Lent Day 31: Friday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent— Ecce Homo.

Ecce Homo.

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Read St. John xix. 4-6.

[4] Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith to them: Behold, I bring him forth unto you, that you may know that I find no cause in him. [5] (Jesus therefore came forth, bearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment.) And he saith to them: Behold the Man.
[6] When the chief priests, therefore, and the servants, had seen him, they cried out, saying: Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith to them: Take him you, and crucify him: for I find no cause in him.

1. The scourging and crowning with thorns have brought the Son of God to a condition pitiable to contemplate. We have seen Him, and there is no sightliness in Him that we should desire Him. Pity, contempt, horror, disgust, indignation, are mingled in the hearts of those who behold Him. He is indeed a worm and not a man. He, the fairest among ten thousand! He, the sinless Lamb of God! Oh, how frightful must sin be if it can work such havoc even in the sacred person of the Son of God!

2. The sin that did this work, moreover, was the sin of others, not His own. It was something external to Him. He took it indeed upon Himself, He was made sin for us, but sin was never His own as it was ours. If it could so disfigure and degrade the sinless Lamb of God when laid upon Him from without, what must be the disfigurement and degradation sin works in us, springing up as it does out of ourselves, being a part of our sinful nature producing its natural fruits?

3. But was the Son of God really degraded by all these consequences of sin? On the contrary, His sacred humanity had never been so glorious or so worthy of honor as it was then. If He was unsightly before men, in the eyes of His Eternal Father He was crowned with honor and glory. There is nothing so pleasing to God as voluntary self-abasement and humiliation, nothing that brings so rich a recompense. How foolish then am I when I seek to avoid humiliation, and hate to be made like to the Son of God by suffering contempt and reproach from others!