Most of us, when we wake in the morning, stretch our limbs and refresh ourselves with a good wash in water. If Our Lord, towards morning, at last managed to snatch an hour or two of sleep, let me look and see what happens when He wakes up.
There is not the relief of stretching those aching limbs, for His hands arc bound all the time. Look at that face. It is covered with blood, and the sweat has hardened and the blood has congealed and the filthy phlegm and spittle still are matted in His beard. He can do nothing about it, not even lift a hand. For Him no soap and fresh water and towel. Good enough for Him to be presented in this deeply humiliating state before His judges; good enough for Him to bear the discomfort of the stickiness, of the grime.
A soldier stops in the corridor outside the cell. I can just hear the click of the key in the door and see him fling it wide open. He bends low in order to come in, and he is carrying a lighted lantern in his right hand. Did the soldier kick the poor Prisoner savagely? Can I see him, the upper row of his teeth gripping his lower lip as he lifts his right foot and with his heavy boot lets its full force fall?
This does not seem unlikely, for this soldier is in bad humour; he is annoyed that he has to get up this early; he is still stupefied after his bout of drunken revelry on the night before, and the selfpossession of the Prisoner and His unruffled patience serve only to add to his sense of irritation. So he may have kicked the Christ, told Him to get to His feet and follow him out into the corridor and into the room where His judge and jury await Him.
Two men, Jesus and His guard, in the same city, are beginning the same new day. But with what widely differing dispositions do they begin! Christ sets out with the sublime aim of doing in all things whatever is ordained for Him by God.
The poor soldier, wedded to earth, is forgetful entirely of God, little suspects that God is walking by his side, has no higher ambition than the speedy dispatch of this job and then his pay envelope and more drinking and more loose language with his boon companions.
It is not difficult, in this place where I live, to find the counterpart of each of these two men, beginning another new day this morning. There are those who stretch out their hands eagerly to seize upon another opportunity of growing in holiness, and there are those who grovel, who are insensible to the appeal of the supernatural. "Man, when he was in honour did not understand; he compared himself to the brute beasts and became as one of them."