The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-05-16
A WONDERFUL CRUCIFIX.
Continued from page ~

of His mortal life Him whom men style Christi
Il followed Him about for three years and fc
the defeats He inflicted on my friends and for til
insults He offered to me gave Him blow for blow
''Were you present when He hung the eros
of Calvary, between murderer and thief and di
you witness his awful agony and ignominiou
death.'
Il was, of all the crowd that Knocked Him ant
laughed at Him when He hung on the wood, tn
most pleased witness Why | inspired the fool
who nailed Him to the wood. 1t was who tempteo
Judas, the Iscariot, to betray Him; | inspired tn
Hebrew priests to insult Him, another to spit upoI
! Him, and my friend Plate who now occupies {
| conspicuous place in my kingdom to scourge Him
and fling Him to the mob. Why, only for me, the
fools would not have whipped Him. pressed the
crown on His head put a reed in His hand for a
scepre and a scarlet cloak on his bleeding shoulders
and. amid laughter and insult made mock king of
Him"
You remember His features the expression on
His Face when He hung on the cross and cried
aloud to His Father: My God Ny God hast
Thou abandoned me"" questioned the Spaniard
AS if His vile death happened yesterday"
Gould you and will you paint for me the face.
and the expression on the face as you saw them
Immediately before He said: All is contaminated,
and when darkness was falling on Calvary and
Jerusalem?"
Il can and will"
well, then, do I beseech you, before sign our
compact. Here is the brush and here the palette
Lucfer took the brush and paints, and when in
a few moments he handed them back the face of
Jesus Christ stood out upon an ebony background.
1t a face full of tenderness of infinite pathos,
of unspeakable pity. of boundless compositions; but
on it, deeply craven in the flesh were lines of awful
suffering, the seamings of sorrow and sustained
agony. The Spaniard. as he gazed upon the 'Santo
Rostro," the Divine Face, trembed as trembles the
man to whom the dead speaks. The eyes of the
Holy Face looked into his own; he was standing be-
fore Christ that not yet dead, but whose body
lay limp, and from which the blood was pouring
from cash in the side and tricklng from wound
in the head and hands. From out the closing lids.
the eyes, glazed with approaching DEATH looked
down upon him in sorrow and infinite pity. The
face and figure were so heart-rendng in their ter
rble realism. the look of the agonized Crucifed so
appealing and so full of love that tears of sympathy
welled from the eyes of the libertine Then before
and hiding the face of the Christ he saw the face
of his mother, and the eyes that looked their last
upon him when she lay upon her bed of death in
their home in Madrid. Rushing past his temptcr
the young Castilian flung himself at the feet of
the Christ and cried aloud: Jesus son of David
have mercy on me-" When, sobbing and broken
hearted. he rose erect he was alone with the dead
Christ and the unsigned compact.
JULIAN GARCE'S COPY.
IN Garoae, ,,o;ntipo ~, r1,ss tho l,-;rr Cl,r;st
stands out in full relief with no perspective. Be
hind the cross all is darkness save alone thread
of lightning snake-like and forked Over Calvary
the sky is urid and of dull red whose fiery hue in
portentous, lugubrious and awe-inspiring. The
body of the dying Savior, the little board above the
cross. with its prophetic inscriptions Jesus of
Nazareth King of the jews" parts of the foot and
the arms of the cross which the Divine Body did not
cover, alone occupy space. Beyond and around
them nothing, only the blackness of ebon darkness
Save the ribbon of snake-like lightning coming out
of and piercing the impenetrabe darkness, there is
nothing; not ray of light anywhere, no mark of
horizon, naught but the body of the Man-God, the
gibbet aIfd-night mooness and starless. But the
isolation of the Figure the lone Cross, the pita
BILE solitude encompassing the Crucifed, the blood
oozing from the frayed wound and trickling down
the pallid fesh and the Divine Face from which
expression, animation and life itself are ingeringly
departing, appeal to the heart and the Imagination.
and we are overwhelmed with pity and sympathy.
If we are familiar with the Holy Scriptures We
hear the pathetic cry of Isas "There is no beauty
in Him now, nor comeiness despised, a
man of sorrows His look was as it were hid
den from US.
He was led as sheep to the slaughter and He
did not open His mouth
Il have. given my body to the scourgers, and
my cheeks to the strikers | have not turned away
my face from them that rebuked me- and spat upon
me-" We call up the prophetic words of the in
spred writer of the Psalms
Il am poured out like water they have dug my