Welcome to Truth of the Spirit. I am your narrator, Patti Brunner. This series contains excerpts directly taken from the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich reported in “The Lowly Life and Bitter Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother”[i]. This episode is the Trial of Jesus Part 5: The Sentencing of Death. Venerable Anne Catherine saw the graphic violence done to our Lord. We have chosen to omit most of the explicit descriptions. The following is from the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine of Pilate’s Condemnation of Jesus at the conclusion of his trial.
Pilate, who was not seeking the truth but a way out of difficulty, now became more undecided than ever. His conscience reproached him: “Jesus is innocent.” His wife said: “Jesus is holy.” His superstition whispered: “He is an enemy of thy gods.” His cowardice cried out: “He is Himself a god, and He will avenge Himself.” Then did he again anxiously and solemnly question Jesus, and then did Jesus make known to him his secret transgressions, his future career and miserable end, and warned him that He would come one day sitting on the clouds to pronounce a just sentence upon him. And now came a new weight to be cast into the false scales of his justice against Jesus release. Pilate was offended at having to stand before Jesus, whom he could not fathom, with his ignominious conscience unveiled under His gaze; and that the Man whom he had caused to be scourged and whom he had power to crucify, should predict for him a miserable end; yes, that the lips to which no lie had ever been imputed, which had uttered no word of self-justification, should, even in this moment of dire distress, summon him on that day to a just judgment. All this roused his pride. But as no one sentiment ruled supreme in this miserable, irresolute creature, he was seized with anxiety at the remembrance of the Lord’s warning, and so he determined to make a last effort to free Him. At the threats of the Jews, however, to denounce him to the Emperor, another cowardly fear took possession of Pilate. The fear of an earthly sovereign overruled the fear of the King whose Kingdom was not of this world. The cowardly, irresolute wretch thought: “If He dies, so die with Him also what He knows of me and what He has predicted to me.” At the threat of the Emperor, Pilate yielded to the will of the multitude, although against the promise he had pledged to his wife, against right and justice and his own conscience. Through fear of the Emperor, he delivered to the Jews the blood of Jesus; for his own conscience he had naught but the water which he ordered to be poured over his hands while he cried out: “I am innocent of the blood of this just Man. Look ye to it!” And that same blood, which Pilate sought to wash from his hands and which he could not wash from his soul, the bloodthirsty Jews invoked as a malediction upon themselves and upon their children. The blood of Jesus, which cries for pardon for us, they invoke as vengeance upon themselves: They cry: “His blood be upon us and our children!”
While this terrible cry was resounding on all sides, Pilate ordered preparations to be made for pronouncing the sentence. His robes of ceremony were brought to him. A crown, in which sparkled a precious stone, was placed on his head, another mantle was thrown around him, and a staff was borne before him. A number of soldiers surrounded him, officers of the tribunal went before him carrying something, and Scribes with parchment rolls and little tablets followed him. The whole party was preceded by a man sounding a trumpet. Thus did Pilate leave his palace and proceed to the forum where, opposite the scourging place, there was a high, beautifully constructed judgment seat. Only when delivered from that seat had the sentence full weight. It was called Gabbatha. It consisted of a circular balcony, and up to it there were several flights of steps. It contained a seat for Pilate, and behind it a bench for others connected with the tribunal. The balcony was surrounded and the steps occupied by soldiers. Many of the Pharisees had already left the palace and gone to the Temple. Only Annas, Caiaphas, and about twenty-eight others went at once to the judgment seat in the forum, while Pilate was putting on his robes of ceremony. The two thieves had been taken thither when Pilate presented the Lord to the people with the words, “Ecce Homo.” Pilate’s seat was covered with red, and on it lay a blue cushion bordered with yellow.
And now Jesus in the scarlet cloak, the crown of thorns upon His head, His hands bound, was led by the soldiers and executioners through the mocking crowd and placed between the two murderers in front of the judgment seat. From this seat of state Pilate once more said aloud to the enemies of Jesus: “Behold, there your King!” But they yelled: “Away, away with this Man! Crucify Him!” “Shall I crucify your King?” said Pilate. “We have no king but Caesar!” responded the High Priests. From that moment Pilate spoke no word for or with Jesus. He began the sentence of condemnation. The two thieves had been already sentenced to the cross, but their execution, at the request of the High Priests, had been postponed till today. They thought to outrage Jesus the more by having Him crucified with two infamous murderers. The crosses of the thieves were already lying near them, brought by the executioner’s assistants. Our Lords was not yet there, probably because His death sentence had not yet been pronounced.
The Blessed Virgin, who had withdrawn to some distance when Pilate presented Jesus to the Jews and when He was greeted by them with that bloodthirsty cry, now, surrounded by several men, again pressed through the crowd to be present at the death sentence of her Son and her God. Jesus, encircled by the executioners and greeted with rage and derisive laughter by His enemies, was standing at the foot of the steps before Pilate. The trumpet commanded silence, and with dastardly rage Pilate pronounced the sentence of death.
The sight of that base double-tongued wretch; the triumph of the bloodthirsty but now satisfied Pharisees who had so cruelly hunted down their Prey; the innumerable sufferings of the Most Blessed Saviour; the inexpressible affliction and anguish of His Blessed Mother and the holy women; the eager listening of the furious Jews; the cold, proud demeanor of the soldiers; and the apparitions of all those horrible, diabolical forms among the crowd, quite overpowered me.
Blessed Anne Cather thought, “Ah! I felt that I should have been standing there instead of my Beloved Bridegroom. Then truly would the sentence have been just!”
Pilate first spoke some words in which, with high-sounding titles, he named the Emperor Claudius Tiberius. Then he set forth the accusation against Jesus; that, as a seditious character, a disturber and violator of the Jewish laws, who had allowed Himself to be called the Son of God and the King of the Jews, He had been sentenced to death by the High Priests, and by the unanimous voice of the people given over to be crucified.
Furthermore Pilate, that iniquitous judge, who had in these last hours so frequently and publicly asserted the innocence of Jesus, now proclaimed that he found the sentence of the High Priests just, and ended with the words: “I also condemn Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, to be nailed to the cross.” Then he ordered the executioners to bring the cross.
The most afflicted Mother of Jesus, the Son of God, on hearing Pilate’s words became like one in a dying state, for now was the cruel, frightful, ignominious death of her holy and beloved Son and Saviour certain. John and the holy women took her away from the scene, that the blinded multitude might not render themselves still more guilty by jeering at the sorrow of the Mother of their Saviour.
Pilate next seated himself on the judgment seat -and wrote out the sentence, which was copied by several officials standing behind him. Messengers were dispatched with the copies, for some of them had to be signed by others. Pilate’s written condemnation against Jesus clearly showed his deceit, for its purport was altogether different from that which he had pronounced orally.
I saw that he was writing against his will, in painful perplexity of mind, and as if an angel of wrath were guiding his hand.
The unjust sentence was pronounced at about ten o’clock in the morning according to our time. The written sentence was about as follows: “Urged by the High Priests, and the Sanhedrim, and fearing an insurrection of the people who accuse Jesus of Nazareth of sedition, blasphemy, and infraction of the laws, and who demand that He should be put to death, I have delivered Him to be crucified along with two other condemned criminals whose execution was postponed through the influence of the High Priests because they wanted Jesus to suffer with them. I have condemned Jesus because I do not wish to be accused to the Emperor as an unjust judge of the Jews and as an abettor of insurrections; and I have condemned Him as a criminal who has acted against the laws, and whose death has been violently demanded by the Jews.”
Pilate caused many copies of this sentence to be made and sent to different places. The High Priests, however, were not at all satisfied with the written sentence, especially because Pilate wrote that they had requested the crucifixion of the thieves to be postponed in order that Jesus might be executed with them. They quarreled with Pilate about it at the judgment seat. And when with varnish he wrote on a little dark brown board the three lines of the inscription for the cross, they disputed again with him concerning the title, and demanded that it should not be “King of the Jews,” but “He called Himself the King of the Jews.” Pilate, however, had become quite impatient and insulting, and he replied roughly: “What I have written, I have written!”
They wanted likewise the cross of Jesus not to rise higher above His head than those of the two thieves. But it had to be so, for it was at first too short to allow the title written by Pilate to be placed over Jesus’ head. They consequently opposed it’s being made higher by an addition, thus hoping to prevent the title so ignominious to themselves from being put up. But Pilate would not yield. They had to raise the height by fastening on the trunk a piece upon which the title could be placed. And it was thus the Cross received that form so full of significance, in which I have always seen it.
Claudia Procla sent back to Pilate his pledge and declared herself released from him. I saw her that same evening secretly leaving his palace and fleeing to the holy women, by whom she was concealed in Lazarus’s house. Later on, she followed Paul and became his special friend.
After the proclamation of the sentence, the Most Holy Redeemer again fell, a prey to the savage executioners. They brought Him His own clothes, which had been taken from Him at the mocking before Caiaphas. They had been safely kept and, I think, some compassionate people must have washed them, for they were clean. It was also, I think, customary among the Romans thus to lead the condemned to execution. Now was Jesus again stripped by the infamous ruffians, who loosened His hands that they might be able to clothe Him anew. They dragged the red woolen mantle of derision from His lacerated body, and in so doing tore open many of His wounds. Tremblingly, He Himself put on the undergarment about His loins, after which they threw His woolen scapular over His neck. But as they could not put on over the broad crown of thorns the brown, seamless tunic which His Blessed Mother had woven, they snatched the crown from His head, causing the blood to gush anew from all the wounds with unspeakable pain. When they had put the woven tunic upon His wounded body, they threw His loose white, woolen robe, His broad girdle, and lastly His mantle. Then they bound around His waist the fetter girdle, by whose long cords they led Him. All this took place with horrible barbarity, amid kicks and blows.
The two thieves were standing on the right and left of Jesus, their hands bound. The thieves were covered with the welts left by their scourging. The one that was afterward converted was now quiet and recollected in himself, but the other was furious and insolent. He joined the executioners in cursing and deriding Jesus who, sighing for their salvation, cast upon them looks of love and bore all His sufferings for them. The executioners meanwhile were busy gathering together their tools. All things were made ready for this, the saddest, the most cruel journey, upon which the loving, the most sorely afflicted Redeemer was to carry for us ingrates the burden of our sins, and at the end of which He was to pour out from the chalice of His body, pierced by the outcasts of the human race, the atoning torrent of His precious blood.
Pilate, that proud, irresolute pagan, who trembled in the presence of the true God and who nevertheless paid worship to his idols and courted the favor of the world, Pilate, a slave of death, ruling for a short time and on his way to the ignominious term of eternal death – went with his assistants, and surrounded by his guard, along a path running between two roads of his own palace, preceded by his trumpeters.
At last Annas and Caiaphas, angry and wrangling, finished with Pilate. Taking with them the couple of long, narrow scrolls, or parchment rolls, that they had received, copies of the sentence, they hurried off to the Temple. They had need of haste to arrive in time. Here the High Priests parted from the true Paschal Lamb. They hurried to the Temple of stone, to slaughter and eat the type, while allowing its Realization, the true Lamb of God, to be led to the altar of the Cross by infamous executioners. Here did the way divide-one road leading to the veiled, the other to the accomplished Sacrifice. They delivered the pure, expiating Paschal Lamb of God, whom they had outwardly aspersed with their atrocious barbarity, whom they had striven to defile, to impure and inhuman executioners, while they themselves hastened to the stone Temple, there to sacrifice the lambs that had been washed, purified, and blessed. They had, with timid care, provided against contracting outward legal impurity themselves, while sullying their soul with inward wickedness, which was boiling over in rage, envy, and scorn.
“His blood be upon us and upon our children!” With these words they had fulfilled the ceremony, had laid the hand of the sacrificer upon the head of the victim. Here again, the road branched into two: the one to the Altar of the Law, the other to the Altar of Grace.
This concludes the Truth of the Spirit series, “The Trial of Jesus” taken from the journal of Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich. We invite you to subscribe and leave us a comment. The transcript of this episode is available at PatriarchMinistries.com/315. We remind you that our free YouTube channel has over 300 episodes produced by the Padua Podcast Network for you to watch including several from the journal of Blessed Anne Catherine. And come back for more. With the Holy Spirit there’s always more! Amen.
[i] VISIONS OF VENERABLE ANNE CATHERINE (jesus-passion.com)
“The Lowly Life and Bitter Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother, Volume IV”. FROM THE VISIONS OF BLESSED ANNE CATHERINE EMMERICH AS RECORDED IN THE JOURNAL OF CLEMENT BRENTANO AND EDITED BY VERY REV. C.E.SCHMÖGER, C.SS.R. 1914
Life_of_Our_Lord_Jesus_Christ_Vol_IV.pdf (jesus-passion.com)
