Month: August 2022

The Jews, not satisfied with the injuries and blasphemies they had offered to Jesus Christ, reproached Him with the Name of His Father, saying: He trusted in God, let him now deliver him, if he will have him; for he said, I am the Son of God (Matt. xxvii. 43). This sacrilegious expression of the Jews was already foretold by David, when he said in the Name of Christ: All they that saw me laughed me to scorn … saying: He trusted in God, let him deliver him, let him save him, seeing he delighted in him (Ps. xxi. 8, 9). These very men who thus spoke were called bulls, dogs, and lions by David in the same Psalm: Fat bulls have besieged me … Many dogs have encompassed me … Save me from the mouth of the lion (Ps. xxi.). Thus, when the Jews said: Let him now deliver him if he will have him (Matt. xxvii. 43), they truly showed that they were these bulls, dogs, and lions foretold by David.

St. Bernard say that “as a man and a woman co-operated in our ruin, so it was proper that another man and another woman should co-operate in our Redemption, and these two were Jesus and His Mother Mary.” “There is no doubt,” says the Saint, “that Jesus Christ alone was more than sufficient to redeem us; but it was more becoming that both sexes should co-operate in the reparation of an evil in causing which both had shared.”

Let us consider how exalted was the throne to which our Lady was raised in Heaven. “If the mind of man,” says St. Bernard, “can never comprehend the immense glory prepared by God in Heaven for those who love Him, as St. Paul assures us, who then can ever comprehend the glory God prepared for His beloved Mother!”

St. Matthew goes on to relate other insults which the Jews offered Jesus Christ: He saved others, himself he cannot save (Matt. xxvii. 42).

Thus they treated Him as an impostor, by referring to the miracles wrought by Him in the restoration of the dead to life, and by treating Him as one Who was unable to save His own life.

St. Leo replies that this was not the proper hour for Jesus to display His Divine power; and that He would not hinder the Redemption of man in order to confound their blasphemies.