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Most of you know that I write a weekly “Question and Answer” Column for Our Sunday Visitor. An interesting question came in on the question of some older Catholic prayers and Bible translations that uses the term “slave” or “slavery” to reference our relationship to God. While such terminology makes must modern people wince, it is an important biblical concept that we should not wholly lose by simply rejecting it or by covering it up with euphemistic terms such as “servant” or “handmaid.” I reproduce here what I wrote for the column.

Question:

I was recently reading a prayer of consecration wherein we were asking the Lord and our Lady to makes us slaves to the will of God. How is this not outrageous and horrifying given the history of slavery in our culture? Name withheld. 

Answer:

Your concern is understandable. The slavery of the colonial period was detestable for many reasons. In biblical times, slavery resulted largely from three causes: one owed large debts, one had committed a range of serious crimes but not capitol, or one was a solider in a losing army. Hence slavery replaced prison or death. But, the slavery of the colonial period (16th – 19th Centuries) exploited peoples who committed no crimes, engaged in no war and owed no debt. It was unjust and horrible. The slavery of biblical times was not without serious problems, hence the biblical texts admonish both slaves and slave masters to observe certain limits (eg. Eph 6:5). There is no blanket-approval of slavery as critics allege. 

So, prayers that speak of us as “slaves” to God or, subordinately, to the Virgin Mother, need to understood in the biblical tradition from which they are drawn. 

Let’s look at some texts wherein the term “slave” is applied to disciples. Often today, the Greek word “doulos” (slave) is translated as “servant.” But this is a euphemism since a “servant” is paid and free to leave employment. Slaves do not have these options. Hence our modern translations hide a more provocative image than most of us know. Consider some of the following examples: 

• • • • In the Letter to the Philippians we read: Jesus Christ, though existing as God, did not consider equality with God something to which he should cling. Rather, he emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, and being made in human likeness… (Phil 2:7) Notice then, while some translations say he became a “servant” the Greek word is δοῦλος (doulous) which translates “slave.” What this means is that Jesus became wholly obedient to death obeying his Father completely, and though, despising the shame of the Cross, he went there because his Father willed it. He did not negotiate a better deal or, like a servant, resign. As a “slave” he obeyed his Father absolutely. 

• • • • When Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,” as most modern translations render it, there is hidden from us what she more literally said, “Behold, I am the slave-girl (δούλη = doule = slave girl) of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you have said.” Perhaps we wince at this sort of talk, but that is most literally what it says. 

• • • • In Romans 6, St Paul teaches that, although we like to think we are “big-shots,” we are actually just little specks of dust in vast universe. We are going to be slaves to someone: either the devil, the world, the flesh, or God. We might as well be slaves to God who loves us. St. Paul writes: : Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness .… For when you were slaves to sin, you were free of obligation to righteousness. …But the outcome of those things is death. But now that you have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap leads to holiness, and eternal life… (Romans 6:20-23). Herein St Paul presents the paradox, namely that there is no place safer and freer than inside the will of God and in a “slavish” but loving and absolute obedience to his commands. Slavery to God paradoxically provides the greatest freedom we can ever hope to experience. 
      • Hence, as our Lord teaches, Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin…. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (Jn 8:34-36). So, “bondage” and obedience to the truth our Lord teaches is the paradoxical and surest way out of destructive slavery. The horrific slavery of the devil and his world are the surest way to the glorious freedom of the children of God. 

In the end, we do best to live in a biblical world and understand its terms, not demand that it conform to our terminology. While words in our times may provoke understandable feelings, we are best served by overcoming this and learning what our Lord teaches in a counter and cross cultural way. “Slavery” in God’s commands is the surest path to true freedom. 

If you saw some or all of the coronation rituals for King Charles in England, you were certainly treated to an exceedingly beautiful event but also a “blast from the past.” It is highly significant that this is the first coronation in England in seventy years. Seventy years reaches back, prior to the wreckovation, iconoclasm and rude casting aside of all tradition and formality which occurred in the West  in the period of the 1960s and after. Today we are relentlessly casual; we almost never dress up and, practically,  nothing is sacred. I have little doubt that, if coronations in England had occurred in the sixties, seventies or eighties, the rituals would have been  gutted and cast aside as something hopelessly old and therefore bad by that simple fact. Likely  it would have been reduced to a mere swearing in, in a secular venue with everyone in business suits.

Yes, I remember the spirit of that time of the late 1960s and beyond, how proud and scoffing we were to anything “old.” Old was just another word for bad. We were mesmerized by our technology and confused it for the wisdom we sorely lacked. Reverence for elders and our traditions was supplanted by a glorification of youth culture with  its trendy ephemeral ideas. Beautiful old buildings were replaced with soulless glass boxes. Churches were wreckovated. Patriotism was dismissed as harmful nationalism and the  wisdom of past generations was sullied by the mere emphasis on sins of the past. What did dead white men who may have owned slaves have to say to us!? Worst of all was the steady marginalization of God, biblical wisdom, the worship that is owed to God, and the salutary notion that we will all answer to Him. Today we live in a largely soulless culture devoid of moral bearings or firm foundations. The  coronation rites we saw lay dormant in this reckless period and seemed to open a window on the ways things largely were before the cultural revolution that set in during the late sixties.

However, I do not exult them as utterly good and devoid of any problems. Clearly there were anti-Catholic aspects and other notions of kings and kingship that offend against our more democratic American ideals. I know too that rituals can be properly celebrated but be very empty. Frankly, the faith in God constantly expressed in the Coronation rites is something few Anglicans and Episcopalians  share today in the “anything-goes” mentality of most of its Western adherents.

Nevertheless, the window that opened on the way we once were is important and if there is a way back, it paints a picture of what we have lost and what we could regain through such edifying rituals. Certain things stood out:

• • • The constant reference to God and our need to depend on him for everything.
    • That a King, or any leader must answer to God and seek to foster and protect the holy Faith for God’s people.
    • The modesty of conducting the anointing behind a screen showed the discretion of the past toward sacred things and is an antidote to the modern insistence that everything, even the most sacred,  be visible and on open display.
    • The liturgies were conducted ad orientem  (facing the altar). Which mean that everyone, people, clergy and kings stand before God and face him together. God is the focus, not us.
    • The concept that rites and liturgies directed to God should be the best we can offer.  The attention to detail, the stately and careful pace, the sense of wonder and awe and that we are before God  are concepts that need rediscovery today.
    • And finally, tradition is beautiful and deserves to be rediscovered.

Though this reflection is wider than the Catholic Church, it is clear that we are desperately in need of rediscovering many of the things we cast aside. As we prepare to focus on the Eucharist this coming year we do well to ponder if our liturgies reflect our belief. Is it really surprising that belief in the true presence of Jesus is lost on many Catholics given the way we behave at Holy Mass? Does not our widespread casual approach  say, “Nothing special here?” What of our own rituals and traditions do we need to rediscover? What will assist most in reviving Eucharistic faith?  More on that later.

Many groups have a tendency to use words that make sense to their members but are unintelligible to outsiders. I have sometimes had to decode “Church-speak” for recent converts.

Here in the aftermath of Easter with all our fancy words like catechumen, mystogogia, neophyte, regeneration, etc, I muse on our overall tendency to “church-speak. To some degree, we need these words and should educate God’s faithful as to their meaning. But it is a source of some humor to ponder how arcane, how obscure our language can become.

For example, one time I proudly announced, “RCIA classes will begin next week, so if you know anyone who is interested in attending please fill out an information card on the table just outside the sacristy door.” I thought I’d been perfectly clear, but then a new member approached me after Mass to inquire about the availability of classes to become Catholic and when they would begin. Wondering if she’d forgotten the announcement I reminded her what I had said about RCIA classes. She looked at me blankly. “Oh,” I said, “Let me explain what I mean by RCIA.” After I did so, I mentioned that she could pick up a flyer over by the sacristy door. Again I got a blank stare, followed by the question “What’s a sacristy?” Did I dare tell her that the classes would be held in the rectory?

I’ve had a similar reaction when announcing CCD classes. One angry parent called me to protest that she had been told by the DRE (more Church-speak) that her daughter could not make her First Holy Communion unless she started attending CCD. The mother, the non-Catholic wife of a less-than-practicing Catholic husband, had no idea what CCD meant and why it should be required in order for her daughter to receive Holy Communion. She had never connected the term CCD with Sunday school or any form of religious instruction.

Over my years as a priest I have become more and more aware that although I use what I would call ordinary terms of traditional Catholicism, given the poor catechesis (another Church word, meaning religious training, by the way) of so many, the meaning of what I am saying is lost. For example, I have discovered that some Catholics think that “mortal sin” refers only to killing someone. Even the expression “grave sin” is nebulous to many; they know it isn’t good, but aren’t really sure what it means. “Venial sin” is even less understood!

Other words such as covenant, matrimony, incarnation, transubstantiation, liturgy, oration, epistle, gospel, Collect, Sanctus, chalice, paten, alb, Holy Orders, theological, missal, Monsignor, and Eucharistic, while meaningful to many in the Church, are often only vaguely understood by others in the Church, not to mention the unchurched (is that another Church word?).

Once at daily Mass I was preaching based on a reading from the First Letter of John and was attempting to make the point that our faith is “incarnational.” I noticed vacant looks out in the pews. And so I asked the small group gathered that day if anyone knew what “incarnational” meant; no one did. I went on to explain that it meant that the Word of God had to become flesh in us; it had to become real in the way we live our lives. To me, the word “incarnational” captured the concept perfectly, but most of the people didn’t even really know for sure what “incarnation” meant, let alone “incarnational.”

Ah, Church-speak!

During my years in the seminary the art of Church-speak seemed to rise to new levels. I remember that many of my professors, while railing against the use of Latin in the liturgy, had a strange fascination with Greek-based terminology. Mass was out, Eucharist was in. “Going to mass” was out, “confecting the synaxis” was in. Canon was out, “anamnesis” and “anaphora” were in. Communion was out, koinonia was in. Mystagogia, catechumenate, mysterion, epikaia, protoevangelion, hapax legomenon, epiklesis, synderesis, eschatology, Parousia, and apakatastasis were all in. These are necessary words, I suppose, but surely opaque to most parishioners. Church-speak indeed, or should I say ekklesia-legomenon.

Ah, Church-speak! Here is an online list of many other Church words for your edification (and amusement): Church words defined

At any rate, I have learned to be a little more careful when speaking so as to avoid too much Church-speak, too many insider terms, too many older terms, without carefully explaining them. I think we can and should learn many of them, but we should not assume that most people know them.

The great and Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that he discovered early on that he often got credit for being learned when in fact he was merely being obscure. And for any who knew him in his later years, especially through his television show, he was always very careful to explain Church teaching in a way that made it accessible to the masses. It’s good advice for all of us: a little less of the CCD and RCIA jargon and little more of the clear “religious instruction” can help others to decode our Church-speak.

Again, I would not argue that we should “dumb down” our vocabulary, for indeed it is a precious patrimony in many cases. But we need to do more explaining rather than merely presuming that most people will know what some of our terms mean.

This video has a lot of gibberish in it, but it illustrates how we can sound at times if we’re not careful!

After Christ rose from the dead, He appeared to His disciples at certain places and times, but did not seem to stay with them continuously. On the first Easter Sunday, He appeared six times in rather rapid succession: first to Mary Magdalene, then to the women at the tomb, third as the women left the tomb, fourth to Peter, fifth to the two disciples going to Emmaus, and sixth to the ten Apostles in Jerusalem (when Thomas was not present).

In His public ministry, Jesus seemed to be with His disciples nearly all the time. However, after His Resurrection he would appear, converse, and teach, but then be absent from them bodily. For example, John 20:26 says that “after eight days” Christ appeared to the disciples, suggesting that He was not otherwise present to them during that period.

While it is true that we do not have an exact calendar of His appearances and not every appearance is necessary recorded, it seems apparent that the Lord was not constantly with the disciples during the forty days prior to His ascension.

Why is this?

St. Thomas Aquinas reflected on this question and offers two basic reasons. In so doing he does not propose an absolute explanation, but rather demonstrates why it was fitting that Christ was not with them continuously during the forty days prior to the ascension. St. Thomas writes,

Concerning the Resurrection two things had to be manifested to the disciples, namely, the truth of the Resurrection, and the glory of Him who rose.

Now in order to manifest the truth of the Resurrection, it sufficed for Him to appear several times before them, to speak familiarly to them, to eat and drink, and let them touch Him. But in order to manifest the glory of the risen Christ, He was not desirous of living with them constantly as He had done before, lest it might seem that He rose unto the same life as before … [For as Bede says] “He had then risen in the same flesh, but was not in the same state of mortality as they.”

That Christ did not stay continually with the disciples was not because He deemed it more expedient to be elsewhere: but because He judged it to be more suitable for the apostles’ instruction that He should not abide continually with them, for the reason given above.

He appeared oftener on the first day, because the disciples were to be admonished by many proofs to accept the faith in His Resurrection from the very out set: but after they had once accepted it, they had no further need of being instructed by so many apparitions (Summa Theologiae, Part III, Q. 55, Art. 3).

While St. Thomas observes that there may well be appearances that were not recorded, he is inclined to hold that there were not a lot more of them. He writes,

One reads in the Gospel that after the first day He appeared again only five times. For, as Augustine says (De Consens. Evang. iii), after the first five apparitions “He came again a sixth time when Thomas saw Him; a seventh time was by the sea of Tiberias at the capture of the fishes; the eighth was on the mountain of Galilee, according to Matthew; the ninth occasion is expressed by Mark, ‘at length when they were at table,’ because no more were they going to eat with Him upon earth; the tenth was on the very day, when no longer upon the earth, but uplifted into the cloud, He was ascending into heaven. But, as John admits, not all things were written down. And He visited them frequently before He went up to heaven,” in order to comfort them. Hence it is written (1 Corinthians 15:6-7) that “He was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once … after that He was seen by James”; of which apparitions no mention is made in the Gospels (ibid).

St. Thomas strikes a balance between the Lord’s need to instruct them and summon them to faith in the resurrection, and the need for them to grasp His risen glory. Christ did not merely resume His former life. The disciples were not to cling to their former understandings of Him as Rabbi and teacher; now they were to grasp more fully that He is Lord.

Though Thomas does not mention it here, I would add another reason for the Lord’s action of not abiding with them continuously: It was fitting for Him to do this to accustom them to the fact that they would no longer see Him as they had with their physical eyes. Once He ascended, they would see Him mystically in the Sacraments and in His Body the Church. Thus, as the Lord broke the Bread and gave it them in Emmaus, they recognized Him the Eucharist (Luke 24). Thereupon He vanished from them. It was as if to say, “You will no longer go on seeing me in the same manner. Now you will experience me mystically and in the Sacraments.”

One option for Easter Sunday morning’s Mass is from the Gospel of John (20:1-8). (I have written before on the Matthean Gospel option (here)). Like most of the resurrection accounts, John’s version paints a portrait of a journey that some of the early disciples have to make: out of fear and into faith. It shows the need to experience the resurrection and then come to understand it more deeply. While the Gospel account begins with Mary Magdalene, the focus quickly shifts to St. John; let’s study his journey.

I. Reaction Mode – The text begins by describing everyone as being in reaction mode, quite literally running about in a panic! On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”

The text describes the opening moments as “still dark.” John is likely trying to do more than tell us the time of day. The deeper point is that there is still a darkness that envelops everyone’s mind.  The darkness makes it difficult for us to see; our fears and sorrows can blind us.

Mary Magdalene sees direct evidence of the resurrection but presumes the worst: that grave robbers have snatched the Lord’s body! It doesn’t even occur to her to remember that Jesus had said that He would rise on the third day and that this was that very third day. She goes immediately into reaction mode instead of reflection mode. Her mind jumps to the worst conclusion; by reacting and failing to reflect, she looks right at the blessing and sees a curse.

We also tend to do this. We look at our life and see only the burdens instead of the blessings.

1. I clutch my blanket and growl when the alarm goes off instead of thinking, “Thank you, Lord, that I can hear; there are many who are deaf. Thank you that I have the strength to rise; there are many who do not.”
2. Even though the first hour of the day may be hectic: socks are lost, toast is burned, tempers are short, and the children are loud; we ought to be thinking, “Thank you, Lord, for my family; there are many who are lonely.”
3. We can even be thankful for the taxes we pay because it means we’re employed, for the clothes that fit a little too snugly because it means we have enough to eat, for the heating bill because it means we are warm, for the weariness and aching muscles at the end of the day because it means we have been productive.

Every day millions of things go right and only a handful go wrong. What will we focus on? Will we look right at the signs of our blessings and call them burdens or will we thank the Lord? Do we live lives that are reactive and negative or do we live reflectively, remembering that the Lord says that even our burdens are gifts in strange packages? And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

Do we know this, or are we like the disciples on that early morning when it was still dark, looking right at the blessings but drawing only negative conclusions, reacting and failing to reflect?

II. Recovery mode – The text goes on to describe a certain subtle move from reaction to reflection. So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.

Mary Magdalene’s anxiety is contagious. She comes running to the disciples, all out of breath, and says that “they” (whoever “they” are) have taken the Lord (she speaks of Him as a corpse) and “we” (she and the other women who were with her) don’t know where they put Him (again, she speaks of Him as an inanimate corpse). Mary’s panic triggers that same reaction in the disciples. Now they’re all running! The mad dash to the tomb has begun.

Notice, though, that they are hurrying so that they can verify the grave robbery, not the resurrection. Like Mary, they didn’t take the time to reflect and perhaps remember that the Lord had said He would rise on the third day and that this was the third day. Instead, they also panic, rushing forth to try to confirm their worst fears.

But note a subtlety: John runs faster than Peter. Some scholars say it indicates merely that John was the younger man. I would argue, however, that it signals hope. The Holy Spirit, speaking through John, is not likely interested in passing things like youth. Some of the Fathers of the Church see a greater truth at work in the love and mystical tradition that John symbolizes. He was the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” the disciple who knew and experienced that love of God. Love often sees what knowledge and authority can only appreciate and later affirm. Love gets there first.

There is a different verse in Scripture that I believe explains John’s strength (manifested in his speed):

But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint (Is 40:31).

Perhaps John runs faster because he begins to move from reaction to reflection and remembrance. When you run quickly it’s hard to talk, so you tend to recede alone into your thoughts. There is something about love that enlightens, that recalls what the beloved has said. Perhaps John begins to think, to reflect and consider these things:

1. Didn’t Jesus say He’d rise three days later and isn’t this that day?
2. Didn’t the Lord deliver Daniel?
3. Didn’t He deliver Noah from the flood?
4. Didn’t He deliver Joseph from the hands of his brothers and from the deep dungeon?
5. Didn’t He deliver Moses and the people from Egypt?
6. Didn’t He deliver David from Goliath and Saul?
7. Didn’t He deliver Jonah from the whale?
8. Didn’t He deliver Queen Esther and the people from wicked men?
9. Didn’t He deliver Susanna from her false accusers?
10. Didn’t He deliver Judith from Holofernes?
11. Didn’t Jesus raise the dead?
12. Didn’t God promise to deliver the just from all their trials?
13. As for me, I know that my redeemer liveth!

Something started to happen inside John. I have it on the best of authority that he began to sing this song in his heart as he ran:

“I don’t feel no ways tired. Come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy but I don’t believe he brought me this far to leave me.”

Yes, John is in recovery now. He has moved from reaction to reflection. He is starting to regain his faith.

The text says that John looked in and saw the burial cloths, but waited for Peter. Mystics and lovers may get there first, but the Church has a Magisterium that must be respected, too.

III. Reassessment mode – In life we must often reassess our initial reactions as further evidence comes in. Peter and John must take a fresh look at the evidence from their own perspective. The text says, When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths [lying] there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.

Mary Magdalene’s assessment was that grave robbers must have struck, but the evidence for that seems weak. Grave robbers typically sought the fine linens in which the dead were buried. Yet here are the linens while the body is gone. If they were going to take the body, why not also take the valuable grave linens? The Greek text describes the clothes as κείμενα (keimena)—lying stretched out in place, in order. It is almost as if the clothes simply “deflated” in place when the body they covered disappeared. Finally, the most expensive cloth of all, the σουδάριον (soudarion), lies folded (rolled up, in some translations) in a separate place. Grave robbers would not leave the most valuable things behind. And surely, even if for some strange reason they wanted the body rather than the linens, they would not have bothered to carefully unwrap and fold things, leaving them all stretched out in an orderly way. Robbers work quickly; they snatch things and leave disarray in their wake.

Life is like this: you can’t simply accept the first interpretation of things. Every reporter knows that “in the fog of war” the first reports are often wrong. We have to be careful not to jump to conclusions just because someone else is worried about something. Sometimes we need to take a fresh look at the evidence and interpret it as people of faith and hope, as men and women who know that although God may test us He will not forsake us.

John is now looking at the same evidence that Mary Magdalene did, but his faith and hope give him a different vision. His capacity to move beyond fearful reaction to faithful reflection is changing the picture.

We know little of the reaction of Peter or Mary Magdalene at this point; the focus is on John. And the focus is on you. What do you see in life? Do you see grave robbers, or are you willing to reconsider and move from knee-jerk fear to reflective faith?

Does your resurrection faith make you ready to reassess the bad news you receive and look for blessings, even in crosses?

IV. Resurrection Mode – Somewhat cryptically, the text now focuses on the reaction and mindset of St. John. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

On one level the text says that St. John saw and believed. Does this mean merely that he now believed Mary Magdalene’s story that the body was gone? As is almost always the case with John’s Gospel, there is both a plain meaning and a deeper one. The text says that he ἐπίστευσεν (episteusen); he “believed.” The verb here is in the aorist tense, a tense that generally portrays a situation as simple or undivided, that is, as having a perfective (completed) aspect. In other words, something has come to fruition in him.

Yet the text also seems to qualify, saying, they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. It is as if to say that John came to believe that Jesus had risen but had not yet come to fully understand all the scriptural connections and how this had to be. He only knew in his heart by love and through this evidence that Jesus was risen. Deeper understanding would have to come later.

For our purposes, let us observe that St. John has gone from fear to faith. He has not yet seen Jesus alive, but he believes based on the evidence and on what his own heart and mind tell him.

At this moment John is like us. He has not seen but he believes. Neither have we seen, but we believe. John would see him alive soon enough and so will we!

We may not have an advanced degree in Scripture, but through love we too can know that He lives. Why and how? Because of the same evidence:

1. The grave clothes of my old life are strewn before me.
2. I am rising to new life.
3. I am experiencing greater victory over sin.
4. Old sins and my old Adam are being put to death.
5. The life of the new Adam, Christ, is coming alive.
6. I am being set free and have hope and confidence, new life and new gifts.
7. I have increasing gratitude, courage, and a deep peace that tells me that everything is all right.
8. The grave clothes of my old way of life lie stretched out before me and I now wear a new robe of righteousness.
9. I am not what I want to be but I am not what I used to be.

So we, like John, see. We do not see the risen Lord—not yet anyway, but we see the evidence and we believe.

St. John leaves this scene as a believer. His faith may not be the fully perfected faith that it will become, but he does believe. John has gone from fear to faith, from reaction to reflection, from panic to peace.

We do well to ponder the whys and wherefores of the Passion of Our Lord. St. Thomas Aquinas presents the premise that God does nothing in an arbitrary way, but rather as Lord of History sets forth everything in fitting ways and at appropriate places and times. Every detail has something to teach us.

Let’s consider why Christ suffered in Jerusalem (but outside its walls) in a place called “the skull.” St. Thomas covered these matters in his Summa Theologiae, Part III, Question 46, Article 10. His words are in bold, black italics; my inferior comments are shown in plain red text.

Christ died most appropriately in Jerusalem. First of all, because Jerusalem was God’s chosen place for the offering of sacrifices to Himself: and these figurative sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s Passion

For the Jewish people of that time, there was only one place to offer sacrifices to the Lord: Jerusalem. Although towns had synagogues, only Jerusalem had the Temple, and one had to go there to offer sacrifices to the Lord.

This rule had become quite firm. Indeed, even when Temple sacrifices were interrupted during the Babylonian captivity (the Temple was destroyed in in 587 B.C. and not rebuilt until about 70 years later), rather than relocate the place for sacrifice, the people lamented, We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader, no burnt offering, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you (Daniel 3:38).

Therefore, because salvation is from the Jews (Jn 4:22), it was fitting that Christ, our Paschal Lamb and perfect, once-for-all sacrifice, was sacrificed in the only acceptable place.

Secondly, because the virtue of His Passion was to be spread over the whole world, He wished to suffer in the center of the habitable world–that is, in Jerusalem. Accordingly, it is written, “But God is our King before ages: He hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth” (Psalm 73:12)—that is, in Jerusalem, which is called “the navel of the earth.”

A glimpse at a map shows that Jerusalem is arguably at the very intersection of three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Psalm 48:2 reads, Mount Zion, true pole of the earth, the Great King’s city!

Thirdly, because it was specially in keeping with His humility: that, as He chose the most shameful manner of death, so likewise it was part of His humility that He did not refuse to suffer in so celebrated a place.

Not only was Christ’s humiliation very public, it occurred when Jerusalem was packed for the Passover feast!

Fourthly, He willed to suffer in Jerusalem, where the chief priests dwelt, to show that the wickedness of His slayers arose from the chiefs of the Jewish people.

Jerusalem had the reputation of being the place where prophets suffered the most and where most of them went to die. This is likely because it was there that faith and power intersected. Human beings seldom negotiate that intersection well and the scale is tipped more to power than to faith.

1. 1. 1. Jesus said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling. Look, your house is left to you desolate. And I tell you, you will not see Me again until you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (Luke 13:34-35).
      2. Jesus said, Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, “I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.” Therefore, this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all. (Luke 11:47-51).
      3. Stephen added, You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it (Acts 7:51-53).

These teachings, fitting though they are, give rise to these questions: If Jerusalem was the appropriate place, why was Jesus not sacrificed on the Temple mount, inside the city? Why was He instead sacrificed outside the city gates? St. Thomas answers this as follows:

For three reasons Christ suffered outside the gate, and not in the Temple nor in the city. First of all, that the truth might correspond with the figure. For the calf and the goat which were offered in most solemn sacrifice for expiation on behalf of the entire multitude were burnt outside the camp, as commanded in Leviticus 16:27.

Note the distinction between the sacrifice of an individual family (which was offered at the temple and burnt on the altar there) and the sacrifice offered on behalf of all the people on the Day of Atonement. Leviticus 16:27 says, The bull and the goat for the sin offerings, whose blood was brought into the Most Holy Place to make atonement, must be taken outside the camp; their hides, flesh and intestines are to be burned up. Therefore, it is fitting that Christ, who died for all, should be sacrificed outside the gate (“outside the camp,” as it were).

Secondly, to set us the example of shunning worldly conversation. Accordingly, the passage continues: “Let us go forth therefore to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.”

Out worldly categories and notions cannot contain Christ. In His time there were at least three political and religious groups: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Zealots. Jesus walked with none of them; neither did He simply parrot their views. There was only one thing the groups could agree on—Jesus had to go. Thus, fitting nowhere, Christ was crucified outside the camp.

Thirdly, as Chrysostom says in a sermon on the Passion (Hom. i De Cruce et Latrone): “The Lord was not willing to suffer under a roof, nor in the Jewish Temple…lest you might think He was offered for that people only. Consequently, it was beyond the city and outside the walls, that you may learn it was a universal sacrifice, an oblation for the whole world, a cleansing for all.”

He suffered once and for all. As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth (Jn 4:21-24).

St. Thomas presents two additional reasons that Jesus was crucified where He was, noting especially the name of the place: Golgotha. Although Aquinas described both reasons, he concluded that only one is correct.

According to Jerome, in his commentary on Matthew 27:33, someone explained “the place of Calvary” as being the place where Adam was buried; and that it was so called because the skull of the first man was buried there. A pleasing interpretation indeed, and one suited to catch the ear of the people, but, still, not the true one. … [For] Adam was buried close by Hebron and Arbe, as we read in the book of Jesus Ben Nave.

To this day, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher there is a small opening or cave at the base of Golgotha that is venerated by some as the tomb of Adam. One can stop in there prior to climbing the stairs to Calvary. Legend has it that the Blood of Christ dripped though the opening and touched the bones of Adam, causing him to get up and dance a jig.

St. Thomas was not impressed with such legends or even with the teaching of St. Jerome; instead, he offered another interpretation.

For the spots where the condemned are beheaded are outside the city and beyond the gates, deriving thence the name of Calvary—that is, of the beheaded. Jesus, accordingly, was crucified there, that the standards of martyrdom might be uplifted over what was formerly the place of the condemned. … [So] Jesus was to be crucified in the common spot of the condemned rather than beside Adam’s sepulcher, to make it manifest that Christ’s cross was the remedy, not only for Adam’s personal sin, but also for the sin of the entire world.

Martyrs die for Christ, not as mere condemned criminals. And though Christ did die for all, not just for Adam, the primordial sin was Adam’s.

It is curious to me that St. Thomas, writing in a style somewhat out of keeping with his usually reserved way, so forcefully set aside St. Jerome’s interpretation. Perhaps we can learn something from both views! This is especially the case because the location of Adam’s burial remains a matter of dispute to this day, with many continuing to venerate the site beneath Calvary.