St. Longinus

From Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon's Pastoral Ponderings:

In his description of the death of Jesus, Saint John is the only Gospel-writer to include the detail that "one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out" (19:34).

Although the evangelist does not name this soldier, Christian legend calls him "St. Longinus," a name that one suspects is corrupted from logke (pronounced "lonki"), the Greek word for "spear." A small feature of art history lends weight to this suspicion. A Syriac manuscript preserved at the Laurentine Library at Florence contains an illumination, by an artist named Rabulas, which depicts the death of Jesus on the cross. It includes the figure of the soldier in question, over whose head, in Greek letters, is inscribed the name "Loginos." This appears to be the immediate source for the Latin name "Longinus."

This manuscript illumination, which is safely dated to the year 586, is contemporary with our first records of the presence and veneration of the spear itself at Jerusalem. The later fortunes of that spear are also somewhat documented. The point of the spear, we know, found its way to Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. After the crusaders' sack of that city in 1204, it was taken to France, where it was enshrined, along with what was believed to be the Lord's crown of thorns, in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. It disappeared in the chaos that followed the French Revolution.

The larger portion of the spear, which seems to have been remained at Jerusalem long after being deprived of its point, eventually found its way to Constantinople, apparently after the Fourth Crusade. What the Crusaders had started, however, the Turks finished. The shaft part of the spear fell into the hands of the conquering Turks in 1453. These, in turn, as part of a later arrangement with the pope (who happened to have in his control a person that the Turks very much wanted released) sent that longer part of the spear to Rome in 1492. It is preserved to this day in St. Peter's Basilica, behind an enormous statue of St. Longinus, sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Various kings over the centuries, Athelstan and Charlemagne among them, have claimed to have at least a part of that venerable spear, but these claims seem less reliable.

Given such exotic legends about his spear, it is not surprising that Longinus himself became the subject of legend. For example, according to The Golden Legend of James of Voragine in the 13th century, the blood and water from the side of Jesus cured Longinus of poor eyesight. That same work goes on at some length to describe the martyrdom of Longinus in Cappadocia, and to this day the church of St. Augustine in Rome claims to hold his relics.

What these latter stories have in common, of course, is their assumption that Longinus was converted to the Christian faith in the context of what he did to the body of Jesus on the cross. This assumption, which is scarcely unreasonable, was surely related to the fact that the deed of Longinus was done as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. It was in this detail that St. John saw enacted the words of ancient Zechariah, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced." Thus, in opening the side of the crucified Jesus--in cleaving for all of us the Rock of ages--Longinus opened likewise the deep fountain of Holy Scripture.

Perhaps we may say, as well, that he opened the wellsprings of divine grace, inasmuch as the blood and the water, in which Longinus was the very first person to be bathed, have long been understood in the Christian Church to symbolize the sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. It was this double flood of redemption that the Roman soldier brought forth to pour upon the earth. It was his spear that found its way into that source of infinite love which is the heart of Christ.

It is through Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, after all, that believers are united to the mystery of the Cross. They are buried with Him in Baptism (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12), and as often as they eat this bread and drink this cup, they proclaim the Lord's death till He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26). These two ordinances of the Church, summoned forth by the mystic spear of Longinus, make effective to believers the redemptive power of the Cross.

Thus, through the mystery of divine providence, the coup de grace given by a Roman executioner to a condemned criminal is transformed, by way of symbol, into a sort of sacerdotal act; it takes on the hieratic significance of a liturgical rite. It is certain that the Church sees it this way, something that is obvious in the prescribed rite preparatory to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. As the priest cuts into the bread that is to become the Body of the Lord, the Church's rubric requires him to recite the appropriate verse of John: "one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out." We may note, in addition, that an image the spear of Longinus is customarily stamped on the loaf designated for the Holy Eucharist.

In short, Longinus, in opening the side of Christ, provided a path of faith, furnished a place for the hand of Thomas--along with the rest of us. It was of this wound inflicted by Longinus that Jesus says, "reach your hand, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing."

Passiontide Anthem

Vexilla regis prodeunt,
fulget crucis mysterium,
quo carne carnis conditor
suspensus est patibulo.

Confixa clavis viscera
tendens manus, vestigia
redemptionis gratia
hic inmolata est hostia.

Quo vulneratus insuper
mucrone diro lanceae,
ut nos lavaret crimine,
manavit unda et sanguine.

Inpleta sunt quae concinit
David fideli carmine,
dicendo nationibus:
regnavit a ligno deus.

Arbor decora et fulgida,
ornata regis purpura,
electa, digno stipite
tam sancta membra tangere!

Beata cuius brachiis
pretium pependit saeculi!
statera facta est corporis
praedam tulitque Tartari.

Fundis aroma cortice,
vincis sapore nectare,
iucunda fructu fertili
plaudis triumpho nobili.

Salve ara, salve victima
de passionis gloria,
qua vita mortem pertulit
et morte vitam reddidit. Amen



The royal banners forward go,
the cross shines forth in mystic glow;
where he in flesh, our flesh who made,
our sentence bore, our ransom paid.

Where deep for us the spear was dyed,
life's torrent rushing from his side,
to wash us in that precious flood,
where mingled water flowed, and blood.

Fulfilled is all that David told
in true prophetic song of old,
amidst the nations, God, saith he,
hath reigned and triumphed from the tree.

O tree of beauty, tree of light!
O tree with royal purple dight!
Elect on whose triumphal breast
those holy limbs should find their rest.

Blest tree, whose chosen branches bore
the wealth that did the world restore,
the price of mankind to pay,
and spoil the spoiler of his prey.

Upon its arms, like balance true,he weighed
the price for sinners due,
the price which none but he could pay,
and spoiled the spoiler of his prey.

O cross, our one reliance, hail!
Still may thy power with us avail
to give new virtue to the saint,
and pardon to the penitent.

To thee, eternal Three in One,
let homage meet by all be done:
whom by the cross thou dost restore,
preserve and govern evermore. Amen.

St. Fortunatus, 569

Sloth (Dejection and Listlessness)

Sloth is something people think they know when they see it, but there is more to it than meets the eye. You see, it is more than just mere inactivity. After all, not doing anything except "contemplating the universe" has its rewards. Contemplation is an activity which puts us in tune with the world around us, making our golden thread to our Triune God ever stronger and more resilient as we observe his truths in ourselves and in nature. It gives us true leisure from the workaday world, where we can rediscover ourselves in the God who created us. Sloth, more than inactivity, can be understood as a kind of boredom of human existence. The ancients called it "accidia".

St. John Cassian divides this vice into two parts: dejection and listlessness. Of dejection he says that it "obscures the soul's capacity for spiritual contemplation and keeps it from all good works." He goes on to say that this demon "instills a hatred of every kind of work," including the monsatic profession. Notice that this is no passive sin: the one who suffers from dejection is very active in his opposition to all good works. The soul afflicted with this kind of sloth is fuled by hatred towards his neighbor, since it has deluded itself into believing that people are the cause of his problems, rather than looking inward. This hatred so paralyses him to the point of hatred towards anything relating to prayer and good works. It is a hatred of life itself.

To the soul thus afflicted, St. Cassian gives a remedy-a recognition that the source of the malady is not external, but internal. This vice "suggests to the soul that we sould go away from other people, since they are the cause of the agitation." It fools the sould into thinking that the source of the problem lies with other people (I can't help but to think of Jean Paul Sartre's startling but logical conclusion in his play, No Exit: "Hell is other people"). This leads to a sense of melancholy, a stiffling of all good work, since this person can't see the real root of the problem: himself. He withdraws from all human company, only to find that his hatred of life gets ever more intense, bringing on a greater sense of melancholy.

Listlessness, on the other hand, is the kind of vice that falls upon a monk "at the sixth hour" (12noon), "making him slack and full of fear, inspiring him with hatred for his monastery, for work of any kind, and even for the reading of Holy Scripture." He calls this the "noontide demon", since it attacks the monk at the time of day when most folks (especially in southern European countries) take a break from the noontide heat and take their customary naps. This is accompanied by a great hunger. This is the hour where a greater vigilance must be maintained, with the full awareness that one has a limited time on this earth, and must therefore take up the weapons of ascetic struggle. Rather than engage in the struggle against his passions, the listless soul is content to fill his belly and sleep in idleness. Commenting from St. Paul's injunction to avoid the company of men who do no work, becoming busydbodies (I Cor. 9), he portays a natural progression that attends this vice: "from laziness comes inquisitiveness, and from inquisitiveness, unruliness, and from unruliness, every kind of evil." Taking his cue from the monks of Egypt, he provides a simple remedy: work. By this he does not mean constant business, but the kind of labor that is offered as an acceptable sacrifice to God. A person working in this spirit brings forth a great degree of charity and a hearty and sober love of life. Such a one, according to St. Cassian, may be afflicted by one demon, "while someone who does not work is taken prisoner by a thousand demons."

Perhaps this is why St. Cassian categorizes slothfulness (dejection and listlessness) above wrath in the list of vices. A wrathful man loves life, so much so that he thinks there are things to get riled up about (whether the things he chooses to b e angry about are worth it is quite another matter altogether). The murderer loves life; he just thinks some are not worthy of it. The slothful, on the other hand, are possessed of a boredom with life, not taking joy in any kind of work. Such a person may be continually busy, but still slothful, in that he hates life to such a degree that he sees no value in any kind of work. He suffers from dejection in that he suffers from melancholy, and such melancholy leads him to listlessness. The listless man's life thus becomes parasitic, for in addition to robbing himself of the joy of life, he sucks in others into his maliciousness.

In the cornice of the Slothful in Purgatory, Dante has the souls work out the effect of this sin through ceaseless activity done with godly zeal (Canto XVIII). But he precedes this cornice by having Virgil discourse about love. Dante the pilgrim asks his master to "Define me love, to which thou dost reduce all virtuous actions and their contraries." To which the master responds:

Fix then on me the luminous

Eyes of the intellect, and plain I'll prove

How, when the blind would guide, their way they lose.

The soul, which is created apt for love,

the moment pleasure wakes it into act,

to any pleasant thing is swift to move. (Canto XVIII, 16-20)

This, perhaps, is the key to the soul's remedy from this particular vice, and is embedded in St. Cassian's counsel that his monks undertake zealous activity as a meaningful sacrifice to God. Love is the central reality of all activity done to the glory of God, since it is what moves us to all good work. It lightens our load, so that we can more swiftly undertake such works with a joy and eagerness that characterizes any activity that a lover does for his beloved.

As Lent draws to a close, and we enter into Holy Week, I am reminded of how the lightness of Laetare Sunday (4th Sunday in Lent), with its joyful, celebratory character, announced by the theme of the introit-"I WAS glad when they said unto me, / 'We will go into the house of the Lord" (Psalm 122:1)- rolls into Passion Sunday. On Laetare Sunday, and the rest of that week, we experienced the "Elim" of our Lenten sojourn, for like the children of Israel, we too expereinced a small respite from our journey. With Passiontide, we are roused yet again from our slumber, taking up the weapons of our struggle for holy freedom. The Church bids us now to take up the royal banner of the cross, and go forward, to labor on with love and devotion to our true rest. The words that began our Lenten journey-Remember, man, that dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return-spur us on to action with holy zeal towards the goal of resurrection.