12 . From the Cross Authentic Faith Is Born

“The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to take place in two days’ time. So the chief priests and the scribes were seeking a way to arrest him by treachery and put him to death. They said, ‘Not during the festival, for fear that there may be a riot among the people.’”

Thus begins chapter 14 of the Gospel according to Mark, which narrates the passion of Jesus in a shocking way. Chapters 14 and 15 of Mark represent the culmination of the narrative, with the tragic events of the condemnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is the fundamental moment of evangelical history. A scholar from the past said that the Gospel of Mark is the story of passion with a long introduction.

Everything narrated until chapter 13 is basically an introduction to the passion event. To understand the drama, note that the Jewish authorities have decided to eliminate him; he bothers them, he is a dangerous prophet, but in their project, they would like to avoid the Easter festival, which is now imminent because there are many people in Jerusalem and they fear that the people are on the side of Jesus.

They plan to arrest him after Easter. This is a first ending in which Mark shows that Jesus is the master of the situation. They don't take him when they want to, they capture him when he decides to be apprehended. And his murder will take place during Easter because it is there, in that historical and festive context that God’s plan for the new covenant is fulfilled.

At the end of the eschatological discourse presented in chapter 13 of Mark, Jesus mentions the necessary vigilance of the disciples in four moments: “You do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.” It is time for the Easter supper; at midnight, it is prayer in Gethsemane, and the disciples sleep to the crowing of the rooster. There is Peter’s denial, and in another way, the disciple is sleeping. In the morning. Jesus is brought before Pilate, sentenced to death, hangs on the cross.

The warning is addressed to the disciples: do not sleep in front of the drama of the cross, that is, do not be estranged, be ready with your eyes wide open, not as blind, but as healed people capable of seeing what the Lord does.

The first scene of the passion story takes place in Bethany and tells of a dinner where an unidentified woman performs a prophetic action, wasting some very expensive perfume, "She broke the bottle and spilled it on the head of Jesus." Ancient perfumers packaged these precious perfumes in sealed alabaster jars. They had a very thin neck that could not be opened, but had to be broken. When the alabaster vial was broken, the perfume had to be used, poured, then consumed. The cost of that perfume is estimated at 300 denarii. If the money is the daily wage of a worker, it is almost a year’s wages. A considerable amount, thrown away like this to honor Jesus, to waste all that money on a perfumed ointment to express affection for Jesus, “It could have been sold for more than three hundred days’ wages and the money given to the poor.”

This scene is prophetic and provocative, and it is the scene that opens the story of passion because this is typically our argument. Many of us can identify ourselves perfectly because of a gift, of very precious ointment be monetized, “It could have been sold for more than three hundred days’ wages and the money given to the poor.”

Instead, Jesus agrees with the woman and calls her a prophet. He considers her capable of deep understanding: “Let her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me. The poor you will always have with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could. She has anticipated anointing my body for burial. Amen, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

This woman has intuited, says Jesus, his imminent burial. And what women cannot do after the death of Jesus, that is, the anointing of the body, this woman prophet did it before, as a gesture of love. She has wasted a lot for Jesus. In what sense is this story the key to reading passion? Because, after all, the passion of Jesus is a waste, it is a huge waste, a life wasted, the Son of God, an intelligent, slender, thirty-year-old young man, strong, brave, good, to die like that ... but it's not a waste. But how many things could he have done! He could have organized so many things! Dying young, dying innocent, dying as the Son of God ... is not a waste.

Human logic, an economic, commercial logic, also in the religious sphere... would say that it is not convenient; it is the same criterion that has guided the disciples throughout the entire itinerary of the Gospel. Jesus has announced that ending, but they continued to follow their own ideas and their own schemes, without accepting that generous revelation of Jesus, who is speaking of his life as a waste for love. He is throwing away his life precisely out of love, for an excess of love and the disciples, a little mercantile, they are numb in the face of events.

When they organize the dinner during that very significant celebration of the Easter of liberation, remembering the ancient covenant, Jesus, with the cup of wine in his hands, says, "This is my blood of the covenant." It is a strange phrase, "my blood is the blood of the covenant that I make with you." Jesus is aware that he is about to shed his own blood as Moses did with the blood of the calves. So now, Jesus, with his blood, says to constitute a new covenant in his blood, that is, his life given is the foundation of a new relationship that unites the disciples with Jesus, and the institution of a new covenant, of a new reality, of a new relationship between the disciples and Jesus is the event of the Church.

It is the institution of this new reality, of the new covenant that unites Jesus to humanity willing to accept him. After dinner, late at night in Gethsemane, Jesus prays. He prays with the invocation of the Son. It is the only time in the Gospels where the Aramaic word ‘Abba’ is placed on the lips of Jesus. The Aramaic word ‘abba’ is a term of endearment, not simply father. Rather, it corresponds to ‘dad’. It is a sweet and affectionate term with which Jesus expresses filial trust in God and humanly reveals all his tension. Mark notes without much consideration that Jesus began to feel anguish, to feel fear, of being deeply troubled, and asks his father for help, if it may pass the cup, understood as a moment of suffering, aware of what is about to happen. Jesus trusts the Father and asks Him if it is possible to avoid it. He does not want to avoid it, but humanly he is afraid. He wants to do the Father's will. The will of the Father is not the death of Jesus, Jesus does not want to die, God the Father does not want that God the Son die.

The will of the Father and the will of the Son is to show humankind how much God loves them, and there is no better way than to let himself be killed, to be faithful to that revelation. At that moment, Jesus says to humanity: "God loves you until death." On that occasion, the man in Jesus says to God, "I love you until I give my life." It is precisely the grandiose event of the free and generous self-giving. The disciples sleep. They don’t notice anything. They were unable to keep watch with him. He invited them to be vigilant so as not to fall into temptation, but they fall in the moment of trial, of the great temptation. They are all on the ground, they are asleep, they are afraid, they flee, they abandon him. However, there was a young man covered only with a sheet, a soldier grabs him, he drops the sheet in the hands of the guard and runs away naked.

We said at the beginning of this course that, most likely, Mark is that young boy himself. The evangelist, who was a young 12, 13, 15 years old at the time of the event, who secretly participated in that scene and no one knew of his presence, only he can tell about it, but this symbolic gesture becomes very impressive. Imagine the scene in the garden of olives, on a full moon night, because the Easter night falls on a full moon, and a soldier holding a sheet in his hand while a naked boy runs away and disappears, is a symbolic image of the resurrection and an announcement before the tragic end of what will be the fulfillment.

Mark then tells the facts of the passion that we know well in a quick, synthetic way, without additions, without comments, and without adjectives. He presents the drama of the events: Jesus is arrested, interrogated, sentenced to death, transferred by Pilate through the insistence of the authorities. He is also condemned by the Roman political power that orders the execution of the sentence according to the method for slaves: the crucifixion. Jesus is taken away together with two brigands who had to undergo the same torture: he is bound, crucified, nailed to the cross.

At the moment of his death, the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and just before the earth had darkened, the sun had eclipsed. It is an apocalyptic scene, that is, of great revelation. There is the cosmic darkness, and the veil of the temple that separates the most sacred place, breaks in two, at which point the centurion who was guarding at the foot of the cross, having seen him die in that way, said: "Really this man was the Son of God."

And this is the second vertex of the narration of Mark, the profession of faith of the Roman centurion who, having seen Jesus die in that way, that is, in a confident way, of total abandonment, without screaming, cursing, insulting, complaining, is the way that affects him. The centurion reaches the mature faith of the Christian disciple, follows the deposition from the cross and the burial of Jesus, he is not thrown into a common grave as would have been the fate of any other condemned, because a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish authorities, intervenes, he shows up and asks for the body of Jesus and buries him in his new sepulcher. But it is late, it is the night of the Jewish Passover dinner, they must return. We would say that there is a curfew at six in the evening and, therefore, there is no more time for the anointing, the rites are suspended and postponed. Saturday follows, the day of great rest, the day of the feast.

The next morning after Saturday the women buy the oils to go to anoint the body of Jesus, but there was no body to anoint, it had already been anointed by another woman during the dinner at Bethany, ahead of time, prophetically, in that generous waste; and the angelic character acting as a catechist for women who had been surprised to find the grave empty is defined by the same term as the young man with the sheet: νεανίσκον = ‘neaniskos’.

It is not said to be an angel, but a young man. What is in the grave? An abandoned sheet. The guards, like those in Gethsemane, held a sheet in their hands, but the Christ was gone naked. It is the image of the resurrection. The risen one is faster and younger. He is the victor who flees, abandoning everything.

It is the announcement of the new creation. That mass of the stone that had been placed in front of the tomb, the women would not have been able to remove it; and they wonder who will remove that stone, but looking at it they realized that it had already been removed. The fundamental problem of death had already been eliminated by God's intervention. And the young man explains to the women: “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold, the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples and Peter... (Peter, who denied him, but was not denied by Jesus) ‘He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.’” He precedes them and us in daily life.

Thus ends the Gospel of Mark, suddenly. "The women went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The end is a surprise. But the gospel continues in the lives of catechumens who heard this splendid story on Easter night and now adhere to it by accepting baptism, by immersing themselves in water and rising with Jesus to new life.

Reading and meditating on the Gospel of Mark is a way to become disciples again, to live Him seriously, learn the style of Jesus, and welcome his grace that opens our eyes. He surpasses us and precedes us, and we want to learn from him and follow him on his way to recognize him as the Christ, the Son of God.