St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER XIX: The literal explanation of the seventh Word, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.”

We have come to the last word which our Lord pronounced. At the point of death Jesus, “crying with a loud voice said, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”[1] We will explain each word separately. “Father.” Deservedly does He call God His Father, for He was a Son who had been obedient to His Father even unto death, and it was proper that His last dying request, which was certain to be heard, should be prefaced by such a tender name. “Into Thy hands.” In the Sacred Scriptures the hands of God signify the intelligence and will of God, or in other words His wisdom and power, or, again, the intelligence of God which knows all things, and the will of God which can do all things. With these two attributes as with hands, God does all things, and stands not in need of any instruments in the accomplishment of His will. St. Leo says: “The will of God is His omnipotence.”[2] Consequently, with God to will is to do. “He hath done all things, whatsoever He would.”[3] “I commend.” I hand over to your keeping My life, with the sure faith of its being restored when the time of My resurrection shall come. “My Spirit.” There is a diversity of opinion as to the meaning of this word. Ordinarily the word spirit is synonymous with soul, which is the substantial form of the body, but it can also mean life itself, since breathing is the sign of life. Those who breathe live, and those die who cease to breathe. If by the word spirit we here understand the Soul of Christ, we must take care not to think that His Soul at the moment of it’s separation from the Body was in any danger. We are accustomed to commend with many prayers and much anxiety the souls of the agonizing, because they are on the point of appearing at the tribunal of a strict Judge to receive the reward or the punishment of their thoughts, words, and deeds. The Soul of Christ was in no such need, both because it enjoyed the Beatific Vision from the time of its creation, was hypostatically united to the person of the Son of God, and could even be called the Soul of God, and also because it was leaving the body victorious and triumphant, an object of terror to the devils, not a soul to be scared by them. If the word spirit then is to be taken as synonymous with soul, the meaning of these words of our Lord, “I commend my spirit,” is that the Soul of Christ which was enclosed in the body as in a tabernacle was about to throw itself into the hands of the Father as into a place of trust until it should return to the body, according to the words of the Book of Wisdom: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God.”[4] However, the more generally accepted meaning of the word in this passage is the life of the body. With this interpretation the word may be thus amplified. I now give up My breath of life, and as I cease to breathe I cease to live. But this breath, this life I intrust to you, My Father, that in a short time you may again restore it to My Body. In your keeping nothing perishes. In you all things live. By a word you call into existence things which were not, and by a word you give life to those who had it not.

We may gather that this is the true interpretation of the word from the thirtieth Psalm, one of the verses of which our Lord was quoting: “Thou wilt bring me out of this snare which they have hidden for me, for Thou art my protector. Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”[5] In this verse the prophet clearly means to signify life by the word spirit, since he beseeches God to preserve his life, and not to suffer him to be killed by his enemies. If we consider the context in the Gospel, it is clear that this is the meaning our Lord also intended to convey. For after He had said, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit,” the Evangelist adds: “And saying this He gave up the ghost.”[6] Now to expire is the same as to cease breathing, which is the characteristic of those only who live. It cannot be said of the soul, which is the substantial form of the body, as it can of the air we inhale, that we breathe it as long as we live, and we cease breathing it as soon as we die. Lastly, our interpretation is strengthened by the words of St. Paul: “Who in the days of His flesh with a strong cry and tears offering up prayers and supplications to Him that was able to save Him from death, was heard for His reverence.”[7] Some authors refer this passage to our Lord’s prayer in the Garden: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to Thee, remove this chalice from Me.”[8] But the reference is incorrect, as our Lord on that occasion neither prayed with a loud cry, nor was His prayer heard, and He Himself did not wish to be heard in order to be delivered from death. He prayed that the chalice of His Passion might pass from Him to show His natural repugnance to death, and to prove He was really man whose nature it is to dread its approach. And after this prayer He added: “But not what I will, but what Thou wilt.”[9] Consequently the prayer in the Garden was not the prayer to which the Apostle alludes in his Epistle to the Hebrews. Others, again, refer this text of St. Paul to the prayer which Christ made on the Cross for those who were crucifying Him. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”[10] On that occasion, however, our Lord did not pray with a loud cry, and He did not pray for Himself, neither did He pray to be delivered from death, and both these objects the Apostle distinctly mentions as being the ends of our Lord’s prayer. It remains then, that the words of St. Paul must refer to the prayer Christ made with His dying breath: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.”[11] This prayer, St. Luke says, He gave forth with a loud voice: “And Jesus crying with a loud voice, said.” The words of both St. Paul and St. Luke agree in this interpretation. Moreover, as St. Paul says, our Lord prayed to be saved from death, and this cannot mean that He prayed to be saved from death on the Cross, for in that case His prayer was not heard, and the Apostle assures us it was heard. The true meaning is that He prayed not to be swallowed up by death, but merely to taste death and then return to life again. This is the evident explanation of the words: “With a strong cry and tears offering up prayers and supplications to Him that was able to save Him from death.”[12] Our Lord could not but know that He must die as He was already so near death, and He desired to be delivered from death in the sense only of not being held captive by death. In other words, He prayed for His speedy resurrection, and this prayer was readily granted, as He rose again triumphant on the third day. This interpretation of the passage of St. Paul proves beyond doubt that when our Lord said: “Into Thy hands I commend my Spirit,” the word spirit is synonymous with life and not with the soul. Our Lord was not anxious about His soul, which He knew to be in safety, as it already enjoyed the Beatific Vision, and had beheld its God face to face from the moment of its creation, but He was anxious for His Body, which He foresaw would soon be deprived of life, and He prayed that His body might not long be kept in the sleep of death. This prayer was tenderly listened to and abundantly granted.


ENDNOTES

1. St. Luke xxiii. 46.
2. Serm. ii. “De Nativ.”
3. Psalm cxiii. 3.
4. Wisdom iii. 1.
5. Psalm xxx. 5, 6.
6. St. Luke xxiii. 46.
7. Heb. v. 7.
8. St. Mark xiv. 36.
9. St. Mark xiv. 36.
10. St. Luke xxiii. 34.
11. St. Luke xxiii. 46.
12. Heb. v. 7.