The Ascent of Mount Calvary
Excerpt from the book The Ascent of Mount Calvary
In this first chapter from the book The Ascent of Mount Calvary by Pere Louis Perroy (1902, P. J. Kenedy and Sons, pages 3-11), the author lays the groundwork for our Lord’s Passion painting the picture of the geography and surroundings of Calvary, then detailing the historical events that intimated the Passion of our Lord, then giving a brief outline of our Lord’s life, and finally leading us to the foot of Calvary where we will begin to ascend with our Lord in His Passion.
Yours in Jesus and Mary.
The Ascent of Mount Calvary
Outside the city of Jerusalem, to the northwest, and close to the walls, there rise, facing each other, two rocky mounds about twenty-five feet in height, and between them stretches a narrow valley wherein are gardens in which olive and fig trees abound. The mound nearest the ramparts is bare and wild, terminating in a knoll of cranium-like shape. It is the place of public execution — the property of the city — and is called Calvary.
Across the valley, directly opposite to Calvary, in the side of the other mound that rises out of the gardens and orchards, a tomb is hewn from the solid rock. As was the custom in those days, the tomb was laid out with an atrium, at the far end of which a low opening led into a small chamber, where a large stone slab ran across the full width and occupied half the space of the vault. Upon the slab was laid the dead body, covered with sweet spices, and swathed in linen. This tomb, as well as the surrounding gardens, belonged to a certain Joseph of Arimathea.
In the narrow valley and its setting of luxuriant gardens in proximity to the walls of Jerusalem and its Judgment Gate, on the bare and wind-swept Calvary and in the tomb cut in the rock, there came to pass, in the space of three days, the two most stupendous events in human history — the death and the resurrection of Christ. The closing episodes of Our Savior’s life were enacted on these two sacred hills.
From eternity God, whose all-comprehensive providence embraces detail as well as the harmonious whole, had prepared the stage for the glorious and sanguinary drama. The two rocky knolls had long been chosen as the blessed spot where, by virtue of the blood that would inundate the one, and the glory that would illumine the other, He would forget man’s long record of iniquity and the fatal consequences of Adam’s fall.
In Our Lord’s wanderings with His disciples around the city and across the plains, He must often have passed near the forbidding and desolate rock of Golgotha. With what emotion He must have gazed on it, as He said to His Apostles, “I say to you, that all that the Prophets have foretold is about to be accomplished. The Son of man shall be betrayed, delivered unto the Gentiles, spit upon, scourged, and crucified.” With a far-off look fixed on Calvary He added: “But He will rise on the third day.” Through the pale green, interlaced branches of the olive trees He discerned the tomb, the stone of the sepulcher victoriously rolled back, and Himself, glorious and triumphant over death, coming forth into the mist and saffron light of the Easter dawn. Through the Cross He had attained to glory.
Calvary, then, would be for Jesus the culminating point of His mortal life. He was born to ascend Golgotha, and to ascend it as a victim; for was He not first and above all, the Victim of Expiation? He knew this. He felt it in every fiber of His being. He had willed it, and His heavenly Father so regarded Him. The foremost reason for Christ’s earthly existence. His chief role, was to satisfy the justice of God, to repair the outrage offered to God, to cherish God’s honor. It would seem, almost, as though the salvation of mankind came second. To satisfy God’s perfect justice, Jesus must pay the full debt, and receive no mercy.
For more than four thousand years this supreme expiation was being prepared. As great storms gather slowly, heralded by threatening clouds, flashes of lightning and distant rumblings of thunder, so the divine wrath had accumulated from century to century against sinful humanity.
Now and then through the ages God’s finger moved, sketching, in rough, broad strokes an outline of His anger, to be filled in, in the course of time. There were tragic and sanguinary expiatory offerings in the animal kingdom: the lamb that was sacrificed daily in the Temple; the red heifer immolated for the people on the Mount of Olives opposite the Temple; the scapegoat, crowned with a crimson fillet, chased into the desert and across the valley of Cedron, bearing upon itself the iniquities of all.
At times God’s avenging hand was laid upon man. Isaac, the only and beloved son upon whom was centered all his father’s hopes, was taken up to a mountain not far distant from Calvary, the rock of Moria, where the Temple was to be built. The boy carried on his back the wood for the sacrifice, and his own father was to immolate him! What picture more tragic!
Again there is Job fallen from riches and honor to the misery of a dung heap near the gate of the city. There is Jonas thrown into the sea, got rid of as a burden that drew down the wrath of God. In all these tragic figures and happenings there are outcries and lamentations that betray the weight of the Almighty’s anger. “. . . for he is accursed of God that hangeth on a tree:” (Deuteronomy 21:23). “We have thought him as it were a leper,” cries Isaias, “and as one struck by God and afflicted.” (Isaias 53:4) Now at last the time is accomplished: the real victim promised through the ages, has come. Christ is born, and it is with jealous care that God guards Him until He ascends Calvary to pour forth His blood.
There is, first, the remote preparation, a slow gathering, as it were, of an outraged justice. Jesus is born; His crib a manger, an icy grotto at midnight, His first roof; then exile, persecution, obscurity, followed by the sweat of toil to earn His daily bread in the labor of the carpenter shop, and finally the exhausting work of the apostolate. All, all are instruments of vengeance in the hands of God; the dust of the highway, the tempests of the lakes, hunger and thirst, the forty days’ fast in the desert, His fatigue at Jacob’s Well.
There were striking miracles, too, but they are the flowers with which God crowns His Victim. Then the final triumph, when this Victim is led in triumphal procession from Bethphage to Jerusalem, and through the Golden Gate, the cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David!” resounding. But behind the palm branches, the delirium and the shouts of joy, the stage is set for the ignominious drama, and another cortege that will before long wend its way up Calvary.
The instruments of torture are ready: from the more refined — Herod, Caiphas and Pilate, to the coarser ones — the rough hireling, the soldiers that spat upon Him. Tortures of the heart are not lacking, nor degraded honor. A human being is trampled upon, and no humiliation or suffering is spared Him. All creatures seem to have been summoned to lend a hand, each at its appointed time.
And now the last, the toiling up Golgotha, where, on the summit, the gentle, blood-stained face of Our Lord lifts supplicating eyes on high, as He whispers that sublime prayer, “Father, forgive them . . .”
O God, forgive them! Here you have the whole drama of the Passion.
I will follow Thee, my Jesus, step by step, walking in Thy bloody footprints even to Calvary’s summit. Let me touch each one of the instruments of torture, let me weigh the agony that pierced Thy Sacred Heart, knowing that at the end of this Via Crucis I shall see my Savior, and shall carry away the imprint of His countenance upon my soul. Marked with this divine seal, my life will be changed. No longer shall I be a slave to the vain things of earth, but I shall rise above them to Calvary, where Thy dying eyes sought and found the satisfied Justice of the Father.
My God, look first upon the face of Our Lord, Thy Christ. Then cast Thine eyes on me below, and have pity. Amen.