In his The School of Jesus Crucified, Fr. Ignatius of the Side of Jesus Passionist reflects on the insult that Pilate offered Jesus by comparing Him with Barabbas:
“Who is Jesus, and who is Barabbas? Jesus is the Eternal Son of God, the King of Majesty, the Lord of Glory, the Creator of Heaven and Earth and the Holy of Holies. It would be a grievous insult to compare Him with the highest of the Angels, what then must it be to compare Him with Barabbas, a rebel, a thief, a murderer, and a notorious criminal? How keenly must the Heart of Jesus feel so ignominious a comparison! What anguish must His Soul suffer on hearing Pilate say to the people: ‘Which of the two will you have? Whom do you prefer? Whom do you love best, Jesus or Barabbas?’ And yet He joyfully submits even to this disgraceful outrage.”
Before the Jews clamored for the release of Barabbas, Jesus suffered the insult of being compared with a notorious criminal. Thus, even if Jesus had been released at that point, He would have suffered greater insult by virtue of His Divine dignity than any mere man could ever suffer.
This is an entirely different religion than the one Francis advocates because we cannot have it both ways: either Jesus is offended by our sins or He is not; either Jesus wants us to amend our lives or He does not; either Jesus is pleased by our indifference to sin or He is not.
As he does throughout his The School of Jesus Crucified, Fr. Ignatius wrote of the way in which we repeat this type of insult in our daily lives:
“How often have you renewed this shameful comparison? Whenever the devil has tempted you to indulge in some sensual pleasure, or the world has instigated you to take vengeance, and you have been careless and lukewarm in rejecting the temptation, being undecided as to whether it were better to please God and obey His laws, or indulge your evil passions, so often have you compared God, the Sovereign Infinite Good, to a miserable gratification and vile pleasure. What an outrage to God! What an insult to His Majesty! Be ashamed of your rash presumption, and weep over your sin.”
This is a sobering reflection for many of us: that even the lukewarmness of our rejection of sinful temptations could insult God. Certainly there is even greater insult if we ultimately consent to those temptations.
What do we hear instead from those representing themselves as the leaders of the Catholic Church? Here are Francis’s words to “young people” on the fifth anniversary of his Apostolic Exhortation, Christus vivit:
“I repeat this to each of you individually: Christ is alive and he loves you with an infinite love. His love for you is unaffected by your failings or your mistakes. He gave his life for you, so in his love for you he does not wait for you to be perfect. Look at his arms outstretched on the cross, and ‘let yourself be saved over and over again.’ Walk with him as with a friend, welcome him into your life and let him share all the joys and hopes, the problems and struggles of this time in your lives. You will see that the path ahead will become clearer and that your difficulties will be much less burdensome, because he will be carrying them with you.”
We know from painful experience that Francis does not mean any of this in a genuinely Catholic sense, and anyone suggesting otherwise at this point perpetuates Francis’s scandal. When Francis suggests that Our Lord’s love for us is “unaffected by your failings or your mistakes,” he clearly intends to convey that we should not fear that our sins may offend Jesus, or in any way disrupt our relationship with Him.
Francis and his followers celebrate the liberation of Barabbas from the rigid snares of Catholic morality, and turn their vengeance on backwards Traditional Catholics who have the audacity to follow what the Catholic Church has always taught.
Conversely, here is what Fr. Ignatius wrote as he continued his reflection on the comparison between Jesus and Barabbas:
“The Jews are guilty in preferring Barabbas before Jesus, but they committed this enormous crime upon one occasion only, whereas how many times have you exclaimed in your heart, by consenting to sin, ‘Away with God from my soul, give unto me the devil with that wicked pleasure, or illicit gain, or that gratification of my evil passions!’ You have preferred the devil to Jesus whenever you have renounced the service of God. You knew that Jesus was your King, you believed Him to be your God, you adored Him as your Saviour, and yet you thus preferred an unclean and degrading sensual pleasure before Him! What more frightful injustice than this? Detest your malice, force your perverse will to retract its shameful determinations, and resolve ever to prefer God before all created objects.”
Obviously this is an entirely different religion than the one Francis advocates because we cannot have it both ways: either Jesus is offended by our sins or He is not; either Jesus wants us to amend our lives or He does not; either Jesus is pleased by our indifference to sin or He is not.
The difference between these two religions — Catholicism on the one hand, and the religion advocated by Francis on the other — should be apparent to even those who cannot appreciate the theological differences. Francis and his followers mock and persecute the Catholics who believe that Fr. Ignatius was correct, while they welcome with open arms those who believe the opposite of what Fr. Ignatius and the entire Church taught before Vatican II. Francis and his followers celebrate the liberation of Barabbas from the rigid snares of Catholic morality, and turn their vengeance on backwards Traditional Catholics who have the audacity to follow what the Catholic Church has always taught.
There is even a sense in which the absurd injustice of Francis’s preferential love for Barabbas is more obvious than when the scene first played out under Pilate. Then, before Our Lord’s Resurrection, there might have been doubt about His claims to being the Son of God. Then, when it was not Our Lord’s chosen disciples clamoring for His Crucifixion, we can understand why He faced opposition from those whose religious beliefs He proposed to radically change.
When Jesus told us that we must be the light of the world, He did not make exceptions for instances in which we would be persecuted for allowing His enemies to see the light. And so today there is no excuse for hiding the truth simply because Our Lord’s enemies in Rome, including the one dressed in white, persecute us.
But today it is different. In the Gospels, Peter wept bitterly after denying Jesus three times and hearing the cock crow (Luke 22:61-62), but today the reputed successor of Peter does not weep. Instead, Francis disdainfully bears false witness against Our Lord’s teachings, encourages the executioners of the Mystical Body of Christ, and consoles Judas for having been so misunderstood and unfairly maligned.
God did not have to make the sides in this battle so clear, but in His great love and mercy He has made it unmistakably clear. If we are being persecuted today because we simply want to believe and practice the Catholic religion as the saints believed and practiced it for almost two-thousand years prior to Vatican II, then we can count ourselves blessed, as Our Lord told us in His Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for My sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid.” (Matthew 5:11-14)
When Jesus told us that we must be the light of the world, He did not make exceptions for instances in which we would be persecuted for allowing His enemies to see the light. And so today there is no excuse for hiding the truth simply because Our Lord’s enemies in Rome, including the one dressed in white, persecute us.
Jesus is permitting His enemies to persecute the Mystical Body of Christ just as He permitted His enemies to persecute Him in His Passion and Crucifixion. If we have been given the unfathomable blessing of being persecuted today by Francis for following Jesus, then we ought to generously repay this gift by doing our best to follow Our Lord ever more closely: “And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48). And now, as then, if we want to faithfully remain at the foot of Jesus’s Cross we should find and stay close to His Mother, Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!
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