Last time we spoke on the third article of the Apostle’s Creed, “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.”  We said this article describes how Christ came into the world and how this necessarily implies that Mary is the greatest creature God fashioned and worthy of honor after God.  The next article of the Creed reads, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”  This article identifies the historical context and manner of Christ’s redemptive suffering and affirms His true humanity. This is article is our topic today.

After His birth, Christ lived 30 years in obscurity.  This was done, it has been said, to sanctify family life.  For thirty years Christ places Himself under parental authority... giving a good example to all children (young and older).  Indeed, Christ only begins His public life at the request of His Mother at the wedding of Cana where Mary initiates her Son’s first public miracle.   “They have no wine,” she tells her Son; “Do whatever He tells you, ” she tells the stewards.  The stewards taste the wine made from water and exclaim its excellence.  Afterwards, Christ begins 3 years of public life: teaching, preaching, healing, forgiving sins, and, in short, prepares the world for the new covenant to be established upon His bride, the Catholic Church.  He schools twelve chosen men to be His apostles to carry on the work He has started. One of these, Peter, Christ places as the earthly head of His Church.  Finally, Christ institutes the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the holy priesthood.

Having prepared the world for its redemption, Christ submits to the divinely appointed hour of His passion and death.  We know the events well.  The Gospels speak in detail on them; we recount them during the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary and during the Stations of the Cross. 

After the Last Supper, Christ retreats for prayer to the Garden of Gethsemani where He suffers the bloody sweat; then is apprehended as a criminal, mocked and tortured with the scourge and crowning with thorns.  Out of human respect, Pontius Pilate permits Christ, Whom  he rightly judges innocent, to suffer crucifixion.  Christ carries His cross to Mount Golgatha, is nailed to it and dies.

When we say, “suffered under Pontius Pilate”...
We believe that Christ could truly suffer and truly die.  In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council affirmed, “Although He (Christ) according to divinity is immortal and impassible, the very same according to humanity was made passible and mortal.”  Put another way, although human nature was united to a divine Person, Christ truly felt all the bitterness of His Passion as if no union ever existed because what is proper to the two natures, divine and human, in the one Person of Jesus remained unimpaired.  In no way did Christ’s divine nature ease His sufferings.  Indeed, He only more acutely suffered for infinite love is more easily wounded than a love which is limited.  Truly did Christ suffer for us as Isaiah prophesied, “Surely He has borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows.”(53:4); and as Christ repeated, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death.” (Mt 26:38)

We believe that Christ suffered and was nailed to a tree when Pontius Pilate governed the Province of Judea, under Tiberius Caesar. 

We believe that Christ freely suffered for sinners not being compelled for any reason.  He freely chose the place and manner and time of His suffering to satisfy for the sins of mankind, to prove His humanity, and to give mankind an example of patience in suffering.

When we say, “was crucified”...
We believe Christ offered Himself as a true and proper sacrifice. In 431, the Council of Ephesus taught “He (Christ) offered Himself as a sweet odor (a pleasing sacrifice)  to the God and Father.”

We believe that Christ sacrificed Himself on the cross for mankind and thereby redeemed (bought us back from death) and reconciled us with God.  In 1442, the Council of Florence affirmed, “no one conceived of man and woman was ever freed of the domination of the devil, except through the merit of the mediator between God and man, our Lord Jesus Christ; He Who was conceived without sin, was born and died, through His death alone laid low the enemy of the human race by destroying our sins, and opened the gates of the kingdom of heaven, which the first man by his own sin had lost with all his succession.”

When we say, “died”...
We believe that Christ truly died which is to say, His human soul separated from His human body but His divinity remained with His soul and with His body.

We believe that Christ did not die for the predestined only but for all mankind without exception.  The Council of Trent affirmed, “Him (Christ) God has proposed to be a propitiation through faith in His blood for our sins and not for ours alone but for those of the whole world.”  Again, we believe Christ died for all men, but we do not mean that all men shall be saved by His death.   

We believe that only those men who, through their own fault, do not share in the infinite merits of the death of Jesus Christ will not obtain salvation.

When we say, “and was buried”...
We believe that the body of Christ was truly given a burial.  The body of Christ was stuffed with a hundred pounds of myrrh, wrapped in a shroud, and placed in the freshly hollowed tomb of one Joseph of Arimathea after which a huge stone was rolled over the entrance and a Roman guard placed to secure against any tampering with the dead body.  These historical details given us in the Gospels were divinely arranged so that Christ’s true humanity and true death could be more clearly manifest so that His forthcoming resurrection would most clearly reveal His divinity.

These are some things we believe when we recite the fourth article of the Apostle’s Creed.

As a last comment, take notice that the Church does not have us say, “suffered, died and was buried,” but rather teaches us to say, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried”?   Certainly this is no arbitrary arrangement.

When we say that Christ “suffered under Pontius Pilate” we place the death of Christ in a historical context; we also acknowledge that secular authority will often fail to service justice.  If that state failed to protect the innocent Christ, the state will fail to protect innocence continually.  If Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, so will His mystical body suffer under every secular government which does not recognize the kingship of Christ. 

Our Lord Himself said this in another place, “Remember My word that I have said to you.  The servant is not above His master.  If they have persecuted Me, they will persecute you.  If they had kept My word, they will keep yours also.” (Jn 15:20)