He Will be Handed Over

Gospel Reflection for February 28th, 2024

Crucifixion of Christ, Andrea Mantegna

There is much to be said about today’s Gospel as the eleven verses given to us capture the immanent passion that Our Lord will undergo. The beginning of the Gospel is a prophecy, the third of its kind, by Christ anticipating His passion and death while the later part of the Gospel details James and John accepting the cross alongside Christ.

For today’s reflection, I want to concentrate on the first two verses:

“As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, He took the Twelve disciples aside by themselves,
and said to them on the way, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and hand Him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and He will be raised on the third day.’" Matthew 20:17-19

In these couple of verses, Our Lord is again foretelling His death and resurrection. He has done this twice before as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. Each time, it is met with disbelief and confusion by His apostles. But it is here in this third prophecy that the details of Christ being handed over by the Jews to the Romans are first revealed. This is a significant point in the overall economy of salvation.

St. Thomas Aquinas tells us:

“In the very manner of the Passion of Our Lord, its effects are foreshadowed. In the first place, the Passion of Our Lord had for its effect the salvation of the Jews, many of whom are baptized in His death. Secondly, by the preaching of these Jews, the effects of the Passion passed to the Gentiles also. There was thus a certain fitness in Our Lord’s Passion, that, beginning with the Jews and then the Jews handing Him on, it should be completed at the hands of the Gentiles.”¹

St. Thomas reveals a great meaning both to this prophecy and to the Passion itself. Christ willed that His Passion be committed by both Jew and Gentile alike. From the Gospels, we understand that the Messiah is a promise first to the Jewish people. But He was never meant to remain only for the Jewish people. He has come for the salvation of all mankind, Jew and Gentile.

This is made even more manifest when we consider that Christ’s coming happened in the fullness of time, meaning that it was this exact time period that God willed to send His Son. Why? Because, historically, the Jewish people were under the occupation of Rome, and Rome ruled the majority of the known world at the time. Further, the Passion itself was willed by God, and crucifixion, at this time, was a Roman style of execution. While other cultures practiced it, Rome perfected it, so to speak, and the Jews certainly did not do it. All of this is done in the fullness of God’s providence to demonstrate God’s great love for mankind.

With this in mind, we can see why Christ willed to be arrested by His own people, using one of His disciples and yet still be handed over to the Romans. St. Thomas explains:

“To show the abundance of the love that moved Him to suffer, Christ, on the very cross, asked for mercy for His tormentors. And since He wished that Jew and Gentile alike should realize this truth about His love, He wished that both should have a share in making Him suffer.”²

The immense truth of the Passion is that the redemption of the world did not have to happen that way. God could have forgiven in any way that He wanted. Even one drop of blood from Our Blessed Lord’s body would have been sufficient for the redemption of mankind. But God desired to demonstrate His abundant love for mankind and so He called all men, Jew and Gentile, to participate in His sacrifice. Through this, He offers salvation to all.

The beauty of the Passion is that it is a perfect act of sacrifice. Not because God is some sadistic tyrant out for blood but because the willing sacrifice of such an innocent and perfect man, laying His life down for the guilty, was far more pleasing to the Father than the offense given to Him through man’s sin. The cross is the manifestation of love, a love that is offered to all men, and a love that calls us to take up our own cross and imitate Him who died for us.

1. St. Thomas Aquinas, Lenten Meditations, Trans. Fr. Phillip Hughes, Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2022. 59.

2. Ibid.