy Week posts now form a complete Way of the Cross. Some readers have found them to be inspiring. So this year we have collected our Holy Week posts, not in the order in which they were written, but in the order in which they appear in the Gospel narrative. They become, for some readers, a personal Holy Week retreat.
We invite you to make these posts a part of your Holy Week and Easter observance. We will retain them at our “Holy Week” page until Pentecost, the conclusion of the Easter Season:
The Passion of the Christ in an Age of Outrage
Overshadowing Holy Week with forced pandemic restrictions and political outrage recalls the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132 against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light
The central figures present before the Sacrament for the Life of the World are Jesus on the eve of sacrifice and Satan on the eve of battle to restore the darkness.
Waking Up in the Garden of Gethsemane
The Agony in the Garden, the First Sorrowful Mystery, is a painful scene in the Passion of the Christ, but in each of the Synoptic Gospels the Apostles slept through it.
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands
‘Ecce Homo,’ an 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri, depicts a moment woven into Salvation History and into our very souls. ‘Shall I crucify your king?’
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross
Simon of Cyrene was just a man on his way to Jerusalem but the scourging of Jesus was so severe that Roman soldiers feared he may not live to carry his cross alone.
Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found
Who was Saint Dismas, the Penitent Thief, crucified to the right of Jesus at Calvary? His brief Passion Narrative appearance has deep meaning for Christians.
To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell
The Apostles Creed is the oldest statement of Catholic belief and apostolic witness. Its Fifth Article, that Jesus descended into hell, is a mystery to be unveiled.
Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerge from the Gospel a faithful, courageous, and noble woman, an Apostle to the Apostles.
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost
On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marks forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?
On the Solemnity of Pentecost Father Gordon MacRae marked forty years of priesthood. Had a map of his life been before him on June 5, 1982, what would he have done?
June 1, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
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“When you were young, you fastened your belt and walked where you would; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten them and take you where you do not wish to go.”
The Resurrected Christ to Peter (John 21:18)
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The few lines just below the top image on many blog posts are sometimes called a “meta-description.” Its purpose is to provide search engines like Google a summary of a post’s content in 164 characters or less (including spaces). Our meta-descriptions are not very useful in that regard because they are written with actual readers in mind and not search engines.
Our Editor’s meta-description atop this post ends with a question: What would I have done forty years ago on June 5, 1982 if I had before me then a vision of my future life as a priest? When I was unjustly sent to prison in 1994, I was asked that question often. I never had an easy answer.
After I began writing from prison at the invitation of Cardinal Avery Dulles fourteen years later in 2008, most people had stopped asking me that question. I think most just assumed that my life as a priest was over, or that whatever was left would just collapse and vanish under the weight of prison. Some thought the Vatican would throw me overboard without evidence simply because I am in prison. After 40 years as a priest, and 28 of them as a prisoner, none of those things has happened. I am now asked a different question: What sustains an identity of priesthood in such a place?
Also atop this post is a haunting quote from the Gospel of John (21:18). It’s from an appearance of the Risen Christ to Simon Peter and the disciples at the Sea of Tiberius. Jesus sought restitution from Peter whose courage gave way to a lie days earlier at Calvary. Peter had an opportunity to live up to his own words declared on the day before the Crucifixion, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:23). At Calvary, as the accusing mob pressed in, Peter’s courage failed. To appease the mob, he three times denied knowing Jesus.
I wrote in a post just weeks ago, “Shaming Benedict XVI, Catholic Schism, Cardinal Zen Arrested,” that we saw faith falter when only 92 of the world’s Catholic bishops signed a letter confronting a threat of Catholic schism in Germany while most others remained silent. We saw this again as prelates in the largest Christian denomination on Earth remained strangely silent after the Chinese Communist government’s unjust arrest of Hong Kong’s 90-year-old Joseph Cardinal Zen.
And we saw it yet again when only 15 U.S. bishops spoke out in support of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone who courageously barred U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Communion until she repents for decades of abject promotion of abortion. He acted as he must in pastoral care for her soul.
But I have no legitimate judgment of Peter at Calvary. It is not easy to stand up to a mob. In the verse that immediately follows the one I quote from Saint John atop this post, the Lord told Peter what would happen when he finds his faith and it informs his strength. He did find it, and Tradition tells us that he was crucified for it in A.D. 67. The flaws of bishops, which only the spiritually blind deny sharing with them in abundance, need not preclude the courage that Christ summons forth.
An Anniversary of Priesthood
A good friend, Fr. Stuart MacDonald, just celebrated his 25th anniversary of priesthood ordination. This is usually a joyful event for a priest, for his family, and for his parish. Father Stuart sent me a wonderful photograph of the Mass of Thanksgiving at his diocesan cathedral. The recently renovated church is beautiful, and the hundreds of Father Stuart’s family, friends and parishioners could not have been prouder, or happier.
Behind the main altar in the photo above is a glorious stained glass window depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus. It is difficult to look at that sanctuary and see anything else. And yet Father Stuart stands out incensing the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, his appearance one of faithful witness inspired by the salvific scene of divine restitution enacted in glory just behind him.
I pondered the scene for a long time, taking in the beauty of the restored sanctuary’s art and architecture. It is all focused on that one place where priestly hands would soon raise in sacrifice the very Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world — even the sins of a three times denial of Him by Peter who would then become the First Bishop of Rome.
I tend not to look at such scenes and think about myself. I was so proud of Father Stuart because he, too, has endured the suffering of the Cross in his years as a priest. Like so many, he suffered bouts of depression and anxiety during the long bludgeoning of the priesthood over the last twenty-five years. It has come from all sides, even lately from some of our bishops. Father Stuart is fortunate to have one who supports him. In an age of cancelled priests, it is not always so.
It was some time before I contrasted the photograph sent by Father Stuart with the scene in my prison cell late at night on June 5, 2022, the Solemnity of Pentecost, as I offer my own Mass of Thanksgiving for 40 years of priesthood. Able to obtain elements for Mass only once per week, I join in that sacrificial offering in a 60-square-foot prison cell in the dark. The chair upon which I offer Mass is a 5-gallon plastic trash bucket emptied and turned upside down for the occasion.
There is something vaguely prophetic in that. Like the bucket, I, too, have to be emptied before Mass of all the harmful refuse of prison. At 11:00 PM, after the last prisoner count of the day, after the last of the chaos and noise that fills this place subsides, I remove my hard-earned Mass kit from a hidden shelf in a corner. The plastic storage box relinquishes a small stole, a corporal and purificator, a sturdy plastic coffee cup. It is all I have for this purpose, but never used for any other.
Lastly comes a host and a quarter-ounce vial of sacramental wine. From a shelf at the foot of my concrete bunk comes a Sacramentary and a small battery powered book light. A concrete slab protrudes from the cinder block wall at the base of the sole, heavily barred cell window. The otherwise torturous prison lights beyond provide just enough light for Mass.
The Mass is always Ad Orientam, facing East, because that is the direction toward which my window faces. I am grateful for this despite it being of no design of my own. My little booklight illuminates the Roman Canon, the Eucharistic Prayer which affords an opportunity to name the living and the dead who accompany me in this Mass. You are always remembered there.
There is no one else physically in attendance except my non-Catholic roommate who begins snoring up a storm in his upper bunk about an hour before my Mass begins. It is not exactly the hymn of a Heavenly choir, but, like most of the harsh sounds of prison, I have learned to tune it out.
So there, sitting on my bucket — ummm, I mean the big upside-down plastic one — Heaven reaches into a place where God often seems absent, but it only seems that way. When I elevate the host for the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God, it is in equal measure just as glorious as the Cathedral altar scene where Father Stuart made that same offering. After 40 years, this may seem to some to be all that remains of the visible manifestation of my priesthood. It is a miracle in its own right, one that I described on an earlier anniversary of ordination in “Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence.”
In the Mighty Wind of Pentecost
But there is another manifestation of priesthood less visible than my weekly offer of Mass, but just as mysterious and powerful. It has to do with the day on which my 40th anniversary of priesthood falls. It has to do with Pentecost, a Greek term meaning “fiftieth.” In Jewish tradition, it is called “Shavuot,” the Feast of Weeks. It falls on the sixth day of the Hebrew month, Savon, the concluding day of the Omer, the 49 days (seven weeks) from the Passover commanded in Leviticus (23:15-16).
In the Book of Exodus (23:16), it became the Harvest Feast. In Rabbinic legend, it was also the day Yahweh gave the Law — the Torah — to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19. It is the second of three annual feasts requiring a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was the reason that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Peter, and the disciples were in Jerusalem with so many others. A seminary professor once told me that “salvation comes from the Jews. They are our spiritual ancestors, and we must honor them.” I do.
It is because they were Jews that they were in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. In the Christian tradition, it is celebrated on the Seventh Sunday of Easter and closes the Easter season. Technically, it is the day after 49 days (or seven weeks) following the final Passover meal of Jesus and the Apostles, the point through which the Jewish and Christian traditions are intimately connected. It was also the day that Jesus was betrayed, the point at which Salvation History begins its fulfillment. For a deeper understanding of this, see my post, “Satan at the Last Supper, Hours of Darkness and Light.”
In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (Ch. 2), the disciples of Jesus are gathered in Jerusalem in one house: then suddenly ...
“A sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, coming to rest upon each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit.”
— Acts 2: 1-4”
The scene recalls the fiery descent of the Spirit of God at Mount Sinai during the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 19:16-19).
As that driving wind filled the room where the Apostles were gathered, “men of every race and tongue, of every people and nation” emptied into the street at the strange and powerful sound. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles began to address the bewildered crowd, each person hearing them speak in his own native tongue. In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit filled not only the Apostles, but some of the crowd as well, “and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
That day in Catholic understanding is the birth of the Church, and by the time it was only an hour old, its first scandal broke out. Those in the crowd who did not inherit the wind immediately accused the Apostles of being drunk at 9:00 AM on a major holy day that required a fast. Their pharisaical claim caused Peter, now the leader of the Twelve, into the first papal defense of the Church:
“Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day.”
Acts 2:14-15
Inspired by the Spirit, Peter went on to preach the Church’s first homily, relying on the Prophet Joel (2:28-32) to explain that God has poured out His Spirit because the Messianic Age had begun. The meaning of the Passion of the Christ was unveiled.
It is interesting that the word for both wind and breath in Hebrew is “ruah,” and the term in Hebrew for the Holy Spirit is “ruah ha-Qodesh.” It simultaneously means the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. The same term is used in the story of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2):
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God, ‘ruah ha-Qodesh,’ was moving over the waters.”
— Genesis 1:1-2
And the term was used again in Genesis 2:7 as God breathed the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam, and yet again in a Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Apostles, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22)
The Wind of God did just as Jesus predicted it would do to Peter in the Gospel quote that began this post. It bound my hands and took me to a place where I did not wish to go. What am I to make of this? What should I have done while laying face down on the floor before an altar as the Litany of Saints offered me up in priestly sacrifice forty years ago? What would I have done then had a vision of my future life as a priest been before me?
When I look back on forty years of priesthood, most of them in exile, imprisoned souls were reached through no merit of my own. In spite of myself, the Wind of God took me up in its vortex, and I am simply blown away by it.
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Editor’s Note: Please share this post and please also visit our updated Special Events page. You may also like these related posts.
The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner
Priesthood in the Real Presence, and the Present Absence
Priesthood, the Signs of the Times and the Sins of the Times
In Honor of Mom: A Corner of the Veil
Pornchai Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae have met the challenge of honoring their mothers during a most difficult time in life, the latter through this moving 2009 post.
The photograph above is the house where Father Gordon MacRae grew up just north of Boston. It is the home where his single-parent mother raised three sons and a daughter alone. The stone wall in the front was built by Father Gordon and his brother at ages 15 and 16. It still stands today.
Pornchai Moontri and Fr Gordon MacRae have met the challenge of honoring their mothers during a most difficult time in life, the latter through this moving 2009 post.
Note from Father Gordon: This post, which is dear to my heart, was first published in 2009 three years after my mother’s death. After I decided to repost it, Pornchai Moontri sent me some photos of how he has honored his mother in northern Thailand last month. For the first time in his life, Pornchai took part in the April celebrations of Songkhram, the Thai New Year, and Loy Krathong, the annual Water Festival and its ritual cleansing of the tombs of his mother and grandmother at a Buddhist temple in the village of his birth. (Note: Pornchai wants everyone to know that the shirt was a gift from one of his cousins!)
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When I was first sent to prison, my mother visited me weekly. She lived North of Boston, about a ninety minute drive from Concord, NH. She was usually brought here by my sister and her husband or by my younger brother. I was very concerned about how my imprisonment affected my mother. The mothers of most priests enjoy a sort of vicarious respect that they cherish with pride. My mother was visiting her priest-son in prison.
My mother was painfully aware that I could have left prison after only one or two years had I been willing to plead guilty to something that never took place. I knew she knew this. One day when we were alone during a visit, I took her hand and asked her if she was disappointed that I did not take a “deal” for the easy way out. She pondered this for a moment, squeezed my hand, and said,
“No, I would have been disappointed if you lived a lie. There’s no freedom in living a lie. I want you to fight for the truth.”
I was very proud of my mother, for in those few simple words she, too, put herself and her pride aside for principle. A few days after our visit, my mother sent me a simple card. It was a quote from Winston Churchill, plain white text on a black background, “Never, ever, ever give up!” It was one of my treasures. The card spent several years on my cell wall, then disappeared one day, lost —as are many such things when I was moved from place to place in the prison.
In the years to follow, my mother became very ill. Her visits were fewer and further between. I witnessed the digression as she appeared in the prison visiting room one day with a cane, then a walker, then a wheelchair — and then I saw her no more. Over the next two years, I could only speak with my mother by telephone. In the last year of her life, my mother and I could not speak at all.
It was a special agony to know that my mother was dying just seventy miles away. As her son and as a priest, I had lost any means to offer support for her except through prayer. I wrote to a priest-friend in Boston, Franciscan Father Raymond Mann, who graciously prepared my mother spiritually for death in my stead. I was most grateful to him, and to my sister and her family who cared for our mother every moment of her last years in this life. On November 5, 2006, my mother died.
Most of you cannot imagine being unable to see or comfort a loved one dying just seventy miles away. There is a barrier between the imprisoned and the free — almost as impenetrable as the barrier between the living and the dead. My duty as her son and as a priest would be carried out in silence in my own heart.
Redemptive Suffering
When I saw the Mel Gibson film, “The Passion of the Christ,” I was struck by the powerful, silent scenes in which Mary viewed her Son’s path to Calvary from a short distance, and yet could not touch him, could not speak to him. I felt as though I was living the reverse of those scenes, that I witnessed from the far side of an abyss the suffering and death of my mother, and could not be present. It was as though I had died before her — already, but not yet.
I was angry. As her son and as a priest, being present to my mother in death was a sacred duty, but one denied to her and to me through the false witness of accusers and the enticement of money — an enticement that has played a far greater role in the Church’s scandal than our bishops and the plaintiff lawyers will admit. How could I not be angry?
“One of the great temptations I have had to face in prison is the impulse to keep a litany of losses. It is a naturally human response to injustice, but the resentment to ensue would be a spiritually toxic weapon of self-destruction.”
My first post on These Stone Walls was “St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Man in the Mirror.” In it, I described something that occurred just six weeks after the death of my mother. I had been standing at the mirror in my cell shaving on the morning of December 23, 2006. I suddenly realized that the equation of my life had just changed, that on that very day I was a priest in prison longer than anywhere else.
The sense of loss and futility was overwhelming until later that same day when I received in the mail an image of Father Maximilian Kolbe in both his Franciscan habit and his prison uniform. I have described in several posts my encounter with St. Maximilian Kolbe just at the point at which the equation changed — the point at which more of my life as a priest was spent in prison than in freedom.
Father Kolbe’s sacrifice of his life for another made me realize the power that exists in sacrifice and especially in the sacrifice of unjust suffering. I have come to know without doubt that suffering offered for another is redemptive of both. It’s a difficult concept for someone on the wrong end of injustice to grasp, and I struggled with it at first. I began to offer my days in prison as a share in the suffering of Christ in the final weeks of my mother’s life. It was all I had to give her.
Newfoundland
My mother, Sophie Kavanagh MacRae, emigrated to the United States from Newfoundland at age 22 in 1949. The oldest of six, she was close to her three sisters and two brothers who remained in Newfoundland. My mother was closest in age and in friendship to her sister, Frances, two years younger.
In 2003, my mother visited her childhood home for the last time.
Even in sickness and in pending death, my mother never lost her Irish sense of humor. During the visit my mother sent me a postcard with a scene from a high cliff overlooking Saint John’s Harbour. She wrote the following message:
“Dear Gordon,
Newfoundland is simply beautiful. I am writing this while visiting Redcliff, a 200-foot sheer cliff where Newfoundlander mothers of old would take their most troublesome sons and threaten to heave them over the edge.
Wish you were here. Love, Mom”
She also sent me a terrific photograph of herself with her sister, Frances at Logy Bay, just north of St. John’s on the Avalon Peninsula where they grew up.
It was the only photo I had of my mother in her last years. I put the photo away, and then lost it. When my mother died, Pornchai helped me search our cell for the photo, but it was gone. It’s difficult for prisoners to hold onto such things. Prisoners’ cells are routinely searched — sometimes even ransacked in the process — and we have very little ability to preserve items we treasure such as photographs. The photo of my mother was lost.
In the July/August, 2009 issue of This Rock magazine (which later became Catholic Answers ), Father Dwight Longenecker has an interesting article, “Weird Things Happen.” He wrote of an experience in the Chapel of the Convent of Saint Gildard in Nevers, France as he prayed before the uncorrupted body of St. Bernadette:
“I kept silence there and noticed a beautiful fragrance of flowers. As I prayed, the fragrance grew stronger, and I felt transported by a presence that was beyond my understanding.”
Father Longenecker — who hosts the Standing on My Head blog — wrote of other phenomena that defy logical explanation in our repository of faith experience. He wrote of Padre Pio’s stigmata, apparitions of the Blessed Mother, healings in the presence of sacred relics. In a later issue of This Rock, Father Longenecker took some heat for what was wrongly interpreted as his dismissal of such experiences.
I found his article to be respectful and serious, with but one small flaw. Father Longenecker later questioned what, exactly, happened to him in that chapel before the body of St. Bernadette, and suggested that we need to be both believing and skeptical.
“Whenever a natural explanation for a seemingly supernatural event is available,” he wrote, “it is to be preferred”
But why should natural explanations preclude the miraculous? Naturally occurring events can be powerful catalysts of actual grace, and as such they seem miraculous. We have all had the experience of coincidence that is so unlikely, so personally shaking that it defies explanation. Who hasn’t picked up the telephone to call a loved one only to find that person already there calling you?
It seems a minor miracle when it happens, something inexplicable and astonishing, then the experience slowly diminishes as doubt and natural skepticism reinterpret the event for us. The task of getting on with life causes us to shrug off the experience over time. Sometimes the balance between belief and skepticism in the modern world can lean too heavily toward the latter.
I wrote of such an event in "A Shower of Roses" in October. While accompanying teenage Michelle through the last weeks of her life, I spoke of St. Therese, the Little Flower, who promised a shower of roses. Michelle, a day away from death, pointed at the ceiling where drifted a helium balloon with a vivid rose imprinted upon it. It left me stunned — for awhile, but in time the trials of life diminished the light of that event. How common are the signs and wonders that come to people of faith? Can we always see them when they arrive?
The Undiscovered Country
In Hamlet Shakespeare called death, “The Undiscovered Country.” I know many people who have suffered the death of someone they love. Think, in the midst of that suffering, of the incredible gift that it contains. Loss is not felt at all but for love, and love is a direct result of grace. It is what folds back a corner of the veil — what links the living to the dead. We have something very special to share with those whose physical life is lost to us: the grace of redemptive suffering, the hope of our prayers, the sacrifice of our trials.
Eight months after my mother’s death, I learned that her beloved sister, Frances, died in Newfoundland. She died on July 10,2007, but I did not learn of it for several days. Prisoners cannot be reached by telephone, so it was July 14th when I received my sister’s letter about the death of my aunt. The next day, July 15th, was my mother’s birthday, the first since her death the previous November. Late that night, I prepared to offer Mass in my cell for the souls of my mother and her sister. Pornchai Moontri was with me for the Mass and told me this week that he remembers this story very well.
Just as Mass began, a prisoner came to my cell to borrow a book. I was irritated. Couldn’t he wait? I had to pull a foot locker from under my bunk and rummage for the book. I found the book and handed it to him, and he left.
I turned back to the Mass, and a moment later there he was again at my door. He walked into my cell and plopped something right onto the corporal I had laid down for Mass. Pornchai and I were both stunned. It was the photo of my mother and Frances that I had lost four years earlier — the photo we searched for in vain when my mother died. It’s the photo above. Just as Mass began on my mother’s birthday — at the very moment I was offering the Mass for her and her sister — their last photograph together found me
An accident? Mere coincidence? It’s a greater leap of faith to dismiss such events as coincidence than to accept them for what they are: personally miraculous gifts of actual grace.
When I looked at the photograph, it was as though someone had lifted a tiny corner of the veil between life and death. I saw something in the photo I hadn’t noticed before. The two sisters stood side by side — my mother on the right — on the shore of a new life, being prepared for the Presence of God. I never saw my mother look happier. I never saw more contentment and hope in her eyes. I never felt so happy for her, so filled with promise that her journey is near its end: Home, her New Found Land.
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Please share this post in honor of Mother’s Day. You may also wish to visit the posts linked herein:
The Chief Priests Answered, ‘We Have No King but Caesar’
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
The Passion of the Christ has historical meaning on its face, but a far deeper story lies beneath where the threads of faith and history connect to awaken the soul.
There are few things in life that a priest could hear with greater impact than what was revealed to me in a recent letter from a reader of These Stone Walls. After stumbling upon TSW several months ago, the writer began to read these pages with growing interest. Since then, she has joined many to begin the great adventure of the two most powerful spiritual movements of our time: Marian Consecration and Divine Mercy. In a recent letter she wrote, “I have been a lazy Catholic, just going through the motions, but your writing has awakened me to a greater understanding of the depths of our faith.”
I don’t think I actually have much to do with such awakenings. My writing doesn’t really awaken anyone. In fact, after typing last week’s post, I asked my friend, Pornchai Moontri to read it. He was snoring by the end of page two. I think it is more likely the subject matter that enlightens. The reader’s letter reminded me of the reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians read by Pornchai a few weeks ago, quoted in “De Profundis: Pornchai Moontri and the Raising of Lazarus”:
“Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
I may never understand exactly what These Stone Walls means to readers and how they respond. That post generated fewer comments than most, but within just hours of being posted, it was shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook and other social media.
Of 380 posts published thus far on These Stone Walls, only about ten have generated such a response in a single day. Five of them were written in just the last few months in a crucible described in “Hebrews 13:3 Writing Just This Side of the Gates of Hell.” I write in the dark. Only Christ brings light.
Saint Paul and I have only two things in common — we have both been shipwrecked, and we both wrote from prison. And it seems neither of us had any clue that what we wrote from prison would ever see the light of day, let alone the light of Christ. There is beneath every story another story that brings more light to what is on the surface. There is another story beneath my post, “De Profundis.” That title is Latin for “Out of the Depths,” the first words of Psalm 130. When I wrote it, I had no idea that Psalm 130 was the Responsorial Psalm for Mass before the Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus:
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
Lord hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication…
”I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and I hope in his word;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than sentinels wait for the dawn,
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.”
Notice that the psalmist repeats that last line. Anyone who has ever spent a night lying awake in the oppression of fear or dark depression knows the high anxiety that accompanies a long lonely wait for the first glimmer of dawn. I keep praying that Psalm — I have prayed it for years — and yet Jesus has not seen fit to fix my problems the way I want them fixed. Like Saint Paul, in the dawn’s early light I still find myself falsely accused, shipwrecked, and unjustly in prison.
Jesus also prayed the Psalms. In a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic, he cries out from the Cross, “Eli, Eli làma sabach-thàni?” It is not an accusation about the abandonment of God. It is Psalm 22, a prayer against misery and mockery, against those who view the cross we bear as evidence of God’s abandonment. It is a prayer against the use of our own suffering to mock God. It’s a Psalm of David, of whom Jesus is a descendant by adoption through Joseph:
“Eli, Eli làma sabach-thàni?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are You so far from my plea,
from the words of my cry? …
… All who see me mock at me;
they curse me with parted lips,
they wag their heads …
Indeed many dogs surround me,
a pack of evildoers closes in upon me;
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones …
They divide my garments among them;
for my clothes they cast lots.”
So maybe, like so many in this world who suffer unjustly, we have to wait in hope simply for Christ to be our light. And what comes with the light? Suffering does not always change, but its meaning does. Take it from someone who has suffered unjustly. What suffering longs for most is meaning. People of faith have to trust that there is meaning to suffering even when we cannot detect it, even as we sit and wait to hear, “Upon the Dung Heap of Job: God’s Answer to Suffering.”
The Passion of the Christ
Last year during Holy Week, two Catholic prisoners had been arguing about why the date of Easter changes from year to year. They both came up with bizarre theories, so one of them came to ask me. I explained that in the Roman Church, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (equinox is from the Latin, “equi noctis,” for “equal night”). The prisoner was astonished by my ignorance and said, “What BS! Easter is forty days after Ash Wednesday!”
Getting to the story beneath the one on the surface is important to understand something as profound as the events of the Passion of the Christ. You may remember from my post, “De Profundis,” that Jesus said something perplexing when he learned of the illness of Lazarus:
“This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it”
The irony of this is clearer when you see that it was the raising of Lazarus that condemned Jesus to death. The High Priests were deeply offended, and the insult was an irony of Biblical proportions (no pun intended). Immediately following upon the raising of Lazarus, “the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council” (the Sanhedrin). They were in a panic over the signs performed by Jesus. “If he goes on like this,” they complained, “the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place (the Jerusalem Temple) and our nation” (John 11 47-48).
The two major religious schools of thought in Judaism in the time of Jesus were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Both arose in Judaism in the Second Century B.C. and faded from history in the First Century A.D. At the time of Jesus, there were about 6,000 Pharisees. The name, “Pharisees” — Hebrew for “Separated Ones” — came as a result of their strict observance of ritual piety, and their determination to keep Judaism from being contaminated by foreign religious practices. Their hostile reaction to the raising of Lazarus had nothing to do with the raising of Lazarus, but rather with the fact that it occurred on the Sabbath which was considered a crime.
Jesus actually had some common ground with the Pharisees. They believed in angels and demons. They believed in the human soul and upheld the doctrine of resurrection from the dead and future life. Theologically, they were hostile to the Sadducees, an aristocratic priestly class that denied resurrection, the soul, angels, and any authority beyond the Torah.
Both groups appear to have their origin in a leadership vacuum that occurred in Jerusalem between the time of the Maccabees and their revolt against the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanies who desecrated the Temple in 167 B.C. It’s a story that began Lent on These Stone Walls in “Semper Fi! Forty Days of Lent Giving Up Giving Up.”
The Pharisees and Sadducees had no common ground at all except a fear that the Roman Empire would swallow up their faith and their nation. And so they came together in the Sanhedrin, the religious high court that formed in the same time period the Pharisees and Sadducees themselves had formed, in the vacuum left by the revolt that expelled Greek invaders and their desecration of the Temple in 165 B.C.
The Sanhedrin was originally composed of Sadducees, the priestly class, but as common enemies grew, the body came to include Scribes (lawyers) and Pharisees. The Pharisees and Sadducees also found common ground in their disdain for the signs and wonders of Jesus and the growth in numbers of those who came to believe in him and see him as Messiah.
The high profile raising of Lazarus became a crisis for both, but not for the same reasons. The Pharisees feared drawing the attention of Rome, but the Sadducees felt personally threatened. They denied any resurrection from the dead, and could not maintain religious influence if Jesus was going around doing just that. So Caiaphas, the High Priest, took charge at the post-Lazarus meeting of the Sanhedrin, and he challenged the Pharisees whose sole concern was for any imperial interference from the Roman Empire. Caiaphas said,
“You know nothing at all. You do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, so that the whole nation should not perish”
The Gospel of John went on to explain that Caiaphas, being High Priest, “did not say this of his own accord, but to prophesy” that Jesus was to die for the nation, “and not for the nation only, but, to gather into one the children of God” (John 11: 41-52). From that moment on, with Caiaphas being the first to raise it, the Sanhedrin sought a means to put Jesus to death.
Caiaphas presided over the Sanhedrin at the time of the arrest of Jesus. In the Sanhedrin’s legal system, as in our’s today, the benefit of doubt was supposed to rest with the accused, but … well … you know how that goes. The decision was made to find a reason to put Jesus to death before any legal means were devised to actually bring that about.
Behold the Man!
The case found its way before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Prefect of Judea from 25 to 36 A.D. Pilate had a reputation for both cruelty and indecision in legal cases before him. He had previously antagonized Jewish leaders by setting up Roman standards bearing the image of Caesar in Jerusalem, a clear violation of the Mosaic law barring graven images.
All four Evangelists emphasize that, despite his indecision about the case of Jesus, Pilate considered Jesus to be innocent. This is a scene I have written about in a prior Holy Week post, “Behold the Man as Pilate washes His Hands.”
On the pretext that Jesus was from Galilee, thus technically a subject of Herod Antipas, Pilate sent Jesus to Herod in an effort to free himself from having to handle the trial. When Jesus did not answer Herod’s questions (Luke 23: 7-15) Herod sent him back to Pilate. Herod and Pilate had previously been indifferent, at best, and sometimes even antagonistic to each other, but over the trial of Jesus, they became friends. It was one of history’s most dangerous liaisons.
The trial before Pilate in the Gospel of John is described in seven distinct scenes, but the most unexpected twist occurs in the seventh. Unable to get around Pilate’s indecision about the guilt of Jesus in the crime of blasphemy, Jewish leaders of the Sanhedrin resorted to another tactic. Their charge against Jesus evolved into a charge against Pilate himself: “If you release him, you are no friend of Caesar” (John 19:12).
This stopped Pilate in his tracks. “Friend of Caesar” was a political honorific title bestowed by the Roman Empire. Equivalent examples today would be the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon a philanthropist, or a bishop bestowing the Saint Thomas More Medal upon a judge. Coins of the realm depicting Herod the Great bore the Greek insignia “Philokaisar” meaning “Friend of Caesar.” The title was politically a very big deal.
In order to bring about the execution of Jesus, the religious authorities had to shift away from presenting Jesus as guilty of blasphemy to a political charge that he is a self-described king and therefore a threat to the authority of Caesar. The charge implied that Pilate, if he lets Jesus go free, will also suffer a political fallout.
So then the unthinkable happens. Pilate gives clemency a final effort, and the shift of the Sadducees from blasphemy to blackmail becomes the final word, and in pronouncing it, the Chief Priests commit a far greater blasphemy than the one they accuse Jesus of:
“Shall I crucify your king? The Chief Priests answered, ‘We have no king but Caesar.”
Then Pilate handed him over to be crucified.
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Mary Magdalene: Faith, Courage, and an Empty Tomb
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous and noble woman, an apostle to the Apostles.
History unjustly sullied her name without evidence, but Mary Magdalene emerges from the Gospel a faithful, courageous and noble woman, an apostle to the Apostles.
As an imprisoned priest, a communal celebration of the Easter Triduum is not available to me. My celebration of this week is for the most part limited to a private reading of the Roman Missal. Still, over the five-plus years that I have been writing for These Stone Walls, I have always agonized about Holy Week posts. I feel a special duty to contribute what little I can to the Church’s volume of reflection on the meaning of this week.
Though I have little in the way of resources beyond what is in my own mind, I feel an obligation in this of all weeks to “get it right,” and leave something a reader might return to. So I have focused in past Holy Week posts not so much on the meaning of the events of the Passion of the Christ, but on the characters central to those events. In so doing, I have developed a rather special kinship with some of them.
I hope readers will spend some time with them this week by revisiting my Holy Week tributes to “Simon of Cyrene, Compelled to Carry the Cross,” and “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.” I wrote a follow-up to that one in a subsequent Holy Week post entitled, “Pope Francis, the Pride of Mockery, and the Mockery of Pride.” Last year in Holy Week, I visited a haunting work of art fixed upon the wall of my prison cell in “Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands.”
Lifting these characters out of the lines of the Gospel into the light of my quest to know them has enhanced a sense of solidarity with them. This has never been truer than it is for the subject of this year’s TSW Holy Week post. Any believer whose reputation has been overshadowed by innuendos of a past, anyone who stands in possession of a truth that must be told, but is denied the social status to be believed will marvel at the faith and courage of Mary Magdalene.
Her Demon Haunted World
First, a word about language. You might note that I always use the Aramaic term, “Golgotha,” instead of the more familiar “Calvary” for the place where Jesus was crucified. Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew. It became the language of the Middle East sometime after the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C., and was the language of Palestine at the time of Jesus. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and so did his disciples.
The Aramaic word, “Golgotha” means “place of the skull.” When the Roman Empire occupied Palestine in 63 B.C., it used that place for crucifixions. It isn’t certain whether that is the origin of the name “Golgotha” or whether the hill resembles a skull from some vantage point. The Gospels were written in Greek, so the Aramaic “Golgotha” was translated “Kranion,” Greek for “skull.” Then in the Fourth and early Fifth Century, Saint Jerome translated the Greek Gospels into Latin using the term, “Calvoriae Locus” for “Place of the Skull.” That’s how the name “Calvary” entered Christian thought.
Mary Magdalene is one of only two figures in the Gospel to have been present with Jesus during his public ministry, at the foot of the Cross at Golgotha, and in his resurrection appearances at and after the empty tomb. The sole other figure was John, the Beloved Disciple. Mary the Mother of Jesus was also present at the Cross, but there is no mention of her at the empty tomb. In the Gospel of Saint Luke, the Twelve were with Jesus during his public ministry …
“… also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Suzanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means.”
The presence of these women openly challenged Jewish customs and mores of the time which discouraged men from associating with women in public. Add to this the fact that these particular women “had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities” could have set the community abuzz with whispers at their presence with Jesus. In the Gospel of John (4:27), the Apostles came upon Jesus talking with a woman of Samaria at Jacob’s well, and they “marveled that he was talking with a woman.”
A revelation that seven demons had gone out of Mary Magdalene is in no way suppressed by the Gospel writer. On the contrary, it seems the basis of her undying fidelity to the Lord. The Gospel of Saint Mark adds that account in the most unlikely place — the one place where Mary’s credibility seems a necessity, the first Resurrection appearance:
“Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.”
In all four of the Gospel accounts, it was Mary Magdalene who first discovered and announced the empty tomb, and in all four places the announcement sowed doubt, and even some propaganda. In the Gospel of Matthew (28:1-10), “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb … .” There they were met by an angel who instructed them, “Go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead and behold, he is going before you to Galilee.”
Then, in Saint Matthew’s account, Jesus appeared to them on the road and said, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” Put yourself in Mary Magdalene’s shoes. She, from whom he cast out seven demons; she, who watched him die a gruesome death, is to find Peter, tell this story, and expect to be believed?
Immediately after in the Gospel of Matthew, the Roman guards went to Caiaphas the High Priest with their own story of what they witnessed at the tomb. Like the thirty pieces of silver used to bribe Judas, Caiaphas paid the guards to spread an alternate story:
“Go report to Pilate that Jesus’ disciples came and stole his body while the guards slept…’ This story has been spread among the Jews even to this day”
Apostle to the Apostles
It makes perfect sense. I, too, have seen “truth” reinvented when there is money involved. Remember that Mary Magdalene is a woman alone, with demons in her past, and she must convey her amazing account to men. So suspect is she as a source that even the early Church overlooked her witness. When Saint Paul related the Resurrection appearances to the Church at Corinth about twenty years later, he omitted Mary Magdalene entirely:
“He appeared to Cephas [the Greek name for Peter], then to the Twelve, then to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James then to all the Apostles. Then last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me, for I am the least of the Apostles.”
Saint Paul lists six appearances of Jesus during the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension. One of those appearances “to more than 500” appears in none of the Gospel accounts. Saint Paul likely omitted the fact that it was Mary Magdalene from whom news of the Resurrection first arose, and to whom the Risen Christ first appeared, because at that time in that culture, women could not give sworn testimony.
And remember that there was another matter Mary Magdalene had to reconcile before conveying her news. It is the elephant in the upper room. She must not only tell her story to men, but to men who fled Golgotha while she remained. Among all in that room, only Mary Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple John saw Christ die. Peter, their leader, denied knowing Jesus and remained below, listening to a cock crow.
I have imagined another version of Mary Magdalene’s empty tomb report to Peter. I imagined reading it between the lines, but of course it isn’t really there. Still, it’s the version that would have made the most human sense: Mary Magdalene burst into an upper room where the Apostles hid “for fear of the Jews.” She summoned the courage to look Peter in the eye.
Mary M.: “I have good news and not-so-good news.”
Peter: “What’s the good news?”
Mary M.: “The Lord has risen and I have seen him!”
Peter: “And the not-so-good good news?”
Mary M.: “He’s on his way here and he’d like a word with you about last Friday.”
Of course, nothing like that happened. The words of Jesus to Peter about “last Friday” correct his three-time denial with a three-time commission of the risen Christ to “feed my sheep.” The Gospel message is built upon values and principles that challenge all our basest instincts for retribution and justice. The Gospel presents God’s justice, not ours.
Of the four accounts of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection Appearances, the Gospel of John conveys perhaps the most painful, beautiful, and stunning portrait of Mary Magdalene, all written between the lines:
“Standing by the Cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister [possibly Salome, mother of James and John], Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”
Also standing there is John, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene becomes a witness to one of the most profound scenes of Sacred Scripture. Jesus addressed his mother from the Cross, “Woman, behold your son.” Is it a reference to himself or to the young man standing next to his mother? Is it both? Standing just feet away, the woman from whom he once cast out seven demons is fixated by what is taking place here. “Behold your Mother!” he says among his last words from the Cross, bestowing upon John — and all of us by extension — the gifts of grace and the care of his mother.
“Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”
“From that point on, John took her into his home,” and we took her into the home of our hearts. Mary Magdalene could barely have dealt with this shattering scene as her Deliverer died before her eyes when, on the morning of the first day of the week, she stood weeping outside his empty tomb. “Woman, why are you weeping?” Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote of this scene from the Gospel of John in his beautifully written book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (Ignatius Press, 2011):
“Now he calls her by name: ‘Mary!’ Once again she has to turn, and now she joyfully recognizes the risen Lord whom she addresses as ‘Rabboni,’ meaning ‘teacher.’ She wants to touch him, to hold him, but the Lord says to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17). This surprises us…. The earlier way of relating to the earthly Jesus is no longer possible.”
Hippolytus of Rome, a Third Century Father of the Church, called Mary Magdalene an “apostle to the Apostles.” Then in the Sixth Century, Pope Gregory the Great merged Mary Magdalene with the unnamed “sinful woman” who anointed Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (7:37), and with Mary of Bethany who anointed him in the Gospel of John (12:3). This set in motion any number of conspiracy theories and unfounded legends about Jesus and Mary Magdalene that had no basis in fact.
The revisionist history in popular books like The Da Vinci Code, and other novels by New Hampshire author Dan Brown, was contingent upon Mary Magdalene and these two other women being one and the same. The Gospel provides no evidence to support this, a fact the Church now accepts and promotes. This faithful and courageous woman at the Empty Tomb was rescued not only from her demons, but from the distortions of history.
“While up to the moment of Jesus’ death, the suffering Lord had been surrounded by nothing but mockery and cruelty, the Passion Narratives end on a conciliatory note, which leads into the burial and the Resurrection. The faithful women are there…. Gazing upon the Pierced One and suffering with him have now become a fount of purification. The transforming power of Jesus’ Passion has begun.”