“He is the Mediator of the new covenant … by means of death”
Venantius Fortunatus’ hymns, Vexilla Regis and Pange Lingua, were originally written for the commemoration of the relics of the true Cross brought to Poitiers in southern France in the 6th century. They have become an integral part of Passion Sunday which marks the beginning of deep Lent or Passiontide. His hymns are a commentary on the Cross and Passion of Christ particularly as expressed in the readings for this Sunday. They contribute to the Paradox of the Passion that is before us.
In Percy Dearmer’s version of Vexilla Regis, “The Royal Banners forward go,/ the Cross shines forth in mystic glow,/ where he, the Life, did death endure,/ and by that death did life procure … Fulfilled is all his words foretold … He reigns and triumphs from the Tree” (Hymn # 128). The Tree, symbolic of the Cross and Christ’s crucifixion, is not shame or ignominy but “proclaims the Prince of Glory now”. Its branches bear “the priceless treasure, freely spent,/ To pay for man’s enfranchisement.” The Cross is the emblem of salvation, personified in Pange Lingua as the “Faithful Cross … the noblest Tree”, the express “Symbol of the world’s redemption” (Hymn # 129).
The hymns illustrate the meaning of the Passion of Christ. They comment in part on the readings from Hebrews and the Gospel from Matthew today. Hebrews is a theological treatise on the mystery of human redemption concentrated in this passage. Christ is both priest and victim, “the High Priest of good things to come” who “by his own blood entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” By his blood outpoured and his death on the Cross, he is “the Mediator of the new covenant” that “they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” He is Mediator not because he stands between but because he unites in himself God and Man. Here is theology in its most proper sense as a form of our thinking upon and engaging with the images that belong to the language of Scripture.
The images in Scripture and hymn highlight the paradox of salvation. The focus is on the Cross, yet in the liturgical traditions, the Altar Cross is veiled, present but not fully seen, there but not fully understood. “We see but in a glass darkly” and yet we see something. “The Cross shines forth in mystic glow,” literally, fulget crucis mysterium. Such is “the mystery of the cross,” but what is at issue is the understanding. We sing in Pange Lingua “that engagement of the struggle glorious” that results in the “triumph on the trophy of the cross” which proclaims “how the world’s redeemer was, sacrificed, victorious.” His kingdom is not a worldly kingdom of human making but the redeeming of our humanity through his embrace of human sin and death. His death is ‘the death of death.’ It makes visible the triumph of life over all and every culture of death such as our own. This is the paradox of death becoming the means to eternal life. How? we might ask.
On Quinquagesima Sunday, Jesus tells us that “we go up to Jerusalem.” He explains exactly what that journey means: his being abused and beaten, his being put to death, and his rising again on the third day; in short, his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. But, as Luke notes, “they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them.” We hear and we see but do not understand. What will it take for us to learn?
This morning we have Matthew’s account of the same story. Immediately preceding this Gospel passage, Jesus says “we go up to Jerusalem”, and explains, as in Luke, the things of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection but without the observation that “they understood none of these things.” Instead, Matthew gives us this extraordinary dialogue between Jesus and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, James and John, and then with the sons themselves. The whole scene reveals to us the paradox of the kingdom. She seeks for her sons, and, they for themselves, “to sit one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom” (basileia, from which we get Basilica). Jesus in response simply says, “ye know not what ye ask.”
This is a profound critique of the problem about human desire and the ambitions to power and prominence. No doubt, parents as well as children want what they think is best and good for them. But do we always know what that is? Are we not often mistaken? At issue is the ancient and modern ethical question about what is the Good for our humanity. What is the end and purpose of our life? Through this dialogue, not unlike Plato’s dialogues where Socrates through questioning makes us confront the assumptions and limitations of our desires, Jesus points out that often what we seek for ourselves and for our children is not just about getting along in the world, responsibly and compassionately, but getting ahead in the world and thus over others which leads to resentment and indignation, to division and envy which this Gospel highlights. This all gets turned on its head, as Jesus shows. It is not about being ministered to but ministering to others. The word in its verb form is deaconing, the most basic and essential feature of all ministry. It is not about power and prestige and prominence. Quite the opposite. “The Son of Man came … to give his life a ransom for many.”
Perhaps the word passion confuses us. What does it mean? It refers to Christ’s suffering. To suffer is to be acted upon, hence passion, as passive. Christ suffers but he suffers for us willingly and knowingly. There is more to Christ’s passion than mere victimhood. It is love, something active and properly speaking, divine. This is the deeper theological point.
Plato in the Symposium uses one of four Greek words for love, eros. But he uses that word deliberately in an extended sense to speak about “the passionate desire to know” as belonging to the human longing for the Good, a good that transcends but does not negate the relational and affective aspects of our being. Aristotle famously says in his Metaphysics about the first principle, his Unmoved Mover, that “thought thinking itself thinks all things.” With Christianity we might add to that “love loving itself loves all things.” This is to speak of the divine yearning or eros for our good that belongs essentially and entirely to the mystery of God in himself which extends to everything in creation and thus to the redemption of our humanity. It seems to attribute to God human emotions such as passion and love but these terms undergo a sea-change of meaning in Christ. The Passion of Christ is about his free willing sacrifice for us which essentially reveals God as Love. Love here is not simply our neediness or God’s neediness. He does not need our love; we need his love but not only because it is the very principle of all life but because it belongs to the truth of our being to seek the Good which is God himself.
How will we learn the lessons of love? Only through Christ who suffers in the body and flesh of our humanity to reveal the super-immensity of God’s love, the total self-giving love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It means going up to Jerusalem with Christ in all of the events of his Passion that reveal us to ourselves in two ways: at once as sinners and as those whom God loves in spite of our sins. And reveal God as love.
The poet and preacher John Donne bids us look within ourselves. “Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell the picture of Christ crucified.” He has in mind an artistic image of the crucifixion, perhaps one that reflects the intensity of the suffering humanity of Christ. He tells us to think upon that image, and interrogate it in order to grasp the deeper meaning of what is both seen and heard. Ask yourself, he says, “whether that countenance” – Christ’s face – “can thee affright?” Is the image of Christ crucified, in all of its graphic horror, something frightening to you? “And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,/Which prayed forgiveness for his foes’ fierce spite?”, alluding to the first of the last words of Christ on the Cross. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”; another expression of our not-knowing. The octet is a double barreled question to which the answer is given in the sestet of the sonnet. “No, no,” an emphatic ‘no’ to both questions.
Ultimately, what we are to see and know, hear and understand through the Passion of Christ is something beautiful, good, and true that belongs to the love of God in himself which embraces us in that love. Contemplating the crucifixion even through the veils of our incomplete and partial knowing is to grasp something good and holy. “This beauteous form assures a piteous mind.” Love in its most radical and ultimate meaning is wonderfully concentrated for us in Christ, “the Mediator of the new covenant” through his suffering and death.
“He is the Mediator of the new covenant … by means of death”
Fr. David Curry
Passion Sunday 2026