He is Crucified
Fifth Sorrowful Mystery
The Crucifixion
The Sacrifice of Infinite Worth, Offered Once for All
The death and Crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ is the fifth and final Sorrowful Mystery. After He agonized over the coming trials, He was scourged and viciously bled, then crowned with thorns, and finally forced to carry His cross the long way to the place of execution, where He willingly offered Himself as a sin-offering in accordance with the Mosaic and Levitical Law.
The Law required sacrifice so that Israel might offer proper worship to the Lord, and the sacrifices were measures of repentance and restitution for violations of the Law. But the nature of those sacrifices was limited in how far they could remit sin. To see why, we have to weigh the offense.
Sin is committed by finite creatures, beings bounded in time and limited in nature. Yet the gravity of an offense is measured not only by who commits it but by the dignity of the one offended, and the One offended by sin is God, who is infinite. So the offense against His infinite majesty carries an infinite weight, and no finite creature, offering only finite repentance, can make it good. The debt outruns every payer.
Here St. Thomas is careful, and his care is worth keeping. Sin is not infinite in every respect; it is a finite act by a finite creature. It is infinite in gravity, by reason of the infinite majesty of the God against whom it is committed. This is why full satisfaction lay beyond any mere man, and why it was fitting that satisfaction be made by one who was both.
So the Word of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, came down and assumed a human nature alongside His infinitely divine Nature. As man He could stand in our place and offer; as God His offering carried infinite worth. Jesus Christ offered Himself, a sacrifice of infinite value, to the God who is infinite, and the debt was paid in full.
This is what Christ means when He says, "It is finished" (John 19:30). It is not a cry of defeat but the announcement of a mission completed: the all-sufficient offering to the Father has been made, once and for all.
Recall the four cups of the Passover from the Institution of the Eucharist. In the upper room Christ stopped at the third cup and said He would not drink of the fruit of the vine again until the Kingdom. The fourth cup, the cup that ends the Passover, He left undrunk there.
He takes it up here. "I thirst," He says, and they lift the sponge of sour wine to His lips, and having received it He says, "It is finished." The Passover He began at the Supper is completed on the Cross. The Last Supper and Calvary are one sacrifice, and this is its final cup.
With the why in view, the theological necessity rather than the political causation, we can look at the how. Returning to the Memoire sur les Instruments de la Passion by Charles Rohault de Fleury, we find his investigation into the relics of the Crucifixion, and in particular the nails held to have fixed Christ to the Cross.
In book two, chapter 1 of the Monseigneur's work, the 17th planche (plate) depicts the nails kept as relics, as does plate 16. Two kinds of nail appear: the larger, said to be those that held the crucified to the Cross, and the smaller, said to have held the Cross together. The larger nail measures 51.4 cm, roughly 20 inches. Each would have been driven through the hands of the overextended arms and then bent slightly on the far side to keep it from slipping back through the wood. The tool shown in the middle plate is held to be the instrument that pulled the limbs to the point where they could be nailed.
The fruit of this mystery is perseverance unto salvation. Christ persevered through the whole of His Passion, refusing at every step to set down the burden He could have set down at any moment, and by that perseverance He won our salvation. As we meditate on His Crucifixion, we ask for the grace to persevere in our own trials to the end, that we may share in the salvation He purchased for us at so great a price.
Pray each verse, then the Ave Maria, letting St. John's account of the Crucifixion carry the decade. (Scripture here follows the RSV-2CE.)
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