by Andrew Fowler
A reflection by Melito of Sardis — a 2nd century bishop and early Church father — on Jesus Christ’s crucifixion offers a shocking revelation Christians often forget: that our Lord, on Good Friday, was “made unrecognizable by his naked body” and “not even allowed a garment to keep him from view.”
As unappealing and undignified as this may sound to our sensibilities, Christ was crucified naked, fully exposed to the elements and onlookers. But his nakedness on the cross not only reflects historical reality, but has intrinsic Biblical roots in the Old Testament and profound spiritual significance for the faithful confronted by modern hedonism.
While nudity typically elicits salacious and pornographic entertainment and abuse, the Roman Empire stripped crucified criminals to degrade and humiliate them, and terrify witnesses. As Scripture attests, the Romans “divided his garments by casting lots” after crucifying Christ, fulfilling a prophecy revealed in Psalm 22.
For the first five centuries, it was rare for Christians to depict him crucified because “the sheer strangeness and awfulness of the cross” was reserved for “the lowest members of society,” as Bishop Robert Barron states. It was “the most dehumanizing” and horrific way to die.
However, over the centuries, the Church, faithful, and artists eventually embraced the image of the crucified Christ as an essential icon, but clothed him for pastoral and liturgical reasons. There was no motive to sanitize the anguish he endured for our sins, as Steve Ray suggests in Catholic Answers:
“Often, we modify reality to fit our sensibilities. We avoid the overly dramatic, the goriness of what really happened. We cover the private parts of the corpus because we are respectful, and it would be imprudent and shocking to do otherwise.”
Still, one must grapple with the immense cruelty inflicted by the Romans during his Passion even if, as Ray states, it “may seem insensitive to discuss nudity with persons of modest impulses or pious presumptions.” Moreover, as he continues, “[H]istorical reality and truth do not bend to sentimentality.”
However, if this “historical reality” is ignored, then we risk failing to fully comprehend the magnitude of Christ’s mission: reversing the shame of the Fall through the redemption of both our physical and spiritual vulnerability in a singular act of love.
Indeed, symbolism and connections abound between the Fall and Calvary. A tree is rooted at the center of the Theodrama: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the cursed tree to which Christ was nailed. And our Lord is often called the new Adam, the “Man through whom the human race starts all over,” as Venerable Fulton Sheen taught.
So is the symbolism of nakedness.
Immediately after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, their eyes were “opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Ashamed, they “sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons” and hid from God. However, upon discovery, Adam told God of his realization. Heartbroken, our Heavenly Father asked, “Who told you that you were naked?”
It is a gut-wrenching question. In those few words, God’s omnipotence is on display: that Adam and Eve’s sudden awareness has literal and figurative consequences, igniting a cavalcade of misery, vices, and susceptibility to disease and death on the rest of humanity. More importantly, the Fall fractured the relationship between Creator, Heaven, and Creation. As Sheen describes, “They were naked and ashamed because they lost the grace of God.”
But Adam and Eve’s initial impulse to cower and cloak themselves from their nakedness — and from God’s wrath — demonstrates how sin corrupts our souls. How often have we done the same? From Cain hiding Abel’s body after the fratricide to even the transfer of abusive Catholic priests or any sin down through the ages, instead of airing our pains and wrongdoings, especially in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we hide our sins, skirt his mercy, and resign ourselves to the falsity of being unforgivable. Yet that is self-destructive — and the road to hell.
Sadly, confession attendance has collapsed since the 1970s, as explored by James O’Toole in For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America. However, again from Sheen, the sacrament is the “[n]udity of the soul” where we strip ourselves “of all the false excuses and shams and pretenses, and [reveal] ourselves as we really are.”
Yet, since the Fall, nakedness and nudity have been corrupted, robbed of their original purpose and meanings, exploited and known merely for sexual gratification. Pornography, particularly, has been a scourge on modern society — a “concealed behavior” that has led to a higher rate of depression and suicide ideation, as reported by the National Library of Medicine. Indeed, 69% of men and 40% of women consume porn in America every year.
Shame can overwhelm the soul; however, God does not abandon us. He is a merciful father, always lovingly pursuing us. Even when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, God’s ultimate intent was not wrath — but mercy. As Father Mike Schmitz explains, “[I]f they eat of the tree of life, they’ll never die…and God doesn’t want them to live in this brokenness forever.” What’s more, despite their disobedience, God even “made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, and clothed them” to protect them in the wilderness.
Which leads to Good Friday. Golgotha is antithetical to the Garden of Eden, not only in landscape (i.e., the former being more arid than the latter), but in its thematic foundations, as a place of death and cruelty, instead of bounty and bliss. Yet, on Golgotha, on the cross, Christ — naked physically and spiritually — bore his pain and suffering openly, going to the depths of desolation, so much so he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In truth, even though Father and Son appeared “most alienated from one another” on that day, both were “always in unison,” as Bishop Barron writes.
On Golgotha, love prevailed, rectifying the chasm ruptured between Heaven and Creation in the Garden. ‘Thy will’ triumphed over ‘my will.’
Though crucifixes clothe Christ to honor his dignity and serve pastoral needs, recognizing his nakedness should deepen our awe at his sacrifice. It reveals a God who embraced our human frailty to restore our trust in his boundless mercy. We should be as spiritually naked toward God as Christ displayed on the cross two millennia ago. We should forgo our shame, embracing “nudity of the soul” in confession, and strive to be in his presence.
That is the naked truth.
– – –
Andrew Fowler is the Editor of RealClearReligion. He is also the Communications Specialist at Yankee Institute and author of “The Condemned,” a novella about a Catholic priest fighting off the cartel to save the residents of a small desert town (which you can find here).
The post Commentary: The ‘Naked’ Truth Why Christ Chose to Die for Us first appeared on The Georgia Star News.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: RealClearWire
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://georgiastarnews.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
