約伯倫理 第 694 章

Verse 20.—'My bone hath cleaved to my skin, my flesh being consumed.' 57. To Christ suffering, while the apostles fled, the holy women clave as skin.—By the bone is signified strength, but by the flesh the weakness of the body. Since, therefore, Christ and the Church are one person, what is designated by the bone but the Lord Himself? What by the flesh but the disciples, who at the time of His Passion were of weak understanding? But by the skin, which abides outermost upon the flesh in the body, what is figured but those holy women who, to prepare the supports of the body, served the Lord with outward ministrations? For while His disciples, though not yet firm, were preaching the faith of the truth to the peoples, the flesh clave to its bone.

And while the holy women prepared those outward things which were needful, they abode outermost, as it were skin, in the body. But when the hour of the cross was come, a grievous fear from the persecution of the Jews seized His disciples: each one fled, the women clave to Him. As though, therefore, the flesh being consumed, the Lord's bone clave to His skin, because His strength, at the time of the Passion, when the disciples fled, found the women beside Him. Peter indeed stood for a while, yet afterward, terrified, he denied (Matt. xxvi, 70). John too stood, to whom at the very time of the cross it was said: 'Behold thy mother' (John xix, 27).

But he could by no means persevere, since concerning him too it is written that a certain young man followed Him, clad in a linen cloth over his naked body, and they laid hold on him; but he, casting off the linen cloth, fled from them naked (Mark xiv, 51). And although afterward he returned to the hour of the cross, that he might hear the words of his Redeemer, yet before, terrified, he had fled. But the women are recorded not only not to have feared, nor to have fled, but even to have stood by unto the sepulchre. Let him therefore say: 'My bone hath cleaved to my skin, my flesh being consumed.'

That is: those who ought to have cleaved more closely to My strength were, at the time of My Passion, consumed by fear; while those whom I had appointed to outward ministries I found in My Passion faithfully cleaving to Me without dread. Wherein it is also plainly understood that these words are spoken through a mystery, since there follows: