Spiritual Quote of the Day (C.S. Lewis, on Jesus, ‘Inventor of All Loves’ on the Cross)

“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say ‘seeing’? there are no tenses in God—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a ‘host’ who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and ‘take advantage of’ Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”—British novelist and religious author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Four Loves (1960)

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Isaac Watts, On the Crucifixion)

“There from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flowed mingled down;
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”— “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” (1707), lyrics by English hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674-1748), music by Edward Miller (1735-1807)
 
The image accompanying this post, Christ on the Cross, is a 1631 oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Tom Bissell, on the Mysterious Figure of Judas Iscariot)

“Who Judas was, what he did, why he did it, and what he ultimately means have been debated within Christianity since its first decades. In the centuries since, many—believers and non-believers alike—have attempted to discern in his few scriptural appearances a personality complicated and large enough to merit the crime for which he is condemned. These myriad attempts have resulted in almost as many Judases as attempts. We have been presented with a Judas who is tormented and penitent, a Judas possessed by devils, a Judas possessed by the Devil, a Judas who is diseased, a Judas who is loyal, a Judas who does what he has to do, a Judas who wants Jesus to act against Rome, a Judas who is confused, a Judas who is loving, a Judas who loves women, a Judas who kills his own father, a Judas who works as a double agent, a Judas who does not understand what he has done, a Judas who kills himself, a Judas who lives to old age, a Judas who loves Jesus ‘as cold loves flame,’ a Judas who is the agent of salvation itself.”— Travel and short-story writer Tom Bissell, “Looking for Judas,” VQR, Summer 2009

In Israel’s Hinnom Valley over a decade ago, Bissell and a companion journeyed toward Hakeldama (alternatively, Akeldama), or Aramaic for “field of blood”—originally where children in the Old Testament were sacrificed, then made more notorious as the site that Judas Iscariot is alleged to have bought for betraying Christ, and where, tradition holds, he hanged himself in guilt-ridden remorse.

In the fascinating creative nonfiction piece that resulted, Bissell examined what is commonly accepted or disputed about the most notorious Apostle, including differences among the Gospel accounts of what led him to his shocking last act.

Unlike other sites in the Holy Land with less historical foundation, Bissell found, there are no physical signs pointing the way for pilgrims here. But the atmosphere, with its "caves, mud, and bushes," remained eerily desolate.

Moreover, on the ridge overlooking the field, loomed a contemporary reminder of the division and violence that Jesus came to ameliorate before becoming its victim: what modern Israelis call the Separation Barrier and Palestinians refer to as the Racial Separation or Apartheid Wall.  That concrete wall, Bissell observed, “possessed the hideous gray inelegance of a supermax prison.”

The image accompanying this post, showing Judas Iscariot, in the right foreground, slipping away from the Last Supper to betray Christ, was created in the late 19^th century by the Danish painter Carl Bloch (1834-1890).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Blaise Pascal, on Why Jesus Suffered and Died)

“Let us, then, consider death in Jesus Christ, and not without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is horrible, detestable, the horror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is altogether different; it is benignant, holy, the joy of the faithful. Everything is sweet in Jesus Christ, even to death: Jesus Christ suffered and died to sanctify death and suffering; he has been all that was great, and all that was abject, in order to sanctify in himself all things except sin, and to be the model of every condition.” —French philosopher and logician Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), letter of Oct. 17, 1651, to “Madame Perier and Her Husband, on the Death of M. Pascal, Pere,” in The Thoughts, Letters, and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal, translated by O.W. Wight (1869)

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Quote of the Day (Christina Rossetti, on ‘Jesus, Man's Redeemer’)

“Up Thy Hill of Sorrows

Thou all alone,

Jesus, man's Redeemer,

Climbing to a Throne:

Thro' the world triumphant,

Thro' the Church in pain,

Which think to look upon Thee

No more again.”— English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), “Good Friday Morning,” from The Complete Poems, edited by R. W. Crump and Betty S. Flowers

The image accompanying this post is The Crucifixion with Donors and Saints Peter and Margaret, by Dutch painter Cornelis Engebrechtsz (ca. 1461–1527). This oil-and-wood painting now hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Quote of the Day (St. Peter, on the Power of the Cross)

“ ‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’”— 1 Peter 2:24

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Quote of the Day (W.H. Auden, on Good Friday)

“Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.” —British poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973), A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Quote of the Day (G.K. Chesterton, on the Passion as a ‘Tragedy of the People’)

"In every century, in this century, in the next century, the Passion is what it was in the first century, when it occurred; a thing stared at by a crowd. It remains a tragedy of the people; a crime of the people; a consolation of the people; but never merely a thing of the period. And its vitality comes from the very things that its foes find a scandal and a stumbling block; from its dogmatism and from its dreadfulness. It lives, because it involves the staggering story of the Creator truly groaning and travailing with his Creation; and the highest thing thinkable passing through some nadir of the lowest curve of the cosmos. And it lives, because the very blast from this black cloud of death comes upon the world as a wind of everlasting life; by which all things wake and are alive.” —G.K. Chesterton, The Way of the Cross (1936)

The image accompanying this post is Christ Carrying the Cross, by Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450–1516)