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THE HEART OF MARY

LIFE AND TIMES OF THE HOLY FAMIL

CHAPTER TWO: “I AM THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA”

9

DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST

21

Life of the Holy Family

Once the bearers of the Messianic scrolls had been found, after the birth of Mary, Zechariah gathered Heli, Joseph’s father, and Jacob, Mary’s father, in his house. What the two men had to say to each other was much. The discovery of the Alpha and the Omega had revolutionized their lives and the future of their children in what a way!

Zechariah, moved, let his soul flow.

“How incredible is Wisdom! The strong believe that the weak are strangled under the weight of their insensitive and violent souls, and the little ones abandon themselves to the destiny that the great ones want to write on their backs with the whip of their perverse wickedness. But suddenly Wisdom turns around. She is tired of being pursued, of never being reached. She turns, the daughter of the winds of Eternity, fixes her eyes on the athletes of God, one implores her to be hers, the other promises her his eternal love. She does not open her mouth, Wisdom has chosen her champion, she advances towards him, shakes his hand, lifts him from the dust, winks at him and herself gives him the crown of life. Stunned, maddened, scandalized by her choice, because she set her eyes on the last among them, because she gave her favors to him who was nothing, the scorned of destiny conspire with darkness to destroy her chosen. She, the Wife of the Omnipotent, laughs; her Bridegroom lifted the galaxies with a single movement of his hands; it was enough for him to open his lips, just once, for Hell to tremble. She is the apple of his eye, what can she fear from the plans of the genii?”

There were her two men. The two rivers that she had hidden under the ground, and that everyone thought had disappeared, had surfaced and, mystery to the astonishment and the intonation of new psalms, they had done it through the same mouth of the earth.

Heli and Jacob presented their sons. The Daughter of Solomon and the Son of Nathan were alive. The Virgin in her cradle, Joseph looking upon her, standing among men.

Then Simeon the Younger spoke words of Wisdom: “Ignorance, my friends, has mankind chained to the post of the dog born to guard the door of his master”, he said.

“God created Man to taste the sweetness of the freedom of a Samson immune to the spells of Delilah. The perfidious Devil forgot his divine condition, envied the human one, and having ended up possessing that of the beasts, hallucinating he howls to the stars of Hell, which he worships as its Paradise. Cowardly, with the cowardice of the one who founds his greatness on the corpse of an army of children.

“Fear not, my friends, the Lord is with us. The Sacred Eagle watches from the invisible cliff every movement of the Dragon; already it breathes, already the dark fire comes out of his snouts, the muscles of the Great Spirit tense like bows ready for battle; if it advances a foot, the Warrior jumps from his peaceful sleep in the tent of the Sage and draws his arrow, swift as lightning, strong as thunder. What we are living here is the dawn of a new Day that already spreads its dawn over the immaculate eyes of the innocence of your children.

“Let the enemies of the Kingdom of God plan their plans of destruction in their caves, let the enemies of Man hide in the labyrinths of the undergrounds of Power, we fear nothing, God is with us. If the Devil is greater than our Savior, why did he flee to hide after killing Adam? Does the lion flee from the gazelle? Does the victor kneel before the throne of the vanquished? If the Devil is hungry, let him eat the stones; if he is thirsty, let him drink all the sand of the desert. Your children are far from his clutches.” 

It was a thrilling oath. Words were heard never to be forgotten. Heli and Jacob swore to marry their sons when the day came for them to do so. May the Almighty plunge their souls into the abysses where demons have their abodes if they break their word - they swore.

Then they each returned to their daily lives. Heli gave brothers and sisters to his son Joseph. Jacob gave Mary her sisters; then the babyboy for whom they longed.

Joseph was already a man and Mary a young woman, both on the verge of signing the most secret and important marriage contract in the history of the world, when the news of Jacob’s death stunned all who lived to see that day. Had Mary not made that Vow of hers, the wedding would have been brought forward. Mary’s Vow, as I said, affected Joseph himself the most.

For a moment the edifice of their hopes seemed to collapse, when Joseph wrote in the history of eternity those words of his, which in his day his wife would repeat to the angel of the Annunciation:

“God’s will be done;

behold his slave,

a thousand years our fathers have waited,

I may well wait a few.”

They were the years that were, they were not more nor were they less. When his time came Joseph arranged things and set out for Nazareth. He rented the Widow a piece of land where he could set up his carpentry shop and waited for Cleophas to get married before he married Mary.

After the birth of the second of Cleophas’ sons, Joseph paid the dowry for the virgins. A year later the wedding took place.

And the wedding took place despite the shadow of adultery that weighed on the innocence of the Virgin.

As his mother-in-law told him, the angel of God removed Joseph from his doubt. Once the shadow of adultery was dispelled, Joseph got on his horse and flew to Judea to fetch the Mother of the Child. The event of John’s Annunciation had been discovered to him by the messenger that Zechariah had sent him. What Joseph did not expect was to find Zechariah and Elizabeth full of life. But after what had happened to him, nothing surprised him anymore. Or so he thought. For when Zechariah regained his speech, his first words were to unveil to her the thoughts that had been growing in his soul about Mary’s Son since the Virgin’s arrival.

“My son, God our Lord has astonished us with a prodigy of infinite nature. As we can read in his Book, from ancient times we knew that God is Father. By forming us in his image and likeness he gave us a taste of the sweetness of fatherhood; and by discovering us to be the Father of many sons he opened our eyes to the existence of one among them, born to be his Firstborn. What he never openly revealed in his Book is that this same Firstborn was his Only Begotten. Or did we not want to see it in his words when his prophet said:

You will mourn as one mourns for the firstborn,

you will mourn as one mourns for the only begotten.

“My son, that is the Son your Bride carries in her womb. In your hands, Joseph, our Lord has placed his Child. His life is in your hands; if his life is already in danger because of who he is: the son of Eve who was to be born to us, what will be the responsibility of the man to whom the Father has given the custody of his only begotten Son? Never let your guard down, Joseph. Defend him with your life; put your arm around his Mother and place your corpse between her and those who would seek to kill her Son. Remember that he is to be born in Bethlehem because it is so written. And precisely because it is written there will be the first place where the Devil will direct his murderous arm.”

Joseph listened to the words of Zechariah, son of a prophet and father of a prophet, unable to believe that God would allow any man, whether his name was Herod or Caesar, to touch even a hair on the head of Mary’s Son.

So Joseph returned to Nazareth, celebrated the wedding with a Mary already in an advanced state of gestation and prepared to go down to Bethlehem when the Edict of Enumeration of the Caesar Octavian Augustus raised in the nation a spontaneous clamor of insurrection.

Only on one occasion did the tribes of Israel submit to a census. In everyone’s mind was the price the people paid for King David’s census. What punishment would he send them if for fear of Caesar they disobeyed the prohibition to let themselves be counted as cattle are counted?

Judas the Galilean and his men preferred to die like brave men fighting against Caesar than to live like cowards before God.

Insurrection broke out in Galilee. Judas cut off the roads, making it impossible for Joseph to go down to Bethlehem so that the Scriptures could be fulfilled.

“How long will this insurrection last? Obviously as long as Herod’s master wants it,” Joseph replied to his brother-in-law Cleophas.

“Don’t you think Herod the Younger will be able to finish off Judas and his men in  twinkle of an eye? The Herods must be chewing their nails right now. If it were up to them they would have put an end to this holy war. But I think Caesar doesn’t want it, and Caesar is in charge. The Roman has decreed that the Census should begin in the kingdom of the Jews because he knows that what is happening would happen. The merciless crushing of Judas and his men will serve as propaganda against any other possible insurrection; this is how the Roman prevents the disease.”

Joseph was not wrong. The Herods obeyed the order of the Roman master. They left the Galilean insurrection grow. When the victim was fat for the slaughter they brought out their armies. They killed as many as they could of the band of the Galilean, and with the bodies of the survivors they strewn with crosses all the roads leading to Jerusalem.

Under that crowd of crosses Joseph and Mary passed in the direction of Bethlehem. Who is surprised that from pain the Virgin gave birth as soon as she arrived at her husband’s house?

In this chapter the truth rather than the facts depends on the faith of each part of the court of history. If we give our confidence to the historian Flavius Josephus, traitor to his fatherland, savior of his people by getting the Caesars by his Histories to learn to distinguish between Jews and Christians, even at the price of turning their descendants into a nation at perpetual war against Truth, in this case the insurrection spoken of by the Apostles was born in the imagination of the authors of the New Testament.

The principles of Psychohistory, however, stand against the distortion which Flavius Josephus executed in imposing between Jews and Christians the wall of steel which was to keep them apart for twenty centuries, an execution which required of his person to deny the existence of Christ himself, becoming, in so doing, the Antichrist of the words of St. John.

22

The birth of Jesus

The insurrection crushed, Jerusalem surrounded by an army of crosses, under such a sea passed a Joseph and Mary who were already in a very advanced state of gestation.

When Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem, surprised, because none of them imagined that Joseph would come down before giving birth to his wife, Joseph’s brothers improvised a bed in the manger for Mary to give birth.

Again the elements of Psychohistory ask us to pass. I mean, Herod the Younger would not have ordered the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents if the Romans had been present in Bethlehem. The Romans, on whom his coronation ultimately depended, would never have allowed such a crime. As soon as the Romans left, Herod the Younger set to work. But it was too late; Joseph, Mary and the Child were gone.

This set of psychohistorical elements opens our eyes to the Battle between Heaven and Hell of which St. John speaks in his Apocalypse. Death, since it had been unable to prevent the Scriptures from being fulfilled, had to lay its hand on the Child. But God, confident in His strength, moved on the chessboard of Earth with the assurance of one who knows the strategy and capabilities of his enemy and is always one step ahead. When Herod the Younger went to set his hands on the Child, his parents had already left. Certainly not to Jerusalem. Although they could have taken refuge in the house of Mary’s grandmother.

And I say not in Jerusalem because, if they had stayed in Jerusalem, the words of Simeon the Younger when he greeted the Mother and the Child in the Temple would not make sense. But if he saw the Child for the first time, they would.

In this as in the rest, the reader must judge for himself who to give credibility to, whether to a traitor to his country, recycled into a kind of savior of the very ones he sold out, or to men who for love of the truth carried that love to its ultimate consequences. I say this because as a result of this new recreation of the facts, there will be those who say that this way of recomposing the times does not belong to the very succession of the events that took place.

Then, when the Child was born, the Mother already standing, Joseph registered his son. We do not know what Joseph’s original intention was. If it was to stay in Bethlehem his plan changed after the secret conversation he had with the Magi.

As you have already deduced the Magi were not kings. The Magi were the Tithe bearers of the Great Synagogue of the East and as such were to have a stop at the Temple.

What the Magi never imagined as they came rejoicing was that the last few miles of the journey would be under a sea of crosses. Thank God the violence of the moment had Herod’s son busy and they headed to Bethlehem to put Joseph on guard.

Joseph registered his son and returned to Nazareth. At the days stipulated by the Law he went down to the Temple in the belief that the danger had passed. He entered the Temple accompanying his wife when Simeon the Younger came out to him.

“What are you still doing here, man of God?;” he said to him. “Has no one told you what has happened?”

He took him aside and brought him up to date.

“Zechariah has hidden your track by sprinkling your footprints with his blood. Soon after the Romans left the Herods sent their assassins to your city. Your brothers mourn the death of their infants. But this is not the end of it. The horror of the news reached Zechariah. He took Elizabeth and John and hid them in the caves of the desert, where they will be safe from all danger. Then he came to the Temple. Joseph, they surrounded him like a pack of dogs, threatening to kill him if he did not disclose to them all that he knew. Unable to bear his silence, they beat him to death with their fists and kicks at the very doors of the Temple. Joseph, take the Child and his Mother and go to Egypt. Do not return until these murderers are dead.”

Joseph did not say a word to Mary. To prevent her from hearing the news from his own people, he took her away from Jerusalem without giving her any explanation whatsoever.

“How could you have lived all this life carrying this burden alone, my husband?” she cried when on his deathbed he told her the fate of his brother’s children.

On his return from Egypt the Child’s grandmother was still alive. I believe I said that the emigrants returned what we might call prosperous and happy. The economic situation of Mary’s property was equally good. The droughts that once plagued the fields were followed by times of abundant rain. Joan, Mary’s sister, managed her sister’s lands without envying a man. Those who thought that Jacob’s death would cause her house to collapse had to admit that they had been mistaken. That girl, dedicated to her family since her youth, did not lose her fight nor let herself be deceived. Although freed from her vow by the marriage of Cleophas, Joan did not marry.

For Joseph, suddenly starting the carpentry business from scratch again did not seem an easy task. Cleophas was not of this opinion. The situation that Joseph had to overcome the day he made his entry into Nazareth was one and this new one was quite another. Joseph was then a perfect stranger. Now they had to begin to make their way with a family clientele sprinkled throughout Galilee.

Among these connections Jesus would find his future disciples. But let us return to the Son of Mary, his heir, and spiritual head of the clans that as branches of the same trunk were spread around.  

Joseph’s death implicated Jesus in the oath that the deceased swore to Cleophas. We have already seen that the Child lived in his being the experience of the one who is born again of the Spirit as a result of the episode in the Temple. The Simeon who came to the Son of David in the Temple was the Simeon the Younger who we have seen saying to Joseph: “Go away, man of God, or they will kill him.”

During the years following Joseph’s death, Jesus left the carpentry shop in the hands of his cousin James and relieved his aunt Joan in the management of his Mother’s property. During his mandate the fields yielded one hundred percent; the fame of the wines from Jacob’s vineyards spread throughout the region. Clever as he was, Jesus revealed himself as a businessman with whom making deals was a guarantee of success. He bought and sold olive crops without ever losing a drachma.

Supported by family relationships and the capital of the head of the clan, the carpentry shop in Nazareth also experienced a very positive boom.

When the Herods died, Jesus took possession of his father’s estate in Judea.

I believe I have said before that in Jerusalem Jesus of Nazareth was known as a mystery is known. His father’s brothers took his singlehood invoking the proverb: Like father, like son. Physically Jesus was the image of that tall and strong Joseph, a man of one word, not very talkative, prudent in his judgments, homely, always attentive to the needs of his family.

The fact is that when he married all his cousins and left the business running by itself, that Jesus, adored by his family, surprised them all with “his disappearances.”

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The Mystery of Jesus’ Disappearances

No one knew where Jesus was going or what he was doing when he disappeared like that. He simply disappeared. He disappeared without warning, without explanation. His disappearances could last for days, even weeks. If his cousins James and Joseph asked around, to see if anyone had seen Jesus, they all made the face of those who knew nothing about anything.

Where did Jesus go?

Well, this is not easy to say. But wherever he went, he would come back from wherever he had been, as if it were no big deal. Then he’d come back all happy, he’d give some excuse to all those who with that natural concern showed him how much they loved him, “I had to attend to some urgent business”, for example, and the subject was closed. To insist more was not worth it; in the end Jesus laughed and they seemed to be the fools.

“What are you worrying about, brother? Are my brothers and sisters lacking something? Are your children sick? You have health, money and love, what more can a man want?”. Didn’t I say it? It was impossible to be angry with Him. Not only was he absolutely right, He said it with that smile in his eyes, in the end you seemed to be the fool for worrying for no reason.

The only ones who seemed neither surprised nor scandalized by his disappearances were the Women of the House. To the greatest surprise of James and his brothers, the Women did not even want to hear about reproaches. What mystery was His to have them enchanted in that way?

Mystery? Why did he have his Mother, his Aunt Joan and his Aunt Mary enchanted?

Yes, there was a mystery. A very big one.

It turns out that when he left, a miracle took place in the house. The sacks of flour never ran out, even if the flour was shoveled out. The oil jars were never emptied, no matter how many liters of oil were given away, the level of the oil in the jars never dropped. And if any of them fell ill, the three women of the house knew that he was coming back because they immediately got well. And like these things all the others. So how could He not have them delighted? Of course, when it came to answering them or their cousins where he had come from or what he had been doing, Jesus just looked at them and gave them a smile for answer.

Where was he going, where had he come from, what was he doing? I believe it was the thirteenth apostle who said that Jesus was going to beg his God with powerful tears for mercy for all of us.

The origin of those tears should not be a strange river to us knowing the source from which they flowed. It was the Son of God, of the same nature as his Father, who looked face to face the future of the work He was about to accomplish, and seeing the Destiny towards which He was leading his Disciples, His whole heart broke.

How could he not look to his Father for a different alternative scene that would remove the destiny towards which he was dragging the world with his Cross?

And what is more tragic, when His blood was dragging Him into the fragility of human existence, and He wondered how could He be sure that what He was going to do it was the will of God, at that moment the weight of that Destiny crushed Him, and from in His chest a river of tears sprang. How could He be sure that what he was going to do was the right thing? Why the Cross of Christ and not the Crown of David?

The tension, the pressure, human nature in its nakedness pounded his brain and soul with the vision of the hundreds of thousands of Christians He would lead to martyrdom. A Fate that He could spare them by simply accepting the Crown that the people en masse would offer Him. What to do? How to know? And by what means to resist the consolation that His Father was offering Him? For after the Day of Yahweh would come the Day of Christ, a Day of freedom and glory: the King on his Throne of Power leading his Father’s armies to victory.

During those days, before beginning his Mission, Jesus was choosing in Galilee those who would be his future Apostles. The connections that bound him to his future Disciples came from the blood knot that the eldest son of Zerubbabel began to tie when he founded Nazareth.

Unlike the atmosphere in which Zerubbabel’s men who remained in Judea multiplied, the people of Galilee welcomed Abiud’s men peacefully and amicably. The neighbors of Judah were scandalized when they discovered the intentions of Zerubbabel and his men; they rebelled against the idea of rebuilding Jerusalem and tried by all means to force them to abandon the project.

The Bible says that they did not succeed. In exchange for they did obtain a policy of perpetual enmity. A policy that resulted in the isolation of the Jews of the South from the rest of the world. Circumstance that, with the passage of time, would transform the southern Jew in a people hater of the Gentiles, whom they despised and treated in private as if they were talking about pure beasts.

“Rather eat with a pig than eating with a Greek,” said a rabbi.

“Rather marry a pork than a Greek,” his colleague pointed out.

This hatred towards the Greek and towards the Gentiles in general, that contempt of the people who came to believe themselves to be the Superior Race, was to a certain extent a natural hatred. Towards the Greek after the persecutions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Towards the Egyptians because one day the Pharaoh... Towards the Syrians because in another time... Towards the Romans because they had them over... The question was to turn hatred into a kind of national identity, to draw from it the strength to continue believing themselves to be the Superior Race, the Chosen Nation, the one called to subdue and be served by the rest of the nations of the world.

The inhabitants of Judea were waiting for the Messiah to become the New World Empire. Their relationship with the non-patriotic laws, imposed by the empire, which regulated life between Jews and Greeks, between Greeks and Romans, between Romans and Iberians, were a path in the jungle full of mortal dangers through which the Jew had to keep awake and always have in the Hatred and Contempt against the other races the vital force that would help him to overcome the circumstances until the Coming of the Messiah.

Contrary to their brothers of the South, those of the North were perfectly integrated in the gentile society. They worked with them, traded with them, dressed like them, learned their language, respected their customs, traditions and gods.

In comparison to their brothers of the South, the Jews of the Galilee had evolved in the opposite direction. While the southerner invoked hatred as a protective wall of their identity, the northerner invoked respect among all men as a guarantor of the preservation of peace.

When therefore Jesus arrived, the mental and moral differences between Galilean Jews and southern Jews were as enormous as those existing at that time between a barbarian and a civilized man. The Galilean was still waiting for the Coming of the Messiah, the Christ who would unite all the peoples of the world; the Jew of Jerusalem was also waiting for the Birth, but not of a Savior, but of a warlike and invincible conqueror who would bring all the other nations of the world to their feet, on their knees before the children of Jerusalem. It would have been difficult for Jesus to find among these Jews of the South a single man who would follow him to sing to Love and Universal Brotherhood the most wonderful poem ever written, the Gospel.  

Given such circumstances, it was not a coincidence that all his Disciples were present at the wedding of Canaan.

When, Abiud, the Son of Zerubbabel and heir to the crown of Solomon settled in Nazareth, his men and his sons united with each other and spread their seed throughout the district. Respectful workers with their neighbors, lovers of the laws of civilization for all, religion a private matter subject to the law of freedom of worship, the men of Abiud and his sons spread throughout the Galilee, keeping the inbred marriage as the basis of their national identity. In other respects the Galilean Jew did not differ in any way from his neighbors. He dressed like them, talked like them.

In such an environment, the success of the Virgin of Nazareth Clothing Workshop business based its fortune on the nationalist current that was awakened in the Galilee as a result of the reconstruction of the synagogues. The art of making the national costume in the hands of the daughters of Aaron, who had turned it into a monopoly based in Jerusalem, the opening of the business by the Virgin, disciple of a master in the best kept secret of the priestly female caste, the making of seamless cloaks its most supreme exponent, was a success that attracted to Nazareth the bride and groom of the region.

Independently of the prosperity that it brought to the house of the Virgin and to Nazareth itself, the success of the Virgin’s workshop ploughed the countryside of the region and prepared it to find in it her sisters a land where to grow and multiply. They married in Galilee and had their sons and daughters. To the pre-existing ties at the birth of the Virgin we must add those that her sisters and the sons and daughters of her brother Cleophas created, and the dimensions of the picture in which her Son moved acquire their true dimensions.

Or, in other words, the disciples of Jesus were present at the famous wedding in Canaan simply because they were united to the bride and groom by blood ties. Or do you believe that Peter’s mother-in-law was healed without faith?

Throughout the Gospels we see that the only condition Jesus asked for in order to receive the grace of his power was faith. When Peter’s mother-in-law was healed, she had not yet seen the only begotten Son of God. That without seeing she had faith opens our eyes to the connection between Peter’s mother-in-law and Our Lady, thanks to which that woman’s faith in Mary’s Son was absolute. And it helps us to open the door of her house and see Peter, through his mother-in-law’s daughter, directly related to the Virgin.

After the miracle of the transformation of water into wine the only thing Peter needed to see was the anointing of the son of David by the prophet.

When one reads the Gospel the first surprise jumps out seeing Peter and his colleagues abandoning everything at the voice of: “Follow me”. As if they were robots or automatons without will those men left their families and followed him without even asking where. This is the first impression. Logically simple appearance. Those men knew perfectly well the Son of Mary. They knew the nature of his spiritual headship over all the Davidic clans of Galilee. Peter and his colleagues were not unwilling automatons obeying the order of their creator at the rhythm of the keystrokes of their fingers on a computer keyboard. Not at all. Needless to say that, on more than one occasion, united by blood ties to the House of their Mother, they spoke with her Son about the Kingdom of the Messiah. Also to point out that the First Miracle in public, of which they were witnesses, transformed the conception that they had made about the Nature of the Messianic Mission for which they were ready to leave everything at the moment that Jesus wanted it. Having clarified this, let us continue.

You have already seen who that John the Baptist was and what feeling lived at the root of those prophetic sentences against the Jews. His mother lived to raise him and tell him the whole truth about his father, why he died and who he would precede. When Elizabeth died, John withdrew to the desert and lived his supernatural life awaiting the fulfillment of the mission for which he was born. The baptism of Jesus by John confirmed to the Disciples what they already knew: The Son of Mary was the Messiah.

They went after Him to conquer the universal kingdom. They never imagined that the sword with which Jesus would conquer the throne of David would be in His mouth.

Jesus announced to them many times what his end would be, but how could they imagine that the Son of God would die crucified?

Witnesses of prodigious, supernatural, extraordinary, divine works, how could they imagine that their brothers in Abraham would commit such a crime against the Father of that Son?

What had to happen happened. Incredibly, Jesus closed his mouth as one who puts his sword back in its sheath and inexplicably abandons himself before the enemy who comes to kill him. All he would have had to do was to open his lips. If he had only said, “On your knees”, the mob that came out to meet him would have remained pinned to the ground like statues of salt. But no, he did not utter a word. He simply let himself be chained.

To them, the Eleven, he left only the coward’s alternative.

For they all ran for cover. All except the one who ran away naked. He was the one who brought the news to the Mother: they had just taken her Son, they were taking him away to judge him.

The Roman had asked the Sanhedrin for the head of that Messiah. Cowed by Pilate’s legions, the Sanhedrin had handed him over to him.

This matter of absolute guilt that the future made fall on that Jewish generation, exculpating the Romans of their direct participation in the Passion of Christ, is resolved in the bowels of the words of the high priest to the Court that gave Pilate the Messiah:

“It is expedient that a man should die for the people.”

“It is expedient” meant that either they would hand him over to Pilate or he would decree a state of siege and bring out the legions to hunt him down. If Jesus of Nazareth was handed over to him, the people would keep quiet as they would be taken by surprise, but if Pilate brought out his legions to hunt the very one whom they were now abandoning to his fate, then, for love of country, they would defend him to the death. And where was the madman capable of believing in the victory of a popular rebellion against Caesar?

The fate of Jesus of Nazareth had been cast. It was either him or the nation. That for their cowardice the future would blame them for having betrayed Him, making them bear all the responsibility for His death, well, what else could they do? The clever Pilate would wash his hands of it, so what? Was it not better that one man should die than that the whole people should be massacred by the legions?

The problem of the Disciples was to believe that their people would not play the role of the coward and would take up arms rather than hand over the Messiah to the Romans. For them the thing was clear, how could the Empire defeat an army led by the King of the Universe? Had not hundreds and hundreds of men, women and children lived in their flesh his Glory? Among the masses were not those graceful living testimony of the Divine Mission of Jesus of Nazareth? It is true that many times those crowds had acclaimed Him king and in the same number of occasions He had given them the back. Logical? Does He renounce to the Throne that by inheritance belonged to Him?

Yes and no.  

Man, throughout the history of Israel it had been demonstrated that the anointing of the king did not correspond to the people but to the prophets of God. From this experience it was natural for Jesus to refuse a coronation established against historical right.

The Anointing, canonically speaking, corresponded to the Temple. The time was to come, then, when those same crowds would follow him to Jerusalem and ask the Sanhedrin for the divine recognition that Jesus of Nazareth had earned by his works.

Then, pressed by the testimony of so many graced ones and by a crowd without number crying out loudly for the anointing of the Messiah by the High Priest, Jesus would sit on the Throne of David, his historical father, and in the presence of all the children of Israel would gird himself with the crown of kings.

When in the third year of his Mission the word spread: Jesus of Nazareth is going to Jerusalem for the Passover, the messianic expectation dragged crowds without number to Jerusalem.

Pontius Pilate was waiting for him. Aware of the adventures of the Messiah of the Jews, he had long since asked the Sanhedrin for the head of that Nazarene. The political decision he had to make regarding the messianic explosion caused by that Nazarene was complex and clear at the same time. He had to kill him. Killing the Shepherd would disperse the flock. Nor could he take out his legions and launch them in unison against the crowd. Nationalist rebellion would break out in defense of his Messiah and a Spartakian war was the last thing Caesar could wish for. As a politician his mission was to prevent disease before war developed. He could expect the worst and let the prey grow fat. As Augustus and Herod had already done in the days of the Census. At the right time Pilate would bring out his legions and from the slaughter the other nations would learn how Rome punishes rebellion against Caesar.

The fact was that the entire Sanhedrin was against the Nazarene and would not lay a hand on him for fear of the crowd that accompanied him wherever he went. The Sanhedrin had sworn to Pilate that they would deliver him in person, but to wait until the fruit was ripe.

After the first year’s triumphant walk to the Mount of Sermon, the second year had been downhill. At the crossroads between the second and the third the refusal of Jesus to be crowned king had been frightening the crowds, who did not understand him at all.

Who among them all who had enjoyed such Divine Power would not have been accompanied by the crowds to Jerusalem to demand from the full Sanhedrin the Crown of his father David?

The bewilderment and ignorance about his Thought had left him alone at the dawn of the third year. Only the Women and his Disciples remained faithful to him.

In what then had that first despair of the Roman politician remained? And what seemed even worse to the Sanhedrin, would Pilate back down now? Were there not among the ranks of his army who, in case of messianic insurrection, would desert the Empire and place himself at the service of the Son of David?

As evidenced by the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, the expectation, stifled in the last year by Jesus himself, awoke from its lethargy. Believing the crowds that the Son of David had made his final decision in favor of his coronation that year, they all rushed to Jerusalem.

As we already know and history shows, for Passover Jerusalem became a city under siege. From all parts of the world Jews came down and went up to the Holy City to celebrate that Supper that served as a prelude to the Deliverance of Moses.

That year 33 of our Era to the usual crowd were added all those who once proclaimed him king.

What was not the surprise of all when Jesus entered the Temple and with a whip he broke forever the pressure against the Sanhedrin and the Caesar that that exalted crowd was ready to exert.

That messianic fever which in his first year awakened Jesus had returned to the scene. It reached Jerusalem before He arrived and made the walls of Jerusalem tremble with the same force that Joshua’s trumpets once did. If instead of going straight to the Temple to grab a whip and declare total war on the Sanhedrin, Jesus had done what he did as a child, made his way to the Court of the Doctors of the Law and entered the matter... But no. Not at all. Not at all. Things were in turmoil and He went to plunge them into chaos in the most explosive way imaginable.

The same crowd that a few hours ago had beaten palms and cheers in honor of the Son of David, at nightfall was asking for his head to a Pilate who, by then, did not see why he had to kill the one who had dug his own grave.

To understand the Flight of his Disciples, we must put ourselves in the shoes of those men who in their hearts dreamed of that triumphal entry … his Coronation. They were the first who were stunned to see their Master take a whip and lash out with almighty wrath against the Temple.

It was at that moment that Judas made his decision to hand him over to the Sanhedrin. The others were as if floating in a total vacuum.

What was going to happen now?

What had Jesus done?

As they ate the Last Supper they felt as confused and empty as that Earth that before the Beginning wandered in the Darkness of the Abyss confused and empty.

Alas, children of the Earth, your mother’s inheritance is your lot! Did she not receive on the day of her birth all kinds of promises from her Creator and as soon as her Creator turned away she was caught up in the confusion that accompanies all loneliness? Your mother having experienced at her birth the confusion and emptiness of loneliness how could you not fall into the same stone?

While they dined with him, his Disciples had no idea what he was talking about. They only knew that they were ready to die fighting rather than leave Him alone. Poor Peter, his soul fell to the ground when his Hero and King took the sword out of his hands! All without exception ran away moved by a force that overcame them and moved their legs against the will of their minds.

“What is going to happen now, Mother?” John asked the Mother of Jesus, as if she knew the answer.

What was going to happen? What had been prophesied for a thousand years was going to happen. The firmament would dress in mourning to mourn the death of the Firstborn, the earth would mourn the death of the Only Begotten.

24

Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ

The events of that night are described in the Gospels. I am not going to reproduce them nor to point them out. I will limit myself to what is not written.

While the Judeo-Roman farce went on, the sky became overcast over the heads of the thousands of drunkards who shouted: Crucify him.

The same confusion that seized the Disciples and threw them into flight, that same force had seized the crowd that had acclaimed him at his triumphal entry, and, now, abandoned to alcohol, they vented their sorrow against the author of the disillusionment that had seized their minds. Alienated, abandoned to the alcohol in which they drowned their sorrow, which ran free and in barrels from the hands of the Temple to their throats, those who just a few hours ago saluted the Messiah now shouted: Crucify him.

As they shouted an ocean of clouds began to surround the horizon, in silence spreading a web of thunder and lightning over Golgotha. As the Condemned dragged his cross along the Via Dolorosa, in the heart of the day a night closed in.

Absorbed, amazed by what they were living, while they made the road to Golgotha Mount, the words of the Prophet came to very few people’s minds. In fact, only one young man, at the foot of the Cross as he gazed at the sky, was reminded of the Scriptures.

“Already the waves of death surrounded me

and the torrents of Belial terrified me.

The bonds of Sheol were binding me,

the nets of death had seized me.

And in my anguish I called upon Yahweh

and cried out to my God.

He heard my voice from his palace,

and my cry reached his ears.

The earth shook and trembled.

The foundations of the mountains trembled,

they trembled before the wrath of the LORD.

Smoke went up out of their nostrils,

and burning fire out of their mouths,

coals of fire set on fire by him.

He lowered the heavens and came down,

a black cloud was under his feet.

He ascended upon the cherubim and flew;

He flew upon the wings of the winds.

He made darkness a veil,

forming around himself his tent;

watery calyx, dense clouds.

At the brightness of his countenance

the clouds melted away;

hail and flashes of fire.

The LORD thundered from heaven,

the Most High made his voice heard.

He hurled his arrows at them,

and discomfited them;

he flashed lightning,

and dismayed them.

And streams of water appeared,

and the foundations of the earth

were laid bare before the rebuking

wrath of the LORD,

before the blast

of the whirlwind of his anger.”

Yes, only one young man had his eyes fixed on the sky, which looked in horror at the crime of the children of the earth.

In the pain of the moment, no one had noticed what was coming upon their heads. The sky was black as the depths of the most impenetrable cave. When Jesus shouted his last breath and they thought the end had already come, as if suddenly awakening from a dream their eyes were opened to reality.

Before they felt the threat of heaven, the firmament split into tears. There was a cracking sound louder than that of the walls of Jericho falling down. It was then that they all raised their heads for the first time and smelled that electric humidity in the atmosphere.

They were about to turn back when suddenly a lightning whip broke through the darkness. It seemed to fall far away. What fools! It was the horseman who once opened the ranks of the enemy to Judas Maccabeus, who now came riding violently on the clouds of prophecy. His glowing eyes illuminated the night and from his almighty throat thunder rolled across the horizon; like a madman, possessed by a pain that blinded his insides, that divine horseman raised his arm and let fall upon the crowd his whip of thunder and lightning.

The hell of the Wrath of the Eternal Father fell in torrents upon children and women, old and young, without distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent. Maddened, as one who awakens startled from a nightmare to open his eyes to find that the real nightmare had just begun, the crowd began to run down Golgotha. The storm overhead threatened hail, lightning and thunder, but not rain. It was a thunderstorm, which the Almighty, pierced by the spear that had been thrust through his Son’s chest, with a broken heart had taken in his hands and, maddened by the pain, was striking against the sons of the earth without looking at whom. The frenzy, the terror seized everyone. Terror rode without sparing the old man or the child, male or female. Maddened by what they had done under the influence of alcohol, the crowd began to move towards the walls of Jerusalem. Mad, as if the pain of God could be stopped by the stone.

And there the crowd began to run down Golgotha looking for salvation within the walls. Then the electric whip of the Almighty began to fall on women and children, young and old, without distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent. His pain, the pain of the Almighty reached them all and tore their flesh without mercy of any kind. In less than the crowing of the rooster’s second announcement, the slope of Golgotha began to fill with scorched corpses. Those who were already climbing the slope of the Lions’ Gate thought they had escaped the horror when the tombs of the Cemetery of the Jews began to open. The prophets came out of their tombs and from their spectral mouths the Wrath of the Almighty sentenced the living to death.

Horror, desolation, more horror. Those who thought they could find refuge in their homes found their doors closed. One night, fifteen hundred years ago, the angel of death went through the houses of the Egyptians looking for first-born children. That same angel now walked the streets of Jerusalem killing without distinguishing between elder and younger. The same infinite pain that had shattered the heart of his Lord had reached his own, and in his unspeakable pain the Angel thrust his cherubic sword against everyone he met in his path.

Terrified, trapped in a hellish nightmare, terror dragged the fugitives to the Temple. There they huddled within its walls seeking mercy. Mad, with the madness of the one who kills the child and takes refuge in his father’s house, there they found their tomb when the whip of God’s Pain let fall on the dome its tears, a dome that collapsed on the terrified crowd.

Horror, desolation. The pain of the Father of Christ in full violent outburst. The blood of a God transformed into blocks of stone falling on a terrified multitude, crushing heads, reducing men and women to rubble. Shout again “Crucify Him!” the stones of the dome of the Temple wrote with their crunching as they fell from the ceiling to the ground.

While these things were happening at the foot of the Cross only one young man and three women remained. As if a shield of energy protected him the boy, standing, he contemplated the scene. At the foot of the Mount of the Passion the burned corpses, the dying crushed under the weight of those who fled down the slopes. Against the walls, with no escape possible for the dead from their tombs, the paralyzed victims of horror were piled up in a frenzy. When after a while the dome of the Temple collapsed and the thunder and lightning and the churning of flesh and blood ceased, John picked up the sword of the Roman who confessed. The young man turned his head to the three Women, spoke to them with his eyes, said “Mother”, and began to make way for them. The crowd of the wounded and dying, horrified, turned away as if it were seeing an angel of God, walking, coming to finishing off the task begun by his Lord. Such was the fire that the little one of the sons of Thunder gave off through his eyes. As they saw him, unable to resist the gaze of that human cherub, the hallucinated people moved out of his way. John led the three women home and closed the door behind him. There stood the Ten and the other women. As if dead, the Mother laid down on the bed and closed her eyes to a world to which she no longer seemed to want to return.

The survivors vowed to tear apart from their minds the memory of the Night when God broke his Covenant with the children of Abraham. Their historians buried the memory of that Night in the tomb of millenary silences. Many times in the History of Humanity a people vowed to tear from its memory a certain event, special, capital for the development of its future. Rarely has a people succeeded in burying in such a definitive way such a traumatizing chapter.

The Eleven also believed that such was the fate of those three years of unforgettable glory. In fact, the only thing that kept them that Friday and the following Saturday locked up in that House was to know the fate of that Mother who lay as if dead in bed.

Would not the Mother wake up from her sleep, would she not see on her face, broken by suffering, the pieces in which her heart had been shattered?

Lord, how could they look her in the face when she woke up? What words of comfort would they say to her to justify the shameful flight they had undertaken?

What could they do? abandon her to her fate? keep running until the distance between them and their memories became the Infinite?

Had He not told them that everything they were living through would pass away, and He would rise again on the third day?

The hours became interminable for all those who watched over the Mother’s sleep. In spite of the danger they were in, no one would leave without accompanying her to Nazareth.

How long would it take for her to wake up? But of course, why would she want to wake up?

On Saturday at noon Mother began to come out of her state. The Eleven thought they could not bear to look at her. Oh, what fools they were!

They had been staring at that aged face for more hours than they could calculate. They already knew every micron of her lacerated cheeks by heart.

Suddenly on Saturday that face began to take on color. Everyone was watching her every movement. Then the Mother opened her eyes full of life.

At her side her sister Jane was caressing her forehead like someone caressing the head of the most beloved person in the world. Unthinkingly the Mother asked for some water. The other Mary, that of her dead brother Cleophas, stood up. Slowly the Mother sat up in bed and looked at them all. The Eleven were sitting on the floor against the walls of the room. The expression on her face had them marveling as the Mother opened her lips.

“What is the matter with you, my children?” she said to them smiling. “Who are you watching over? You look at me as if you were seeing a ghost”.

The Eleven could not get over their surprise. Mary of Cleophas returned with the glass of water and sat down beside them, resting her head on her shoulder.

“That’s it, Mary, don’t be a little girl, don’t cry anymore, or do you want my Son to find you like this when He comes?”

The Eleven looked at each other believing that the pain had made her lose her mind. The Mother read their thoughts and began to speak to them, saying:

“Little children, I am to blame for everything. A long time ago I should have revealed to you who is He whom you call Master and Lord. This had to happen for Him to free me from my silence. Whom do you think you followed from one side to the other?

“I am old, my children, and I am tired. Listen to me well and lift up your souls; tomorrow, when He comes, you will have the proof of all that I am going to tell you today. What would my Son think if He were to come tomorrow and find you like this? How could I look Him in the face? Have patience with me if I am not clear on any point. When He sends you His Spirit, you will remember my words and I myself will be enchanted by the wisdom He will pour into your souls. What I am going to tell you I have heard from Him. I have neither His grace nor His wisdom. I tell you, He Himself will fill you with His Wisdom and then you will no longer need me to tell you anything. He spoke to me of His World, of His Father; I asked Him and He answered me without hiding anything from me. At least nothing that I did not need to know. I was His confidant, the open and innocent heart into which He poured His divine Heart. He spoke to me of His World with His eyes gazing into infinity; I kept it all in my heart; each of His words I sealed in my flesh. I have not known why he sealed my lips until this day. Today He has released me from my Silence and I place in your hearts what He placed in mine and I have carried with me for so many years.”

Opening her Heart to them, the Mother unveiled to the Disciples: the Annunciation, the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the Divine History that She heard from the lips of her Child, in those days when “her Child”, the Son of God, came to refuge Himself in the arms of “his Mother”, the Sadness in the eyes of theSson who misses his most loving Father, a History that, brought to its Fullness, I narrate to you in the following Chapter.

CHAPTER III

"I AM THE BEGINNING AND THE END"

I

Origin and Infancy of God