Schola Christi - The Everyday Meditations of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman - The Mental Sufferings of Christ

Schola Christi, The Oratory Lecture Series and Homilies from The Pittsburgh Oratory

In this brief meditation, Newman draws us into mind and heart of Christ as our Lord enters into His Passion. In His embrace of our humanity, Christ also embraces the mental anguish and darkness of the poverty of our sin. He freely surrenders to His fate in loving obedience. Satan seizes his opportunity and Christ is afflicted not only with the weight of impending death that He has foretold all along but with the betrayal love by those closest to Him. The Evil One darkens the hearts of all of His apostles making them murmur amongst themselves about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom. They maneuver for position not realizing that they are being manipulated by the great father of lies. One directly betrays Him but all with their egos heavily weighted with pride would begin to abandon Him in His time of need.

One alone stands among them who sees the Lord's anguish and seeks to sooth it. In a lavish gesture she pours out her precious ointment; both soothing his brow and pointing to the incomprehensible Love that will allow itself to be broken and poured out upon the Cross. Yet this tender moment is interrupted by harsh and piercing words of the traitor who can only see such love and generosity as a waste. Mercy would not have extended to Him even smallest act of tenderness. The Master is rebuked by the disciple.

It is a sad truth that those closest to Christ frequently betray Him the most. The ingratitude of those called "friends" always pierces the deepest. Such ingratitude, Newman tells us, is a daily occurrence and Christ who has taken on our humanity feels it in its fullness. We who slake our thirst for love take up the Chalice of His blood and likewise receive His body often with no greater consciousness of the full measure of malice we return simply through our indifference.

After all his discourses were consummated (Matt. 26), fully finished, and brought to an end, he said: The Son of Man will be betrayed to crucifixion. As an army puts itself in battle array, as sailors, before an action, clear the decks, as dying men make their will and then turn to God, so, though our Lord could never cease to speak good words, did he sum up and complete his teaching and then commence his Passion. Then he removed by his own act the prohibition that kept Satan from him and opened the door to the agitations of his human heart, as a soldier, who is to suffer death, may drop his handkerchief himself. At once Satan came on and seized upon his brief hour.

An evil temper of murmuring and criticism is spread among the disciples. One was the source of it, but it seems to have been spread. The thought of his death was before him, and he was thinking of it and his burial after it. A woman came and anointed his sacred head. The action spread a soothing tender feeling over his pure soul. It was a mute token of sympathy, and the whole house was filled with it. It was rudely broken by the harsh voice of the traitor, now for the first time giving utterance to his secret heartlessness and malice: Ut quid perditio haec? “To what purpose is this waste?” (Matt. 26:8) — the unjust steward with his impious economy making up for his own private thefts by grudging honor to his Master. Thus in the midst of the sweet calm harmony of that feast at Bethany, there comes a jar and discord; all is wrong: sour discontent and distrust are spreading, for the Devil is abroad.

Judas, having once shown what he was, lost no time in carrying out his malice. He went to the chief priests and bargained with them to betray his Lord for a price. Our Lord saw all that took place within him. He saw Satan knocking at his heart, and admitted there, and made an honored and beloved guest and an intimate. He saw him go to the priests and heard the conversation between them. He had seen it by his foreknowledge all the time Judas had been about him and when he chose him. What we know feebly about something to happen affects us far more vividly and very differently when it actually takes place. Our Lord had at length felt, and suffered himself to feel, the cruelty of the ingratitude of which he was the sport and victim. He had treated Judas as one of his most familiar friends. He had shown marks of the closest intimacy; he had made him the purse-keeper of himself and his followers. He had given him the power of working miracles. He had admitted him to a knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He had sent him out to preach and made him one of his own special representatives, so that the Master was judged by the conduct of his servant.

A heathen, when smitten by a friend, said, “Et tu, Brute!” What desolation is in the sense of ingratitude! God, who is met with ingratitude daily, cannot by his nature feel it. He took a human heart, so that he might feel it in its fullness. And now, O my God, though in heaven, do you not feel my ingratitude toward you?

Newman, St. John Henry. Everyday Meditations