Jesus Christ famously died for the sake of his followers,
but his life was filled with even more suffering in
the form of betrayal, massacres, and executions.
The Bible doesn't have much to say about the relationship
between Jesus and Saint Joseph.
In fact, Joseph doesn't have a single recorded line, probably
because he died about a decade before Jesus begins ministry.
Instead, the relationship is extrapolated from extra biblical traditions which
stressed Jesus grief over losing his earthly father.
The main source is the apocryphal text The Story of
Joseph the Carpenter, which depicts a tender, loving relationship between
Joseph and Jesus.
As the 111 year old Joseph lay sick and dying,
Christ and the Virgin Mary prayed over him.
After Jesus invoked blessings upon Joseph, he breathed his last
breath and then he was buried near his father Jacob.
The tradition of Joseph's passing has survived for generations of
painters to depict in vivid detail.
Jesus endured a serious family tragedy when the Judean King
Herod Antipas executed John the Baptist.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, Herod beheaded John to
impress his former sister-in-law and present wife, Herodius.
The Jewish historian Josephus confirmed this biblical version in his
writings.
Neither Josephus nor the Bible describe Jesus's personal relationship with
his cousin, although the Gospel of Luke does confirm that
they were related to their mothers.
But it doesn't say if they were particularly close or
even really knew each other.
In fact, the Gospel of John says that John didn't
know Jesus when the latter appeared for baptism, which is
their only reported interaction.
Greater than all of us.
One was sandals.
I am not worthy to carry.
Despite their seemingly distant relationship, the Bible makes it clear
that Jesus was deeply affected by John's death.
As the Gospel of Matthew recounts, when Jesus heard of
it, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place
by himself.
But was Jesus upset mainly because he had lost a
family member or because an important holy man had died?
Either way, despite the lack of biblical evidence, artists from
across Christian history have imagined that the two of them
grew up together from their earliest days, with multiple paintings
depicting Mary with both John and Jesus as babies.
Jesus's opinion of the Roman government of Judea is difficult
to parse from the Bible.
Considering Pontius Pilate's reputation for brutality and anti Jewish sentiments,
one would expect Jesus to have denounced him.
Instead, he tells his disciples repay to Caesar what belongs
to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.
The only mention of a massacre that might have affected
Jesus personally appears in the Gospel of Luke.
A group of Jews questioned him about pilots killing of
a group of Galilean pilgrims.
It's implied that they were massacred in the Temple.
Judaism spoley of Holies and the only place where the
Mosaic Law permitted sacrifices to take place.
Jesus's reaction is quite muted in the text, with a
massacre being secondary to a call for repentance.
But if it indeed happened in the Temple, a massacre
at the hands of the Pagan Romans would have been
sacrilege, as the Temple of Jerusalem was God's house.
Jesus made his attitude toward anything resembling sacrilege clear in
the Gospel of John when he drove the money changers
out of the temple.
My house will be a House of prayer, and you
have turned it into a dead.
Of these.
It's fair to say that Jesus was targeted from the
day he was born as King Herod of Judea tried
to kill him as a baby.
Later in his life, the Pharisees tried to stone him,
a high priest arrested him, and Pontius Pilate crucified him.
Jesus's frequent brushes with death have much to do with
the political and religious intrigues of his day.
King Herod was a Roman ally, as were the Sadducees,
the Jewish elites whom Herod consulted with.
The Gospel of Matthew implies that Herod and the Sadducees
saw Jesus as a threat to their positions.
If Jesus was king of the Jews, that meant that
that Herod wasn't.
Furthermore, the Pharisees opposed Jesus claims of divinity, which they
considered to be blasphemy.
As for the Romans, they're barely mentioned in the Bible
until a Passion narrative.
Pontius Pilot likely had little interest in Jesus, while historians
like Josephus and Philo both noted that Pilot hated Jews
and vice versa.
As a Pagan, Pilot had little reason to order Jesus
death on religious grounds.
His priority was maintaining Roman rule in Judea, but when
it seemed like the crowd in Jerusalem when instigated revolt
at Jesus trial, he chose crucifixion to appease them.
Are you the king of the Jews?
So you say Crucifixion was surely one of the worst
ways to die in the Roman world, as it was
meant to inflict as much pain as possible while also
humiliating the victim.
Hanging them from the wrist or hands from the crossbeam
compressed their bodies downward, preventing them from breathing properly.
To get air they would have to push themselves up
by the feet, which were also nails, but that made
the nails rub up on the phone.
Death came slowly by asphyxiation.
For Jesus, who had been brutally beaten before the ordeal,
the pain was probably even worse from his wounds rubbing
against the wood.
This form of public execution was reserved for the lowest
types of people, like slaves, criminals and prisoners of war,
whom the Romans wanted to make an example out of.
The condemned could actually still survive for days, although merciful
executioners might break their legs or kill them after just
a few hours.
In the Gospel of John, Roman soldiers break the thieves
legs so that they can be buried before the Sabbath.
Jesus, however, is already dead.
He spared that in dignity.
It is finished.
The Eliusa icon shows the child Jesus cheek to cheek
with the Virgin Mary, sometimes with his arms tenderly thrown
around her neck.
This style captures Mary's love for her only child, whom
she saw die in agony.
There are differences between the Gospels regarding Mary's presence at
the crucifixion, though they're all pretty thin on details, if
they mention her at all.
The Gospel of Mark says simply that she watched it
from afar, while Matthew and Luke omit her completely.
John, however, places her at the foot of the cross.
Perhaps the details of her suffering are unnecessary, as any
mother would have suffered horribly while seeing her son dying
such a painful death.
Despite the lack of biblical details, centuries of Christian art
have portrayed her weeping in despair while watching her son
die.
It was no doubt tragic.
There's also a theological explanation behind it, as suffering is
stressed as the source of new life.
1st century Judaism was filled with religious and ethnic divisions
that Jesus had to navigate throughout his ministry.
Chief among his rivals were the Pharisees, one of several
1st century Jewish factions primarily focused on living out Mosaic
Law.
They viewed equality with God as blasphemy and an event
that was punishable by Stoney.
In the Gospel of John chapter 8, Jesus uses the
divine name of God, Yahweh, to describe himself, and in
chapter 10 of the same gospel, he claims to be
one with God the Father.
In both cases, the Pharisees responded by attempting to stone
him.
Despite these encounters, Jesus and the Pharisees weren't purely enemies.
He respected them as teachers of the law and exhorted
people to obey their teachings.
While some Pharisees warned Him about King Herod's plot to
kill him, ultimately, he simply held Pharisees to a higher
standard and called out those who failed to live up
to it.
Your obsession with what is clean and unclean was farther
than God intended.
As we said earlier, King Herod was after Jesus from
right around when he was born.
King Herod infamously ordered every male child under the age
of two in and around Bethlehem killed in an effort
to off a potential rival.
While Herod carried out his massacre, the Holy Family fled
to Egypt.
According to Coptic tradition, they were generally well received as
they made their way through a handful of towns from
the Nile Delta all the way to Cairo.
The last six months were spent living in a cave
on a site that is still commemorated today.
Cops believe that baby Jesus even left them a souvenir
of his footprint on a piece of stone.
Once Herod died, the family was able to return home,
but they opted to lay low by settling in the
town of Nazareth in what is today northern Israel, rather
than your Jerusalem, where Herod's successors could more easily find
them.
In the build up to his crucifixion, Jesus spent time
in the Garden of Gethsemane with his 12 apostles, according
to the Gospel of Matthew chapter 26.
Peter told Jesus, even though I should have to die
with you, I will not deny you.
Approximately 40 verses later, Peter's result crumbled as he denied
Jesus not once, but three times.
I don't know what what you're talking about.
Jesus reaction is all in the subtext.
According to Luke's gospel, after the third denial, he simply
turned and looked at Peter, which was essentially meant to
convey stone cold silence.
Peter's triple denial, including claiming not to know him in
the Hebrew context, was a rejection of Christ.
The expression that Peter used was the equivalent of saying
that someone was dead to you.
It's the same expression that Jesus used in Matthew Chapter
7 when he said I never knew you.
In reference to God's rejection of the wicked in Hebrew
and Aramaic, repeating things three times was a way of
making it superlative, and it essentially amounted to rejecting God.
The Bible emphasizes the betrayals of Peter and Judas, almost
equating the two, but the other apostles weren't much better.
Following Jesus's arrest, Matthew chapter 25 simply says all the
disciples left him and LED.
According to Catholic tradition, when Jesus was condemned to die,
only Saint John the Evangelist actually bothered to show up
the crucifixion, comforting the Virgin Mary as she watched her
son die.
The rest were nowhere to be found, despite their ostensible
fidelity to Jesus.
Well, I'm a little silent on what exactly these disciples
were doing.
The crowd had attempted to arrest Saint Peter alongside Jesus,
after which the disciples fled.
So the simplest explanation is that they were in hiding.
There's a passage in John that specifically says they were
in hiding.
They may all also felt ashamed about showing their faces
before the dying Jesus after the refusal to stand by
and bring some rest.
In a final twist, those who fled paid their dues
by suffering.
Later on, the absent apostles, excluding Judas, all endured incredibly
violent and painful deaths.
St.
John, on the other hand, is said to have enjoyed
a long life, even making it to the century mark.
According to some traditions.
In Luke chapter 18, Jesus tells his disciples that he
is God in the flesh and that he will die
and rise again.
True to his word, he suffers the most excruciating death
possible for their sins.
Yet most of his followers don't even bother to show
up.
But then he encounters his apostles after his resurrection.
As the Gospel of Mark recounts, as the eleven were
at table, he appeared to them and rebuked them for
their unbelief and hardness of hearts because they had not
believed those who saw him after he had been raised.
The Gospel of John offers more specifics, particularly about the
Apostle Thomas who tells the others.
Unless I see the mark in the nails in his
hands and put my finger into the nail Marks and
put my hand into his side, I will not believe
Thomas reacted this way despite the fact that Jesus was
standing right in front of him.
Instead of getting angry over yet another denial, Jesus let's
Thomas feel his wounds along with the review because he
makes sure to note, blessed are those who have not
seen and have believed.
Stop your doubting and believe, my Lord.
Ultimately, Jesus's reaction unmistakably illustrates a Christian belief that tragedy
and doubt are teaching moments for strengthening one's faith.