The First Word: “Pater, ignosce illis, quia nesciunt quid faciunt.”
“And when they had come to the place which is called Calvary, they crucified Him there; and the robbers, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. And Jesus said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”
—Luke 23:33–34
Saint Bonaventure’s Meditation on the First Word17
There are “Seven Words” (or pronouncements) which Christ uttered while elevated upon the cross, which may be likened to seven rich and verdant leaves springing forth upon a mystical vine [the cross itself being this spiritual vine]. Again, the wood of the cross may be likened to the frame of a lyre, and these Seven Words imagined to be the seven strings extended upon it.
The first words of the crucified Jesus were when He said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” O leaf, wonderfully green and vibrant! How marvelously these words of mercy befit the incarnate Word of the eternal Father! For the good Master here does exactly what He taught. He prays not only for His friends and supporters, but for His enemies and for those who persecute and torment Him.
O reader, treasure this precious leaf zealously within the depths of your heart! Then, whenever you are afflicted by any enemy, you will be able to summon to your mind the memory of the abundant sweetness of the supremely merciful Jesus. You will be able to use this saying as a powerful shield against any insults which may be directed against you, and any aspersions cast upon you. The divine Spouse prayed for those who killed Him: will you not pray for those who insult and criticize you?
Let us examine this prayer of Christ more diligently. “Father,” He says. Why does He place the name “Father” here? Children typically use the word “Father” when asking for some affectionate favor, because by doing so they bring to mind the natural bond of paternal love which unites them with their parent. Thus Jesus, the compassionate and merciful Lord, although He knew that His voice was always heard by the Father, chooses to use this intimate form of address here, in order to make manifest to us how much sincerity and love we should feel in praying for our enemies. It is as if He says, “Father, through the paternal and filial love by which we are eternally one, I pray for these, my killers. Remember Your love for Me, and forget the sins of my foes!”
Jesus, saving victim;
Jesus, atoning sacrifice;
Jesus, safe refuge for the anguished and afflicted!
For the sake of the human race, You have redeemed the captive;
You have led us forth from the sorrows of our earthly exile;
You have taken our guilt upon Your own sacred shoulders!
And not only this, but You have united us to God Himself
In an eternal and indissoluble union.
The chains You did not refuse, nor the scourges, nor the blows.
You did not flee from the gallows of the malefactor,
Nor did You seek to escape receiving the holy wounds
By which our wounds are healed.
When You were held to the cross,
And the enemy snarled savagely against You,
When the hammer struck, and the nail pierced Your holy flesh,
When pain and anguish overwhelmed You,
Then You implored the Father with suppliant prayer,
That He should forgive even those who crucified You, saying:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”18
Arnold’s Commentary on the First Word19
After Christ’s teaching and preaching of the doctrine of the Gospel, and after all of His marvelous signs and miracles, He chose to reinforce what He had taught by means of His own personal example. This was pursuant to the wise proverb of the Roman philosopher Seneca: “The journey to knowledge is long and difficult through instruction alone, but easy and direct by means of example.”20 And, lest there should have been anything omitted or unclear in His teachings, Our Lord completed it and perfectly illustrated His message by the lesson of His own actions.
Thus what He reserved until the very end of His earthly life constitutes a summary and consummation of all that He had done and said previously. Christ’s final words are therefore a most precious inheritance, bequeathed to the faithful. As such, they should be embraced with ardent love, and reflected upon with the deepest devotion. It may be said that Our Lord wrote His last words in His own blood, intending thereby to inscribe them indelibly into the hearts of all those who believe in Him and love Him.
So it was that from the pulpit of the cross, He communicated His new law, recapitulating briefly but compendiously and completely all that He had hitherto said. He, the good Master, taught simultaneously by word and by action, by precept and by example. He was not merely a teacher of the truth, but a witness to it, and, indeed, the very Incarnation of it.
It was upon the cross that He chose to speak these infinitely profound words, just as, a little earlier, He had chosen to keep silence before Herod and Pilate, spurning their impertinent and impious curiosity. From the gallows of the cross, He addresses not the potentates of this world, but the poor and humble in spirit. And the torments which He sustained were not able to impair or compromise the purity and nobility of His lessons.
In these Seven Last Words, Christ laid down a firm foundation for the edifice of the faith, including all its mystical paradoxes. Therefore, His words sometimes exhibited His humanity, and at other times manifested His divinity. Sometimes He spoke as the omnipotent Lord of the universe, and at other times He spoke as a fragile mortal. The most exalted sublimity and the most abject humility thus alternate. At one moment He implores, and at another He commands. He laments the human experience of abandonment by God, and yet also promises the glories of paradise to the thief who suffers beside Him. He does not complain on His own behalf, nor does He curse and condemn His killers. Rather, in His very first words, He implores mercy for them, and manifests the infinite depths of the divine mercy.
“An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth!”21 Thus was it decreed by the old law in former times. And in this ancient law, Moses spared no one. All injuries were to be punished and avenged, in a most exact and proportionate manner, with neither mercy nor compromise nor partiality. And whoever disdained or violated the grim demands of this exacting law were to be put to death.
Yet, with the advent of the time of grace, the stringency of that old decree is tempered.22 Evangelical mildness expels from the elect all wrath and vengefulness. A person is no longer permitted to call his brother or sister a rebel or a fool, nor does the teaching of our Master permit a hurtful word to be uttered in rage.23
For He who is the supreme judge of all is Himself the only avenger and punisher. And Christ directs us to return our swords to their sheathes; for the one who lives by the sword (as He teaches us) will surely die by the sword.24 And this He exemplified perfectly in His passion. For when His back was pounded with blows, when His cheeks were torn, when His face was covered with contemptuous spittle, He did not strike back. When His head was made to bleed with the crown of thorns, when His hands and feet were pierced by nails, when His side was torn asunder with a spear, He remained imperturbably silent and supremely patient. Like an innocent lamb led to the slaughter, He offered His very flesh as a fragrant holocaust upon the altar of the cross—for the propitiation, not of any guilt of His own, but for our sins.
Let us remember that He was the Son of God, and true God Himself; He could have easily summoned countless legions of angels at His merest behest, armed with star-wrought swords and celestial fire, to rescue Him from the clutches of His foes or to lay His adversaries to waste. Yet He had taught that if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, offer to them the other, and that if anyone sues you for your cloak give them your tunic as well.25
Christ put His own precepts into practice, and illustrated them in His actions. He is the head of the body, of which all the faithful are members; and it is fitting that the head should initiate what the body is to follow. And so He expresses His ardent desire (which He will later describe as a thirst) for the forgiveness for His enemies: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
What is this You say, O Lord? You do not accuse, nor seek vindication. Rather You try to excuse Your killers, and explain the error of these wicked conspirators. The weight of punishment which is fittingly due to them, You humbly undertake to bear upon Your own shoulders on their behalf. You do not confront them with their crime, but rather You act as their advocate, suggesting that forgiveness is due to them for “they know not what they do.”
But how is this to be reconciled with a statement You had made some time before Your crucifixion? For You said: “If I had not come and spoken to them, then they should not be guilty of sin…. But now they have seen and they have hated, both Me and My Father.”26 Indeed, these cruel hypocrites had seen and hated. They had heard all that was prophesied concerning You in the Old Testament by Moses, and all that was read aloud to them each Sabbath. You Yourself had spoken in the synagogues, offering clear commentaries on the Scriptures. In the presence of the whole assembly, You made manifest the prophetic meaning of the passage of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me and He has anointed me. He has sent Me to bring the good news to the poor.”27 You had openly declared that this oracle was fulfilled in Yourself, even as You spoke.
What place, then, was there for any claim of ignorance? How can it be believed that they “know not what they do”? How could they not understand and believe in You, when You had spoken in this unambiguous way? Moreover, all the people saw that You could read the Scriptures and interpret them with divine wisdom, despite the fact that You had received no human schooling. These things were by no means hidden or concealed; but on the contrary, all the people witnessed them and marveled at them. Out of Your own heavenly wisdom, You exhibited a miraculous knowledge, and easily confounded the scribes and the professional teachers of the law with Your erudition and insight.
And what place for doubt was there, when the entire populace had seen You make the blind see and the lame to walk? How could there be any shadow of uncertainty remaining when You had cleansed lepers of their affliction, proclaimed the good news to the poor, and even restored the dead to life?
Therefore it could only have been willful obstinacy of soul and a deliberate refusal to see and to understand which prevented them from believing. Such was the baleful fire of hatred which burned within their hearts that they would not recognize as manifestations of God’s power, that is, all the good works and miracles of Christ. Yet they could scarcely deny them, since they were plainly visible to all. Rather, they sought to explain them as the workings of devils. They ascribed to Beelzebul the deeds of Jesus, and blasphemed the Holy Spirit by attributing its effects to demons.28
Nevertheless, Christ says that such persons “know not what they do,” and hence supplicates to the Father for their forgiveness. He seeks to excuse them on account of their blindness and error. And this request He makes is filled with deep significance, and was necessary according to God’s salvific plan. For it reveals the intention of God to sow the seeds of salvation even in what appears to be the most barren of soil, and to supplant ignorance and error (however deeply rooted), in order that the glorious tree of hope may burst forth with its wonderful fruit, and a temple of living faith be established on firm foundations.
And we should not doubt that the authority of such a meditator, Christ, was sufficiently potent and efficacious to delete any weight of guilt. For in cases where the mind is genuinely and unconsciously ignorant or the heart is unintentionally darkened, there is no sin, but merely error; there is no culpability, but merely blindness.
But alas, such was not the case here! For the very Truth was clearly before them. Their eyes had seen, and their ears had heard.29 Neither evidence nor reason were lacking to them. Yet they continued to prefer false vanities to eternal verities, clinging stubbornly to tyrannical lies while refusing the liberating truth. They would not accept the healing medicine which was graciously offered to them. They preferred to remain blind, so that they could continue to live in the old, evil manner to which they had grown accustomed. Evil had become comfortable for them. And for them, the habit of evil had made it into a kind of necessity, which had then become a kind of willing compulsion or voluntary madness. Thus, when Jesus said that they “knew not what they did,” He spoke the truth. But their ignorance was of their own free choosing and evil will, and was therefore a culpable ignorance.
It was of this wicked and willful ignorance that the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “Seeing, they will not perceive; and hearing, they refusing to understand.”30 These people scorned and abused the examples of justice and mercy which the Lord had shown them, and shunned the illuminating rays of truth which shone forth in all His words and deeds. Rejecting the light of grace and nature, they concealed themselves and their malice in the shadows and figures of the old law. Thus did they exemplify the oracle of the apostle Saint Paul, when he declared that “the letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life.”31
In clinging to the letter which kills in order to deny the life-giving Spirit, they revered Moses more than Christ. They esteemed the words of a prophet more highly than the incarnate Word of God Himself, blasphemously preferring the servant to the Lord and the disciple to the Master. This was the unforgivable blindness and ignorance which Jesus asked the Father to forgive.
Why then, did He ask for them to be forgiven, if He knew that forgiveness was not possible for them? Why did He plea that they might be excused on account of their ignorance, when He knew that their ignorance was not of a nature which could mitigate their guilt? Indeed, Jesus knew that the Father had placed all things into His hands,32 and He enjoyed omnipotent dominion and authority over both heaven and earth.33 Thus He Himself was able to forgive, and had no real need to ask. This is the key to understanding the mystical and hidden purpose of Christ’s words here.
For Our Lord speaks here in the person of a supplicant, not of a judge, in order to exhibit perfectly the super-abundance of His love and the depths of His humility. He shows, moreover, that though He is the appointed judge over all humanity, He does not ever cease to be our merciful advocate. Paradoxically, the role of the administration of perfect judgment and of pleading for clemency are united in the one Person, and thus will never be in genuine conflict. His words at this point reveal this most mysterious and marvelous truth.
There can be no place for severity where the wounded Christ pleads for mercy with His own blood. But how appallingly great was the weight of humanity’s sin, that its redemption demanded such a high price!
In this act of reconciliation and redemption, “justice and peace embrace” and are united in an eternal, loving kiss.34 And henceforth, they can never be separated. Our Liberator makes Himself into a secure bridge, across which we, who had hitherto been captives, are able to flee to safety and freedom, escaping from the power of sin and death. And the Monarch of all the universe has written the decree of our pardon in His own blood, thereby imparting to it invincible and incontestable authority. His own crucified body, displaying the glowing crimson emblem of the sacred wound in His heart, is held aloft like a flag. And it is continually before the eyes of the invisible Father, as an everlasting token and testament of our redemption. This invisible Father—who is God omnipotent, eternal, and transcendent—constantly gazes upon it with infinite love and tenderness.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who both bestows and offers testimony to our forgiveness, has left this forgiveness as an everlasting inheritance for ourselves and all generations. The root of our sin (which was the first transgression of Adam and Eve) has been cut out. And although sometimes new growths of wickedness may spring up from the moribund stump which remains (as indeed we know they do, every day), they are continually removed and healed, without the need for a new sacrifice of propitiation.
This reconciling sacrifice of Christ pleads for our forgiveness. In it lies the healing of our wounds and the reparation of all we have lost. Yet it also is offered to us as an eloquent and instructive example. For just as Our Lord achieved our salvation by the outpouring of His own blood, so each of us may arrive at the glory of our heavenly homeland only by the shedding of some of our own blood, too. Just as Christ was crucified, so must our own sinful tendencies and worldly vices be crucified. Just as He gave forth His precious spirit, so must we be parted from our foolish vanities, and misguided and egotistical ambitions. Just as He sacrificed His self, so must we renounce our selfishness. When Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them,” He summons us to imitate both His mercy, and to be united with Him, in our own small ways, in His redeeming sacrifice.
Nor should we neglect to contemplate the sacred form and potent magnitude of the cross itself. For its depth, breadth, and height all reveal to us secret mysteries.35
Depth
The depth of the cross (that is to say, the manner in which it was deeply inserted into the earth, in order to stand erect) portrays the manner in which it penetrates the human heart. By this penetration, it lays bare the hidden thoughts and impulses which are concealed within. So deeply does it sink into our depths (if we but let it) that it reaches the point where the soul and the spirit are separated from each other.36
If we let it, the cross of Christ hides itself in our heart and finds a resting place there. Its presence is able to sanctify all our thoughts and emotions, and to fortify our will and conscience. And not only this, but it becomes a powerful weapon, whereby the Leviathan which lurks within all of us—that is, the dark and venomous worm of sinful desire—can be transfixed and rendered innocuous.
And just as it happened when Moses, following the instructions of the Lord, cast a piece of wood into the water at Marah, the harsh acridity of those waters was transformed into sweetness, so too when the wood of the cross truly enters into our souls all of our bitterness is taken away.37 Indeed, by the presence of the cross within our soul, our whole being is ennobled—
our confusion is clarified;
our belligerence is pacified;
our darkness is illuminated;
our hardness is mollified;
and our sourness is rendered sweet.
Breadth
The breadth of the cross is such that it embraces the entire creation with the heavenly amplitude of its charity. By the all-encompassing and stupendous breath of the cross, God united Himself to the whole human race, without exception. He thus shares in all the multitude and diversity of sufferings which afflict the woebegone children of Eve and the wretched progeny of Adam, which we all are. He feels the discomforts of the sick, and the constraints of the captives, and the poverty of the poor, and the tears of the sorrowful, and the pain of the broken-hearted.
He extended His arms in love, as a hen extends its wings to gather and protect its chicks. And as a hen does not discriminate between one or the other of its offspring, but desires the safety and well-being of them all, so does Christ long for the salvation of all individuals. Thus it was appropriate that there was a thief both at the right and the left hand of the cross. Very gladly would Our Lord have promised paradise to both—but, alas, only one was willing to accept this precious gift!
Height
Finally, we should consider the height of the cross. For its base was located on the earth, or rather beneath the earth, yet its peak reached upwards towards the sublimity of the heavens. This towering height of the cross reveals the strong confidence which is born of the virtue of hope. This confidence and hope raises up to aspirations of celestial glory all who have been crucified to this passing world.38 And for those who have an unstained conscience and are free from attachments to earthly things, it makes them sharers, even during this life, in this heavenly beatitude.
Of such a soul, it may be said that:
already it tastes the sweetness of paradise;
already it converses with angels;
already it consorts with saints;
already it perceives the highest truths; already it melts with bliss;
already it rejoices in jubilation;
already it rests in peace;
already it loves perfectly!
Yet what is it that can exalt a soul to such a mystical beatitude? It is not pride, nor learning, nor wisdom, nor even good works; but rather, it is the sublimity of the cross itself. And without the experience of the cross in some way or the other, no one may enter into such blessedness, or experience such divine elevation.
Saint Bonaventure’s Prayer
O gentle patience, and patient gentleness,
O infinite mercy, O infinite kindness!
As a gentle Lamb, You proffer no complaint,
And as a loving mother, You seek to excuse the wrongs of Your children.
With Your most sweet soul, You offer only benevolence;
With Your most merciful will, You display only forgiveness.
Unto You, the hopes of my souls all fly;
Unto You, the sighs of my heart all ascend.
To You flow all my tears,
And the desperate yearnings of my heart’s cry to You, O Jesus:
“Forgive me, Lord, forgive me,
For very I often I know not what I do!” Amen.39
Saint Bonaventure’s Hymn
In the Lord’s most holy cross,
Which restored sweet Eden’s loss,
Bides a refuge ever sure,
Truest hope of hearts made pure!Let us ever mindful be
Of Christ’s doleful agony,
Of the crown of thorns He wore—
Torments which for us He bore,And the wounds in limbs and side,
Pouring forth love’s crimson tide;
Whips and gall and bitter wine
Proffered to those lips divine!In such things, let hearts be sunk—
Lost, inebriated, drunk!
Let the cross’s branch take root
In our souls, and bear rich fruit.Let us honor fervently
That redeeming gallows tree,
And, amongst the saints, Christ’s praise
Peal with joy for endless days!Praise and glory to God’s Son,
Scorned and sold, betrayed and shunned:
Thus died Christ to save the lost,
Paid in blood sin’s dreadful cost!40
_______________
16 “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
17 From Bonaventure’s Vitis Mystica.
18 From Bonaventure’s De Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
19 From Arnold of Bonneval’s Tractatus de Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce. It is to be noted that, since Arnold used a slightly different ordering of the Seven Last Words to Bonaventure, some editorial re- arrangement of his commentaries have been made to accord with what is now the standard ordering.
20 See Seneca, Moral Epistle VI.
21 Exodus 21:24.
22 See Matthew 5:38–42.
23 See Matthew 5:22.
24 See Matthew 26:52.
25 See Matthew 5:39–40.
26 John 15:22, 24.
27 See Luke 4:18 and Isaiah 61:1.
28 See Matthew 12:24–32.
29 See 1 Corinthians 2:9.
30 See Isaiah 6:9 and Matthew 13:14.
31 2 Corinthians 3:6.
32 John 3:35.
33 Matthew 28:18.
34 See Psalm 84:10. Note that all Psalm numbers throughout this text reflect those of the traditional Douay-Rheims translation.
35 In the following commentary, Arnold shows how a consideration of the various dimensions of the cross (its depth, breadth, and height) each reveals an aspect of its mystical power.
36 See Ephesians 3:18.
37 See Exodus 15:22–25.
38 See Galatians 6:14.
39 From Bonaventure’s De Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
40 From Bonaventure’s Officium de Passione Domini.