BLOOD CURSE TO BLESSING

BLOOD CURSE TO BLESSING

Fr. Mervyn Carapiet

“His blood be on us and on our children” (Mathew 27, 25)

In the gospel of Mathew, the evangelist makes the Jews themselves take responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus. This may explain why for centuries the Jews as a whole were considered cursed and deserving of maltreatment by Christians, even though on the personal and social levels they could and did make good friends. In his explanation of the Passion of Christ, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, endeavours, in book, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume II, to moderate and reverse this anti-Semitic demeanour by adverting to the conflict between orthodox Jews and Christians of the period. This particular period, explains Pope Benedict, was marked by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the exclusion of early Jewish Christians from the synagogues. In such a taut environment one can imagine the mutual animosity of the two communities, which makes it easier to understand that haunting slogan: “His blood be on us and on our children.” Popular biases hang tough, like persistent viruses. As a biblical scholar, Holy Father Benedict provides the “correct meaning” of that verse as a blessing rather than a curse. Whether they knew it or not, “the people as a whole” were invoking a healing upon themselves and their posterity.  This is the mind of the Holy Father. He does not hazard at having to correct Mathew’s hostility towards those Jews who failed to accept Jesus as Messiah as this would overstep his competence and embark on re-writing the gospel.

It is safer and more fundamental to state that Almighty God turns curses, however horrific, into blessings. Can the blood of Christ ever become the medium of a curse? Horrible thought. If the compassionate Christ could forgive his enemies who “knew not what they do”, would not he shower his Spirit on those who called upon his blood, whether in ignorance or not? On the Cross Jesus must surely have foreseen the stark details of the Jewish people’s suffering down the corridors of time – the maltreatment by Christians and Muslims, and the inexorable horror of the Holocaust. Was that not reparation enough for a crime committed by the Jewish aristocracy and the local mob? Could an all merciful God have demanded it?

 

 Punishment is not the last word, it leads to healing, says the Holy Father. The Saviour never demands a “quid pro quo”, tit for tat. Pope Benedict writes, “When in Mathew’s account ‘the whole people’ say: ‘his blood be on us and on our children’, the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Hebrews 12, 24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment, it brings reconciliation” (ibid. Pg. 187). Just as Caiaphas’ words about the need for Jesus’ death must be read in the new light of faith, so also Christ’s blood is not poured out against anyone but for many, for all. All stand in need of the purifying power of love which is his blood. “Only when understood in terms of the theology of the Last Supper and the Cross, drawn from the whole of the New Testament, does this verse of Mathew’s Gospel take on its correct meaning” (ibid.).

 No one can ever claim to earn the mercy of Christ. There is no mutual causality between the divine and the human. Divine work must be accomplished by divine power, and Gethsemane has shown that divine power can be exercised only as human power admits its failure, in the measure of the self-emptying of one pole at the advent of the “power-full” other.

So let the divine flash across the field of nothingness to fill the empty with its fullness, for in the first and last instance, man is pure undeserving receiver and God pure Giver.