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Reflections on the First of the Seven Last Words
Church of the Gesu
Ateneo de Manila University
31 March 2010
And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:33-34)
I don’t know about you, but I have a little problem with these first words of Jesus on the cross. I have a couple of questions.
First of all: Who’s 'them'? Who is He actually forgiving? Our Lord could be referring to several groups of people who have wronged him before and during the crucifixion, people responsible for what happened in different ways and in varying degrees. Who could these people be?
Second question: What does he mean ‘they don’t know what they’re doing’? What does that mean?
If we try to figure out who he’s referring to, several groups of people immediately come to mind. I can think of five groups actually.
First, there are the Roman soldiers, those immediately responsible for carrying out his crucifixion plus all the other things that went with it—like the scourging at the pillar, the crowning of thorns, etc. To this group I also include Pontius Pilate, who ordered the execution. These are the people who wronged Jesus because they thought they were just “doing their job.”
Then there are the Jewish leaders, the priests, the Pharisees, and the scribes. Actually, they would have crucified Jesus themselves if Roman law had not prohibited them from doing so. These are the ones who had schemed and plotted to get Jesus the death sentence. Wasn’t it, after all, the high priest Annas who rationalized their plan by claiming that: “It’s better for one man to die than for an entire nation to perish!” So they plotted against our Lord in the name of their country. They were just loving their country. Of course despite their lip service to patriotism, we know that they were really jealous and resentful of Jesus and worried about their own self-interests. In other words, they were really just “looking out for themselves.”
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