The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. John
Chapter 19
Ver. 1. — Then Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged Him. That is after he had said (Luke xxiii. 22), “I will chastise Him and let Him go.” The tradition is that He was first scourged with thick ropes, then with knotted ropes and iron scorpions, then with chains, and lastly with rods of thorns. But Ribera says that these traditions are of little account, as the inhabitants of the country have so often changed, and the old traditions were not kept up.
Ver. 2. — And they put on Him a purple robe. — See notes on S. Matt xxvii. 30, also [Pseudo] Athanasius, de Cruce , who says that Christ bore in the purple robe the blood of men (because the devil had polluted the earth with murders), in the thorns their sins, in the reed the hand-writing with which the devil had enrolled us as his own ; for all these Christ took away by His Passion. He adds that when Christ took the reed, the devil armed him with a weapon against himself, for the reed is said to be fatal to serpents, and that Christ took the reed to deliver us from the serpent’s subtilty.
Ver. 7. — He ought to die , because He made Himself the Son of God. As being a blasphemer, sacrilegious, and opposed to God. S. Augustine says, “ See here a greater charge. It seemed but a light thing that He had aimed at sovereign power : and yet He did not falsely claim anything ; for He is the Only Begotten Son of God, and is King placed by Him on the hill of Sion, and He would now give proof of both, unless, the more powerful He was, the more patient did He choose to be.”
Ver. 11. — Thou wouldest have no power against Me , unless it were given thee from above : therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin. The best explanation of this passage is that of Jansenius, Cajetan, and Ribera. Thou couldest have no power over Me, both because I am innocent, and because I could deliver Myself, if I so willed ; But My Father willed that I should submit to thee, in order to the work of redemption, and accordingly permitted thee to give way to the Jews in this matter, and to exercise thy power over Me. But this thou wouldest not have done, unless they had accused Me. Their sin is therefore greater than thine.
Ver. 12. — And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release Him . He had sought to do so before. But he now more especially did so, after he had heard that He was the Son of God ; fearing to incur the vengeance of God on condemning Him. The fear of Caesar, however, prevailed over the fear of God. The Gentiles reckoned many sons of the gods, whom they worshipped as demigods. See S. Cyril in loc.
Ver. 13. — In a place that was called the Pavement , but in the Hebrew Gabbatha. That is a High Place, the seat of judgment, being raised on many steps. These steps were sent to Rome, and placed near the Church of S. John Lateran. They are much reverenced by the faithful.
Ver. 14. — It was the preparation of the Passover . That is of the Paschal Sabbath, the Sabbath which fell in the octave. On this day great preparations were made for the following Sabbath, on which no work could be done. This was the only Sabbath which had its preparation-day. The Greeks explain it as being the day before the offering of the Paschal Lamb. But according to the other Evangelists Christ was crucified on the day after the Passover, which S. John terms the day before the Paschal Sabbath.
About the sixth hour. That is, says the Arabic version, six hours after sunrise. S. Mark says it was the third hour. Some consider that S. John should here be corrected by S. Mark. But all the MS. and versions read “ the sixth hour.”
2. S. Jerome (on Ps. lxxvii.) thinks that S. Mark should be corrected by S. John. But here all the MS. of S. Mark agree in reading the third hour.
3. Euthymius (on Mark xv.) thinks that S. Mark mentions the third hour, because it was at that hour that the Jews demanded His death. But to demand His death, and actually to crucify Him, are very different things.
4. S. Augustine says that it was the sixth hour from the time that Jesus was preparing for death, i.e. the ninth of the previous night. But this is a somewhat “violent” mode of solving the difficulty (see S. Aug. in loc. in Ps. lxiii. and de Consens. Evang. iii. 13) ; and he says himself —
5. That it was in the third hour in the Jewish language, but at the sixth hour in the Latin tongue, and in Pilate's sentence.
6. It was at the end of the third hour, and at the beginning of the sixth, the Roman and Jewish hours or watches being three of ours.
7. Ribera thinks it probable that at the third hour Pilate yielded to the clamour of the Jews, but that at the sixth hour the formal sentence was passed. S. Mark indicates the preparation for crucifixion , S. John the completion and carrying out of the sentence.
Ver. 15. — We have no king but Caesar. “They rejected the Lamb, they preferred the fox,” to be their king, says Cassiodorus. See Luke xiii. 32, “Go ye and tell that fox.”
Ver. 17. — Bearing His cross . After the Roman custom. S.
Augustine writes, “A noble spectacle : a great jest for the ungodly, but a great mystery to the godly; a great mark of disgrace to the wicked, a great evidence of faith to the godly; ungodliness, as it looks on, laughs at a King bearing His cross of punishment instead of His sceptre : while the godly behold a King bearing the cross on which He was to be nailed, and which He would afterwards fix on the brows of kings ; scorned in the eyes of the ungodly for that very thing in which the hearts of the saints would thereafter
Ver. 23. — But His coat was without seam , woven from the top throughout. Euthymius says it was said to have been woven by the Blessed Virgin.
Allegorically . This was a type of Christ's Church, which it is not lawful to rend, and thus cause a schism.
Tropologically. S. Bernard regards it as the Divine Image, so implanted and impressed on nature that it cannot be torn asunder.
Ver. 25. — But there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister (cousin), Mary the wife of Cleophas (and the mother of S. James the Less and Jude), and Mary Magdalene, who was the more enkindled with love for Jesus, when she saw Him washing away with His Blood those very sins which she had just washed away with her tears. Christ wished it so to be, that He might suffer the more by witnessing the sorrows of His mother, and that she by sharing His sufferings might give us a perfect example of patience and charity: as Damascene says (Lib. iv. 13), “The pangs of child-birth which she escaped she suffered at the time of His Passion, by her motherly compassion, bearing Him afresh in beholding His wounds.” For the holier she was, and the nearer to Christ, the larger was the cup of suffering which He offered her. Euthymius states that she stood quite close to the cross, her ardent love overmastering her fear of the Jews. She stood therefore firm and erect in her body, more erect in her mind, looking and wondering at this great mystery of godliness, God hanging on the cross. Hence Sophronius (S. Jerome, Serm. de Assump.) calls the Blessed Virgin a martyr ; nay, more than a martyr, “ Because,” he says, “ she suffered in her mind. Her love indeed was stronger than death, because she made the death of Christ her own.” And S. Ildephonsus (Serm. ii. de Assumpt.): “She was more than a martyr, because there was in her no less love than sorrow. She was wounded with a sword within, for she stood prepared, though the hand to smite her was wanting. And she was rightly more than a martyr, for, wounded with overpowering love, she witnessed His death, and in her inward grief she bare the torture of the
Passion.”