Each token of perfection, each saying too pure for them,
each undoubted miracle, only made them more furious, and for once they
made common cause together. The Passover came. Herod Antipas came to
Jerusalem to observe the feast, Pilate to keep the peace among the Jews;
and Jerusalem saw her King coming, meek, and riding on an ass, and amid
the Hosannas of the children, weeping at the vengeance that He foresaw
for the favoured city where He had been despised and rejected, and where
He was Himself about to become the true Passover, which should purchase
everlasting Redemption.
The traitor sold Him to the Sanhedrim, or council, in which the last
words of the prophecy through the Priesthood had declared that one man
must die for the people; and a band of Roman soldiers was obtained from
Pilate. Meanwhile, our blessed Lord instituted the new Passover, the
Communion by which all the faithful should be enabled to partake of the
great Sacrifice; then He went out to the garden, among the grey olives
which still stand beside the brook Kedron, and there, after His night of
Agony, He was betrayed by a kiss, and dragged before the High Priest,
under an accusation of blasphemy; but as the Sanhedrim had not power of
life and death, and such a charge would have mattered little to a Roman,
a political offence was invented to bring before Pilate.
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