"Then they spat in his face." (Matthew 26:67)
There is a sacramental quality to the body that is unbreakable. We are complex creatures, with complex intentions and thoughts and willings, borne of our hearts and minds and souls--and we naturally express these things physically, through our bodies. There is nothing of our bodies, no action or feature or quality, that does not bear a meaning beyond the physical, that does not communicate. The most perfunctory hug is still as a gesture of affection: the touch of a stranger's handshake--a kiss on the cheek--the movement of a muscle in the face--all have their own proper meanings.
So let us consider, for a moment, what is expressed by the spittle on the face of Christ. Christ Jesus became man in order to inaugurate a system of Sacraments, or rather in order to be the one, eternal Sacrament of the love and mercy of God. His every gesture, his every word, indeed his entire being as man, spiritual and physical, was a communication, an expression, of the eternal Word and his love for each man and woman and child. All that he communicated, and all that he received, through the physical, through his body, was communicated and received also by God.
Thus the enormous significance of all that was done to Christ in his Passion, all that was done to and for Christ throughout his life. Christ came to earth to communicate his love physically, through the Sacraments of his body and life and actions--he also came to earth to suffer, in himself, all the sin and disorder and suffering of man. In this suffering, too, he worked out our salvation not only in soul, but in body as well. In his Passion, the sufferings of Christ's soul were signified and expressed and effected by the sufferings of his body. All that was done to the body of Christ by man was done also to the soul of Christ, and hence to God--all that has been done against God was suffered by Christ in his soul, effected and expressed in his body.
Christ did not merely suffer the sins of those who crucified him, or of his contemporaries--he suffered the sins and wounds and sufferings of each and every man who has ever existed or ever will exist, including each of us. He bore our sins in his soul and in and through his body, through all that he gave and received in the body. That which a few men did to Christ in his Passion, then, truly signified and expressed and effected that which has been done to Christ by us all. When Christ received the blows of the soldiers, in them he recognized and suffered the blows of us all.
Think, then, of the action of spitting in the face of Christ. This is, it would seem, a fairly universal gesture--one whose meaning and import strikes us immediately, across cultures and times and places. It is the physical embodiment of contempt.
Contempt, or despising, is not a sin that we think of, perhaps, very often. To define it, though, we have merely to look to the physical gesture, the physical sacrament, which very well both effects and reveals what it signifies.
When we spit, we cast out of our bodies, out of ourselves, something which we regard as superfluous, unnecessary, or even hateful to us. Our spit to us is both valueless and distasteful, not something we prefer to think of at all, a matter for disgust--and so we cast it from ourselves, usually without thought, into places equally valueless and disgusting.
When we spit upon another, then, we treat that person as an appropriate receptacle for our spitting, our casting out of what is valueless and distasteful. Our act of spitting is not intended to hurt, to cause pain, or even to harm. It is intended, rather, to humiliate, to lower, to disregard.
To spit in someone's face expresses this basic reality even more intensely. The face is the part of the body that shows forth the person, the unique, relational being, more clearly and more inescapably than any other. We both express and receive love through the face; when we recognize the face of someone we know, we recognize not merely a body or a mind, but something unique, irreplaceable, valuable, loved and loving, a you to our I. It is in the face we appear as we are, beings defined by relation, existing from and for love. To spit in someone's face, then, is to treat as valueless and disgusting not merely the body qua physical, but the person itself, the unique, relational being capable of love, with a name, a mind, a heart, a soul. It is to degrade and lower and crush not merely some person, but this person, you. I see your face--and I spit in it.
Imagine, then, spitting in the face of Christ. Here is the face of God, the face that embodies and makes effectual his love for each and every person, including you. Imagine the sorrow in his eyes as your spittle strikes the face of God. Imagine your spittle resting on that face, slimy and repulsive, dripping slowly down, in his eyes, his hair, his beard, covering up his features, obscuring, mocking, defiling.
You have taken that face, that love, and treated it as valueless, disgusting, as nothing. You have even taken pleasure in doing so--taken pleasure in the power, the superiority, the indifference, by which you so lowered, so degraded, God himself. You have seen yourself as you spat in the face of God, and have taken delight in what you saw.
Perhaps you think you have not done this, that you have not spit in the face of God, or in the face of any other man. You are mistaken.
We spit in the face of Christ, in the first place, each and every time we willingly despise another human person--whenever we treat another as valueless, disgusting, beneath us, whenever we choose to lower, to humiliate, to disregard. "That which you do the least of these, you do to me": strangers, waiters, sexual objects, political opponents, anonymous Internet trolls. In each and every person whose irreplaceable personhood, name, heart, soul, whom Christ loves and for whom he died, we have not acknowledged, we have despised and spat upon the face of Christ.
We spit in the face of Christ, likewise, when we treat his love for us, expressed in the Church and the Sacraments and in so many other things, as something valueless or distasteful or indifferent. It is difficult to accept the love of God, which requires us to submit ourselves to others, to deny our desires and inclinations and thoughts, and to accept and receive something far beyond our own knowledge or control. Far easier, then, to despise Christ and his Incarnation, and the means he uses to show us his love. Whether that is the teachings of the Church, or one's fellow Christian, or the Sacraments in which Christ offers himself to us, the blow is no less severe. It is most cruel of all when we reject and disregard Christ in the Eucharist, the most perfect sign of God's love, receiving him into our bodies without acknowledging him or giving ourselves to him or desiring to be obedient to him in all things, or perhaps not bothering to receive him at all.
I invite you, then, to contemplate once again the image of Christ, with your spittle on his face. He willingly bears our contempt, our indifference, for the sake of his love. He allows us to despise him and disregard him and humiliate him and lower him, and he takes on himself all those situations in which we ourselves have been despised and disregarded. This is the measure of God's love, that he permits us to treat him, in comparison to whom we are nothing and can have no value at all, as valueless, as nothing. He chooses to love us, although he does not need us, and he allows us to despise him, although we cannot exist apart from him.
This is the extent of God's love for us, and the effectual sign of its omnipotence in regard to us. All that Christ asks of us is that we acknowledge that love, and accept it, that we permit him to love us and save us from our sins. He has willingly borne, and will willingly bear, all in us that is most distasteful and disgusting and shameful, and he will give us in return his own immortal and incorruptable life. He bears our spittle in his face, and gives to us his own flesh and blood. Let us receive him, then, worthily, and love him in our neighbor.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, as in your Passion you willingly bore the spittle of our indifference and contempt, so grant us both to acknowledge and accept your great love for us and for all mankind, so that trusting in you and following you in all things, we may both love and honor you in all persons, and faithfully obey you in all things.
Amen.
There is a sacramental quality to the body that is unbreakable. We are complex creatures, with complex intentions and thoughts and willings, borne of our hearts and minds and souls--and we naturally express these things physically, through our bodies. There is nothing of our bodies, no action or feature or quality, that does not bear a meaning beyond the physical, that does not communicate. The most perfunctory hug is still as a gesture of affection: the touch of a stranger's handshake--a kiss on the cheek--the movement of a muscle in the face--all have their own proper meanings.
So let us consider, for a moment, what is expressed by the spittle on the face of Christ. Christ Jesus became man in order to inaugurate a system of Sacraments, or rather in order to be the one, eternal Sacrament of the love and mercy of God. His every gesture, his every word, indeed his entire being as man, spiritual and physical, was a communication, an expression, of the eternal Word and his love for each man and woman and child. All that he communicated, and all that he received, through the physical, through his body, was communicated and received also by God.
Thus the enormous significance of all that was done to Christ in his Passion, all that was done to and for Christ throughout his life. Christ came to earth to communicate his love physically, through the Sacraments of his body and life and actions--he also came to earth to suffer, in himself, all the sin and disorder and suffering of man. In this suffering, too, he worked out our salvation not only in soul, but in body as well. In his Passion, the sufferings of Christ's soul were signified and expressed and effected by the sufferings of his body. All that was done to the body of Christ by man was done also to the soul of Christ, and hence to God--all that has been done against God was suffered by Christ in his soul, effected and expressed in his body.
Christ did not merely suffer the sins of those who crucified him, or of his contemporaries--he suffered the sins and wounds and sufferings of each and every man who has ever existed or ever will exist, including each of us. He bore our sins in his soul and in and through his body, through all that he gave and received in the body. That which a few men did to Christ in his Passion, then, truly signified and expressed and effected that which has been done to Christ by us all. When Christ received the blows of the soldiers, in them he recognized and suffered the blows of us all.
Think, then, of the action of spitting in the face of Christ. This is, it would seem, a fairly universal gesture--one whose meaning and import strikes us immediately, across cultures and times and places. It is the physical embodiment of contempt.
Contempt, or despising, is not a sin that we think of, perhaps, very often. To define it, though, we have merely to look to the physical gesture, the physical sacrament, which very well both effects and reveals what it signifies.
When we spit, we cast out of our bodies, out of ourselves, something which we regard as superfluous, unnecessary, or even hateful to us. Our spit to us is both valueless and distasteful, not something we prefer to think of at all, a matter for disgust--and so we cast it from ourselves, usually without thought, into places equally valueless and disgusting.
When we spit upon another, then, we treat that person as an appropriate receptacle for our spitting, our casting out of what is valueless and distasteful. Our act of spitting is not intended to hurt, to cause pain, or even to harm. It is intended, rather, to humiliate, to lower, to disregard.
To spit in someone's face expresses this basic reality even more intensely. The face is the part of the body that shows forth the person, the unique, relational being, more clearly and more inescapably than any other. We both express and receive love through the face; when we recognize the face of someone we know, we recognize not merely a body or a mind, but something unique, irreplaceable, valuable, loved and loving, a you to our I. It is in the face we appear as we are, beings defined by relation, existing from and for love. To spit in someone's face, then, is to treat as valueless and disgusting not merely the body qua physical, but the person itself, the unique, relational being capable of love, with a name, a mind, a heart, a soul. It is to degrade and lower and crush not merely some person, but this person, you. I see your face--and I spit in it.
Imagine, then, spitting in the face of Christ. Here is the face of God, the face that embodies and makes effectual his love for each and every person, including you. Imagine the sorrow in his eyes as your spittle strikes the face of God. Imagine your spittle resting on that face, slimy and repulsive, dripping slowly down, in his eyes, his hair, his beard, covering up his features, obscuring, mocking, defiling.
You have taken that face, that love, and treated it as valueless, disgusting, as nothing. You have even taken pleasure in doing so--taken pleasure in the power, the superiority, the indifference, by which you so lowered, so degraded, God himself. You have seen yourself as you spat in the face of God, and have taken delight in what you saw.
Perhaps you think you have not done this, that you have not spit in the face of God, or in the face of any other man. You are mistaken.
We spit in the face of Christ, in the first place, each and every time we willingly despise another human person--whenever we treat another as valueless, disgusting, beneath us, whenever we choose to lower, to humiliate, to disregard. "That which you do the least of these, you do to me": strangers, waiters, sexual objects, political opponents, anonymous Internet trolls. In each and every person whose irreplaceable personhood, name, heart, soul, whom Christ loves and for whom he died, we have not acknowledged, we have despised and spat upon the face of Christ.
We spit in the face of Christ, likewise, when we treat his love for us, expressed in the Church and the Sacraments and in so many other things, as something valueless or distasteful or indifferent. It is difficult to accept the love of God, which requires us to submit ourselves to others, to deny our desires and inclinations and thoughts, and to accept and receive something far beyond our own knowledge or control. Far easier, then, to despise Christ and his Incarnation, and the means he uses to show us his love. Whether that is the teachings of the Church, or one's fellow Christian, or the Sacraments in which Christ offers himself to us, the blow is no less severe. It is most cruel of all when we reject and disregard Christ in the Eucharist, the most perfect sign of God's love, receiving him into our bodies without acknowledging him or giving ourselves to him or desiring to be obedient to him in all things, or perhaps not bothering to receive him at all.
I invite you, then, to contemplate once again the image of Christ, with your spittle on his face. He willingly bears our contempt, our indifference, for the sake of his love. He allows us to despise him and disregard him and humiliate him and lower him, and he takes on himself all those situations in which we ourselves have been despised and disregarded. This is the measure of God's love, that he permits us to treat him, in comparison to whom we are nothing and can have no value at all, as valueless, as nothing. He chooses to love us, although he does not need us, and he allows us to despise him, although we cannot exist apart from him.
This is the extent of God's love for us, and the effectual sign of its omnipotence in regard to us. All that Christ asks of us is that we acknowledge that love, and accept it, that we permit him to love us and save us from our sins. He has willingly borne, and will willingly bear, all in us that is most distasteful and disgusting and shameful, and he will give us in return his own immortal and incorruptable life. He bears our spittle in his face, and gives to us his own flesh and blood. Let us receive him, then, worthily, and love him in our neighbor.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, as in your Passion you willingly bore the spittle of our indifference and contempt, so grant us both to acknowledge and accept your great love for us and for all mankind, so that trusting in you and following you in all things, we may both love and honor you in all persons, and faithfully obey you in all things.
Amen.
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