ACC ~ Mark 14 v58a
THE LORD BOUND IN THE TEMPLE
PRUDENTIUS:
Lo, the house of the wicked blasphemer, Caiaphas, has fallen,
Where the sacred face of the Christ was cruelly smitten.[1]
This destruction will be the lot of all reprobate sinners,
For their life will lie buried in crumbling ruins forever.
In this house the Lord stood upright, bound and tied to a pillar,
And submitted his back as a slave to the pitiless scourging.
Worthy of reverence, this pillar still stands,[2]supporting a temple,
And instructing us how to lead our lives free from all scourges.
SCENES FROM SACRED HISTORY 40, 41.[3]
THE TEMPLE BUILT BY HANDS
PRUDENTIUS:
Do not the quarried stones of Solomon
Now lie in ruins, that temple built by hand?[4]
Why so? The mortal hand of mason wrought
That short-lived work. It rightly lies in ruins,
Since every work of art returns to nought.
All that is made is doomed one day to fall.
Learn what our temple is, if you would know;[5]
It is one that no artisan has built,
A structure not of riven fir or pine,
Nor reared with blocks of quarried marble fair.
Its massive weight no columns high support
Beneath the arches of a gilded vault.
By God’s Word it was formed, not by his voice,
But by the everlasting Word, the Word made flesh.[6]
This temple is eternal, without end,
This you attacked with scourge and cross and gall.
This temple was destroyed by bitter pains.[7]
Its form was fragile from the mother’s womb,
But when brief death the mother’s part dissolved,
The Father’s might restored it in three days.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.[8]
Mk
[1]Cf. Mt 26:57-67; Mk 14:53-65.
[2]Prudentius, writing at the end of the fourth century, knew the Jerusalem pilgrims’ tradition that the pillar “still stands” on the Via Dolorosa.
[3]Cetedoc 1444, 40.157; FC 52:192. Centuries later only the pillar still stands in Jerusalem where he was scourged, instructing us how to be free from the final scourging.
[4]Cf. Acts 7:47-48.
[5]Cf. Heb 8:1-2.
[6]Cf. Jn 1:14.
[7]Cf. Mk 14:58; Jn 2:19-21.
[8]Cetedoc 1439, 512; FC 52:22-23.