The King Is Asleep

H/T to Amy at Via Media. Good stuff, as always.
(An ancient homily from Holy Saturday. Office of Readings)

Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
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Saving The World Through Body Fluid

Ugh. If there is anything less glamorous about being a parent than being doused with body fluids not your own, I don't know what it is. Blynken and Nod-girl are down with the latest crud.

The care for children is one of God's greatest gifts to mankind. It simultaneously takes care of the immediate physical necessities of the needy, strengthens the emotional and psychological bond between parent and child, instills unselfishness in the caregiver, and increases the parent's ability to love.

Whew. That's a big job for some stomach acid and waste water.

And we must really love the little kids to do that all that for them; only God could have devised a method for saving the world through snot and other unmentionables. While not entirely theologically accurate, it is perhaps an appropriate meditation for Holy Week to ponder the infinite value of Jesus' love and sacrifice as mirrored in our mundane lives.

All I know is that with the first two Nodlings down, we may get several more chances to find out.

The Entire Cohort

The phrase that struck me about the reading of the Passion this week is an odd little detail that I never paid attention to before now: Pilate assembled the entire Cohort to participate in Jesus' scourging and execution.

So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas to them and, after he had Jesus scourged, handed him over to be crucified.

The soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is, the praetorium, and assembled the whole cohort. Mark 15:15-16

So how much is a cohort?

Following the restructure [of the Roman Army] by Gaius Marius (157 BC–January 13, 86 BC) the format was again changed so that the Century would be raised to its literal number of 100.

• 1 Legion = 10 Cohorts

• 1 Cohort = 6 centuriae

• 1 Manipulus = 2 Centuria

• 1 Centuria = 10 Contubernia

• 1 Contubernia = 10 Soldiers

The fact that Pilate assembled the Cohort means that this was no minor whipping of the local boy, but rather a flogging of the first order and a particularly grisly execution: a public spectacle, meant to discourage any and all resistance.

They lined up at least 600 people for this event -- and those were just the soldiers. Remember that the next time you are "just a bystander"; you are still complicit in the event even (or especially) if you did nothing.