Good Friday: Joseph Haydn's "Seven Last Words of Christ"

As readers know, the hosts of the Son Rise Morning Show and I have been going through Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ from his The Friendship of Christ. (On Easter Monday, the Son Rise Morning Show will air a "best of" episode, but we will continue our series on Benson with his meditations on "Christ Our Friend Vindicated" on Monday, April 13).

At the same time as I've been reading Benson's meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, I've also been listening to Franz Joseph Haydn's "Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze." As Haydn explained in 1801, he wrote it for a Lenten service of meditation on those Words :

Some fifteen years ago I was requested by a canon of Cádiz to compose instrumental music on the Seven Last Words of Our Savior On the Cross. It was customary at the Cathedral of Cádiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances. The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hanging from the center of the roof broke the solemn darkness. At midday, the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced the first of the seven words (or sentences) and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit and fell to his knees before the altar. The interval was filled by music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra following on the conclusion of each discourse. My composition was subject to these conditions, and it was no easy task to compose seven adagios lasting ten minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself to the appointed limits.[2]

So in 1786, Haydn had composed the orchestral version; in 1787, a version for string quartet and another for piano; then in 1796, a choral version with meditations--inspired by hearing someone else's adaptation of his work with meditations (no copyright disputes!--but Haydn thought he could improve upon it). So there's an extensive Hoboken catalog of works.

I have been listening to a choral version and a string quartet version. The string quartet version is by the Juilliard String Quartet, at that time comprised of Robert Mann and Joel Smirnoff, violin; Samuel Rhodes, viola, and Thomas Paul, bass. The soloists are Benita Valente (great Handel and Mozart soprano in her day), Jan DeGaetani (mezzo soprano renowned for premiering many contemporary works, and for medieval/renaissance works!), John Humphrey, Tenor, and Thomas Paul, Bass; Warren Jones was the Musical Advisor.

From what I read in the CD booklet, this is yet another version of Haydn's composition:

The Seven Last Words has long been a favorite of the Juilliard Quartet. Aware that all the reworkings had not disturbed the length and tenor of the original version, they gathered four famous vocal soloists and a prominent music advisor, and worked out among themselves a version for string quarter and vocal quartet that incorporates the strings quartet version in toto, plus as much of the oratorio version as would include its text and emotional impact.

The other version I've been listening to was recommended on The Ultimate Classical Music Guide by Dave Hurwitz YouTube channel, conducted by Nicholas Harnoncourt with the Concentus musicus Wien, Arnold Schoenberg Choir with Inga Nielsen, soprano, Margareta Hintermeier, alto, Anthony-Rolfe-Johnson, tenor, and Robert Hall, bass.

These are, of course, solemn and moving works. And because the meditations are in German, one has to pay attention to the CD playing (or at least this one does!). I can't be reading anything but the texts while listening to the CDs. I found the Juilliard's string quartet version more vibrant and moving--even in the concluding "Terremoto".

Haydn was born on March 31, 1732 and he died on May 31, 1809.

Preview: The Seventh Last Word: "Father, Into Your Hands . . ."

On the Monday of Holy Week, March 30, we'll consider Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seventh Last Word on the Cross, "Father, into Your hands I commend my Spirit" (Luke 23:46) on the Son Rise Morning Show.

Monsignor Benson highlights the first rest the Incarnate Son of God had experienced, especially since He began the public ministry:

Our Lord has just cried aloud that Sixth Word in which He proclaimed that there was finished at last that "Father's business" of which He had first spoken in the Temple. Now He droops His Head again little by little upon His Breast, and in the words that he had learned at Mary's knee -- words in which every Jewish child committed the care of his soul into God's care through the coming night -- He commits His spirit into His Father's hands. For the evening is drawing on and the Sabbath is near in which once more, God, having seen all that He has done, pronounces it "Very good" and rests from His labours.

I. The thought of this Peace of Death into which our Divine Friend is passing is one of the most moving considerations of the Passion. He has been about His work for thirty-three years; and not for one instant, since He first drew mortal breath in the frosty stable of Bethlehem, has He ever yet truly rested. Even while He slept His Heart waked.

How many times do we read in the Gospels how Jesus responded to the needs of His people, even when trying to get some rest, some time to go away from the crowds with the disciples, or have some time for prayer?!

How utterly then has He earned His Rest! And at last He is to find it. The Soul through which such strong agonies have passed, is to sink into that peaceful place of refreshment and light where the souls that have served God according to their graces are awaiting that First Advent of their Redeemer. The Body that has borne so great a burden and heat of the day, that has been wearied with labours, and bowed down by sorrows -- and, at last, has been beaten, pierced and broken by the hands of those for whom such labours were borne -- this Body of His is to be laid in the cool rock-tomb, with wrappings of soft linen, soaked in spices and myrrh, to await once more the inbreathing of the Divine Energy which again shall pass through every vein, sinew and muscle, transforming each utterly back again to the unmarred Divine Image, in which, once again, now no longer subject to any law of limitation or weariness and waste, the Soul that can never sorrow again, shall eternally rejoice. Our Friend sleeps at last.

Monsignor Benson applies this sleep of peace to our mortality:

It is this for which we look at death -- the one hope that reassures and reconciles us to that violent cessation of activities which is to an energetic and vital soul the chief imaginative horror of death. It is even sometimes (so great is its attraction) -- we might almost say that it must be -- for every soul that is really taking part in the conflict of life, the chief attraction of death. For life must become from time to time an all but intolerable strain -- not only is there that weariness of body which arises from its incapacity to rise always to the demands of the soul; but there is that further weariness of soul arising from its effort to respond always as it ought, to the excitations and demands of grace. . . .

In the midst of our struggles, Benson urges us to find peace, "the Peace of God that passes all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) in the only place it can be found:

And it must come from one thing and one thing only, namely, a perfect balance in the environment for which our souls were made -- not as of a bird sleeping on the water, but of a bird poised in the air -- a perfect response, that is to say, on the part of our loving and lovable nature to the one adorable Nature which alone can support and can understand us -- in a word, that Peace can alone be found in that of which we have been treating throughout, in an intimate, intelligent, affectionate and voluntary Friendship with Christ, who made us for Himself, and designed His own Incarnation that the union might be complete.

That's why in the midst of our solemn celebrations of Holy Week, as we participate in those liturgies, we can't be morbid or bleak. 

Death is no longer frightful; and Life is no longer burdensome.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo's Pieta: The venerated image with its original canonical crown from 14 August 1637 by the Pontifical decree of Pope Urban VIII. Photo circa, 24 May 1888.

Preview: "I Thirst" and "It Is Finished" on the Son Rise Morning Show

In our last discussion on the Son Rise Morning Show, Matt Swaim quite rightly pointed out that the psalm Our Lord began on the Cross, Psalm 22, ends in hope:

31 And to him my soul shall live: and my seed shall serve him.

32 There shall be declared to the Lord a generation to come: and the heavens shall shew forth his justice to a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made. (Psalm 21 in the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, however, does not go there immediately; he leaves Our Lord in the midst of that chosen desolation, until He endures another humiliation, which we'll discuss on Monday, March 23: 

As Benson puts it: 

Up to the present the deepest point of Christ's Humiliation has been His cry to His Father -- that call for help by the Sacred Humanity which by His own Will was left derelict -- His confession to the world that His Soul was in darkness. Now, however, He descends a still deeper step of humiliation, and calls for help, to man.

Christ asks man to help Him!

The fifth Last Word is "I thirst". (John 19:28) 

All through His life He had offered help: He had fed hungry souls and hungry bodies He had opened blind eyes and deaf ears; and lifted up the hands that hung down, and strengthened the feeble knees. He had stood in the Temple and called to all that thirsted to come and drink. Now, in return, He asks for drink, and accepts it. So David, too, in the stress of battle had cried, "Oh that some man would give me a drink of the water out of the cistern that is in Bethlehem!"{1} For both David and David's Son were strong enough to condescend to weakness.

(ii) In the age-long Calvary of the world's history, Jesus cries on man to help Him; and the Giver of all humiliates Himself to ask.

In the context of Benson's meditation on the Friendship of Christ, he reminds that we are not equal partners in this relationship:

We have spoken of the Divine Friendship throughout as if it were a mutual relationship, as if we on one side, and Christ on the other, were united in a common bond. But, as a matter of fact, it is all on one side. We cannot even desire Christ without, except by the help of Christ within. The Christ within must cry "I thirst,"{2} before the Christ without can give us the Living Water.

This appeal, then, of Jesus must be our last and final motive, when all other impulses have failed. He is so beaten and rejected that He is come even to this. He must ask for mercy upon Himself, before He can have mercy on us. If we do not find our Heaven in Him, at least let Him find His Heaven in us. If we can no longer say, "My soul is athirst for the Living God," at least let us listen when the Living God cries, "My Soul is athirst for you." If we will not let Him minister to us, for very shame let us be content to minister to Him.

And then Benson references one of the Gospel stories we've heard this Lent: The Woman at the Well of Sychar:

He first uttered His petition, by the side of Jacob's well, and on the Cross of Calvary -- even the Samaritan woman, the alien from God's commonwealth, even the soldiers of an Empire that was at war with God's kingdom, had mercy upon Him, and gave Him to drink.

In Saint John's Gospel as soon as He has tasted the common wine on the sponge, Our Lord pronounces the Sixth Word: "It is finished." (John 19:30) Then He proclaims victory:

The evening light begins to glimmer again upon Calvary, the three crosses, and the little group that waits for the end; and as it falls upon the Face of Christ, the look of agony is gone. He has cried alike to God and man to have pity, upon tortured Soul and parched Body, and each has answered. Now in that Face, bleached by the darkness of the soul, and the Eyes, sunken with sorrow, a new look begins, that rises, as those who stand by watch Him, until the whole Face is radiant once again. The breaths come fuller and fuller, the Body nailed by its extremities begins to lift itself higher and higher till strength is regained sufficient for Him not to speak only, but to utter a cry so loud and triumphant as to startle and amaze the officer who has watched many men die, but never as This Man dies. The cry peals out, like the shout of a king in the moment of victory; and, in an instant, failure and labour and bitterness are behind Him for ever. Consummatum est. . . . "It is finished!"{1}

Benson explains the effects of this moment of victory for us:

Friendship between God and man is now made possible again, in the Body of Christ. That old irreconcilable enmity between the sin of the creature and the Justice of the Creator, between the defilement of the spirit and the Holiness of the Father of Spirits, is done away. We can be "accepted in the Beloved."

First, then: salvation is open to the sinner. No sin henceforth is unforgivable.

Even more:

Not only is mere friendship made possible by the death of Christ, but degrees of friendship to which even the angels cannot aspire. It is not only that a soul, through the Precious Blood, can pass from death to life, but that she can pass up through stages and heights and strata of that life, up to the perfection of sanctity itself. . . .

II. Christ's work, then, is "finished" on the Cross -- finished, that is, not as closed and concluded, but, as it were, liberated from the agonizing process which has brought it into being -- finished, as bread is finished from the mills and the fire, that it may be eaten; as wine is finished after the stress and trampling of the winepress -- finished, as a man's body is finished in the womb of his mother and brought forth with travail. . . .

Yet here is this vast river of grace pouring from Calvary, the river that ought to be making glad the City of God. Here is this enormous reservoir of grace, bubbling up in every sacrament, soaking the ground beneath our feet, freshening the air we breathe. And we still in our hateful false humility talk as if Perfection were a dream, and Sanctity the privilege of those who see God in glory.

In Christ's Name, let us begin. For Christ has finished.

As we enter into the Passiontide of Lent, when the glorious symbols of one aspect of that fulfillment--the sanctification of the human soul--and even the Crucifixes in our churches may be veiled, we remember both the Agony of the Passion and prepare for the celebration of its Victory. And on the Monday of Holy Week, we'll conclude this series with the Last Word 

Preview: "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

As you might surmise, the next passage in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ our Friend Crucified, which we'll discuss on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, March 16, begins dramatically, as Benson sets the scene:

The darkness of Calvary, spiritual as well as physical, draws on to its deepest. Christ has prayed for those who have outraged and repudiated His Friendship: He who was always the Friend of Sinners has added one more to the company [the Good Thief, Saint Dismas]: He who was always the Friend of Saints has united two of them yet more closely than ever by the wedding of Pain [His Mother and Saint John the Apostle].

Benson describes Jesus as drawing into Himself in this Word and choosing to experience this desolation:

Now He draws inwards from the world for which He has done so much: He directs this consciousness into His own Sacred Humanity; and in a Word at which heaven and earth tremble together, reveals to us that that Sacred Humanity, as a part of that process by which He chose to "taste death for all"{1} and to learn "obedience by the things which He suffered,"{2} has to experience the sorrow of dereliction. He who came to offer that Sacred Humanity as the bond of Friendship between God and man, wills that His own Friendship with God should be obscured. He becomes indeed the Friend of fallen man, for He chooses to identify Himself with the horror of that Fall. The Beatific Vision which was lost to man through that fall, and which Jesus Christ can never lose, is now obscured to the eyes of Him who comes to restore it through Redemption.

"My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" is the only of the Seven Last Word reported in two Gospels, Mark (Mark 15:34) and Matthew (Matthew 27:46) and occurs at the "Ninth Hour". 

Benson admits that this Word is hard to understand and to apply to ourselves because we can and do distract ourselves from the deepest realities:

This Word is the one that, above all others, is most difficult of application to ourselves. For the state in which it was uttered is simply inconceivable to us who find our consolation in so much that is not God, and to whom sin means so little. If physical comforts are wanting to us, we find refuge in mental comfort; if mental comforts are wanting, we lean upon our friends. Or, more usually, when the higher pleasures are withdrawn, we find relief, with scarcely an effort, in lower. When religion fails us, we console ourselves with the arts; when love or ambition disappoint us, we plunge into physical pleasures; when the body refuses to respond, we take refuge in our indomitable pride; and when that in its turn crumbles to nothing, we look to suicide and hell as a more tolerable environment. There seems no depth to which we will not go, in our passionate determination to make ourselves tolerable to ourselves.

I agree that we (I) do often accept our faults pretty easily and can tolerate and excuse our weaknesses readily. Perhaps we're sometimes a little less tolerant of ourselves when we make a good examination of conscience before Confession, but: 

This Word, then, is meaningless to most of us; for to Jesus Christ, when the Beatific Vision was overlaid with sorrow, there was nothing in Heaven or upon earth. . . . "I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: for one that would comfort me, and I found none."{6} The tragedy goes on, up there in the darkness: we hear the groan; we catch glimpses of the tortured, colourless Face behind which the Soul itself hangs crucified; . . . we grope, we conjecture, we attempt to form lower images of the august reality; but that is all.

Without referring to the Dark Night of the Soul, Benson says we can and probably will experience this sorrowful loneliness:

(i) Occasionally even we ourselves rise to the point in the spiritual life where our Friendship with Christ is our chief joy, among all the other and lesser consolations that God gives. The fact that we know Him and can speak with Him is reckoned by us as sufficiently sweet as to make its apparent withdrawal the most acute of all our sorrows. (I need hardly say that this requires no particular proficiency in spiritual things. It is, in fact, impossible to be sincere and persevering in our religion, without sooner or later experiencing it.) Well, such a point is reached by us, let us say; and then, on a sudden, without our being conscious of anything more than our usual faithlessness and lethargy, this spiritual pleasure in religion is swiftly and completely withdrawn.

Then it all depends on what we do. Do we retreat into those other pleasures, as listed above? 

Suddenly care a lot about opera and ballet, maybe?

Instead, Benson advises:

How is our hold upon our Friend to be tightened unless now and again it seems as if He were slipping from our grasp? How is real faith to throw out its roots and clench its fibres into the Rock, unless the desolating wind of trouble at times threatens to uproot us altogether? For the keener the tribulation and the more bitter the dregs, the more honourable is the draught. To hold our lips to that Cup which our Saviour drained, even though its bitterness is diluted by His mercy -- the honour of this should surely be enough to make us hold our peace, for very shame.

Secondly, Benson reminds us:

Religion is not one of the departments which make up our life -- (that is Religiosity) -- but Religion is that which enters into every department, the fabric on which every device, whether of art or literature, or domestic interests, or recreation, or business, or human love, must be embroidered. Unless it is this, it is not Religion as it is intended to be. . . .

Now this, let us remind ourselves, is actually intended to be the life of every human soul; and, in proportion as we approximate to it, we are more or less fulfilling our destiny. For it is only to a soul that has reached this state that God can be All. He becomes "All" because nothing is any longer alien to Him. "Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." {7} The whole of life becomes illuminated with His Presence; everything is seen to subsist in Him: Nothing has any value except so far as it is in relations with Him. . . .

This, then, is the state for which a Christian soul is bound to strive and aspire. This and this only is the entirety of the Friendship of Christ; to a soul in this condition, and to her alone, can Jesus truly be said to be All. And this, further, is the only state in which real "Dereliction" is possible. . . .

As usual, there's too much here for the time we'll have on Monday morning, but with broadcast professionals and good friends like Anna and Matt, we'll do what we can!

We adore Thee, most holy Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Thy churches that are in the whole world, and we bless Thee; because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the World. Amen.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo: Crucifixion of Christ, 1540

Crucifix in St. Pierre des Chartres, copyright (2026) Stephanie A. Mann

Preview: Christ's Second "Last Word", to Saint Dismas, the Good Thief

In case you are not reading Benson's The Friendship of Christ this Lent, here is some background on this chapter on "Christ Our Friend on the Cross" as we discuss the Second Last Word, "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."{4} on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monday, March 2:

When Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson writes these meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, he does not separate them into sections or chapters. He writes a harmony of the Four Gospel accounts of these Words; his point of view is always Jesus Christ Our Friend on the Cross. He weaves his meditations of the Seven Ways into a tapestry depicting aspects of the spiritual life in the Friendship of Christ. He constructs a chronology and even narrates the passage of time: he imagines the dialogue of the two thieves and Jesus as occurring about an hour after the three crosses have been raised on Golgotha.

The first thief, the Bad thief, after an hour of agony, is "still absorbed in his own pain, regarding it, contrasting it, turning it this way and that, seeking to adjust it" so he can deal with it; the second thief, the Good Thief, traditionally called Saint Dismas, has become "aware that there is something in this universe besides his own pain."

The first demands, out of that obsession with his own pain, "If thou be Christ, save thyself, and us." Saint Dismas has, with "the mind of a savage child--has been painfully at work" trying to figure out Who is in the center of their agony. He heard that First Word, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" and is thinking about what it meant.

Benson explores the mystery of Grace at work in the Good Thief, "its mysterious operation" and notes that "we know almost nothing, after all our theology, of that divine process; we know a little of its conditions, a fraction of his effects; we have labelled a few by-laws of its working; but no more." Somehow, "there was still in him enough receptivity for Grace to enter."

Somehow, in the midst of his pain, Saint Dismas begins to think that Jesus is not a criminal at all--that His execution is unjust, unlike his own--that Jesus is King--that the "crown of thorns were not wholly a mockery, that the title above the cross was something besides a sneer", so he reprimands the first thief and asks Jesus for something more than relief from their present agony: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 

Because of the simple humility of that request he receives a greater promised than expected: "This day thou wilt be with me in Paradise."

Benson's application of this drama to our spiritual life is that humility is the key. He warns against "self-assertion" in the spiritual life, trying to make individual progress there as we want to in our "worldly affairs", on our own terms, according to our own standards; to "force our friendship on Christ." So, Benson advises, the way to succeed in the spiritual life is to emulate Saint Dismas. 

He warns that the "soul", when thinking about any progress in the spiritual life, should remind herself that "not one of her good actions in the past that has been wholly good, for each that has not been done out of a merely natural generosity, has been done largely out of this very love of self; she learns that her "progress," for the most part, has been in the wrong direction altogether, that she has been accumulating merits that have scarcely a touch of meritoriousness, that she has been serving self throughout in those very actions which she had told herself were pleasing to God." 

[This unmeritorious merit seems like a corollary to the "unknowing knowing sin" of the First Word of Forgiveness.]

Therefore, we should ask Our Friend Jesus to "Remember me" and when You do "in that day be to me not a judge but a saviour!" 

Then Benson starts to turn our direction to the trio of those standing near Jesus on the Cross, His Mother, Saint John the Apostle, and notes that in a way the thief has joined that group. . .

Image Credit (Public Domain): Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, medieval illustration from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, 12th century

Image Credit (Public Domain): An icon showing Christ (center) bringing Dismas (left) into Paradise: At the right are the Gates of Paradise, guarded by a seraph (Solovetsky Monastery, 17th century).

Preview: Christ our Friend on the Cross: "Father, Forgive Them"

On Monday, February 23, we'll continue our discussion of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show with a Lenten series on his meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross: "XII. Christ Our Friend Crucified [The Seven Words]." 

After acknowledging various aspects of Christ Crucified, ("Priesthood is there, Royalty, the Prophetic Office, Sacrifice, Martyrdom")Benson states the focus of this chapter:

But, for the most part, we shall pass these by: we shall consider Him from that same standpoint as that from which we have considered Him throughout -- as our own familiar Friend who trusted us, and who was rewarded by us with the Crown of Thorns; who yet is content to bear all this and a thousand Passions more, if at the end He can but persuade us that He loves us. He spoke Seven Words as He hung there on Calvary, and each tells us of His Friendship.

The First Word:

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

Benson describes how this First Word might have been spoken:

Our Friend has climbed the Hill; He has been stripped of His clothes and laid upon the Cross that He has carried from the steps of the Praetorium. The executioners prepare and choose the nails. . . . Those whose love He is seeking stand round looking down upon His upturned face. He, lying there, sees them, and sees behind them all those whom they represent -- all those countless souls each one of whom He desires to win. And, as the hammer is lifted and falls, He utters His first Word.

His first comments on this statement highlight the wondrous charity of Jesus: in one sense, the injustice of this punishment was obvious: remember that in "Christ in the Average Man" Benson judged Pilate harshly not because Pilate did not recognize the Incarnate Son of God standing before him but because Pilate knew Jesus was innocent of the crimes He was accused of committing, and yet gave in to the mob. 

Many in the mob knew that He had healed the sick, gave the blind sight, and fed the multitudes. The only thing that He was guilty of was that "he was no friend of Caesar"--and Pilate did not want to be implicated in that crime! (If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend. For whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." John 19:12) 

In various ways, however, they really did not know what they were doing:

• They thought that they were taking His Life from Him; they did not understand that He was laying it down of Himself. They thought that they were ending for ever a career of mercy which displeased them; they did not know that they were co-operating in a supreme climax of mercy. They knew not what they did.
• They knew, then, that they were outraging a human friend, but not that they were slaying a Divine Friend. They knew that they were betraying a fellow-creature, that they were sinning against every code of human decency and gratitude and justice; they knew, like Pilate, that they were killing a just man, that they were taking upon their own heads the blood of an innocent person. 
• But they did not know that they were crucifying the Lord of Glory, that they were attempting to silence the Eternal Word.
• This, then, can at least be said in their favour -- "They know the horror, but not the full horror, of what they do. Therefore, Father, forgive them."

Next, Benson reflects on how Catholics in his day needed to forgive those states and organizations in Europe which had oppressed the Church in various ways:

They know that she has been the mother of ideals, of the noblest art and the purest beauty. They use to-day, in every country of Europe, for secular or semi-sacred purposes, buildings which she raised for her own worship of her God. They know that the morals of men find their only ultimate sanction in her teaching -- that where dogma goes down, crime goes up. And here, again, the only charge against her is that she is no friend to Caesar -- no friend, that is, to any system that seeks to organize society apart from God.

Benson names names that don't mean as much to us today. Nevertheless, any Catholic is hurt or even outraged today when she hears about a Catholic Church being desecrated, statues broken and toppled, or worst of all, the Tabernacle being broken into and the Blessed Sacrament scattered and stolen. 

Then he moves on to the deeper meditation for us, because "we too, in our our measure, have sinned in frantic ignorance":

We confess to a little sloth and lethargy, a little avarice, a little lack of generosity. We "know what we do," in part: we know we are not faithful to our highest inspirations, that we have not done all that we might, that we have shown a little self-will, a little malice, a little pardonable temper. And we confess these things, and give an easy absolution. And yet we know not what we do. We do not know how urgent is the need of God, how tremendous are the issues He has committed to our care, how enormous is the value of every soul -- of every act and word and thought that help to shape the destinies of such a soul.

Echoing the image of Christ lying on the ground, Benson warns of greater consequences of this unknowing knowing sin:

He lies here, and we gossip and stare, and go our ways where the tragedy is done, when He hangs between heaven and earth, descended from the one and rejected by the other -- our God whom we thought our slave, who desires to be our Friend.

Father, then, by this prayer of Thy crucified Son, forgive us also; for we know not what we do. . . .

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.