The Book of the Holy Rosary: Part II, Chapter IX. Scripture Types of the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery: Isaac Carrying the Wood of the Sacrifice; David Going Forth with His Shepherd’s Staff against Goliath
1. Isaac carrying the wood of the sacrifice up Mount Moriah.
“Before Isaac comes to the place where he is to be sacrificed,” St Augustine says, “he carries the wood of the sacrifice on which he is to be lifted up, and something is herein signified. Jesus went to the place where He was to be crucified, carrying His Cross. O most wonderful sight! as seen by the eyes of the wicked, an object to be mocked at; as seen by the eyes of faith, a deep mystery.”
The narrative from the Holy Scripture occurs in the Book of Genesis:—“After these things God tempted Abraham, and said to him: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am. He said to him: Take thy only-begotten son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and go into the land of vision; and there thou shalt offer him for an holocaust upon one of the mountains which I will show thee. So Abraham rising up in the night, saddled his ass; and took with him two young men, and Isaac his son; and when he had cut wood for the holocaust, he went his way to the place which God had commanded him. And on the third day, lifting up his eyes, he saw the place afar off. And he said to his young men: Stay you here with the ass; I and the boy will go with speed as far as yonder, and after we have worshipped will return to you. And he took the wood for the holocaust, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he himself carried in his hands fire and a sword. And as they two went on together, Isaac said to his father: My father. And he answered: What wilt thou, my son? Behold, saith he, fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust? And Abraham said: God will provide Himself a victim for an holocaust, my son. So they went on together” (Gen. xxii. 1–8).* Isaac, in bearing the wood of the sacrifice on his shoulders, as St Augustine explains, bore the burden that was properly that of the ass, which was the beast of burden by nature; yet Abraham took the wood for the sacrifice, and laid it upon Isaac his son. Thus Isaias says of Christ, “Surely He hath borne our infirmities, and carried our sorrows,... and the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. liii. 6). Jesus carries His Cross, the proper burden of the condemned malefactor, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. “He was reputed with the wicked.” His Eternal Father lays upon His shoulders the burden of the malefactor, and He, like Isaac, obedient to His Eternal Father, says, “I will go to the mountain, to the mountain of myrrh, till the day break and the shadows retire” (Cant. iv. 6).
2. David goes out against the enemy of the armies of the Living God, with his shepherd’s staff that he always carried in his hands.
In the reign of Saul, the Holy Scripture relates, the armies of Israel and of the Philistines were gathered together to fight; and a certain Philistine, Goliath, of the sons of the giants, came forth, and defied the army of Israel. And the Philistine said, “I have defied the bands of * It will be instructive to see a specimen of the lively interest with which this touching history was treated as a popular Christian heirloom in the ages of faith.
It is thus paraphrased in the “Coventry Plays.” The spelling of the words has been somewhat modernised.
Abraham.—“Now son, on thy neck this faggot thou take, And this fyre bear in thy honde (hand); For we must now sacrifice go make, Even after the wylle of Goddy’s sonde (providence).
Take this brenning bronde, My swete chylde, and lete us go;
There may no man that levyth in londe Have more sorrow than I have wo.”
Isaac.—“Fair fadyr, ye go right stylle;
I pray you, fadyr, speke unto me.”
Abraham.—“My good chylde, what is thy wylle? Tell me thyne hert, I pray to thee.”
Isaac.—“Fadyr, fyre and wood here is plentye, But I kon se no sacryfice;
What ye xulde offer sayn wold I se, That it were done to the best avyse.”
Abraham.—“God xal that ordeyn, that sytt in hevynne, My swete son; ffor this offryng, A dearer may no man nempne (name)
Than this xal be, my dere derlyng.”
— Coventry Plays: Abraham’s Sacrifice.
Israel this day: give me a man, and let him fight with me hand to hand.” And Saul and all the Israelites, hearing these words of the Philistine, were dismayed and greatly afraid.
As the Philistine continued to defy Israel for forty days, David came into the camp to inquire after his brethren’s welfare; and hearing the Philistine’s challenge, he asked to be led to Saul. When he was brought before Saul, he said to him, “Let not any man’s heart be dismayed in him; I, thy servant, will go and fight against the Philistine.” After giving a patient hearing to him, Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with thee.” And David took his staff, which he had always in his hand, and choosing five smooth stones from the brook, took a sling in his hand, and went against the Philistine. And the Philistine, seeing David, a stripling, of a ruddy countenance, despised him, and said to David, “Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with a staff?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. And he said to David, “Come to me, and I will give thy flesh to the birds of the air, and to the beasts of the earth.” And David said to the Philistine, “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, which thou hast defied. This day the Lord will deliver thee into my hand, and I will slay thee, and take away thy head from thee: and I will give the carcasses of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air, and to the beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear; for it is His battle, and He will deliver you into our hands.”
Jesus bearing His Cross on His way to Mount Calvary is the true David, the Champion of the armies of the living God, who rejects the armour of the kings of this world, and who is going out to fight against the prince of darkness with His Cross, “the staff that He always has in His hands” and to deliver them from him who up to this time had the power of death, “and to whose servitude they were all their lifetime subject through the fear of death” (Heb. ii. 15). The prince of darkness, in the beginning, prevailed by the wood of the fatal tree in Paradise, but One stronger than himself now comes against him, with the “staff that He always had in His hands” to destroy him, and to spoil him of his goods. “Jesus went forth carrying His Cross,” as the Church sings—“Forth comes the standard of the King!
All hail! Thou Mystery adored!
Hail, Cross! on which the Life Himself Died, and by death our life restored.”
— Vexilla Regis, Caswall’s Version.
Jesus had seen the serpent under the branches of the fatal tree in the Garden of Eden. He had seen the hand stretched out to take of the fruit at the insidious words of the deceiver, when Eve fell a victim to his deceit; and in the language of the Church hymn, He now comes, according to the will of the Eternal Father, against the arch-deceiver, to defeat him with his own weapon. As the Church sings—“Eating of the tree forbidden, Man had sunk in Satan’s snare, When our pitying Creator Did the second tree prepare, Destined, many ages later.
That first evil to repair. Such the order God appointed When for sin He would atone, To the serpent thus opposing Schemes yet deeper than his own; Thence the remedy procuring Whence the fatal wound had come.”
— Office of Passion-Sunday, Caswall’s Version.
On the tree of the Cross Jesus was to repair the fall that was brought about through the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and now, in the sight of all the people, He goes against the enemy of the armies of the living God, with His staff of victory in His hand. “Jesus went forth bearing His Cross.”
“The children of Israel,” writes St Augustine, “stood over against their adversaries forty days; which signify the present life, in which the Christian people cease not to fight against Goliath and his army—that is, against the devil and his angels. Nor would they have prevailed had not the Christ, the true David, come down amongst them with His staff in His hands; that is, with the mystery of the Cross. David, therefore, came and found the people of the Jews in battle-array against the devil; and when not one of them dared to come forward to a single combat, he, who was the figure of Christ, went forth to fight, carried his staff in his hands, and went out against Goliath. And thus, in him, there was shown in a figure that which was afterwards accomplished in our Lord Jesus Christ. For Christ, the true David, came forth, and when He was about to fight with the spiritual Goliath, He carried His own Cross. Observe, my brethren, where David wounded Goliath; in his forehead, where he was not marked with the sign of the Cross. For as the staff he carried was the figure of the Cross, so the stone with which Goliath was slain was the figure of Christ the Lord” (Augustine, Sermon cxcvii,, De Tempore).