Gospel according to Saint Matthew, commented on verse by verse

Chapter 27

27, 1-2. Parallel. Mark. 15, 1; Luke. 23, 1; John 18, 29.

Mt27.¹ Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people held a council against Jesus to put him to death. – From the morning. The narrative had been interrupted by the insertion of St. Peter's denial: the story picks up the thread that was momentarily broken. So, very early in the morning, says St. Mark, the Sanhedrin members met again "against Jesus." Their night session had gone on very late, and yet, at the first light of day, they were already up to complete their work of revenge. They held a council. These words indicate a new official assembly, as most commentators agree. Only Luke has preserved the details (22:66-71). Moreover, it was brief and held almost entirely as a formality. But it was deemed necessary to maintain appearances. Indeed, it was contrary to Jewish law to conduct important matters during the night (Sanhedrin 4:1), that is, between the evening and morning sacrifices. Now, the trial proceedings and the condemnation of Jesus had taken place entirely during this interval. This irregularity had to be rectified, for fear of exposing themselves to awkward protests. To kill him ; cf. 26, 4-59. «Let us take heed. This is not a question of revising the sentence pronounced the day before. Jesus is condemned, irrevocably condemned. It is solely a question of delivering him to death with legal forms and apparatus capable of imposing authority»; Lémann, Valeur de l'Assemblée, etc., p. 91. Above all, in this second session, the aim is to consider the means of carrying out the sentence that was previously pronounced. They seek the grievances that can be presented to Pilate, they wonder what the best way is to formulate the accusation in order to force the Roman governor to condemn Jesus in turn.

Mt27.² And, having bound him, they led him away and handed him over to the governor Pontius Pilate. – And having bound him. Our Lord had been chained from the very first moment of his arrest (cf. John 18:12); but his chains or bonds were probably removed during his various interrogations. They were put back on for added security when he was taken from Caiaphas's palace to the praetorium. they handed him over to Pontius PilatePontius Pilate, that cowardly magistrate who had such a great influence on the fatal outcome of Jesus' trial, had governed Judea and Jerusalem since the year 26 in the name of the Emperor Tiberius and under the authority of the proconsul of the province of SyriaThe title attributed to him by our two Latin and Greek texts is not entirely accurate: the true nature of his functions was expressed in official language by the word "procurator." Cf. Tacitus, Annals 15.44: "This name comes to them from Christ, who, under Tiberius, was delivered to torture by the procurator Pontius Pilate." He was the sixth procurator of Judea. His administration lasted a full ten years (26-36), much to the annoyance of the Jews, whom he constantly mistreated during this long period. Hostile to their institutions and their religion, he often overstepped his authority against them, to the point of openly violating the liberties that Rome had granted them after the conquest. Thus, he did not hesitate to bring into Jerusalem and hang on the walls of his palace shields bearing the names of several pagan deities; Philo, ad Caium, § 38. On another occasion, he confiscated the sacred money that came from the redemption of certain vows and used it to build an aqueduct; cf. Flavius Josephus, The War Jews 2:9:4. These arbitrary acts and others like them (cf. Luke 13:1; Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 13:3:1) stirred up insurrectionary movements which he ruthlessly drowned in blood. But we will see later (note to verse 26) that he himself ended up becoming a victim of his reckless severity. – We must, in the meantime, investigate the reason why the members of the Sanhedrin, after condemning Our Lord Jesus Christ, led him to the Roman governor. The expression used by the Evangelist is significant; “They handed him over”—this is precisely the phrase the Savior had once used when prophesying this circumstance of his Passion: “The Son of Man,” he had said, “will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, who will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles” (Matthew 20:18-19 and parallels). Jesus is brought to Pilate to be handed over, to be abandoned into his hands like a criminal destined to die. But why do they not carry out their own sentence? Nothing less than dire necessity was required to bring these proud priests and teachers to implore the assistance of a Roman magistrate, and especially of a Roman like Pilate. If they submit their judgment to him, it is because they are incapable of carrying it out without Roman intervention. They admit it explicitly in the Gospel of John: “We are not permitted to put anyone to death” (John 18:31). Indeed, we know from history that for many years Rome had deprived the Jews of the right of life and death, in other words, the “right of the sword.” The Sanhedrin had retained the paltry power to pronounce death sentences; but the Romans had reserved for themselves the right to review the sentence and carry it out. This is why we find the Councilors in the Praetorian Guard. They came en masse following their victim, hoping to impress Pilate with their sheer number. The early hour they chose also lent their approach the air of an urgent and extremely serious matter. The procurator usually resided for most of the year in Caesarea in Palestine, on the coast. But, at the time of the festivals, he would typically come to Jerusalem for a while, with additional troops, to be better able to suppress the riots that almost always broke out then due to Jewish fanaticism. Herod's palace, located west of the city, served as his residence in these circumstances. Cf. Flavius Josephus, The War Jews 2:14, 8; Philo, ad Caium, 38. Nevertheless, that year he must have settled in the Antonia citadel, northwest of the temple, since it is in this place that an ancient tradition places the scenes of the scourging and the "Ecce Homo." It was therefore there that Jesus was taken. To get there, he had to cross, amidst the insults of the crowd, a considerable part of the city, the house of the high priest being located, in all likelihood, near the summit of Mount Zion. Cf. Ancessi, Geographical Atlas, plate 17.

Mt27.³ Then Judas, who had betrayed him, seeing that he was condemned, was moved with repentance, and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the Chief Priests and the Elders, – «Then,» meaning when the Sanhedrin, after the two sessions in which it had officially decreed the death of Jesus, set out to take its victim to the Roman governor. Who had betrayed him? : a sinister formula added to Judas's name to stigmatize him. Seeing that he was condemned. The traitor understands that Jesus is condemned without recourse and that his death is seriously desired. What does this mean? Did he not know, in betraying him, that things would come to this extreme? Dom Calmet and other exegetes have thought so. But this seems unlikely. It is better, to explain the kind of stupefaction that then seizes Judas, to turn to psychology. Often it happens that great criminals only fully grasp the enormity of their crimes after they have committed them; Tacitus already affirmed this, Annals 14.10: "It was when Nero had committed the crime that he understood its magnitude." It is in this sense that Judas is filled with horror at the condemnation of Jesus, even though he had foreseen and facilitated it. – It is also in this sense that he repents: Driven by repentance. Let us consider on this a very apt reflection by John Chrysostom, Hom. 85 in Matth.: «The devil always begins with small things, and imperceptibly leads men to the greatest crimes, from which he then plunges them into despair, which is the culmination of all others. For he who despairs after his crime will be more damned for his despair than for the crime that caused it.» Moreover, the ancient authors rightly compared Judas’s penance to that of Cain: like that of the first fratricide, it undoubtedly consisted of a profound feeling of pain and fear; but divine love and hope were absent from it. Cf. Thom. Aq. Comm. In hl. The Greek text expresses the wish that what has been done had not been done, a wish mingled with regret and even remorse, but without any real change of heart, without serious repentance. St. Peter had repented in the true way; Judas, on the contrary, only has a false contrition that increases his sin far from diminishing it. – The evangelist, however, notes a striking sign of the remorse that consumed him: He returned the thirty pieces of silver. In hatred of the crime he had committed, he freely deprived himself of the horrible gain his betrayal had brought him. Perhaps he flattered himself that, by returning the money and declaring Jesus's complete innocence, he would obtain his release.

Mt27.⁴ saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." They replied, "What is that to us? That's your problem."« – I have sinned. He openly confesses his iniquity, the full extent of which he then indicates by adding: by delivering innocent blood. To deliver innocent blood is a Hebraism meaning: to deliver an innocent man to one's enemies, whom one will then have killed in the most unjust way. Judas, therefore, fully understood, as we stated above, the almost infallible result of his betrayal. – The testimony he now bears to Jesus is very strong: the one who proclaims the perfect innocence of the Savior is a disciple who lived in close proximity to him for several years and studied him closely with hostile feelings. What does it matter to us? «What business is it of ours?» the chief priests and elders coldly replied. All their malice shines through in these words: it becomes increasingly clear that they wanted to get rid of Jesus at any cost. They condemned him not because he is guilty, but because they hate him. His innocence, belatedly attested to by their accomplice, is of little concern to them. They added ironically: “That’s your business. If you have sinned, see how you can make amends; but it doesn’t concern us at all.” How right Bengel is to say, Gnomon in hl: “Those who acted as joint heirs but deviated are the impious. Those who did not act as joint heirs but later repented are the pious.”.

Mt27.⁵ Then, having thrown the silver coins into the Sanctuary, he withdrew and went and hanged himself. – Having thrown away the silver coins. The priests' brutal response filled Judas with despair. He began by throwing into the temple, as evidence against them and to break the infamous contract, the thirty pieces of silver that had caused his downfall. In the temple. It is true that access to the sacred precinct was reserved exclusively for priests; but laypeople could enter the vestibule of the temple, and it was there, no doubt, that Judas threw the thirty pieces of silver. It is also possible, as some reputable authors conjecture, that the traitor, in a desperate act, invaded the Holy Place to throw the thirty pieces of silver into it. Then he left, probably outside the city, and ended his life in a shameful and criminal manner. He hanged himself. And yet, attempts have sometimes been made to give the verb a figurative meaning. Grotius, Hammond, Perizonius (De Morte Judae, Lugd. Bat. 1702), etc., translate it as "to die of grief, to be consumed by despair": but what is the point of such an arbitrary interpretation to give Judas an honorable death that he did not have? On the other hand, Origen and Lightfoot, though in very different ways, indulge in all the flights of fancy of a fervent imagination when they depict, the former (Command in Matthew 11:1), Judas rushing by voluntary death into the realm of the dead to precede his Master, throw himself at his feet, and implore his mercy; the latter, the devil seizing the traitor as he left the temple, lifting him into the air, and throwing him to the ground after strangling him. Cf. Horace and Talmudic texts in Matthew 11:1. The reality was neither so beautiful nor so dreadful, although it still contained enough horrors. The details cited by St. Peter in the discourse we mentioned above do not contradict the Gospel account in any way. Several rationalists (cf. K. Hase, Leben Jesu, p. 165) do not hesitate to acknowledge this. The entire difference lies in the different perspectives adopted by the two narrators. While St. Matthew places greater emphasis on Judas's personal actions, the Prince of the Apostles primarily notes the role of Providence, which allowed a horrific circumstance to be added to the traitor's death.

Mt27.⁶ But the chief priests gathered up the money and said, "It is not permitted to put it into the sacred treasury, since it is blood money."« Death accompanied Judas's heinous betrayal in every way: the death of the traitor himself; the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and finally, the purchase of a burial ground for the dead. The evangelist first shows us the embarrassment of the chief priests when they found the thirty pieces of silver that the traitor had thrown away before his suicide. These men, who had unhesitatingly dipped their hands in the blood of Jesus, were suddenly seized with scruples: "You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!" (23:24). The "treasury" here refers to the temple treasury, made up of sums offered by the piety of the faithful for the upkeep of worship. God had expressly forbidden the inclusion in this treasury of money from sources that were impure in themselves, or considered impure by the Jews. Cf. Deuteronomy 23:18; Sanhedrin f. 112. The priests argue and judge that it is not appropriate to put into the sacred treasury what they rightly call the blood price. The thirty pieces of silver were, so to speak, entirely stained with the blood they had been used to buy.

Mt27.⁷ And, after consulting among themselves, they used this money to buy the Potter's field for the burial of strangers. They therefore held a council to deliberate on the use to be made of this money. Their meeting probably did not take place that very day, as it occupied them with many other matters; but rather the following day, or shortly after the Savior's death. It is likely that the potter had largely exhausted the clay in that field: this is why a plot of land that had become practically useless could be acquired at a low price. The field paid for with Judas's thirty pieces of silver would thus serve as the burial ground for foreigners. The priests believed they were thereby performing a pious work, worthy of a sum that was doubly sacred in their eyes. By the word "foreigners" should be understood not the pagans, or at least not exclusively the pagans, but above all the Jews of the diaspora who might die in Jerusalem during the festivals or at other times.

Mt27.⁸ That is why this field is still called the Field of Blood today. – That's why because this cemetery had been bought with the price of Jesus' blood. Did the name come directly from the chief priests? Or was it one of those popular names by which the multitude so readily characterizes certain acts? It is difficult to determine, although the second hypothesis seems to us the most likely; cf. Acts of the Apostles 1, 18-19. – Haceldama, more precisely Hakal-Dema, which in Aramaic means "field of blood." According to St. Matthew, the blood was that of Jesus, leading St. John Chrysostom to say: "They bought a field for the burial of foreigners, which was to be a manifest proof and an eternal monument of their betrayal. For the very name of this field is like a resounding voice that proclaims everywhere the crime they committed," Hom. 85 in Matth. According to St. Peter, Acts of the ApostlesThis would be Judas's name, since it was in the potter's field that the traitor's suicide and the horrific shedding of his blood supposedly took place. But nothing prevents the two circumstances combined from having contributed to the formation of the name Haceldama. To this day ...until the time of the composition of the first Gospel. The use of this formula clearly implies that a considerable amount of time elapsed between the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the appearance of the account in St. Matthew. Pilgrims visiting Jerusalem have been shown, since the time of St. Jerome (cf. Onomasticon, sv. Acheldama), the sinister Field of Blood, on a narrow plateau overlooking the Hinnom Valley, near the point where it joins the Kidron Valley. (cf. R. Riess, Bibelatlas, pl. 6). There, one sees a half-ruined building that must once have served as a charnel house. Its Arabic name is Hak-ed-damm. It is surrounded by tombs and burial caves, but it itself ceased to be a burial site in the 18th century. Its terrain is Cretaceous: for a long time in the Middle Ages, it was believed to have the property of rapidly burning bodies; this is why considerable quantities of it were brought from afar. The Pisans thus created their Campo Santo. Reliable travelers attest that there are quite large quantities of clay near the Field of Blood, from which people still come to collect it. This feature would confirm the authenticity of the place designated by tradition.

Mt27.⁹ Then was fulfilled the word of the prophet Jeremiah: «They received thirty pieces of silver, the price of him whose value the children of Israel had determined, ¹⁰ and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord commanded me.» – In the use made by the princes of the priests of the thirty pieces of silver that had been given to Judas, St. Matthew sees the fulfillment of an important prophecy of the Old Testament, and he points it out, in accordance with his purpose, to show that Jesus is truly the Christ promised to the Jews. This was what had been predicted by the prophet Jeremiah Nothing in the writings of Jeremiah resembles the passage quoted by St. Matthew, but Zechariah has a few lines that are almost identical to those the evangelist attributes to Jeremiah; cf. Zechariah 11:12-13. How can this be explained? St. Matthew, taking a liberty of which we find more than one example among the ancient Jewish writers, may have combined, amalgamated several prophetic passages, drawn partly from Jeremiah, partly from Zechariah, and given the resulting text the name of the more famous of the two prophets. Several passages in Jeremiah, in particular 19:1-2 and ff., 32:6-15, lend themselves to such a combination. The prophet of Anathoth speaks there of a field, even a potter's field located in the Valley of Hinnom, which the Lord commanded to be bought. In Zechariah's prophecy, there is no mention of a field; but the thirty pieces of silver are clearly specified. Why should St. Matthew, enlightened by the Holy Spirit and considering the ancient prophecies in the brilliant light of the story of Jesus, not have composed a mixture that better manifested the thought of the Prophets? Moreover, as we have seen, from the very first pages of his Gospel (cf. 2:23 and the commentary; see also Mark 1:2:3 and the explanation), he extracts from all the prophets combined a text that none of them, taken individually, had written: "He will be called a Nazarene." He provides a similar, though less extraordinary, summary on his last page. But since his quotation relates more closely to the text of Zechariah, we will refer more specifically to the words of that prophet to explain it. In its twelfth chapter, Zechariah acts in God's name and symbolically represents the ingratitude of the Jewish nation toward its God. He is the shepherd of a flock representing Israel; weary of the troubles his sheep cause him, he asks for his due and then retires. He is offered the paltry sum of thirty pieces of silver; but God commands him to throw this money into the Temple. "And I took hold of the thirty pieces of silver," he recounts, according to the Hebrew text. God said to him, "Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which they valued me." He immediately obeyed this command: "And I threw it to the potter in the house of the Lord." According to St. Matthew, the thirty pieces of silver foreshadowed the sum for which Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, was betrayed to his enemies. It was at this paltry price that he was charged by the chief priests, just as Zechariah, God's representative, had been before him. The evangelist quotes freely, in the manner of the Targums, in order to make the application more readily apparent. Hence the changes in persons, the insertion of new words, and the other modifications he introduces into the prophetic text. But he does not alter the substance of the prediction. In the potter's field. It was Jeremiah who attributed this idea to St. Matthew, at least in its entirety. In Zechariah, we commonly read "to the potter." But since Jeremiah had been charged by the Lord to buy a potter's field—which was clearly symbolic—the evangelist linked this action to Zechariah's, thus obtaining a typical paraphrase that coincides exactly with the story of Jesus. Thanks to St. Matthew, we can therefore better understand how ancient prophecies, after having been fulfilled once in a distant past, obtained at the time of the Savior's Passion a second fulfillment, which was in reality the principal one, although it had remained hidden until then in the mysterious plans of Providence.

27, 11-26. Parallel. Mark. 16, 2-15; Luke. 23, 2-5, 13-15; John 18, 29-19, 1.

Mt27.¹¹ Jesus appeared before the governor, and the governor questioned him, saying, «Are you the king of the Jews?» Jesus answered him, «You say so.»– There is the gentle and innocent victim standing before a new tribunal and a new judge. Pilate will be no less unjust than Caiaphas. At least he is impartial against Jesus; on the contrary, he takes a keen interest in his fate and steers the proceedings in a direction favorable to the accused. the governor questioned himSince the procurator had to confirm or overturn the Sanhedrin's sentence, according to Roman law, he was required to interrogate Jesus in turn. Are you the king of the Jews? This question, which he first poses to him according to the account of St. Matthew, becomes clearer when one has read the versions of St. Luke and St. John. Pilate had first asked the Sanhedrin about the charges they were bringing against the Savior, and they had accused him of setting up a throne against Caesar's and of calling himself King of the Jews. Only then did the governor directly question Jesus to find out if he was indeed the King of the Jews. You say soThat is to say: Yes, I am. Cf. 26:64. Our Lord proclaims his kingship before Pilate, just as he had proclaimed his messianic dignity before the Sanhedrin. It is doubtless to this courageous testimony that St. Paul alludes in his First Letter to Timothy6:13. Jesus only answered in this way after exchanging several sentences with Pilate and explaining to him the entirely spiritual nature of his kingdom. Cf. John 18:33-37.

Mt27.¹² But he did not respond to the accusations of the Princes of the Priests and the Elders. The members of the Sanhedrin interrupted him loudly to protest his claims and to level the most violent and unjust accusations against him. To them, Jesus resumed his majestic demeanor from the night (cf. 26:63). The statements he had made to the governor were sufficient; he needed no further defense. Now that his hour had come, it would be beneath him to engage in a struggle with such impassioned enemies. «Cursed, he does not curse; tormented, he does not threaten; but he gives himself up to him who judges him unjustly» (1 Peter 2:23).

Mt27.¹³ Then Pilate said to him, "Do you not hear how many things they are accusing you of?"« Pilate was struck by this noble silence. Never before in his long administration had he encountered such a noble defendant. Moved with pity, he could not suppress an exclamation full of sympathy for Jesus. “Do you not see,” he asked him, “the damning evidence they are bringing against you?” They accused him, in fact, of inciting the Jews to revolt throughout Palestine, cf. Luke 235. Pilate, who had understood his innocence from the first moment (cf. Luke, ibid. v. 4), would like to see him reduce to nothing with a few words the accusations of the Sanhedrin.

Mt27.¹⁴ But he did not answer any of his grievances, so the governor was greatly astonished.– Jesus remained silent. Yes, it would have been easy for him to defend and justify himself: but hadn't he promised to die for the salvation of mankind? To encourage himself in this moment of anguish, he thought of the sublime lines with which, six hundred years earlier, Isaiah had described his Passion: “He was willingly sacrificed; therefore he did not open his mouth. Like a sheep led to the slaughter, like a lamb before its shearer, he was silent, he did not open his mouth.” Isaiah 53, 7. – The governor was very surprised by this. Pilate's astonishment turns to admiration: he admires this dignity, this composure, this disregard for death. Why, then, did the procurator, heeding the voice of his conscience, not immediately release Jesus? We will understand this better by studying the parallel passage in St. John: He fears displeasing these Jews, whom he nevertheless despises, and being accused by them before Caesar of not having suppressed the audacious schemes of a man who wanted to become king of Jerusalem. But, learning then that Jesus was a Galilean, he thinks he can cleverly rid himself of this delicate matter by having it decided by Herod, who was at that moment in the capital; cf. Luke 23:6-12. The expedient fails; an hour or two later, we find Jesus in the praetorium.

Mt27.¹⁵ At each Easter festival, the governor used to release a prisoner, the one the crowd demanded. Pilate, a shrewd and cunning man, takes another approach to absolve himself of all responsibility in the trial of Jesus. He is loath to condemn the accused; he doesn't dare release him of his own accord and thus directly confront the supreme Jewish court. He suddenly remembers a custom which, he thinks, will completely extricate him from this predicament. holiday day This obviously refers to Passover, according to the context; cf. John 18:39. It was the preeminent festival of Judaism. It was customary: according to St. Luke, "he was obliged to": This was therefore not merely an ancient custom, but a real right, the exercise of which the Jews could demand. Was it a privilege granted to them by the Romans after the conquest to give themselves an air of generosity? Rosenmüller, Friedlieb, M. Fouard, and other exegetes have thought so. But most commentators more plausibly suppose that it was a custom established very early on by the Jews themselves, in remembrance of their deliverance from Egyptian rule, and simply maintained by the Romans. This is evident from the words Pilate addressed to the people, according to the version in John 18:39: «It is the custom that at the Passover festival I release someone to you.» The governor expressly gives the custom a Jewish origin. However, similar practices existed among the pagans; in Rome, slaves were freed from their chains for the festival of Lectisternia, and in Greece, prisoners themselves could take part in the festivities celebrated in honor of Bacchus. The one the people were asking for. It was the crowd that chose. But, in the present circumstance, Pilate vowed to direct the choice in such a way that Jesus could benefit from the privilege to the exclusion of any other captive.

Mt27.¹⁶ Now they had a famous prisoner at that time, named Barabbas.The «famous» prisoner whom Pilate wanted to pit against Jesus was one of the bandits who were then ravaging Palestine: he had committed murder. Cf. Luke 23:19; John 18:40. His name, Barabbas, is mentioned by all four evangelists. Modern Hebraists disagree on the etymology of this name, common among Jews at the time, but which is written in four different ways in Greek manuscripts. Some explain it as Bar-rabba, son of the teacher; others as Bar-rabbân, son of our teacher; and still others as Bar-abba, son of the father. St. Jerome already accepted, and quite rightly, we believe, this last interpretation, in Psalm 108, cf. Theophyl. in hl. It is possible, however, that Abba was a proper name. Barabbas would then be one of those patronymic appellations so common among the Semites, meaning "son of Abba." A large number of relatively recent Greek manuscripts, corroborated by the Armenian version, call Jesus Barabbas, either here or in verse 47, the criminal whom Pilate opposed to the Savior. This reading, which Origen claims to have sometimes encountered, has been adopted by several exegetes, such as Lachmann, Fritzsche, and Tischendorf. But most commentators rightly reject it: if it were authentic, how could one explain its omission in the ancient manuscripts and the most important versions?

Mt27.¹⁷ Pilate, having summoned the people, said to him, «Which one do you want me to deliver to you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?» – The governor, through a skillful diversion, presents the crowd gathered in front of the praetorium since the beginning of the proceedings with a choice between this man and Jesus. Barabbas or Jesus? What a contrast! He has no doubt that Jesus will be chosen immediately. The most basic decency will compel the people to save Our Lord rather than a vile scoundrel. Who is called Christ. Pilate undoubtedly emphasized these words. "Beware, he may be your Messiah. Would you let him die?" The procurator supposes, following the thought of St. John Chrysostom, that if they refuse to absolve him as innocent, they will at least consent to pardon him out of honor for the Easter solemnity.

Mt27.¹⁸ Because he knew that it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over. – It had been easy for an experienced judge like Pilate to guess the true motive that drove the Sanhedrin to demand the condemnation of Jesus. The passion with which they had accused him, the constant repetition of the same charges, without serious proof; on the other hand, the attitude, the language and the physiognomy of the Savior, which indicated nothing less than a criminal, perhaps also the information that Pilate may have received either while Jesus was being taken to Herod, or before, all had made him understand that the prosecution had been brought about by the lowest of all motives.

Mt27.¹⁹ While he was sitting on his tribunal, his wife sent word to him: "Let there be nothing between you and that righteous man, for I have been greatly troubled today in a dream because of him."«The governor had just entrusted the task of absolving Jesus to the crowd; it was in this sense that he had ostentatiously instructed them to guide their choice. He had even taken his place on the tribunal and sat on the curule chair that dominated the platform (Gabbatha, cf. John 19:13) to confirm the people's vote and pronounce, according to all Roman formalities, a sentence of acquittal in favor of Jesus, when a remarkable incident occurred, which only strengthened his resolve to set Our Lord free. His wife sent word to himOriginally, Roman magistrates sent to the provinces were strictly forbidden from taking their wives with them. This law was repealed by Tiberius, but it was established that governors and other officials would be responsible for the conduct of their wives, especially for any intrigues they might engage in; cf. Tacitus, Annals 3, 33-34. It is therefore not surprising to find Claudia Procula, or simply Procla, as tradition calls her (cf. Nicephorus, Ecclesiastical History 1, 30), with Pilate, her husband, in Judea and even in Jerusalem. This woman suddenly intervenes in a touching way in the trial of Jesus, as evidenced by the urgent message she sends to the procurator. Her words are clear: "Do not condemn this righteous man," she has a servant say. "This righteous man": it is a beautiful name she gives to Jesus. Perhaps she knew of the Savior by hearsay, for his reputation had steadily grown since the beginning of his public life. Or perhaps it was in a dream that she had been wonderfully enlightened about the Savior's character. Indeed, although several modern authors have regarded Pilate's wife's dream as a purely natural phenomenon, produced by the events of the previous night, which she supposedly learned before falling asleep, it seems impossible to us not to see in it, following the Fathers and the majority of exegetes, a true supernatural prodigy. However, ecclesiastical writers do not all share the same view of the nature of this incident. For example, St. Ignatius of Antioch... letter to the Philippines c. 5, Bede the Venerable, St. Bernard, the author of the poem Heliand) who attribute it to the devil. Satan, they say, wanted to prevent the work of Redemption from being complete by arousing strong and powerful sympathies in Jesus. Most, however, in particular Origen, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, etc., suppose, quite rightly, a completely heavenly origin for the governor's wife's dream. Faced with the false testimonies of men, we see heaven constantly occupied in providing the Savior with all the assistance compatible with divine decrees, and above all in attesting to his innocence and holiness. At that moment, Judaism was neither capable nor worthy of receiving a higher revelation. In the end, as at the beginning of Christ's life, the divine warnings are addressed to strangers. Cf. St. Hilary, Comm. in hl – I suffered a lot. These words indicate that the details of the dream had taken on a frightening and terrible character; but for fear of falling into arbitrariness, we prefer to refrain from any conjecture on this subject. The pagans attached very great importance to dreams, which they believed came directly from Zeus, according to the expression of old Homer. Today, Therefore, in the second part of the night. It was barely 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning. Such was the message delivered to Pilate by his wife. It reveals, in the one who conveyed it, not only a passing interest in Our Lord, but also a profoundly religious soul, well above the narrow prejudices of paganism. The historian Josephus tells us, in The Jewish War, 20, 2, that a great number of Roman women, won over by the dogmatic and moral beauties of the Mosaic religion, had been received as proselytes. Pilate's wife, according to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (chapter 2), which often contains credible details, had many synagogues built. Why, after the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, should she not have become a Christian? A tradition dating back at least to the time of Origen (see his Hom. in Matth. 35) expressly affirms her conversion. The Greek Menology even goes so far as to place her among the Saints; cf. Calmet, Dictionn. de la Bible, under the entry Procla. In any case, we can exclaim with Origen, at the end of this interesting episode, of which St. Matthew alone has preserved the memory: «We say that Pilate’s wife is blessed, for in her dream she suffered greatly for Jesus» sake.”.

Mt27.²⁰ But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the people to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. – The intervention of this noble Roman woman on behalf of Jesus was not to have any more power over Pilate's heart than the testimony of Judas (cf. v. 4) had over the will of the Sanhedrin. The latter were too hardened, while he was too weak to be influenced by any testimony favorable to the divinely accused. Moreover, while grace was visibly acting upon Pilate through his wife to enable him to act as a just judge, the devil was using the chief priests and the other members of the Sanhedrin to somehow force the hand of the cowardly governor. «His wife warned him, grace enlightened him in the night, divinity prevailed,» St. Ambrose, Exp. in Luke, l. 10, c. 100. They persuaded the people. The evangelist shows them moving through the ranks of the crowd during the brief interruption of the audience caused by the incident we have just read about, and, through lies and treacherous accusations, persuading this restless people to demand freedom for Barabbas. And to kill Jesus. Choosing Barabbas meant leaving Jesus under the sentence brought against him; consequently, the Sanhedrists had no doubt that they would soon obtain from Pilate, whom they saw weakening, the authorization to execute their death sentence.

Mt27.²¹ The governor addressed them, saying, "Which of the two do you want me to release for you?" They replied, "Barabbas."« After receiving his wife's message, Pilate resumed the session, which had been briefly suspended, and reiterated his question from verse 17: "Which of these two men do you want me to release to you?" The crowd, blinded by the hateful insinuations of the priests and scribes, dared to prefer Barabbas to Jesus. "The crowd, like a pack of wild beasts following the broad road, demanded that Barabbas be released to them…" (Original Hebrew Bible).

Mt27.²² Pilate said to them, «What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ?» Pilate was visibly disappointed and disconcerted by this unexpected preference. But, immediately concealing his resentment and playing it smart, he made another attempt to persuade the crowd to release Jesus. “I grant you Barabbas’s pardon; it is your right. But what shall I do with Jesus?” This was an insinuation to the Jews that he was loath to condemn him and that he would gladly release him if they withdrew the charges against him.

Mt27.²³ They answered him, "Let him be crucified!" The governor said to them, "What evil has he done?" And they shouted all the louder, "Let him be crucified!"« – All of them, the people and the members of the Grand Council, together utter a deicidal cry: Let him be crucified. For Jesus, they do not demand simple death, but the painful, ignominious torment of the cross, to which Roman law condemned all seditious individuals who did not enjoy the rights of citizenship. Pilate replies: What harm did he do? That is to say: He has committed no crime; how then can you demand that I condemn him to death? But such timid arguments were bound to have no effect on a bloodthirsty mob. Upon hearing Pilate's final remark, the Jews began to shout with renewed rage: "Crucify him!".

Mt27.²⁴ Pilate, seeing that he was gaining nothing, but that the uproar was increasing, took water and washed his hands in front of the people, saying, «I am innocent of this righteous man’s blood; you are the ones who must answer for it.» Pilate realizes too late that he is overwhelmed. This will always be the fate of these supposedly wise politicians who imagine they can lull popular passions with dangerous concessions, without considering that the masses, becoming increasingly demanding, will soon overturn the flimsy barriers by which their violence was thought to be contained. Not only has Pilate obtained nothing in return for his ill-advised overtures, but he sees that his efforts to calm the crowd only serve to further inflame them. A real riot is to be feared. What will he do? Will he perhaps finally understand that only an act of force can snatch an innocent man from death and save himself from infamy? No. He has water brought to him, washes his hands before the people, and testifies that he had nothing to do with the torture of Jesus; Then, believing he had thus appeased his conscience and banished all injustice from his heart, he abandons the victim to the executioners who await him. He washed his hands. When a murder, the perpetrator of which remained unknown, was committed within the territory of a Jewish city, the leading inhabitants were required, according to the law (Deuteronomy 21:1-9; cf. trans. Sotah 8:6), to wash their hands beside the corpse, protesting their innocence. From this, it has been concluded that Pilate's act was an imitation of this Jewish custom (Rosenmüller, de Wette, Friedlieb, etc.). However, among the Greeks and Romans, expiatory purifications existed for involuntary homicides, which the procurator was familiar with. He therefore had nothing to borrow from the Jews. Moreover, symbolic actions of this kind are quite natural and can be found among all peoples. In front of the people. The entire assembly could see him, for he was still on his raised platform; cf. v. 19. I am innocent of the blood… Pilate explains the meaning of his action in a few words: he declares that he wants to participate in no way in the death of Jesus and declines all responsibility in this heinous affair. Like Judas (v. 4) and his wife (v. 19), Pilate bestows upon Jesus the title of righteous man, but his declaration carries far greater weight, for he makes it as Judge, from the height of his tribunal. However, in protesting the Savior's innocence, he openly accuses himself of the most revolting injustice. He may well say to the people: That's your business. (cf. verse 4 and its explanation) he nonetheless committed, before God and before history, a true judicial murder against the adorable person of Jesus. “He is permitted to wash his hands, but this will never erase his evil deeds. Even if he thinks he can remove from his limbs every trace of the righteous man’s blood, his spirit will still remain contaminated by that blood. For he who delivers Christ to death kills him,” St. Augustine, Sermon 118 on the Temporal. Indeed, adds St. Leo, Sermon 8 on the Passion, “Purified hands do not purify a contaminated soul; fingers washed with water do not expiate the crime they committed, with the soul as an accomplice.” Allow us to quote yet another admirable passage, which we borrow from a famous pastoral letter published by Bishop Pie on February 22, 1861: “For eighteen centuries, there has been a formulary in twelve articles [the Creed] that all Christian lips recite every day. In this summary of our faith, written with such concision by the apostles, appear, in addition to the three adorable names of the divine persons, the thousandfold blessed name of the woman who gave birth to the Son of God, and the thousandfold execrable name of the man who gave him death. Now, this man, thus marked with the stigma of deicide, this man thus nailed to the pillory of our creed, who is he? He is neither Herod, nor Caiaphas, nor Judas, nor any of the Jewish or Roman executioners; this man is Pontius Pilate. And that is just.” Herod, Caiaphas, Judas, and the others had their part in the crime; but ultimately, nothing would have happened without Pilate. Pilate could have saved Christ, and without Pilate, Christ could not have been put to death… Wash your hands, O Pilate. Proclaim yourself innocent of the death of Christ. As our only answer, we will say every day, and posterity will still say: I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, who was born of the Virgin Married, and who endured death and suffering under Pontius Pilate.” See, on the trial of Pilate, Dupin, Jesus before Caiaphas and Pilate, §§9 and 10. And yet, as Mr. Dupin observes, it does not appear that Pilate was a wicked man: but he was a public official, he valued his position, he was intimidated by cries that called into question his loyalty to the emperor. He feared dismissal and he yielded. Providence took its revenge on him by allowing that, a few years after the death of Jesus (AD 36), he was dismissed by the proconsul of Syria Vitellius, because of his tyrannical conduct towards the Samaritans. Cf. Josephus, Antiquities 18:4. Brought before the emperor's tribunal, he was, it is said, banished to Vienne in Gaul. Another tradition places him on the Swiss mountain near Lake Lucerne, which today bears his name: one day, to put an end to his remorse, he is said to have thrown himself into the lake. Eusebius also recounts that Pilate himself took his own life, like Judas, cf. Ecclesiastical History 2:7. Early on, an apocryphal literature formed around the name of Pilate, which the Church Fathers mention and which the pagans ridiculed, cf. Origen Celsus; Eusebius. HE 9, 5. Numerous fragments of this text still exist, which Fabricius, Thilo, and Tischendorf collected in their works under the titles "acta Pilati, epistolae duae Pilati ad Tiberium, Paradosis Pilati," etc. The Gospel of Nicodemus also deals with the same events in its first part; cf. Brunet, Les Évangiles apocryphes, 2nd ed., Paris, 1863, p. 215 ff. The basis for these legendary details would be an official report, presumably sent by Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius concerning the trial of Jesus, and mentioned by St. Justin Martyr, Apology 1, and by Tertullian, Apology c. 21.

Mt27.²⁵ And all the people said, "His blood be on us and on our children."« The crowd unhesitatingly assumes the responsibility that Pilate tries, albeit in vain, to shift from him. They cry out in unison: May his blood fall upon us… cf. 23, 35; 2 Samuel 1, 16; Jeremiah 51, 35; Acts of the Apostles 18, 6. Among the Jews, when judges pronounced a death sentence, to attest to their perfect impartiality in the proceedings, they would approach the condemned man, raise their hands above his head, and say: “Your blood be upon you.” The multitude that condemned Jesus at the instigation of the Sanhedrin, on the contrary, shouted: “His blood be upon us!” They even added: “And upon our children.” They thus wished that the full punishment for the sin, if there was sin and punishment, be inflicted upon them and the next generation. Forty years later, this horrible imprecation was fully realized. The blood of Jesus fell again in the form of the terrible plagues foretold earlier, chapter 24, by the Savior. Moreover, as St. Jerome rightly affirms, in hl: "This imprecation still weighs upon us today (...) That is why Isaiah said: when you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you, and when you multiply your prayers, I will not answer them; your hands are full of blood."

Mt27.²⁶ Then he released Barabbas to them, and after having Jesus flogged, he handed him over to be crucified. This is the consummation of the infamy to which Pilate had miserably consented. He abandons Barabbas to them, whose release they had requested, and then hands Jesus over to his own lictors to subject him to the torment of the cross. But why, beforehand, did he have the divine Master flogged? There are two main conjectures on this point. To understand them properly, one must know that, according to the Roman criminal code, flogging could be inflicted under three distinct conditions: 1) as a means of extracting a confession from the accused: this was called torture; 2) as a punishment proper, less severe than the death penalty; 3) as an integral part of the crucifixion? That being said, and since nothing in the Gospel narrative indicates that Jesus was flogged to force him to confess to alleged crimes, we can make the following hypotheses: Either his scourging was, in Pilate's intention, a form of torture that would conclude the trial and beyond which the governor would not allow himself to be drawn into the violence of the Jews; or it was merely a terrible prelude to death on the cross. Saint Jerome supports this second view when he writes: "Pilate was simply carrying out Roman law, which ordered that the one who was to be crucified be flogged first" (Comm. in hl). Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Augustine (Treatise 116) favor the first opinion. «Pilate’s sole aim was undoubtedly to appease the Jews» rage by the spectacle of his torments, to force them to declare themselves satisfied, and to prevent them from carrying out their cruelty to the point of putting him to death.« And this, we believe, is indeed the impression that emerges from the narrative of St. John, chapters 18 and 19, where we see that Pilate sought in the scourging of Our Lord only a new expedient to save him, a new means of arousing the Jews» pity. In any case, the divine Master was cruelly scourged. «Jesus is then handed over to the soldiers to be beaten; and they tear with whips this most holy body, this divine breast.« All this happened because it is written: »Many lashes are reserved for sinners» (Psalm 32:10), and this scourging delivers us from them, for Scripture says to the righteous man: “Evil shall not come near you, nor the whip near your dwelling place,” St. Jerome in hl – Flagellar. How many dreadful tortures are contained in this simple word: Horace rightly calls flagellation "a horrible punishment." The condemned man, after the upper part of his body had been stripped bare, was tied to a low column, so as to bend his back; he was thus exposed to the full force of the blows. Lictors, or failing them, soldiers, would then arm themselves with flexible rods, or sticks, or whips made of leather thongs and sometimes fitted with goads, sometimes with knucklebones or lead balls; then they would strike the unfortunate victim with all their might. Blood gushed, flesh flew in shreds; soon the victim would fall unconscious at the feet of his executioners, who nonetheless continued their brutal work. The number of blows was not limited by any law among the Romans; everything in this respect was left to the discretion of the lictors. It frequently happened that, when they stopped, exhausted, they found nothing but a horribly disfigured corpse. (See the description of a scourging in Cicero, In Verrem, 5; cf. Philo, in Flacc. § 10). Such was the torment endured by Our Lord Jesus Christ. Like a common criminal, he was bound to a small column that had been venerated in Jerusalem since the fourth century and which was later moved to Rome, to the church of Saint Praxedes (see the learned Memoir by M. Rohault de Fleury on the Instruments of the Passion, p. 264 ff.). His divine body was torn by numerous blows of the whip; his blood flowed profusely. But they remained without pity. Like wild beasts that, having tasted blood, crave it until they are satiated, they too became increasingly thirsty: crucifixion was necessary to quench their ferocious thirst. He handed it over to them. However, Pilate did not immediately consent to Jesus' crucifixion. We will see in the Gospel of John, 14:4-16, that after the scourging he still tried to save him from death. Furthermore, he did not hand him over directly to the Jews, but to the soldiers of the garrison, who alone were responsible for carrying out the sentence.

27, 27-30. Parallel. Mc. 15, 16-19; John 19, 2-3.

Mt27.²⁷ The governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. – «Was it not enough, then, that so many outrages had already been committed against the Son of God? And, since he was finally condemned to die, was it necessary to add to the injustice and severity of this sentence such bitter insults and such barbarous cruelties? It seems,» says St. Chrysostom, “that all of hell was unleashed on that sad day, and gave the signal to incite everyone against Jesus Christ. For it is no longer even the Jews, no longer the chief priests, no longer the Scribes and Pharisees, who could have hidden and particular reasons for hatred against this divine Savior; it is no longer, I say, those who persecute him; But it is Pilate's soldiers, pagans and foreigners, who make him their plaything, preparing him for the torment and ignominy of the cross with the most egregious mockery and all the inhumanities inspired by their brutal ferocity,” Bourdaloue, Exhortation on the Coronation of Jesus Christ. Immediately after the scourging, those of Pilate's soldiers who served as lictors covered Jesus with his garments and led him to the praetorium. This courtroom This designated the headquarters of Roman officials who were given military command. Since Pilate's authority was both military and civil, his residence was always and everywhere called the Praetorium. We have seen (cf. the note to verse 2) that the procurator then lived in the Antonia citadel, northwest of the Temple, which also served as barracks for his troops. The entire cohort. The barbarian soldiers, wanting to have some fun at the expense of the victim who had just been handed over to them, gathered the cohort around them, that is to say the five or six hundred men who formed the usual garrison of Jerusalem.

Mt27.²⁸ Having stripped him of his clothes, they threw a scarlet cloak over him. Then a most cruel scene unfolded. First, Jesus was stripped of his outer tunic once more; then, not a scrap of purple, as is so often repeated, but a scarlet chlamys, according to the very accurate description in St. Matthew, was thrown over his shoulders. This was the name given to a cloak made of coarse wool, dyed red (cf. Pliny, Natural History 22, 2, 3), which Roman soldiers wore over their armor. It was a square or rectangular piece of cloth in which one draped oneself in various ways. A brooch or buckle fastened it either on the left shoulder or below the neck.

Mt27.²⁹ They twisted together a crown of thorns and placed it on his head. They also put a reed in his right hand and, kneeling before him, mocked him, saying, «Hail, King of the Jews.» – We now understand the soldiers' objective. «They had heard that Jesus assumed the title of king, and to mock this kingship, which they perceived as their own, their plan was to bestow upon him, with a kind of ceremony and pomp, all the honors due to him, and to observe in his regard all the customary practices toward kings,» Bourdaloue, 11. They had already clothed the Savior in the royal mantle; now they crowned his brow. But it was a harsh diadem that Jesus had to wear. Equipped with gauntlets, the soldiers hastily wove it from a few flexible branches gathered from one of those thorny shrubs that abound in Palestine. One would like to know exactly what kind of thorns were used for this cruel purpose, but on this point, we are reduced to conjecture. The Swedish naturalist Hasselquist argued in favor of the Nabk or Nabek, whose supple branches covered in very sharp thorns were all the more suited to the soldiers' intended purpose because its dark green leaves closely resemble those of ivy: ivy being used to make triumphal crowns, the irony would have been bloody in any case. With the "Rhamnus paliurus," commonly called "Spina Christi," it would have been difficult to form a proper diadem, because its branches are not very flexible. But, as M. Rohault de Fleury explains (LC, p. 202 ff.), based on authentic relics of the Holy Crown, it could very well have been used to make a kind of thorny cap that would have covered and torn the entire head of Jesus. On his head. Grotius, contemplating in spirit the divine head of the Savior thus crowned with thorns, made a beautiful comparison: «The curse began in the thorns, Genesis 3:18, and ended in the thorns. The lily among the thorns, Song of Solomon 2:2.» A reed in his right hand. Alongside the cloak and the crown, a mock scepter was needed to complete the royal regalia. A thick, sturdy reed, probably a Cypriot reed similar to those we call Spanish rushes, served this purpose. Bending the knee. When the king had been clothed in all his regalia, the ceremony of homage took place, which was a horrific caricature of the customs prescribed in such cases. 1. The soldiers ironically genuflected before Jesus; 2. They greeted him, saying in a mocking tone: Hail, King of the Jews. He was indeed king, despite their bitter mockery.

Mt27.³⁰ They also spat in his face, and taking the reed, they struck his head with it. – 3. They spat in his face, replacing with this gross insult the kiss customary in such circumstances according to Eastern custom. 4. Snatching his reed scepter from his hands, they struck him violently on the head, driving the thorns in all directions. But though they despised, debased, and profaned the royal dignity of the God-Man as much as they could, despite themselves, and to a certain extent because of them, it was established and reinforced. Besides, did not Jesus receive their unworthy treatment with the nobility and dignity of a king? – History offers only rare examples of outrages comparable to those this vile soldiery inflicted upon Our Lord Jesus Christ, Pilate persisting in his cowardly tolerance. Dio Chrysostom, 4, p. Chapter 69 tells of a criminal condemned to death, whom Persians placed on a royal throne and heaped with insults before executing him. Philo, in Flacc. § 6, also recounts a similar but less cruel scene that took place in Alexandria shortly after the death of the Savior. The pagan inhabitants of the city took advantage of Herod Agrippa I's visit to mock him and all the Jews, of whom he was king. They seized a madman, dressed him in derisory ornaments meant to mimic the insignia of royalty, formed a royal guard for him armed with sticks instead of spears, and ironically paid him all the homage kings usually receive. They wanted to show by this display their contempt for Herod's kingship. Pilate's soldiers similarly, but with much more brutality, demonstrated their contempt for the royal authority of the Son of Man.

27, 31-34. Parallel. Mark. 15, 20-23; Luke. 23, 26-32; John 19, 16-17.

Mt27.³¹ After mocking him in this way, they took off his cloak, put his own clothes back on him, and led him away to be crucified. – John 19:4 ff. recounts the scene of the Ecce Homo, in which the procurator made a final attempt to arouse the people's compassion and obtain Jesus' release. Matthew deliberately omits this scene, moving immediately to the tragic conclusion of the Passion. He shows us the soldiers removing the cloak that had served as the Savior's purple mantle, covering him with his tunic, and leading him to Calvary. Here, then, begins the Way of the Cross, the path of which must have been so painful for Our Lord Jesus Christ after the tortures he had already endured since the previous evening. A centurion on horseback, in charge of the execution (Tacitus calls him "Exactor mortis"; Seneca: "Centurio supplicio praepositus"), leads the way. A herald follows, proclaiming the condemned man's crime. Behind him, the divine cruciarius (the classical name for those crucified) drags himself painfully, burdened with the heavy instrument of his torture: he is surrounded by the soldiers who are to fasten him to the cross and then guard him until his death. The two thieves, who have been decided to execute him along with him, follow, also carrying their crosses and accompanied by their executioners. On either side, and especially behind, a noisy crowd presses forward, heaping humiliations and insults upon Jesus.

Mt27.³² As they went out, they met a man from Cyrene named Simon, whom they compelled to carry Jesus' cross.– As they were leavingThis word cannot refer to the exit from the praetorium, since it was mentioned at the end of the preceding verse. It therefore represents, as most exegetes agree, the moment when the procession passed through the city gate leading to Golgotha. Indeed, according to Jewish law, cf. Numbers 15:35 ff.; 1 Kings 21:13; Acts of the Apostles 7, 58; similarly, according to Roman custom (cf. Cicero in Verr. 5, 66; Plautus Mil. Gl. 2, 4, 6), executions always took place outside the cities. A man from CyreneWe were leaving the walls of Jerusalem when we encountered Simon of Cyrene. His surname indicates that he was from Cyrenaica, a province on the coast of North Africa, where Ptolemy Lagos had once established, with considerable privileges, a colony of one hundred thousand Jews. (See Josephus, chapter 2:4.) Everything suggests (see Mark 15:21 and the commentary) that he was then living in Jerusalem. But it is unlikely that he was already a Christian, and that the soldiers would have imposed on him for this reason the forced labor mentioned by the evangelist, as if they wanted to take malicious pleasure in having one of the Master's disciples carry his cross (Grotius and Kuinoel). It would nevertheless be surprising if he had not later embraced Christianity. ChristianitySt. Mark, 11th, mentions his two sons as well-known Christians in Jerusalem, and ancient martyrologies count him himself among the saints (see Richard, Dic. Hist. t. 5, p. 92). They forced them.We explained above, 5.41, the origin of the verb "requisition," meaning to compel. Roman soldiers soon made its meaning known throughout the empire, and especially in Judea (cf. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.3.4), where they liked to make everyone "subject to forced labor at will." What joy for them, in the present circumstance, to make a Jew carry a burden on a solemn holiday! To carry the cross. But why did they deviate this time from the custom mentioned above, according to which it was the condemned man's duty to carry his cross to the place of execution? It would be unnatural to suppose, in these hearts that had forgotten pity, a feeling of sympathy for Jesus. If they relieved him of his burden, it was rather out of fear of seeing their victim die before reaching the summit of Calvary. It is easy to understand that Our Lord, exhausted by the sufferings of every kind that he had endured for about ten hours, lacked the strength to climb the slope of Golgotha with the cross on his shoulders. Tradition rightly speaks of his repeated falls. When the soldiers saw him at the end of his strength at the most difficult point of the path, they relieved him of his cross, and, seeing Simon of Cyrene coming to meet the procession, they assigned him the task of carrying it to Calvary. A humiliating function in itself, but glorious on this occasion: it is she who immortalized the name of the humble Cyrenaean.

Mt27.³³ Then, having arrived at the place called Golgotha, that is, the place of the Skull, – At the place called Golgotha. The true pronunciation of this word in the Aramaic language was Goulgoltha; in pure Hebrew, it would have been Goulgoleth. Its etymology is Galal, to roll; its meaning is quite well indicated in the translation given by St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. John: the location of the skullBut St. Luke is more accurate when he translates it simply as "the skull." – What was the origin of this peculiar name? Several exegetes, including St. Jerome, Bede the Venerable, Rosenmüller, Baumgarten-Crusius, Berlepsch, etc., have thought that it was given to the ground on which Our Lord was crucified, because it was the usual place for capital executions in Jerusalem. The objections rightly raised against them are: 1) that the ancients did not have, as we do, fixed locations for executing criminals; they chose one place or another, depending on the circumstances; 2) that, if their opinion were correct, the evangelists would have used the plural, and not "the place of the skull" in the singular. St. Cyril of Jerusalem already proposed another, much more natural opinion, which is adopted today by most commentators. The name Golgotha, or Calvary, as we say according to the Vulgate, simply derives from the shape of the rock that once stood on the site of the Savior's death. There was once a third opinion, noted by several Fathers (cf. Origen in Matthew 11:1; St. Athanasius in Luke 22:33; St. Ambrose in Luke 10, etc.), according to which Golgotha was so named because Adam was originally buried there. "I have heard of an ancient tradition according to which Christ was crucified on the spot where the body of the first man, Adam, was buried; thus, as every man dies in Adam, so each will receive life in Christ," Origen wrote. But St. Jerome did not hesitate to dismiss this tradition as a legend: "It tickles the ears of the people, and yet it is not true." It is from this, at least, that the ancient custom of placing two crossed bones surmounted by a skull originates, placed below the crucifix. – Golgotha was located outside Jerusalem (cf. v. 32; 28:11; Hebrews 13:12), although near the city walls (cf. John 19:20). The fact that the site of Jesus' death and burial is now venerated within the very walls of the Jewish capital is due to a third series of fortifications and ramparts, built a few years after the Passion by Herod Agrippa, encompassing Calvary along with the entire northwest part of Jerusalem (cf. Flavius Josephus). The War Jews 5:4:2, and compare the plans of ancient and modern Jerusalem. – The authenticity of the traditional Golgotha, which has been vigorously contested on the grounds of topography, has been met with the response that the tradition concerning the location of Calvary remains legitimate and unshakeable. It is not our intention to recount the details of this serious debate. It is worth noting that several of these defenders of Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre are Protestants.

Mt27.³⁴ They gave him wine mixed with gall to drink, but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.“Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to the one whose soul is bitter: Let him drink and forget his povertyand that he may no longer remember his sorrows.” From this passage of Book of ProverbsAccording to verses 31, 6, 7, among the Jews, in ancient times, the custom arose of offering condemned prisoners, at the moment their torture was about to begin, a cup filled with a potent beverage which, by partially intoxicating them, made them less susceptible to the violence of the tortures. It was usually a mixture composed of strong wine and myrrh or frankincense: its property of numbing or even paralyzing the mind had earned it the significant name of "sopor" among the Romans. In Jerusalem, the ladies of the highest nobility reserved for themselves the privilege of preparing it. It is to this practice that St. Matthew alludes, along with St. Mark (15:23). However, while the latter evangelist speaks clearly of "myrrh wine," the former uses expressions which, if taken literally, would suggest less a relief from Jesus' suffering than a new insult added to all those he had already endured. "They gave him wine mixed with gall to drink," or even, according to the Greek Recepta, "vinegar mixed with gall." But, besides the fact that most versions and many manuscripts use "vinum," like the Vulgate, it must be remembered that the same Greek word can represent both wine and vinegar, just as myrrh can refer to all bitter substances. It is therefore not impossible to relate St. Matthew's account to that of St. Mark on this point. A wine mixed with bitterness is not much different from wine mixed with myrrh. Moreover, St. Matthew seems to have intended, when writing this passage, to allude to the prophetic Psalm 69, where it is said, verse 21: “They put gall in my food, and for my thirst they give me vinegar to drink.” He will have sacrificed perfect accuracy to the desire to make a striking parallel. When he had tasted it. Jesus merely dipped his parched lips into the drink that friendly hands had prepared for him. But that was all: he didn't want to drink. We understand the reason behind his refusal. He who comes to redeem humanity through his suffering wants to endure the ultimate torment without the slightest mitigation, with a full and complete conscience. Let others have the concoctions that numb the mind and senses: Christ must have all the powers of his soul perfectly alive while he sacrifices himself for us. This is why he turns away the cup of flavored wine offered to him by well-intentioned people, who are unaware of his true nature and his true role.

27, 35-50. Parallel. Mark. 15, 24-37; Luke. 23, 33-46; John 19, 18-30

Mt27.³⁵ When they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots, so that what was spoken through the Prophet might be fulfilled: «They divided my garments among themselves, and for my robe they cast lots.»The simplicity with which the Evangelists recount the deeply moving scenes of the Passion of the Son of God has often been admired. It is a clear testament to their perfect impartiality. Their narratives would be no more colorless if they were official reports issued by Pilate or his subordinates. Not a single epithet intended to express or incite either indignation against the executioners or compassion for the victim. No attempt is made to draw any doctrinal conclusion. The writers simply state the facts… They have presented the drama of Calvary to the world as they saw it. Each new generation contemplates, through a clear and limpid atmosphere, the image of the Crucified, uncovered by any drapery formed by the rhetoric of sentiment. We would, however, like to find in the Gospel some details about the crucifixion of the Savior. The sacred writers provide none, because they assumed that the punishment of the cross, so common at that time, was well known to all their readers. Fortunately, it is easy to fill this gap, thanks to the abundant data from archaeology. We will speak first of the cross, then of the crucifixion. – 1 The Cross. This ancient and painful instrument of torture received the most varied forms throughout history. Originally a simple post to which the condemned was tied, it soon acquired a completely new appearance thanks to the addition of a crossbar. Thus, depending on how this crossbar was attached to the original shaft, three types of crosses emerged. The first, better known as the St. Andrew's Cross, was X-shaped; the second, sometimes called the St. Anthony's Cross, resembled the letter T; the third differed from the second only by a slight projection of the main upright above the crossbar: this is the Latin cross with which we have been familiar since childhood. If ancient monuments of Christian art leave the question uncertain, it is because the cross of the second type alternates with that of the third. The Fathers compare the Savior's cross to a man swimming or a bird flying (St. Jerome, in Mark, c. 11), to Moses praying with outstretched arms (St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, c. 90; cf. Minutes of Felix, October, c. 29), to the Roman standard (Tertull, Apologia, c. 16), to the four cardinal points (St. Maximus of Turin, De cruce Dom. hom. 3), and to a fishhook (St. Gregor, Illum. ap. Spicil. Solesm., t. 1, p. 500). The tablet attached above the Savior's head, cf. v. 37, would have transformed a T-shaped cross into a Latin cross. Crosses were usually quite small: they were at most twice the height of a man. We know from the testimony of other ancients that the patient's body was close enough to the ground for wild beasts to devour it. Cf. Suetonius, Nero, 49. [Conversely, it took a spear to pierce Jesus' heart when the soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves. Once their legs were broken, those crucified could no longer breathe by pushing up and died of asphyxiation much more quickly. Crucifixion is a death by slow asphyxiation. The more the feet are nailed down, the less range of motion and maneuver the crucified person has to pull themselves up and fill their lungs with air. Suspension by the nails in the wrists causes muscle spasms. Cf. Pierre Barbet, *The Passion of Jesus Christ According to the Surgeon*, Médiaspaul editions. – 2. The Crucifixion. The soldiers in charge of the execution, cf. Seneca.] According to Ira, 1, 17, and Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19, 1, 6, the condemned were first stripped of their clothing: such was the rule, cf. Artemidorus, Oneirocritus 2, 58, and tradition supposes that it was carried out for Our Lord Jesus Christ as for other condemned men. Was the nudity complete? Can it be affirmed that the veil respectfully thrown around the loins of the crucified Jesus is not a pure fiction of Christian art? It is mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, ch. 10; and its use was required by Jewish propriety, cf. trans. Sanhedrin, ch. 6, 3, and even by Roman propriety, cf. Horace, Letter 1, 11, 18; St. Augustine, De Civica Dei 14, 17; Dionysius, Halicarnassus. 7, 72. After the condemned man had been stripped of his clothes, the crucifixion took place. The shaft of the cross, the vertical part, was fixed in the ground beforehand and remained there permanently. The horizontal part, the wooden beam carried by Jesus and Simon of Cyrene during the Stations of the Cross, was then placed on the ground, and the nails were driven through the condemned man's wrists. The beam was then hoisted or placed on the vertical beam. In ancient authors, we often encounter these expressions: to mount the cross, to place on the cross, to hoist onto the cross. Athanasius says in his sermon on the Passion: he came to the place where he was to mount the cross. And Hilary in the Trinity, Book 10: He was raised on the wood. Saint Bonaventure, Rodolphe, and Tolet share this opinion. – The hands were first fixed to the wood of the cross by means of enormous nails, several examples of which are cited by M. Rohault de Fleury in his memoir on the Instruments of the Passion, p. 172 ff. The feet were then pierced in the same way. It is in this operation and its horrific consequences that, properly speaking, the atrocity of the crucifixion consisted, says Tertullian, adv. Mark 3:19. A twofold debate has arisen concerning the manner in which the divine feet of the Savior were attached to the cross. 1. Several rationalists (Paulus, von Ammon, etc.) claim that they were not nailed, but simply bound with ropes. They cite as proof of their assertion a passage from St. John 20:25, where Our Lord, speaking of his wounds, mentions only those of his hands and side, not at all those of his feet. But we counter them with the authority of Christ himself, according to the account in St. Luke 24:39 ff.: «See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have…» After saying this, he showed them his hands and feet. We also oppose them with the unanimous testimony of tradition (cf. in particular St. Justin Martyr, c. Triph. 97; Tertull. c. Marcion. 3, 19; C. Cyprian, etc.) which sees in the crucifixion of the Savior the fulfillment of the famous prophecy: «They have pierced my hands and my feet,» Psalm 22:17. Finally, we oppose them with the following text from Plautus, Mostell. 2, 1, 13: «I will give a talent to the first person who climbs the gallows, but on the condition that their hands and feet be nailed twice.» From this singular offer, it is evident that the ancient custom was to nail the feet as well as the hands to the cross; the extraordinary aspect of the request lies in the fact that it would require each limb to be pierced with two nails. Moreover, our opponents expose their true intentions when they add that, since Jesus' death was only apparent, it is not surprising that he could so quickly make use of his feet. If ropes intended to bind the guilty to the cross are mentioned in various places (cf. Pliny, Natural History 28, 11; Xennaeus, Ephesians 4, 2, etc.), this proves that they were often used in conjunction with the nails. For greater convenience, the hands and feet were tied together before being pierced. St. Hilary brings together "the chains of the ropes that bound him and the wounds of the nails that pierced him." – 2. The second discussion concerns the number of nails used to fix the Savior's feet to the cross. The study of the Holy Shroud indicates that a single nail fastened both feet together, the left being pressed against the right by a violent twist (cf. Maria Grazia Siliato, Counter-Inquiry into the Holy Shroud, Paris, 1998, Plon/Desclée de Brouwer, p. 244.] In a poem falsely attributed to St. Gregory of Nazianzus, "Christus patiens," v. 1463 ff., the cross is called "wood with three nails," which suggests that the two feet were placed one on top of the other and pierced by a single nail, as seen on many crucifixes. Nonnus's paraphrase in John 19:91 seems to attest to the same fact, albeit in rather obscure terms. 

– It has sometimes been questioned whether sculptors and painters are right to depict the divine Crucified One with the crown of thorns on his head. Those ancient authors who addressed this question give an affirmative answer, for example Origen, in Matthew, 11, and Tertullian, against Judaeus, ch. 13. The Gospel of Nicodemus, 1:10, also recounts that the soldiers, after stripping Jesus of his garments, placed a cloth around his waist and put his painful diadem back on his head. It was, moreover, natural that the "King of the Jews" should be crucified by the Romans with this attribute of his kingship.

– They divided his clothes among themselves. When the soldiers had completed their horrible task, they immediately divided the victim's clothes among themselves, which, according to the law (Digest. 48, 206, De bonis damnatorum, l. 6), were awarded to the executioners. There were four of them: they therefore divided them into four parts. Draw them by lot. Since the portions were necessarily unequal, lot was chosen to decide each person's share. Cf. John 19:23-24. So that it may be accomplished …These words and the end of the verse are omitted by many Greek and Latin manuscripts, by several Church Fathers, and by several versions; consequently, most critics reject them from the text as apocryphal. It is probably a marginal gloss borrowed from John 19:24 and inserted into the text of Matthew by a copyist. By the prophet. The quote is taken from Psalm 21 (vulg, Ps.22 Hebr.), v. 19; it is made according to the Septuagint.

Mt27.³⁶ And, having sat down, they kept watch over him. – Once the division of the body was complete, the executioners sat at the foot of the cross to guard Our Lord Jesus Christ. This custom of standing guard beside the crucified until their death is mentioned by classical authors; cf. Petronius, Satires 3.6; Plutarch, Vita Cleom. 38. Its purpose was to prevent relatives or friends of the condemned from taking them down from the cross in an attempt to save them through their efforts. Flavius Josephus recounts, Vita 75, that one of his friends was delivered in this way and restored to life. Crucifixion did not directly cause death, as the bleeding was soon stopped by the swelling of the parts pierced by the nails. The victim therefore often remained on the cross for entire days before breathing his last. Cf. Petronius, loc. cit.; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History. 8, 8. The soldiers did not leave him for a single moment.

Mt27.³⁷ Above his head they placed a sign indicating the reason for his execution: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."« – They putSeveral exegetes believe that the perfect tense should be interpreted as the pluperfect, because they rightly assume that the tablet had been attached to the cross before the casting of lots for Jesus' garments. Others, for the same reason, go so far as to say that there was, in this passage, a transposition of the verses due to the clumsiness of the copyists: the original order would have been vv. 33, 34, 37, 38, 35, 36, 39. Finally, M. Fouard, in *The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ*, p. 122, conjectures that, in the haste with which Jesus was condemned and dragged to his execution, the inscription was initially forgotten: Pilate would only have remembered this legal formality later, and the document would not have reached Calvary until after the crucifixion was over. The last two hypotheses seem unlikely to us; The first is more natural, but it is by no means necessary, since it can very well be translated using the perfect tense: when the crucifixion was completed, the soldiers placed the inscription on the cross, above the head of the crucified man. It was a small board, usually whitewashed with gypsum, and called in legal language "titulus" or "elogium" by the Latins, cf. Luke 23:38. The description of the condemned man's crime was written on it in abbreviated form. It was often carried in front of the condemned man or hung around his neck as he was led from the praetorium to the place of execution. It was most often written in black, sometimes in red characters. We know, cf. Luke 2338, that the inscription of Jesus Christ was written in three languages, in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so that everyone could understand it. It varies in the four Gospels, although it is everywhere the same in substance. According to St. Matthew, it expressed: 1) the name of the guilty party (this is Jesus), 2) the nature of his sin (the King of the Jews). King of the Jews, that is to say, one who calls himself King of the Jews; this was a crime of Roman lèse-majesté.

Mt27.³⁸ At the same time, two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and the other on his left. – After Jesus had been nailed to the cross, or better yet, during his own crucifixion, since each condemned person had a special squad of soldiers responsible for their execution. Two thieves. The Greek noun refers more to brigands than to common thieves. The two thieves crucified with Jesus were undoubtedly among those bands which, according to the historian Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 16.10.8; 20.8.10; The Jewish War 2.12-13), infested Palestine at that time, and a considerable number of whom were condemned to crucifixion under the rule of Felix; perhaps, as has sometimes been suggested, they were even accomplices of Barabbas. See Luke 23:39-43 for touching details about their final moments. Jesus was placed between them, in the most humiliating position in this situation.

Mt27. ³⁹ And passersby insulted him, shaking their heads. – «A kind of commiseration, a respect for suffering, usually surrounds the vilest criminals as soon as they mount the scaffold; Jesus did not even have this sad consolation.» Fouard, Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, p. 144. Three categories of insulters—the crowd in general (vv. 39-40), the Sanhedrin (vv. 41-43), and the thieves (v. 44)—will hurl the most outrageous words at him. It is the pitiless multitude that begins. Passersby Those who were going to or returning from the city, the curious who were there expressly to see the crucified, and especially Jesus, etc. This word proves that Jesus had been crucified on the edge of a busy road, in accordance with Roman custom; cf. Cicero's Verrine Orations 5, 66; Quitilino's Declarations 274. They blasphemed The Greek verb means to insult; but the insults directed against Jesus were in reality blasphemies proper. Nod your head Among the Hebrews, it was a gesture of mockery and contempt. Compare Psalm 21:8; 109:25; Job 16:4; Jeremiah 18:16.

Mt27.⁴⁰ and saying, «You who destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!» – The Evangelist preserved some of the crowd's sarcastic remarks. You who destroy the temple of God. This biting insult is linked to the assertion of Jesus quoted by Saint John, 2:19, and recently brought back to the people's attention by the testimony of the false witnesses, Matthew 26:61. Save yourself. If you are powerful enough to destroy the gigantic structures of the Temple and rebuild it in three days, it must be easy for you to free yourself. Those who insult him have little idea that, in three days, Jesus will have rebuilt the august temple of his holy humanity, which they have just so cruelly destroyed. If you are the Son of God. Since Christ was to be endowed with the power to perform all kinds of miracles, Jesus, who claimed this title, should have been able to easily descend from the cross, despite the nails that held him fastened to it.

Mt27.⁴¹ The Princes of the Priests, along with the Scribes and the Elders, also mocked him and said: – The evangelist has preserved some of the sarcasms of the crowd. This is the second class of insulters. It consisted, according to the express mention of our evangelist, of the chief priests, the Scribes and the Elders, that is to say the three chambers of the Sanhedrin, who had come in large part to feast on the sufferings and humiliations of their victim.

Mt27.⁴² «"He saved others, and he cannot save himself. If he is the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in him.".– St. Matthew tells us about the Sanhedrin's sarcastic remarks, just as he had done for those of the people. The multitude had addressed Jesus directly; like well-mannered men, the members of the Sanhedrin speak of him in the third person, but their insult only becomes more biting. He saved the others. An allusion to the numerous healing miracles performed by Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Sanhedrin itself thus admits that the Savior worked true wonders: this is a precious admission that we gather from their lips to refute the rationalists. «Even the Scribes and Pharisees,’ says St. Jerome, in 111, «acknowledge despite themselves that »he saved others.«» Then the holy Doctor adds, refuting the enemies of Christ with the continuation of their insult: “Your own judgment therefore condemns you, for since he saved others, he could have saved himself if he had so willed.” If he is the king of Israel That is to say, if he is the Messiah, one of whose principal prerogatives was to be to govern the nation of Israel. Cf. 2:18. The Sanhedrin, moreover, borrows this sarcasm from Jesus' recent assertion, cf. 26:64, and from the very inscription that everyone could read above their heads, v. 37. They ironically ask Jesus for the dazzling miracle that the crowd had already demanded a few moments before. In return, they promise to believe in him and to recognize him as the Messiah, the Son of God. Let us quote St. Jerome again: "A false promise: For what is greater, to come down from the cross still alive, or to rise from the tomb after dying? Yet this is what he did, and they did not believe; They wouldn't have believed him if he had come down from the cross. But such promises cost these imposters little. Besides, they were so sure they had ruined their enemy and his power forever.

Mt27.⁴³ He trusted in God; if God loves him, let him deliver him now, for he said, »I am the Son of God.” – Abusing the Holy Scriptures in a manner unworthy of them, the Jewish priests and Doctors dare to ridicule Jesus by citing a passage from Psalm 22 (21 Vulgate), which was generally considered messianic. Verse 9 of this canticle reads, according to the Septuagint and the Vulgate: «He has hoped in the Lord; let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, since he loves him.» Distorting the meaning, they substitute an ironic «if» for the entirely affirmative «for» of the text. Let him deliver him, if he loves him. But, they thought, he will certainly refrain from delivering him. If he loves her. The corresponding Hebrew verb means both to want and to love. Because he said… Referring to Jesus’ personal statements, the Sanhedrists mention them to insinuate that they are entirely false, God letting him die on the cross; which would not happen if he were truly the Messiah.

Mt27.⁴⁴ The brigands who were crucified with him insulted him in the same way. – The bandits Those crucified alongside the Savior themselves join their voices to this mournful chorus of insults. At first glance, this plural seems to contradict the account in Luke 23:39 ff., according to which only one of the thieves participated in the insults hurled at Jesus; but the reconciliation is easy. «One might think that the two thieves initially insulted him; but when the sun was hidden, the earth trembled, …, one of them believed in Jesus, and made amends for his initial refusal to believe by confessing his faith,» St. Jerome in hl; likewise Origen, St. Cyril, St. John Chrysostom, Theophylact, etc. One might also say that St. Matthew, cf. Mark 15:32, speaks in general terms for the sake of brevity: the plural would be used by synecdoche, or else it would be a categorical plural. This is the opinion of St. Augustine, in Cons. Evang. 3, 16.

Mt27.⁴⁵ From the sixth hour until the ninth hour, there was darkness over all the land. Verses 45-50 describe the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The sixth hour: that is, from noon onward. According to St. Mark 15:25, the Savior had already been on the cross for three hours. St. John does indeed recount, in 19:14, that around the sixth hour of the day Jesus was only entering Pilate's house; but we will prove elsewhere that the fourth evangelist calculates the hours here according to a particular method. There was darkness. Around midday, as the agony of the divine Master began, there suddenly occurred an extraordinary darkening of the sun and the atmosphere. This darkness, which the three Synoptic Gospels solemnly describe in almost identical terms (cf. Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44), was not the result of an eclipse, as had been noted since the early centuries of the Christian era (cf. Orig. in hl; Victor Cap. de cycl. Pasch. Spicil. Solesm. 1, 297; Evang. Nicod. c. 11), since the moon was then full. Nor did it have any connection with the darkness that usually precedes earthquakes, since the commotion mentioned below, verse 51, was miraculous. It was a providential event, a true miracle by which nature seemed to mourn at the very moment the Son of God was about to breathe his last. Men showed him no pity; but the inanimate world thus demonstrated a kind of sympathy. Just as the night had suddenly been illuminated by a new light at the birth of Jesus, so too did the day sadly darken in his final moments. Throughout the earth. A considerable number of exegetes, including Origen, Maldonatus, Erasmus, Kuinoel, and Olshausen, believe that the word "land" should be restricted here, as in other passages of the Bible, to a specific area, namely Judea, or at least Palestine. On the contrary, most of the Church Fathers and several ancient and modern commentators take the expression literally. It can at least be admitted that the darkness extended well beyond the borders of Palestine and that it invaded the far reaches of the Roman Empire's provinces. We know the famous words that Dionysius the Areopagite is said to have uttered when the sky was thus darkened: "The God of nature suffers, and the machine of the world must fall to pieces." Tertullian did not hesitate to cite these wondrous dark times to the Roman authorities as a fact known to all and recorded in the public archives. «At the same instant,» he wrote in his Apology, ch. 21, «the day was deprived of the sun, which had only reached midway. This prodigy was certainly taken for an eclipse by those who did not know that it had also been foretold for the death of Christ. And yet you find it recorded in your archives as a worldwide accident.» Up to the ninth. Around three o'clock in the afternoon; the darkness therefore lasted until the moment of Jesus' death.

Mt27.⁴⁶ About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, «Eli, Eli, lamma sabachthani, that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?» – St. Matthew goes on to the Savior's final moments, to point out a painful aspect of his agony. Under the violent pressure of an extremely intense anguish that tore at his soul, Jesus cried out and uttered a phrase full of desolation. Eli, Eli Of the seven last words of the dying Christ, this is the only one preserved in the first Gospel. It is taken from Psalm 22, the first part of which seems to have been written after the fact by a witness to the Passion. The evangelist quotes it first in the Syro-Chaldean dialect, which was spoken in Palestine at the time of Jesus and by Jesus himself: this was necessary to make the wordplay of the following verse clear. In pure Hebrew, it is Lamma hazabthani instead of Lamma sabacthani. This exclamation, which implies a veritable abyss of sorrow in the soul of Our Lord Jesus Christ, contains a very profound mystery. How could the Messiah have declared himself abandoned by God his Father? How could he reconcile this terrible anguish with the beatitude that must necessarily reign in the heart of a God? But let us hasten to say, despite the contrary assertions of Celsus, Julian the Apostate, and modern rationalists, that this desolation has nothing in common with despair. Jesus undoubtedly complains, but his complaint is filial and submissive. He appeals to God, but this proves that he trusts in him, for "whoever can speak to God must have God with him.".

Mt27.⁴⁷ Some of those who were there, having heard it, said, "He is calling for Elijah."« It has sometimes been claimed (by St. Jerome, Euthymius, etc.) that these men were Roman soldiers who, understanding only the first word of Jesus' cry, "Eli, Eli," supposedly, through a singular error, that the divine Crucified One was calling the prophet Elijah. But how could the executioners of Rome have known Elijah? The strange thought he calls Elijah So it was written by Jews. In what sense was it made? Was it an impious and brutal distortion of the text quoted by Jesus, such that «the most terrible cry of anguish that ever resounded on earth, the most sacred word of lamentation, would have been derisively transformed by a spirit full of malice»? Many exegetes think so. They judiciously observe that the Jews respected the divine name too much to allow themselves such an unworthy joke about it. They therefore suppose that Jesus’ words were misunderstood and gave rise to an unintentional misunderstanding, although not entirely devoid of a certain malice (cf. v. 49).

Mt27.⁴⁸ And immediately one of them ran to get a sponge, filled it with vinegar, and, having put it on the end of a reed, offered it to him to drink. – Jesus cried out almost at the same time: I thirst. Cf. John 19:28 ff. One of the bystanders, moved with pity, immediately took steps to quench this burning thirst, which was one of the greatest torments of the crucified. He took a sponge. There was a sponge there, which the executioners had probably used to wipe the blood covering them: stuck on the end of a stick, it could at least be used to moisten the victim's lips. It was the best way to quench his thirst a little in his circumstances. fill it with vinegar. The Roman soldiers' drink was called "posca": sometimes it was a mixture of water and vinegar, sometimes it was bad wine. The compassionate man, moved by Jesus' cry, dipped the sponge in the supply of "posca" that was kept near the cross for the soldiers on guard. Having tied her to a reed : it was, says St. John, 19, 29, a branch of hyssop.

Mt27.⁴⁹ The others said, "Leave it, let's see if Elijah will come to save him."« The other Jews want to prevent him from performing this act of mercy. Leave it. That is to say, don't do it. They add ironically: Let's see if Elijah will come…They supposed that Jesus had called upon the prophet Elijah for help, who, according to the prophets (cf. Malachi 4:5, 6) and the Gospel (cf. Matthew 11:14), Luke 1, 17, was supposed to have the most intimate relationship with the Messiah. These cruel men therefore maliciously claim that it is better to leave Jesus: his Elijah will undoubtedly come to refresh and deliver him. 

Mt27.⁵⁰ Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and gave up his spirit. – A first cry had been mentioned earlier, verse 46. What words then escaped the Savior's lips at the same time as his last breath? St. Matthew does not say; but we learn it in the account of St. Luke, 23:46: «Jesus cried out with a loud voice, »Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ And when he had said this, he breathed his last.” A loud cry. The three Synoptic Gospels took care to note this extraordinary detail which proves, as the Fathers had already stated, that Our Lord died freely, of his own free will. He gave up the ghost. Here, one must love, adore, and remain silent.

27, 51-56. – Parallel. Mark. 15, 38-41; Luke. 23, 47-49.

Mt27.⁵¹ And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom; the earth shook, the rocks split, – Among the events that immediately followed the Savior's death, St. Matthew highlights three principal ones: 1° Some miraculous phenomena in the natural world and in the realm of the dead, vv. 51-53; 2° the centurion's assessment, v. 54; 3° the conduct of the holy women, vv. 55-56. And here. This opening is solemn and heralds great things. Moreover, it has long been observed that the narrative of St. Matthew, which is usually so calm and austerely simple, suddenly takes on a more elevated tone in this passage: it is poetic and rhythmic like a song of triumph; the sentences follow one another rapidly, in cadence, preceded by the conjunction And. – The veil of the templeThere were two main veils in the Temple of Jerusalem. The first was located in front of the Holy Place, separating it from the vestibule; the second was at the entrance to the Holy of Holies. Cf. Exodus 26:31 ff.; Leviticus 16:23; Philo, Vita Moys. 3, 6. Both were very thick and richly decorated; cf. Flavius Josephus, The War Jews 5:5, 4, and 5. Everything suggests that the evangelist meant the second veil. Indeed, 1. it was the veil par excellence; 2. St. Matthew and St. Mark refer to it by its common name; 3. the symbol becomes much more significant if it was the entrance to the Holy of Holies itself that was thus miraculously opened. Despite the preponderance of these reasons, D. Calmet, Hug, and others decide in favor of the first veil. Lightfoot tries to settle the matter by conjecturing that both veils were torn at the same time; but his hypothesis has no basis whatsoever. This phenomenon was not the result of the earthquake, since it preceded it by a few moments: it was the first of the miracles that took place after the Savior's death. The idea he expresses in such a dramatic way is easy to grasp. The veil that rendered the sanctuary impenetrable to all eyes except that of the High Priest signified, according to the beautiful language of St. Paul (Hebrews 9:8), that the way to the true sanctuary remained closed as long as the first tabernacle continued to exist. Thus, it remained in its place until the powerless blood of goats and bulls could atone for the sins of mankind (Hebrews 10:4). But as soon as the divine victim, the only one capable of satisfying God's infinite justice, had breathed his last on Calvary, this thick curtain, which for so many years had symbolized the separation between the Creator and the creature, was mysteriously torn apart, the Holy Spirit thus showing that the entrance to the Holy of Holies was now open. It can also be said that the temple thus marked its share in the universal grief caused by the death of Jesus: as we have seen, the Eastern peoples tore their clothes as a sign of mourning. From top to bottom, therefore, in its entirety. According to a note from the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews preserved by St. Jerome, Comm. in Matth., 27, 51, cf. letter 149, q. 8, and reproduced in substance in the Jerusalem Talmud, tr. Ioma 6, 4, the stone lintel to which this veil was attached was first broken: «In this Gospel of the Hebrews, we read not that the veil of the temple was torn, but that the lintel of the temple, of immense size, broke and split,» St. Jerome. This detail would explain why the tear began at the top. The earth trembled. The earth, like the firmament, thus expressed its sympathy on the occasion of Christ's death. It was seized by convulsive movements, "It was as if it had been moved from its center, and from its place," Sylveira in hl, when its author breathed his last, just as the human body sometimes begins to tremble under the sway of sadness and sorrow of the soul. The stones split. This phenomenon, which was a consequence of the earthquake, occurred at Golgotha and in the vicinity of Jerusalem. There is said to be an extraordinary fissure in the rock of Golgotha in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, already noted by St. Cyril, Catechism 13, chapter 33. Instead of having been produced along the grain of the stone, as usually happens in similar circumstances, it splits the rock so as to cross the different layers that compose it at right angles.

Mt27.⁵² The tombs opened, and several saints, whose bodies were lying there, were resurrected. – Only St. Matthew mentions this last miracle, which surpasses all others in magnitude. The earthquake, while splitting the hardest rocks, also caused the enormous stones that sealed the entrances to the Jewish tombs to roll from their hinges. Cf. v. 60; John 11:38, etc. But that is not all: Several of these funerary monuments, thus opened, released their dead who, according to the description in the following verse, rushed into the city and appeared to many witnesses. Many bodies of saints… In what manner and in what sense did these miraculous resurrections take place? Scholars have always been divided on this delicate point. However, the main opinions they have expressed can be reduced to three. 1. The dead mentioned by St. Matthew were resurrected in the manner of Lazarus, the friend of Christ; that is to say, their souls were reunited with their bodies for a second life of varying duration. This is Theophylact's view. But this is rightly countered by the expression "appeared" in verse 53, which implies mere appearances, and therefore a temporary resurrection. 2. Origen, St. Jerome, St. Thomas Aquinas, and following them Maldonatus, etc., believe that this resurrection was definitive; it would have been an anticipation of the resurrection of all humankind at the end of the world. For the blessed who were subjected to it, death would thus have forever lost its dominion: moreover, they themselves would have accompanied Jesus into heaven in body and soul on the day of his Ascension. But is this opinion not refuted in the Letter to the Hebrews, 11, 39, 40? Doesn't she have against her the general belief that, apart from the Savior and the glorious Virgin Married, will no one before the end of the world enter Heaven with a transfigured body? 3° According to the system adopted by Messrs. Schegg and Bisping, the marvel the evangelist mentions here does not consist in actual resurrections, but in simple temporary appearances, similar to those of angels, or even better, to that of Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration. It was therefore not in the actual form of their bodies, but in corresponding external phantoms, that the holy figures chosen by God appeared in Jerusalem. – Which Saints of the Old Testament thus had the honor of participating in a certain sense in the Resurrection of the Savior? Adam, Noah, Abraham, David (according to the Acts of Pilate, cf. Thilo, Codex Apocrisa NT p. 810), or even St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist, etc., have often been named. Nothing precise is known on this subject: it seems more likely, based on the context, that most of them belonged to the contemporary generation, since we see them being recognized by a large number of people. Who had fallen asleep. From the very first days of ChristianityThe verb "to fall asleep" became a graceful euphemism for dying; cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:4. Hence the name of dormitory, in Greek, (hence graveyard) given to the fields of the dead.

Mt27.⁵³ Having come out of their tombs, they entered, after the resurrection of Jesus, in the holy city, and appeared to many. – Ewald and Fritzsche take this expression in the active sense: “Coming out of their tombs after Jesus had resurrected them.” But one must do violence to the text to translate it in such an unnatural and ungrammatical way. It is obviously a question of the resurrection personal of the Savior. It was only after Jesus Christ had risen from the dead that the chosen souls, to whom he somehow imparted the privilege of his resurrection, left their tombs and came to reveal themselves to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. It was indeed fitting that they should not manifest themselves before he had left his own tomb. It follows from this that they themselves probably only rose again after him: otherwise, what would they have been doing in the tombs from Friday evening until Sunday morning? Thus, it is the common opinion of exegetes that these details are recounted here in anticipation. Only the first words of verse 52, "the tombs were opened," are therefore in their chronological place. But, after speaking of the miraculous opening of the tombs, the evangelist quite naturally adds, in logical order, other marvelous events that took place there a little later. In the holy city. See sections 4 and 5 and the commentary. The holy city had, alas, been transformed into a city of deicide. They appeared to manySuch was the purpose of their entry into Jerusalem. They came there as witnesses, as living proof of the resurrection of Jesus. That is why they multiply their appearances. The more we see them, the more hearts will believe in the messianic character of Our Lord and in his divinity.

Mt27.⁵⁴ The centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and all that was happening, were terrified and exclaimed, «Truly this man was the Son of God!» – St. Matthew now shares with his readers the impression made by the miracles he has just described on the Roman soldiers who witnessed the death of Jesus, and the profound reflection they inspired in them. He first names the centurion, that is, the officer under whose command the crucifixion took place. The following words, those who were with him, These were the ordinary soldiers who had acted as executioners and who were now standing guard around the body of Jesus. These rough and uncouth men, witnessing the earthquake and the other extraordinary phenomena that accompanied it (the darkness, the supernatural cry of the dying Savior, the breaking of the rocks), could not suppress a profound sense of fear. Convinced in a certain way of the divinity of their victim, they dreaded his vengeance, since they themselves had put him to death. The Son of God. In what sense do they affirm that Jesus is the Son of God? It is very difficult to determine, as evidenced by the great disagreement among exegetes on this point. Luke 23:47 puts a much vaguer expression on the centurion's lips: "Certainly, this man was righteous," and it is possible that the title "Son of God" simply meant, for these pagans, "friend of God." Perhaps, too, they were then, in the strictest sense, making a true act of faith in the divine nature of Jesus Christ. They had heard, either from Pilate (cf. John 19:7) or recently at the foot of the cross (Matthew 27:40), that Jesus claimed to have the right to the title "Son of God": from all the miracles that had occurred at the time of his death, they concluded that he was truly God, as he had affirmed. «In the midst of this scandal of the Passion, the centurion confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, while within the Church, Arius proclaims him a mere creature,» St. Jerome in hl. «It is therefore with good reason that the centurion is the figure of the Church’s faith, he who, as soon as the veil covering the heavenly mysteries is torn by the Lord’s death, proclaims him a truly righteous man and the true Son of God, while the synagogue remains silent,» Rhaban Maurus, ap. Thom. Aq. Cat in hl.

Mt27.⁵⁵ There were also several women there, watching from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee to serve him.. – Alongside these pagans who revere Jesus, we find another friendly and faithful group. It is composed of a considerable number of pious Jewish women, who had long been attached to him by faith of the mind and devotion of the heart. While the Apostles cowardly fled, they had the courage to follow Jesus to Calvary. Their presence comforted his last moments. Even after his death, they remain at the post their holy affection had assigned them: they will not leave until the last rites have been performed for his body. At some distance. Out of courtesy, so as not to find themselves mingling with the brutal crowd surrounding the cross. However, several of them had not hesitated to approach the dying Savior; cf. John 19:25. Who had followedThese holy women usually accompanied the Savior on his travels; cf. Luke 8:1-3. They had come with him from Galilee to Jerusalem for the current Passover. To serve it. «To serve» does not only refer to the general services one can render to others. It sometimes means, in a specific way, as is the case here, to provide for what is necessary. Cf. Matthew 4:11; 25:44; Mark 1:13; 15:41; Luke 8:3; 1 Peter 4:10-11, etc. The evangelist therefore means that Jesus’ friends provided for his temporal needs and those of his disciples.

Mt27.⁵⁶ Among them was Mary Magdalene, Married mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. – After mentioning their noble conduct, he names the most famous among them. Mary Magdalene, Or Married of Magdala, a small town located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, south of Capernaum; cf. 15:39 in the Greek text. We will have to examine later whether to confuse Married Madeleine with Married Lazarus' sister. Married mother of… This other Married She was the wife of Cleopas and, as we have said elsewhere (cf. John 19:25 and the explanation of Matthew 13:55-56), the sister or sister-in-law of the Blessed Virgin. Her sons James and Joseph were therefore the "brothers" of Our Lord Jesus Christ; the word "cousin" does not exist in Aramaic. The first is no different from the Apostle St. James the Less; of the second, nothing is known except the name. The mother of the sons of Zebedee Salome, Mark 15:40, was there too, repairing by her courageous presence the act of weakness into which she had once been led, cf. 20:20, by a love too natural for her two sons.

27, 57-61. Parallel. Mark. 15, 42-47; Luke. 23, 50-56; John 19, 38-42.

Mt27.⁵⁷ In the evening, a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus, arrived. – The Greeks called «evening» sometimes the part of the day between 3 and 6 p.m., that is, what we call afternoon (cf. 8:16; 14:15 and Mark 4:35); sometimes the last hours of the day, those immediately preceding night (cf. 14:15-23). It is the first of these two evenings that is being referred to here, as is clear from the account in St. Mark 15:42. Arrived. Several commentators have suggested that Joseph of Arimathea went to Calvary before going to Pilate: this is possible, but the sacred text says absolutely nothing about it. Arrived is indeed parallel to "went to find" in the following verse, cf. Mark 15:43; Luke 23:52, and these two verbs together seem to express only one and the same action. A rich man. This circumstance was not without value. It gave Joseph greater authority to present himself to Pilate and explain his request. Moreover, this pious disciple had another source of credibility and influence: his title as a member of the Sanhedrin. (cf. Luke 23:50 ff.) From Arimathea. The exact location of Arimathea has not yet been definitively established. Travelers and geographers hesitate between three main locations: Ramleh, Renthieh, and Neby-Samouil. The first, built on a dune rising above the fertile plain of Sharon, near the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, about 30 km from the latter city, benefits from a tradition that seems to date back at least to the Crusades, and which even appears to be supported by the testimony of Eusebius and St. Jerome, since these two ancient authors, one in his Onomasticon, sv Armathem Sophim, the other in the epitaph of St. Paul, place Arimathea in the vicinity of Lydda, that is, modern-day Loudd, from which Ramleh is only a league away. The village of Renthieh is located a little further north. Neby-Samouil: The Arabs use this name for a picturesque hill rising northwest of Jerusalem, on which, in all likelihood, the town of Ramathaim, the birthplace of the prophet Samuel, was once built; cf. 1 Samuel 1:1-19. The similarity of names has led some commentators to seek the site of ancient Arimathea on Neby-Samouil. – In any case, at the time of Jesus' death, Joseph of Arimathea had probably left his birthplace some time before settling in Jerusalem, since he had just had a family tomb erected for himself in the capital; cf. v. 60. Named Joseph. St. Joseph had been entrusted by Providence with the protection of the Savior's childhood; another Joseph receives from it the mission of overseeing his burial. Joseph was one of Jesus' disciples, hence the zeal he displays in honoring his Master; but his adherence had remained secret "for fear of the Jews," as we will read in the fourth Gospel, John 19:38.

Mt27.⁵⁸ He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. And Pilate ordered that it be given to him. He came to the praetorium pleading. Nevertheless, he came as a courageous and resolute man, as St. Mark 15:43 notes: "He had the audacity to go to Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus." The body askedAccording to Jewish law, cf. Deuteronomy 21:23; Flavius Josephus, The War In the Jews' Codex 4.5.2, the bodies of the condemned were to be taken down from the gallows and buried before sunset on the very day of their execution. In contrast, according to Roman custom, the corpses of the crucified often remained on the cross for days, left to birds of prey or wild animals, unless they were burned after a certain time. Cf. Horatus, Letter 1.16.48; Plautus, Militia glorifica 2.4.19. Magistrates, however, had the power to grant them to relatives or friends who requested them in order to give them an honorable burial. Cf. Ulpian 43.24.1, De Cadavian, Punit. This explains the actions of Joseph of Arimathea. Pilate ordered. The governor first ascertained that Jesus had died (Mark 15:44-45). Based on the information he received from the centurion in charge of the crucifixion, he readily agreed to Joseph's request. He complied all the more easily with Jewish custom in this instance because he had condemned Jesus only reluctantly, and believed that in doing so he was, to some extent, making amends for his act of weakness.

Mt27.⁵⁹ Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a white shroud, – The Savior's body was respectfully taken down from the cross; then, hastily, because the Sabbath rest was approaching, his burial took place. Since Jesus' friends intended to pay their last respects to his sacred remains more solemnly on Sunday morning (see Mark 16:1; Luke 24:1), on Friday they limited themselves to giving him a quick and temporary burial. Joseph wrapped him up. After washing and anointing him, they wrapped him in linen cloths according to custom (John 19:39-40) and finally wrapped him in a linen shroud. A white shroud, that is to say, new, not yet used.

Mt27.⁶⁰ and placed it in the new tomb, which he had cut out of the rock for himself, and then, having rolled a large stone to the entrance of the tomb, he went away.  – John 19:41-42 commented on these words. «In the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. They laid Jesus there because of the Jewish law against the tomb, since it was nearby.» The tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea; it had only just been dug. Therefore, Jesus was buried there first. That he had had carved from the rock. We have said elsewhere, cf. 23, 29 and the commentary, that in the vicinity of Jerusalem there were many tombs hewn from the rock. According to various details noted in the fourth Gospel, 20, 5-6, 11, that of Joseph of Arimathea seems to have consisted of a single chamber, hewn horizontally from the rock: the body of the Savior must have been placed in the middle of this burial chamber. He rolled away a large stone. These enormous stones, which the Jews used to place at the entrance of their tombs, were intended to ward off wild beasts and thieves. Their name meant "that which is rolled." They were sometimes skillfully embedded in the rock and fitted with a secret lock; cf. de Saulcy, Jewish Art, p. 235 ff.

Mt27.⁶¹ Now Mary Magdalene and the other Married were there, sitting opposite the tomb. – “When the others abandoned the Lord, women continue to watch over him… and thus they deserve to be the first to see his resurrection,” St. Jerome, in hl Mary Magdalene is the first in this position of love. With her is theother Married, that's to say Married, mother of James and Joseph, mentioned in verse 56. They are there in an attitude of grief. It is impossible for them to leave Jesus, even after his death: moreover, they had wished to know where his body would be laid, because they wanted to anoint him more completely when the Sabbath rest was over. Mark 15:47; Luke 23, 55 et seq.

Mt27.⁶² The next day, which was Saturday, the chief priests and the Pharisees went together to Pilate, – The day after : on Holy Saturday. By Paraskeva, Hellenistic Jews designated the Day of Preparation, the day preceding the Sabbath or solemn feasts. This name was derived from the special preparations that had to be made during the vigils, so as not to violate the sacred rest of the following day; cf. Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 16, 6, 2. At Book of JudithIn Gospel of John 8:16, we find the equivalent expression "eve of the Sabbath." But why did the evangelist use such a peculiar circumlocution when he could have simply and much more clearly said "Sabbath" or "Sabbath day"? Since the Sabbath is far more important than its vigil, it seems surprising at first that it was designated here not directly, but after the preceding day. Several explanations have been proposed to account for this expression. The most natural, and also the most commonly accepted, is that the name Paraskeva entered the Church's liturgical language early on to designate the day of the Savior's death. As, from a Christian perspective, this day was paramount, it is easy to understand why it served as the central name for all others, without the Sabbath being an exception to this custom. The phrase "day after the Paraskeva" is therefore used in a thoroughly Christian style, although it is borrowed from Jewish ideas. The chief priests and the Pharisees. They presented themselves to Pilate as delegates of the Sanhedrin. We know that the Pharisee party was largely represented in the Sanhedrin, and that the chief priests formed one of the three chambers that comprised the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrists feared Jesus even after his death: learning that his body had been left at the disposal of his friends, they wanted to prevent them from abusing it to deceive the people. Hence the audience they requested with Pilate. It is difficult to determine precisely the time at which they appeared at the praetorium. According to D. Calmet, it would have been at the beginning of the Sabbath, therefore Friday evening after sunset. But most commentators place the Sanhedrists' visit either on Saturday morning or evening: the meaning of the words the following day fosters this feeling.

Mt27.⁶³ and said to him, «Lord, we remember that this deceiver, while he was still alive, said: After three days I will rise again, – Lord was an honorific title frequently used in social interactions at the time. We remembered. The delegates of the Sanhedrin apologized, in a way, for disturbing the procurator again in this matter; but they had overlooked a point of utmost gravity, which it was essential to have him address as soon as possible. This imposter. An expression of contempt, even after his death, they did not cease to heap ignominy upon Jesus. Horace himself applies this word to a mountebank or street vendor who deceives people with trinkets and knick-knacks. When he was still aliveSo he was really dead: the Pharisees were certain of it. We recommend this saying to those modern rationalists who, in order to explain the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, resort to a simple fainting spell, from which he supposedly recovered after a few hours. See Dehaut, The Gospel Explained, Meditated, vol. 4, p. 414 et seq., 5th ed. After three days I will be resurrectedThe verb is in the present tense in the Greek text, which better expresses the perfect certainty with which Jesus spoke these words. “After three days,” that is, the third day following my death, as we have previously demonstrated. See 12:40 and the commentary. Moreover, this is very clear from verse 64 and a similar text in Luke 23:7. The prophecy mentioned here by the Sanhedrin seems to have been announced only to the Apostles in such formal terms. Cf. Mark 8:31. Several exegetes (Bishop MacEvilly, J.P. Lange, etc.) have conjectured that the Savior's enemies learned of it through a revelation from the traitor. But it is possible that it was revealed in another way. Moreover, several Gospel passages already mentioned, especially John 2, 19; Matt. 12, 39, 40, are sufficient to explain the quote from the Pharisees.

Mt27.⁶⁴ Therefore, order that his tomb be guarded until the third day, lest his disciples come and steal the body and tell the people, »He has risen from the dead.” This last deception would be worse than the first.» – After the considerations, comes the request: order by virtue of your superior authority. The Sanhedrin itself would not have had the right to take the measure it is imploring Pilate to do. It would have been an abuse of power that the Romans would not have tolerated. Be kept : by a squad of praetorian guards. – Until the third day That is to say, until Sunday evening. Since Jesus promised to rise again on the third day after his death, if he remained in the tomb after that day, his deception would become evident and there would no longer be a need for guards. To the people : to the uneducated crowd, so easily misled. This expression reveals the disdain the proud Pharisees felt for the illiterate people. Cf. John 7:49. An imposture that would be even worse. They outline the unfortunate consequence that would result from the people's belief in the resurrection of Jesus. It is this very belief that they call the final deception; the first error was faith in the messianic character of the Savior. Note that they unwittingly corroborate the argument based on the fact of the resurrection of Jesus. Assuming that Christ rose from the dead, we must immediately admit everything implied in faith in a Christianity supernatural.

Mt27.⁶⁵ Pilate replied, "You have a guard; go, guard him as you see fit."« Pilate's response was laconic and cold: if the governor were to grant this new request from the members of the Sanhedrin, it would be by humiliating them once again. You have guards. According to the translation from the Greek, the text can be understood as follows. In the first case, Pilate would have reminded the chief priests that he had already placed soldiers at their disposal either to protect the area around the temple and prevent any disturbance during the festival, or more recently, to crucify Jesus. Why were they coming to ask him for another detachment of his troops? Another possibility, which might be more accurate, is that Pilate simply agreed to the request of his unwelcome visitors. «Pilate replied to this: »That is permitted to a soldier. Preserve the body buried in the ground as you wish.’” Juvenc. Evang. Hist., lib. 4. Come on. Pilate, unwilling to concern himself further with the matter before him, curtly dismissed the Sanhedrin. As you understand it ; That is to say, as well as you can; or, as you see fit, according to the goal you wish to achieve. 

Mt27.⁶⁶ So they went away and secured the tomb by sealing the stone and placing guards there. They withdrew, filled with joy at having succeeded so easily, and hastened to take the necessary precautions to prevent any fraud on the part of Jesus' friends. They established a post of Roman soldiers near the tomb, to whom they entrusted strict vigilance. They sealed the stone. This was their first operation. To protect themselves even from the guards, who might have been swayed by Jesus' friends and handed over his body, they began by sealing the tomb in such a way that it would be impossible to open it without breaking the wax seals they had affixed. Similar seals are sometimes found on ancient Egyptian tombs. They posted guards there.A Roman post usually consisted of sixteen men: of these, there were always four soldiers on guard. They were relieved every three hours. The providential nature of these measures taken by the Sanhedrin already attracted the attention of the Holy Fathers: they served, they said, to better establish the authenticity of the miracle of the resurrection“All they gained by their artifices was that they made his resurrection more famous and more certain; so that it cannot reasonably be doubted, since he rose again in the presence of the Jews themselves and the soldiers.” St. John Chrysostom, Homage in Matthew 11:1. “The care they took to guard Jesus served our faith. The more the body of Christ was protected, the more evident the power of his resurrection became.” St. Jerome, in 11:1. Without the meticulous precautions of the Great Council, the story of the disciples’ removal of the body (cf. 28:13-15) would have spread everywhere with even greater success.