Miserable offenders

Alan Jacobs:

In our church, during Lent we use the old language from the Book of Common Prayer, in which we confess ourselves to be “miserable offenders.” Many people, I have learned over the years, dislike that language because it sounds self-degrading or self-abnegating. But the word “miserable,” which comes from the Latin miserere, simply means “in need of mercy.” And an “offender” is just a person who has sometimes done what is wrong. Aren’t we all people who have done things wrong and are, therefore, in need of God’s mercy? ....

...[M]y comfort as a reliably bad Christian, an inconsistent and often hapless follower of Christ, is that nothing I do, no matter how bad, surprises or discourages God. As J.I. Packer wrote in his classic Knowing God:

There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.

So, in the light of that Good News, let’s welcome the Christmas and Easter Christians with open arms. To those of you who are Christmas and Easter Christians: Come without guilt, without shame, and without hesitation. We are all people who have gone astray; we are all in need of God’s mercy. Christmas and Easter tell us that we’ve got it. In Christ God has dealt definitively with our offenses, and if that’s not something to celebrate, I don’t know what is. So here’s something each of us can say to our neighbors in the church: Greetings, fellow miserable offender!

Alan Jacobs, "Welcome to the Party, Christmas and Easter Christians," The Dispatch, April 5, 2026.

The day in between

The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein the Younger

Russell Moore:

Good Friday is terrible, but it is also dramatic and full of passion. Easter Sunday is triumphant, radiant, and full of song. But Holy Saturday is quieter and thus harder for us to inhabit. It asks us to remain near the tomb and to resist the urge to hurry toward resurrection before we have reckoned with the weight of Christ’s death and burial.

The Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus “was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead,” while the Nicene Creed declares that the eternal Son “became man” and, for our sake, “suffered death and was buried.” We should not mistake these as spare liturgical phrases placed between cross and resurrection merely to mark the passage of time between Friday and Sunday. They are the church’s way of insisting that the gospel is anchored in history, with a real flesh and blood body in a real tomb.

"Why do you hide your face from me?"

From "The World Needs to Recover True Lament. Christianity Can Teach It"

In the psalms, lament is a structured form of prayer that follows a discernible pattern: crying out to God, complaining, requesting, remembering God’s works, and—perhaps most surprisingly—often ending in praise of God. And for much of contemporary American Christianity, which we know best and have been studying for years, it has quietly disappeared. ....

...[O]nly about 4 percent of contemporary Protestant Christian worship songs reflect the kind of lament modeled in the psalms, despite the fact that nearly 40 percent of the biblical Psalter consists of laments. The hymnal of Israel was saturated with honest complaint. Ours largely is not. At some point—and this has been well-documented by theologians like Soong-Chan Rah, Todd Billings, and Walter Brueggemann—much of American Christianity internalized a triumphalist posture toward suffering: one that emphasized victory, gratitude, and praise, and grew increasingly uncomfortable with the raw petition and protest that fill the psalms. ...

When churches ask suffering people to outwardly project trust rather than speak truth, they are asking a particular kind of thing from a particular kind of person: the person for whom Sunday morning is often the loneliest hour of the week. The cancer patient. The grieving parent. The one whose life has come apart. Even if unintentionally, they are often the ones being asked to manage their presentation, to signal resilience, to express gratitude before they have had space to grieve. When we silence the pain of our most vulnerable members, we are telling them that their full reality does not belong in the community of faith. ....

The psalmists knew the value of inconvenient honesty. The two fundamental questions of lament, as musician and author Michael Card has written, are “God, where are you?” and “God, if you love me, then why?” Jesus prayed a lament psalm (Psalm 22) from the cross, crying “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These are not questions the psalms treat as spiritually dangerous. They are questions that Scripture itself models—and models prolifically. Lament is not the opposite of faith. It is one of its most ancient expressions. To deprive suffering people of this practice is to withhold from them a resource that Scripture provides precisely for moments like theirs. ....

There is a difference between complaining to God and complaining about God. The psalms of lament do the former. They bring honest anguish, protest, even anger—directly into the presence of God. This is not the same as griping about God to others. The counterintuitive truth is that complaining to God can be an act of faith: It demonstrates that you still believe God is present, that God hears, that the relationship can bear the weight of honest expression.

This is what lament does. It does not offer an explanation for suffering. It does not promise that circumstances will change. It offers something more basic: a structure for telling the truth about pain in the presence of a God who, the psalms insist, does not despise or ignore the cry of the afflicted. .... (more)

"The World Needs to Recover True Lament. Christianity Can Teach It," The Dispatch, March 22, 2026.

"Come, ye sinners..."

A blogger I once followed thought this a good hymn for Ash Wednesday,  "Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Needy" (Joseph Hart, 1759):

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, Weak and wounded, sick and sore; Jesus ready stands to save you, Full of pity, love and power. Refrain	View Him prostrate in the garden; On the ground your Maker lies. On the bloody tree behold Him; Sinner, will this not suffice? Refrain
I will arise and go to Jesus, He will embrace me in His arms; In the arms of my dear Savior, O there are ten thousand charms.	Lo! th’incarnate God ascended, Pleads the merit of His blood: Venture on Him, venture wholly, Let no other trust intrude. Refrain
Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome, God’s free bounty glorify; True belief and true repentance, Every grace that brings you nigh. Refrain	Let not conscience make you linger, Not of fitness fondly dream; All the fitness He requireth Is to feel your need of Him. Refrain
Come, ye weary, heavy laden, Lost and ruined by the fall; If you tarry till you’re better, You will never come at all. Refrain

A variation on the hymn by the Missouri All State Choir:

"Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies"

Robert Duvall has died.  He was a great actor and was in several of my favorite films. Some years ago, at the beginning of Lent, John Nolte suggested several films appropriate to the season. One he recommended:

Tender Mercies(1983) - Robert Duvall plays Mac Sledge, an alcoholic has-been country and western star who wakes up hungover in a rundown motel run by a widow and her young son. The great Horton Foote’s exquisite, Oscar-winning script understands faith like few others. Sledge doesn’t come back to life through rediscovering music; he rediscovers music after coming back to life. And what brings him to life is the love of a kind and simple woman, her young son, a difficult reconciliation with the past, and in the film’s most touching scene, a gentle dunk in baptismal waters.

Tender Mercies seems to be about a very troubled and messed-up life. It is really about God's grace. I saw the film in a theater on its first run, and I've watched it on videotape and DVD many times since. It isn't a "message" film. It isn't propaganda for the faith. It simply shows how, even when we focus on the drama in our lives—on the terrible and stressful things—we are still surrounded by blessings.

Tolerance for country music is necessary if the film is to be enjoyed. If you haven't seen it, it is worth at least renting (it is available on Blu-ray and, last time I checked, can be watched on Prime). If you haven't seen it for a while, this is a good time to revisit.

Duvall was given "Best Actor" and Horton Foote "Best Original Screenplay" for the film—back when that still meant something. Foote was also responsible for the screen adaptation of Duvall's first film, To Kill a Mockingbird (for which Foote also received an Academy Award). Duvall famously objected to delivering lines that no real person would utter. Foote didn't write any dialogue like that.

O blessed they

From Augustine, "Exposition on Psalm 148":

The subject of our meditation in this present life should be the praises of God; for the everlasting exaltation of our life hereafter will be the praise of God, and none can become fit for the life hereafter, who has not practiced himself for it now. So then now we praise God, but we pray to Him too. Our praise is marked by joy, our prayer by groans....On account of these two seasons, one, that which now is in the temptations and tribulations of this life, the other, that which is to be hereafter in everlasting rest and exultation; we have established also the celebration of two seasons, that before Easter and that after Easter. That which is before Easter signifies tribulation, in which we now are; that which we are now keeping after Easter, signifies the bliss in which we shall hereafter be. ....

Praise ye the Lord from heaven: praise Him in the high places. First he says, from heaven, then from earth; for it is God that is praised, who made heaven and earth. All in heaven is calm and peaceful; there is ever joy, no death, no sickness, no vexation; there the blessed ever praise God; but we are still below: yet, when we think how God is praised there, let us have our heart there, and let us not hear to no purpose, Lift up your hearts. Let us lift up our heart above, that it become not corrupted on earth: for we take pleasure in what the Angels do there. We do it now in hope: hereafter we shall in reality, when we have come there. Praise Him then in the high places. ....

What sort of command, think ye, have things in heaven and the holy angels received? What sort of command has God given them? What, but that they praise Him? Blessed are they whose business is to praise God! They plough not, they sow not, they grind not, they cook not; for these are works of necessity, and there is no necessity there. They steal not, they plunder not, they commit no adultery; for these are works of iniquity, and there is no iniquity there. They break not bread for the hungry, they clothe not the naked, they take not in the stranger, they visit not the sick, they set not at one the contentious, they bury not the dead; for these are works of mercy, and there is no misery, for mercy to be shown to. O blessed they! Think we that we too shall be like this? ....

"He is not here..."

Some years ago, when a family in his community had suffered a terrible loss, a Lutheran pastor preached an Easter Vigil sermon:

.... For almost two thousand years, humans have heard this story and for almost two thousand years we have been coming up with reasons not to believe it. Perhaps Jesus' body was stolen, it is argued, and the appearances to his disciples were the work of an imposter. Perhaps the appearances were a mass hallucination by the disciples, unresolved grief expressing itself as a sort of denial that he was even dead. Maybe the empty tomb is a later addition to this story. Maybe the whole thing is a metaphor for the power of Jesus' teaching. Maybe it is an echo of the stories of the pagan gods of the ancient near east, who go to the underworld for a season and then come back, bringing spring with them. The sun will come up tomorrow and life will renew itself.

These arguments are, briefly, all balderdash. Yes, the stories are strange and filled with mystery. No, they do not create one consistent picture of that morning and the days that follow. But the doubt and confusion are written into the story from the start. This is not a confidence game or a fraud or a metaphor. The stories would look totally different if they were. The people who were there believed this had happened. What and how, exactly, they couldn't say. But it was unbearably, unbelievably real to them. ....

Yet there it was, and there it is: a tomb with no corpse. A door opening to a possibility we may not even want to entertain. That there is something beyond the grave—not in our warm, rose-tinged memories, not in some distant shore where the souls of the righteous congregate, not in the recurring cycle of nature, spring following winter and day following night, not in our plucky human desire to go on living despite it all—but in the love shown to a broken body as it is knitted back together. In the care shown to a dead body as it is revived to life. In the promise of salvation and in-gathering of all the peoples that is initiated by this one lonely empty tomb. In a new age that begins now, in the devil being cast out from this one cranny of earth, hell being crushed under this one foot, death being deprived of its spoils in this one corpse. .... (more)

Benjamin Dueholm, "Preaching the Easter Vigil," The Parish Bulletin, April 17, 2025.

The day in-between

From "Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus" by A.J. Swoboda:

.... Martin Luther said himself that Saturday was the day that God himself lay cold in the grave. Friday was death, Sunday was hope, but Saturday was that seemingly ignored middle day between them when God occupied a dirty grave in a little garden outside Jerusalem. Saturday is about waiting, about uncertainty, about not knowing what’ll happen. ....

So much of Christian faith is Saturday faith. ....

A medieval theologian, Anselm, once described the kind of faith that comes with Saturday—fides quaerens intellectum: “faith seeking understanding.” By that, he meant that faith isn’t something that arises after moments of understanding. Rather, faith is something that you cling to when understanding and reason lay dead. We don’t believe once we understand it—we believe in order to understand it. Saturday’s like that: offering a day of waiting, a day of ambiguity, a day when God is sovereign even if our ideas and theologies and expectations about him are not. It is the day that our ignorance is our witness and our proclamation. Truth is, our intellect will always be one step behind in our love of God. We don’t love God once we understand him; we love God in order to understand him. ....

At times, we are all like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus who were really close to Jesus but didn’t always know it. In Luke 24, two disciples walked away from Jerusalem, where they’d just seen their Lord and Master die on the cross. Leaving, dejected, upset, hopeless, and broken, to find the next stage in their lives and careers. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus had been resurrected and was actually walking alongside them on their way to Emmaus. The hope of Sunday hadn’t dawned on them yet. The Gospels tell us that, on their way to Emmaus, the disciples were “downcast.”

That experience is the kind of experience Saturday is all about. .... (more)

This is from A.J. Swoboda's A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension between Belief and Experience, excerpted in Christianity Today.

Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus | Christianity Today

Good Friday

Kevin Williamson:

This week, Christians around the world will observe Good Friday, the most somber day on the liturgical calendar. The word good in Good Friday expresses an older sense of the adjective: holy, rather than desirable or positive. .... Good Friday is not an observance for the sort of person who insists he has “no regrets.” I don’t know what you do with somebody like that. But for people who understand, even if it is only at some instinctive level, the necessity of penance and reconciliation, Good Friday can be useful and purpose-giving, if not joyous. It isn’t only the joyous things that we need.

Kevin D. Williamson, "The Indictment and the Problem of Discretion," The Dispatch, April 3, 2023.

"Love one another"

Kevin DeYoung:

.... If you've never heard the term, it's not Monday-Thursday (which always confused me as a kid), but Maundy Thursday, as in Mandatum Thursday. Mandatum is the Latin word for "command" or "mandate", and the day is called Maundy Thursday because on the night before his death Jesus gave his disciples a new command. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34).

At first it seems strange that Christ would call this a new command. After all, the Old Testament instructed God's people to love their neighbors and Christ himself summarized the law as love for God and love for others. So what's new about love? What makes the command new is that because of Jesus' passion there is a new standard, a new examplar of love.

There was never any love like the dying love of Jesus. It is tender and sweet (John 13:33). It serves (John 13:2-17). It loves even unto death (John 13:1). Jesus had nothing to gain from us by loving us. There was nothing in us to draw us to him. But he loved us still, while we were yet sinners. ....

"To lay aside His crown..."

A good Lenten hymn. The last two verses here were unfamiliar to me, but I like them.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
To lay aside his crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb who is the great I AM;
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.

Then friends shall meet again, who have loved, who have loved,
Then friends shall meet again, who have loved;
Then friends shall meet again, in Jesus' presence, when
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved, who have loved,
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved.

Ye winged seraphs, fly! Bear the news, bear the news.
Ye winged seraphs fly! bear the news;
Ye winged seraphs fly! Like comets through the sky,
Fill vast eternity with the news, with the news,
Fill vast eternity with the news!

Anonymous; composite; 19th cent.

Tune: WONDROUS LOVE (6.6.6.3.6.6.6.6.6.3.)

American folk tune; The Southern Harmony, 1840

Conjubilant with Song included this about the hymn, which first appeared in 1811:

The tune for this hymn, adapted from an earlier folk tune, was first printed in the second edition of William Walker's The Southern Harmony (1840), in three-part harmony (and with only one stanza of the text). There have been many different arrangements of the tune since then, not only in hymnals but also as choral anthems and instrumental pieces.

Conjubilant with Song: Like Comets Through the Sky

An image

Re-posted:

I've posted about the Shroud of Turin on this blog several times. In 2009 I wrote:

The Shroud of Turin is the one religious relic that has intrigued me over the years, not as an object of reverence, but because of the possibility it could be authentic. Might there be an actual image of Jesus as well as evidence for His execution and possibly even the resurrection which had been preserved until a time when science could authenticate it? I should have known better — controversy about this sort of thing never ends and there is never enough evidence to erase all doubt. Nevertheless, the seemingly inexplicable nature of the image, the things a medieval artist would have been unlikely to know like the wounds on the wrists rather than the palms and the similarity to actual Roman methods of crucifixion, made the possibilities of the Shroud extremely interesting. .... (more)

The New York Post published an AI-generated image based on the shroud:

Olivia Land, "Face of Jesus? AI recreates stunning likeness of Shroud of Turin image that many believe to be Christ," New York Post, August 22, 2024.

"Every Holy Week thereafter..."

Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis were friends. CSL wrote about their relationship: "She was the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter. I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation—as I like a high wind. She was a friend, not an ally." Lewis approved of The Man Born to be King, a series of radio plays she had written for the BBC.

Lewis read the radio plays when her book was first published and then every Holy Week thereafter. This is the first letter he wrote her, on May 30, 1943:

Dear Miss Sayers— I’ve finished The Man Born to be King and think it a complete success. (Christie the H.M. of Westminster told me that the actual performances over the air left his 2 small daughters with “open and silent mouths” for several minutes). I shed real tears (hot ones) in places: since Mauriac’s Vie de Jesus nothing has moved me so much. I’m not absolutely sure whether Judas for me “comes off”—i.e. whether I shd. have got him without your off-stage analysis. But this may be due to merely reading what was meant to be heard. He’s quite a possible conception, no doubt: I’m only uncertain of the execution. But that is the only point I’m doubtful on. I expect to read it times without number again…. Yours sincerely C.S. Lewis (Collected Letters, II, 577f)

The Man Born to Be King is available at Amazon.

"Who is the ultimate sovereign..."

Meir Soloveichik on "America and the Exodus":

.... Ben Franklin made this proposal for a seal for the United States: “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Franklin’s suggestion reminds us that the Haggadah’s central exhortation—that we must see ourselves as if we had been slaves in Egypt and had been guided out by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm—is not only a religious idea but also one with political and moral implications. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has noted that modernity was formed by four revolutions: the British (in 1688) and American on the one hand, and the French and Russian on the other. In Britain and America, one source of inspiration was the Hebrew Bible. Secular philosophy guided the French and Russian revolutions. The former led to free societies, while French and Russian utopian revolutions ended in tyranny.

Why, asks Sacks, did Britain and America succeed where France and Russia failed?

The explanation is surely complex but much—perhaps all—turns on how a society answers the question: who is the ultimate sovereign, God or man?.... For the British and American architects of liberty, God was the supreme power.... For the French and Russian ideologists, ultimate value lay in the state...when human beings arrogate supreme power to themselves, politics loses its sole secure defense of freedom.... Societies that exile God lead to the eclipse of man. .... (more)

Cecil B. DeMille made two movies titled The Ten Commandments, a silent version in 1923 (poster above) and the more familiar one starring Charlton Heston as Moses.

 Meir Soloveichik, "America and the Exodus," The Free Press, April 10, 2025.

An intriguing image

I've posted about the Shroud of Turin on this blog several times. In 2009 I wrote:

The Shroud of Turin is the one religious relic that has intrigued me over the years, not as an object of reverence, but because of the possibility it could be authentic. Might there be an actual image of Jesus as well as evidence for His execution and possibly even the resurrection which had been preserved until a time when science could authenticate it? I should have known better — controversy about this sort of thing never ends and there is never enough evidence to erase all doubt. Nevertheless, the seemingly inexplicable nature of the image, the things a medieval artist would have been unlikely to know like the wounds on the wrists rather than the palms and the similarity to actual Roman methods of crucifixion, made the possibilities of the Shroud extremely interesting. .... (more)

Yesterday the New York Post published an AI-generated image based on the shroud:

Olivia Land, "Face of Jesus? AI recreates stunning likeness of Shroud of Turin image that many believe to be Christ," New York Post, August 22, 2024.

And He shall reign for ever and ever!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

The kingdom of this world is become

the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and of His Christ;

and He shall reign for ever and ever

King of Kings,

for ever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

and Lord of Lords,

for ever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

And He shall reign for ever and ever,

for ever and ever,

King of Kings,

and Lord of Lords,

King of Kings,

and Lord of Lords,

and He shall reign for ever and ever

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

A Saturday kind of faith

From "Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus" by A.J. Swoboda:

.... Martin Luther said himself that Saturday was the day that God himself lay cold in the grave. Friday was death, Sunday was hope, but Saturday was that seemingly ignored middle day between them when God occupied a dirty grave in a little garden outside Jerusalem. Saturday is about waiting, about uncertainty, about not knowing what’ll happen. ....

So much of Christian faith is Saturday faith. ....

A medieval theologian, Anselm, once described the kind of faith that comes with Saturday—fides quaerens intellectum: “faith seeking understanding.” By that, he meant that faith isn’t something that arises after moments of understanding. Rather, faith is something that you cling to when understanding and reason lay dead. We don’t believe once we understand it—we believe in order to understand it. Saturday’s like that: offering a day of waiting, a day of ambiguity, a day when God is sovereign even if our ideas and theologies and expectations about him are not. It is the day that our ignorance is our witness and our proclamation. Truth is, our intellect will always be one step behind in our love of God. We don’t love God once we understand him; we love God in order to understand him. ....

At times, we are all like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus who were really close to Jesus but didn’t always know it. In Luke 24, two disciples walked away from Jerusalem, where they’d just seen their Lord and Master die on the cross. Leaving, dejected, upset, hopeless, and broken, to find the next stage in their lives and careers. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus had been resurrected and was actually walking alongside them on their way to Emmaus. The hope of Sunday hadn’t dawned on them yet. The Gospels tell us that, on their way to Emmaus, the disciples were “downcast.”

That experience is the kind of experience Saturday is all about. .... (more)

This is from A.J. Swoboda's A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension between Belief and Experience, excerpted in Christianity Today.

Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus | Christianity Today

"Suffered under Pontius Pilate; Was crucified, dead and buried..."

I've made a practice on Good Friday of publishing an excerpt from this article.

From "On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ" by William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer. The original article is downloadable as a pdf and is substantially longer and detailed, with many diagrams and ample citation. Our Lord's manner of execution was like that suffered by a great many others in the Roman world:

…. It was customary for the condemned man to carry his own cross from the flogging post to the site of crucifixion outside the city walls. He was usually naked, unless this was prohibited by local customs. Since the weight of the entire cross was probably well over 300 lb (136 kg), only the crossbar was carried. The patibulum, weighing 75 to 125 lb. (34 to 57 kg), was placed across the nape of the victim’s neck and balanced along both shoulders. Usually, the outstretched arms then were tied to the crossbar. The processional to the site of crucifixion was led by a complete Roman military guard, headed by a centurion. One of the soldiers carried a sign (titulus) on which the condemned man’s name and crime were displayed. Later, the titulus would be attached to the top of the cross. The Roman guard would not leave the victim until they were sure of his death. Outside the city walls was permanently located the heavy upright wooden stipes, on which the patibulum would be secured. In the case of the Tau cross, this was accomplished by means of a mortise and tenon joint, with or without reinforcement by ropes. To prolong the crucifixion process, a horizontal wooden block or plank, serving as a crude seat (sedile or sedulum), often was attached midway down the stipes. Only very rarely, and probably later than the time of Christ, was an additional block (suppedaneum) employed for transfixion of the feet.

At the site of execution, by law, the victim was given a bitter drink of wine mixed with myrrh (gall) as a mild analgesic. The criminal was then thrown to the ground on his back, with his arms outstretched along the patibulum. The hands could be nailed or tied to the crossbar, but nailing apparently was preferred by the Romans. The archaeological remains of a crucified body, found in an ossuary near Jerusalem and dating from the time of Christ, indicate that the nails were tapered iron spikes approximately 5 to 7 in (13 to 18 cm) long with a square shaft 3/8 in (1 cm) across. Furthermore, ossuary findings and the Shroud of Turin have documented that the nails commonly were driven through the wrists rather than the palms.

After both arms were fixed to the crossbar, the patibulum and the victim, together, were lifted onto the stipes. On the low cross, four soldiers could accomplish this relatively easily. However, on the tall cross, the soldiers used either wooden forks or ladders.

Next, the feet were fixed to the cross, either by nails or ropes. Ossuary findings and the Shroud of Turin suggest that nailing was the preferred Roman practice. Although the feet could be fixed to the sides of the stipes or to a wooden footrest (suppedaneum), they usually were nailed directly to the front of the stipes. To accomplish this, flexion of the knees may have been quite prominent, and the bent legs may have been rotated laterally.

When the nailing was completed, the titulus was attached to the cross, by nails or cords, just above the victim’s head. The soldiers and the civilian crowd often taunted and jeered the condemned man, and the soldiers customarily divided up his clothes among themselves. The length of survival generally ranged from three or four hours to three or four days and appears to have been inversely related to the severity of the scourging. However, even if the scourging had been relatively mild, the Roman soldiers could hasten death by breaking the legs below the knees (crurifragium or skelokopia). …. (the article pdf)

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

O Saviour of the world, who by Thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us, Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord. Amen.

Thomas Tallis, 1575

The Greatest Drama Ever Staged

I have previously found this appropriate for Lent.

 

Gilbert Meilaender recommended reading Dorothy Sayers's radio plays collected as The Man Born to Be King :

On June 4, 1955, C.S. Lewis wrote to Dorothy Sayers to thank her for a pamphlet and letter she had sent him. He noted, in passing, that “as always in Holy Week,” he had been “re-reading [Sayers's] The Man Born to Be King. It stands up to this v. particular kind of test extremely well.” We might, I think, do far worse than imitate Lewis in our own Lenten reading.

The Man Born to Be King is a series of radio plays, twelve in all, dramatizing the life of Jesus from birth to death and resurrection. First broadcast by the BBC in 1941–1942, they were published in 1943, together with Sayers’s notes for each play and a long Introduction she wrote recounting both her aims and approaches in writing the plays and some of the first (often comical) reactions from the public.

Sayers did not suffer fools gladly, and she takes evident delight in recounting objections, many of which grew out of a kind of piety that resisted the deliberate realism of the plays. Thus, for example, among those who wrote her with objections was one who objected to her having Herod tell his court, “Keep your mouths shut.” The reason for the objection? Such “coarse expressions” struck the correspondent as “jarring on the lips of any one "so closely connected with our Lord." .... (more)

The book can be ordered at Amazon. If you haunt second-hand bookstores and come across it, it is well worth possessing and reading, and Sayers' notes are as valuable as the plays themselves.

Gilbert Meilaender, "The Greatest Drama Ever," Touchstone.