St. Longinus – the Centurion at the Crucifixion – Part Two.

His reason for piercing the Heart of Jesus with his lance. Although objectively the blow of the lance seems cruel, Longinus’ motive was noble. The great concern Longinus shows towards the Blessed Mother. Mary obtains for him the grace of salvation.

 

Following is a condensed version of Maria Valtorta’s long chapter on the Crucifixion (609), in her work The Gospel as Revealed to Me, removing whatever is extraneous to the role of Longinus in this tragedy. 

 

Four brawny men, certainly of the same category as the scourgers, jump from a path onto the place of the execution. They are wearing short sleeveless tunics, and in their hands they are holding nails, hammers and ropes, which they show to the condemned men scoffing at them. The crowd is excited with cruel frenzy.

 

The condemned men are ordered to undress. The executioners offer the condemned men three rags, so that they may tie them round their groins.

 

But Mary has noticed everything and She has removed the long thin white veil covering Her head under Her dark mantle, and on which She has already shed so many tears. She removes it without letting Her mantle drop and gives it to John so that he may hand it to Longinus for Her Son. The centurion takes the veil without any objection and, when he sees that Jesus is about to strip Himself completely, facing the side where there are no people, and thus turning towards the crowd His back furrowed with bruises and blisters, and covered with sores and dark crusts that are bleeding again, he gives Him His Mother's linen veil. Jesus recognizes it and wraps it round His pelvis several times, fastening it carefully so that it may not fall off.

 

                                                       Pope Innocent VIII holds the spear point. 

 

Now the top of Golgotha has its trophy and its guard of honour. At the top there is the cross of Jesus. At the sides the other two crosses. Half a century of soldiers, in fighting trim, is placed all round the summit; inside this circle of armed soldiers there are the ten dismounted soldiers, who throw dice for the garments of the condemned men. Longinus is standing upright between the cross of Jesus and the one on the right. And he seems to be mounting guard of honour for the Martyr King. The other half century, at rest, is on the left path and on the lower open space, under the orders of Longinus' adjutant, awaiting to be employed in case of need.

 

The indifference of the soldiers is almost total. Only an odd one now and again looks at the crucified men. Longinus, instead, watches everything with curiosity and interest, he makes comparisons and judges mentally. He compares the crucified men, and the Christ in particular, and the spectators. His piercing eye does not miss any detail. And to see better, he shades his eyes with his hand, because the sun must be annoying him.

 

The sun is in fact strange. It is yellow-red like a fire. Then the fire seems to go out all of a sudden, because of a huge cloud of pitch that rises from behind the chains of the Judaean mountains and soars swiftly across the sky, disappearing behind other mountains. And when the sun comes out again, it is so strong that the eye endures it with difficulty. While looking, he sees Mary, just under the slope, with Her tormented face raised towards Her Son. He calls one of the soldiers who are playing dice and says to him: «If His Mother wants to come up with the son who is escorting Her, let Her come. Escort Her and help Her.»

 

And Mary with John, who is believed to be Her «son», climbs the steps cut in the tufaceous rock and goes to the foot of the cross, but a little aside, to be seen and see Her Jesus. The crowd showers the most disgraceful abuses on Her at once, associating Her with Her Son in their curses.

 

In fact Longinus has given an order, and the fifty soldiers, who were resting, have come into action and they prick the buttocks of the first Judaeans they find. The latter run away shouting and the soldiers stop to block the entrances to the two roads and protect the open space. The Judaeans curse, but Rome is the stronger.

 

Also the soldiers point to the sky and to a kind of cone that seems of slate, so dark it is, and that rises like a pine-tree from behind the top of a mountain. It looks like a water-spout. It rises and rises and seems to produce darker and darker clouds, as if it were a volcano belching smoke and lava. It is in this frightening twilight that Jesus gives John to Mary and Mary to John.

 

And fainter and fainter, sounding like a child's wailing, comes the invocation: «Mother!» And the poor wretch whispers: «Yes, darling, I am here.» And when His sight becomes misty and makes Him say: «Mother, where are You? I cannot see You any more. Are You abandoning Me as well?» and they are not even words , but just a murmur that can hardly be heard by Her Who with Her heart rather than with Her ears receives every sigh of Her dying Son, She says: «No, no, Son! I will not abandon You!

 

Listen to Me, My dear... Your Mother is here, She is here... and She only regrets that She cannot come where You are...» It is heart-rending...

 

And John weeps openly. Jesus must hear him weep. But He does not say anything. I think that His impending death makes Him speak as if He were raving and that He does not even know what He says, and, unfortunately, He does not even understand His Mother's consolation and His favourite apostle's love.

 

Longinus – who inadvertently is no longer standing at ease with his arms folded across his chest, and one leg crossed over the other alternately, to ease the long wait on his feet, and is now instead standing stiff at attention, his left hand on his sword, his right one held against his side, as if he were on the steps of the imperial throne – does not want to be influenced. But his face is affected in the effort of overcoming his emotion, and his eyes begin to shine with tears that only his iron discipline can refrain.

 

The head of Jesus falls on His chest, His body leans forward, the trembling stops, He breathes no more. He has breathed His last. The summit of Golgotha trembles and quakes like a plate in the hands of a madman, because of the subsultory and undulatory shocks that shake the three crosses so violently that they seem on the point of being overturned.

 

Longinus, John, the soldiers grab whatever they can, as best they can, not to fall. But John, while grasping the cross with one arm, with the other supports Mary Who, both because or Her grief and the unsteadiness, has leaned on his chest. 

 

Joseph and Nicodemus appear and they go to Longinus. «We want the Corpse.»

 

«Only the Proconsul can grant it. Go quick, because I heard that the Judaeans want to go to the Praetorium to obtain permission to fracture His legs. I would not like them to disfigure His Body.»

 

«How do you know?»

 

«A report of the ensign. Go. I will wait.»

 

The two men rush down the steep road and disappear. It is at this moment that Longinus approaches John and in a low voice says something to him, which I do not understand. Then he makes a soldier give him a lance. He looks at the women, who are all attending to Mary, Who is slowly recovering Her strength. They have all their backs turned to the cross.

 

Longinus places himself in front of the Crucified, he ponders carefully how to deal the blow and he strikes it. The lance penetrates deeply from the bottom upwards, from right to left. John, wavering between the desire to see and the horror of seeing, makes a wry face for a moment.

 

«It is done, my friend» says Longinus, and he ends: «Better so. As for a knight. And without fracturing bones... He was really a Just Man!» A lot of water and just a trickle of blood, already tending to clot, drip from the wound. I said drip.

 

There is a compassionate group that is consoling Mary, and John standing on the left side of the cross and weeping, and Longinus, standing straight on the right side, solemn in his respectful posture. Nicodemus and Joseph arrive back running and they say that they have Pilate's permission. But Longinus, who is not too trustful, sends a horse-soldier to the Proconsul to learn what he has to do also with regard to the two robbers. The soldier goes and come back at a gallop with the order to hand over Jesus and break the legs of the other two, by will of the Jews.

 

Longinus calls the four executioners, who are cravenly crouched under the rock, still terrorised by what has happened, and orders them to give the robbers the death-blow with a club. Which takes place without any protest by Disma, to whom the blow of the club, delivered to his heart, after striking his knees, breaks in half, on his lips, the name of Jesus, in a death-rattle. The other robber utters horrible curses. 

 

The four executioners would also like to take care of Jesus, taking Him down from the cross. But Joseph and Nicodemus do not allow them. Also Joseph takes off his mantle and tells John to do likewise and to hold the ladders, while they climb them with levers and tongs.

 

Mary stands up trembling, supported by the women, and She approaches the cross. In the meantime the soldiers, having fulfilled their task, go away. And Longinus, before descending beyond the lower open space, turns round from the height of his black horse to look at Mary and at the Crucified. Then the noise of the hooves resounds on the stones and that of the weapons against the armour, and fades away in the distance.

 

On Calvary remain the three crosses, the central one of which is bare and the other two have their living trophies, who are dying.

 

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The Lord Jesus praised St. Longinus: 

 

“Pilate is a false good man. Longinus is good, because although he was less powerful than the Praetor and less defended, in the middle of the street and surrounded by few soldiers and a hostile multitude, he dares to defend Me, help Me, grant Me a rest, to be consoled by the pious women, be assisted by the man from Cyrene and finally to have My Mother at the foot of the Cross. He was a hero of justice and so he became a hero of Christ.”

The Blessed Virgin obtained his salvation, as she revealed to Maria Valtorta, in The Notebooks, Dec. 8, 1943:

 

“It was the mercy of Longinus that allowed me to approach the Cross, at which I had arrived by way of steep shortcuts, carried more by love than by my own strength. Longinus was an upright soldier who did his duty and exercised his right with justice. He was already predisposed, then, towards the miracles of Grace. Because of that mercy of his, I obtained for him the gift of the drops from the Side, and they were his baptism in grace, for his soul was thirsty for Justice and Truth. At dawn on the day of Jesus' birth, the angels had said, “Peace on earth to men of good will.” 

 

“At sunset on the day of his death, the same Christ was giving this man of good will his Peace. And Longinus was the first son born to me from the labor of the Cross, for Disma was the last one to be redeemed through the word of Jesus of Nazareth, as John was the first one, and I might say that he, with his heart like a lily made of diamonds inflamed by love, was the light born of Light, and the Darkness was never able to obscure it.”

 

 

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