Fifth Gospel(137)

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

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

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

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

She wondered how many could read it now?

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

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

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

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





68


ECCE HOMO




Even before Cassius had reached the guardhouse adjacent to the praetorium, he could hear the chants of the guards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The guards,’ Cassius answered.

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