Malchus can feel the heavy gazes of the others. He ignores them. His own eyes are pinned to the door they guard, listening to the drip of water condensing and dropping onto the floor. There is no rain, but the air is damp, as if the heavens are drawing out the wet stores of the earth in preparation for a storm.
Customarily, the chill would make him wish for his bed. He’d grumble with his fellows about the weather, about the work, peppering complaints with a few stout curses. But there is no discussion tonight. Malchus sits hunched forward, forearms braced on his thighs, and he waits.
What are they waiting for?
Cold fingers touch the lobe of his left ear. He turns to see Jesse, who’d touched him, withdrawing, fingers curling into his palm. The apology is gruff. “Just wanted to see.”
That’s a lie, thinks Malchus, turning back to the door. They’ve already seen tonight. What’s left is to believe.
Malchus doesn’t ask permission before he rises, taking the flask which hangs on a wall hook, and the keys there beside it. The eyes of the others follow. He unlocks the door and slips in, shutting it behind, and then pauses, palm flat on the wood. He takes a breath.
Drip.
Drip.
The Nazarene’s hands are chained so that he must stand. His head bows, forehead resting against the bruised back of his right hand. He lifts himself when Malchus enters. His lips, which had been moving silently, still.
Malchus holds out the flask. Then, as an embarrassing afterthought—the man is in chains—he uncorks it.
“It’s just water,” he assures when the man doesn’t move to drink. He tips the flask close enough to meet the cracked lips. The Nazarene swallows twice and then pulls back, chains jingling. His face is wet. Tears, Malchus thinks, until he hears the drip of water dropping onto the man’s head. It slides down his temple and dirty cheek, carving a clean track through the crust. Malchus re-corks the flask.
It’s not quite fear that he feels. He had felt fear on his knees in Gethsemane, blood down his neck and a howl on his tongue. The world was silent, then, and shrieking, dizzy with pain and the terror of new loss. When strong hands cupped his face, he clung to them. He grabbed hold of words he could not hear but lips he could see moving, breath he could feel on his face, brown eyes he could see.
And then, he could hear.
It was as if he’d never before heard sound, not true sound, but only echos, half-formed, half-heard, until that very moment when he heard truly. Each noise was crisp and new. Around him were the night birds stirring in the trees, the puffed breath of the disciples, the crackle of licking flame, the creak of leather belts. He heard them all, and he hasn’t stopped hearing since. Creation is vibrating, uncountable voices overlapping in the same tremulous song. Even the breeze seems to have a voice, and the water running on stone. Even his own heartbeat. They cry out when the rest of the world is silent.
“What did you do to me?” Malchus asks, voice barely above a whisper, for everything is new and he cannot make sense of it.
The Nazarene’s smile isn’t mocking. It’s as quiet as his voice, and it crinkles the corner of his good eye. “I know how long you’ve waited to hear.”
They’ve never met, of course. Of course not. This man doesn’t know him. How could he? Malchus has taken great pains to hide his gradual loss of sound. Each year, the muffle covers his ears a little more, stealing his senses, deadening the world to him. If he misses a call, he plays it off. If he cannot hear his wife calling, he feigns captivation by his task. He does it well, he thinks, well enough. Perhaps his wife suspects. But only he knows, only he and his God. And this backwater Nazarene with an accent pulled from Galilee’s fishing waters—because Malchus can hear the accent now—cannot know Malchus. How could he? No, he does not.
But he knows.
Malchus is sure, standing before this man who made him more than whole, that he is known. Known, and known truly. And here stands Malchus, his jailer. His enemy.
“How could you know?” he asks, eyes searching the Nazarene’s. The water drips, drips. A rat scritches at a bit of stone. “I can’t do anything for your case. They’re bringing you to Pilate.” His grip tightens on the flask—his only offering—and the stale water it holds. The words pour out of him. “I’m a guard. They told us to go, so we went. I had no stake in it, see? See, we were told to go. I was told to go. I never intended—”
“Malchus,” the man says softly, almost fondly, as if he is interrupting a brother and not one walking him to his death. “Will you pray with me?”
The request startles Malchus out of his own thoughts. He pauses, wary of some trick. Without meaning to, his hand rises to touch the warm outer shell of his ear, tracing the connecting point between the cartilage and his skull. There’s not even a seam to show where it had been severed.
Mouth dry, Malchus finally nods, and the Nazarene closes his good eye. The water slides again down his temples. His words fill the damp space, and Malchus recognizes them at once, joining the recitation:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked shall I return.
The Lord gave—”
The man breathes in, and Malchus breathes with him.
“—and the Lord has taken away;”
Their breath stirs the stale air of the room. All has finally gone quiet. The Nazarene opens his eye and tips his head to look up, past the stone roof, past the courtyard and the trembling earth, to the heavens, spread out over them like a tent. The water no longer falls. The rat is silent.
A night wind rustles through the garden. Acacius shifts his feet, eyes following the bounce of a tree branch, though no night creature disturbs it. The sky is empty of clouds, leaving the moon silver and naked. The faint blush of dawn touches the horizon. Acacius feels his back touch the stone behind him and he straightens himself.
“Have you noticed,” he says sideways to Longinus—who alone remains awake while the other two in their guard sleep, rotations completed—“that you can’t hear any insects?”
Longinus doesn’t respond. When Acacius turns his head, he sees the man’s face is set, eyes unfocused. He’s on his back, one hand behind his head, the other on his belly, calloused fingers curled. His thumb taps an unsteady rhythm.
“Longinus,” Acacius says, and the man finally looks over, though for a moment only.
“Hercules died,” he says.
“…Hercules.”
“He was a demigod. He died. So, the sons of gods can die.”
Acacius’ grip tightens on his spear. “You’re speaking of the Nazarene.”
“Who else could I speak of?”
It’s not a biting retort, but an earnest one. Longinus has not spoken since they left Golgotha. Now, his voice is quiet, gruff. Uneasy. The brush rustles, and Acacius’ head snaps towards it. Longinus doesn’t flinch. His eyes remain fixed upwards.
“Are his followers really stupid enough to try stealing the body?” Acacius asks when he’s certain there’s no one in the garden.
“Does their god have sons?” Longinus doesn’t seem to have heard the question. Or, he’s heard and ignored it, continuing his own thoughts. “He must. All gods do. His mother must be a great woman.”
“He’s not a demigod,” Acacius says, a sigh held behind his teeth. “And we saw his mother. She was plain. So was he. Just a man.”
“He wasn’t just a man.”
“Why not?”
Longinus’ thumb taps on the curve of his bottom rib. “You saw what I did.”
“I saw a man die on a cross.”
“And the earth shake at his death.”
“Earthquakes happen.”
“Not like this.”
“If you are so certain,” Acacius says, “perhaps you should make an offering to appease his father. The lightning could strike you any moment now. Oh yes, look, here it comes.” He lifts a hand to the clear sky above.
Longinus’ jaw shifts. He pushes himself up on his elbows so he can properly see his fellow legionnaire. There is still blood on his tunic, spattered against him by the wind when he thrust his spear through flesh. “Be careful what you mock.”
“I mock nothing. I mock no one. Is their god so powerful? Hm? He does nothing for them while Rome rules. He sends only rain while his ‘son’ hangs on a cross.” Acacius snorts and readjusts his stance. “They have one god, and he has forgotten them.”
“You’re a fool,” Longinus tells him. “Even Petronius recognized him for what he was.”
“The centurion is superstitious.”
“And you aren’t?”
“We did our duty.” Acacius is growing uneasy. Something rustles again in the brush. “So he was unusual. So, then, what? It changes nothing.”
“He prayed for our forgiveness.”
“Then he was sentimental.”
Longinus mutters a crude retort and lies down again. Acacius smiles thinly. The Nazarene had disturbed him, with his piercing eyes and silence under their whip, though he won’t admit it. The man’s eyes had been open when they pulled him down from the cross. Acacius had shut them to hide from them.
“If he truly was the son of a god,” Acacius says, after the silence has stretched out like a shadow and grown heavy, “then we’d be the ones who killed him.”
“Yes,” Longinus says quietly.
There is a warm wind stirring the trees like a breath. The earth is otherwise still around them. For hours, it has been still, as if creation is holding its breath, and just now, it has let it out again, sending puffs against Acacius’ skin and raising the soft hairs. The other two guards stir in their sleep. Longinus sits suddenly upright.
“Something is here,” he says, hand on his sword. He’s up before his words are out, kicking the others so they wake. The dawn makes itself known. The wind rises quickly. Clear is the sky, but the moon trembles as if afraid, hiding its face. A shaking begins, deeper than stone, making the trees shudder and groan, causing the roots to untwist themselves from the ground. Caius, who had laid his head on the Nazarene’s tunic, which he had won, has gone pale. He clings to his sword and shouts into the wind. His words are lost.
A man—no, it is not a man, though it is dressed in the white robes of one—comes across the grass, silent in its steps. When Acacius looks at it, terror seizes him. It’s a flash of terror, bright and terrible, illuminating all within himself that he has tried to hide. This is death! he thinks. This is death! His legs are limp beneath him. His face is crushed against the ground.
The man who is not a man places its hand on the stone. The wax seal melts away. Though the soldiers had strained themselves closing the tomb, the stone is pushed away with one hand, as easily as a boy might pick up a pebble and toss it away. It lands on its side, though it makes no sound. The being sits on it.
When Acacius comes to his right mind again, he is on his belly. His cheek is damp with dew. With his head turned sideways, he can see, two paces from him, Longinus, who is prostrate on his belly also, arms bent at the elbows so that his hands cover his head. He is shaking. Acacius hears him speaking, though it is more a babble than intelligible speech, the words forced from his lungs as he weeps.
Mercy, Acacius realizes. He begs for mercy.
There is still a terror in his own self when he raises his head to see the tomb. The being is gone. The tomb is open, stone cast aside, seal destroyed. Slowly, Acacius turns his head from side to side. The garden has come alive. In the new light, green has unfurled itself splendidly, trees putting forth their fruits and flowers like offerings so their fragrance fills the air. He sees fruit he does not know, nor has ever tasted. In the dipped branch of an olive tree, a grey dove sits.
His sword is gone. When did he drop it? He lifts himself and looks for the others, who are sprawled on the ground like dead men, though they breathe. He should check them. He should look for wounds. But something draws him towards the tomb, until he’s at the dark mouth of it, leaving the others behind, breathing in the cool, damp air.
The tomb is empty.
“My gods,” he whispers, and he is terrified. He takes a step back, then another, turning from the empty tomb and the white linen cloths folded neatly where the body should be. His sandal catches on a root. He sprawls. The ground strips the skin from his knees. Blood rolls down his right calf as he limps forward.
Father, forgive them, had said the Nazarene, with a tongue swollen from thirst.
“Run,” he tells Longinus hoarsely, grabbing the back of his tunic and hauling him upright. The others rise too. Their swords are abandoned. The Nazarene’s red garment lies crumpled on the ground. In the tomb, the graveclothes are folded.
Father, forgive them, the man had prayed.
They know not what they do.
Acacius falls again, knocking the breath from himself. No one stops. The other three run ahead, fleeing the emptiness of the tomb, and though he gasps after them, they do not hear.
There is no strength left in his limbs. As if gripped by fever, he trembles. Every story he has heard of the wrath of the gods comes to him here, crouched in the dust, made as low as beasts, while some great and holy fear passes over him. He covers his head as Longinus had done and begs for mercy.
Son of a god I do not know, he pleads, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.
A hand touches his shoulder.
Peace, says a voice he has heard before. Be still.
Immediately, the trembling leaves him. The terror that had overshadowed him passes on, leaving him be, and he is alone in the dust, alone, breathing. A dove coos. When he opens his eyes, he sees it on the path ahead, feathers ruffling. His eyes follow it when it takes flight.
The tomb is empty. The seal is broken, and the Nazarene is gone. At last, the world has thrown off its silence, and it sings around him, crying out while he stands mute. For a moment, he is still, seeking the source of their song. From where does it come? He cannot discern it. He abandons the stillness and presses on.
It is only when he rejoins the others that he finds his skinned knees made whole.
Hosanna! Blessed is HeWho comes in the NameOf the Lord!We lay our cloaks downTo honor our saving King,We sing, we shout, we raise our palm branches—But do we really know the One we praise?Who is this?I mean, wasn’t it a little strange,This King of ours—Riding not a war horse,But a borrowed donkey,Entering not through the Eastern Gate,The gate of victorious kings,But through the Sheep Gate,The…
Introduction
Yesterday I went with my wife and father-in-law to the theater to see Part 1 of The Chosen, Season 5. The theatrical release is combining episodes, so Part 1 is comprised of episodes 1 and 2. This season focuses on Holy Week, the days that start with Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and lead up to His crucifixion. For those of us watching from a modern perspective, it’s easy to…
Ano ang life mission mo o konsepto nito? Paano mo ito malalaman? Bakit may kailangang pasaning krus bago ito makuha? Kailangan ba iyong paniniwala rito?
