Body, and nailed[1] His Hands and His Feet to the Cross. They crucified Him with two thieves[2], one on the right, the other on the left. Naked and bleeding He hung upon the Cross, raised aloft[3] between heaven and earth. Pilate wrote a title[4] in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and put it on the Cross. The writing was: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (Fig. 90).
Many of the Jews were dissatisfied ; they came to Pilate and said: “Write not[5]: ‘The King of the Jews’, but that He said: ‘I am the King of the Jews’.” But Pilate answered: “What I have written, I have written.”[6] And the soldiers cast lots for His garments[7], even as the prophets had foretold.
- ↑ Nailed. Our Lord was crucified in the following way: He was first stripped of all His clothing, with the exception of a cloth round His loins. The tearing of His clothes from His Body re opened His smarting wounds and renewed the pain of His scourging; but His greatest torment was in having His Sacred Body stripped and exposed to the gaze of the multitude. Then our Blessed Lord was extended on the Cross as it lay on the ground, and His Arms were stretched and fastened to the Cross by nails, driven through His Hands with a heavy hammer. Both His Feet were secured, one over the other, with one long nail, driven through both, into the Cross. The torture of this piercing and nailing of His Hands and Feet was indescribably great; the bones and nerves cracked, the blood streamed out. The whole Body was racked with pain. Then the Cross on which the Lamb of God was nailed was raised up, and fastened in the ground.
- ↑ Two thieves. Our Lord being in the middle, as if He were the greatest criminal of the three.
- ↑ Raised aloft. There He hung, covered with wounds and blood, and His Head crowned with thorns, the nails through His Hands and Feet being His only support, while His Precious Blood slowly trickled down on this earth of ours, to cleanse it from sin.
- ↑ A title. It was the custom to fix over the head of each one crucified an inscription telling the cause of the sentence. Hebrew was the language of the Jews, while Greek and Latin were the most widely spread languages of those days. The four letters INRI which are placed over our Lord’s Head on crucifixes are the first letters of the four words of the Latin inscription “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudseorum”.
- ↑ Write not. The wording of the inscription vexed the chief priests, for it was an outrage on the Jews to call a crucified man their king, such an one being considered dishonoured and accursed.
- ↑ I have written, i. e. it shall remain written.
- ↑ His garments. Namely, His linen under-garment, His cloak, and His girdle. Jesus hung on the Cross in utter poverty and abasement. He was robbed even of His clothes, and had to witness how His tormentors divided them among themselves.
