took to flight, and Sedecias was captured, bound in chains, and brought to Babylon: “The army of the Chaldees pursued after the king and overtook him,…and bound him with chains, and brought him to Babylon.”[1] There the unhappy king had to see his children slaughtered before the throne of Nabuchodonosor; his eyes were plucked out, and there was nothing more left him on earth to see or care for. Thus deprived of sight, childless, helpless, without consolation or hope, his most bitter torment and greatest shame was to know that he had to lie there a prisoner and slave to a king like himself, who was now his conqueror and sworn enemy. “So they took the king and brought him to the king of Babylon, and he gave judgment upon him,”[2] and mocked at his misfortunes. That was worse to him than his imprisonment, his blindness, nay, even than death itself. Truly unhappy, Sedecias! But still more unhappy are you, O sinner, if you have to stand with open eyes before a Man like yourself, and hear Him convict you as your implacable Judge!
Even during His life on earth Christ often terrified men. For the same Man, when He was taken prisoner in the garden, patient as He was then, by merely uttering the words “I am He,”[3] so terrified the shameless rabble and fierce soldiers that they fell to the ground in fear: “They went backward and fell to the ground.”[4] The same Man, when He showed a few rays of His beauty and glory to His disciples on Mount Thabor, although they knew Him well and He was friendly disposed to them, filled them with dismay: “The disciples fell upon their face and were very much afraid.”[5] The same Man, when He engaged in works of mercy and was healing the sick, frightened with one question the woman we read of in the Gospel of St. Mark: “A woman who was under an issue of blood twelve years,” says the Evangelist, “when she had heard of Jesus, came in the crowd behind Him and touched His garment” with the firm hope that she would be freed from her infirmity; meanwhile “Jesus turning to the multitude, said: Who hath touched My garments?” Whereupon the poor woman fell to the ground in terror: “But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing
- ↑ Persecutes est exercitus Chaldæorum regem, comprehenditque eum, vinxitque eum catenis, et adduxit in Babylonem.—IV. Kings xxv. 5, 7.
- ↑ Apprehensum ergo regem duxerunt ad regem Babylonia, qui locutus est cum eo judicium.—Ibid. 6.
- ↑ Ego sum.—John xviii. 5.
- ↑ Abierunt retrorsum, et ceciderunt in terram.—Ibid. 6.
- ↑ Ceciderunt in faciem suam, et timuerunt valde.—Matt. xvii. 6.
