Mystery stories (as in detective stories) are certainly good. They are the only form of literature current that by its very nature celebrates the exposure and punishment of the wickedness. It also celebrates the good, as we frequently discover in Hercule Poirot’s matchmaking and Sherlock Holmes’s mercy.
St. Thomas Aquinas says that God contains the essence of all good things: the roar of the lion, the beauty of a flower, and, if I may add by implication, the plot of a mystery. Girt about with these two premises, let us face the conclusion to the syllogism, and let us boldly consider the Passion as not only the greatest of mysteries (those things which we cannot fully understand because they are above our nature), but as a mystery story.
A mystery story always features a victim, a crime, a villain, and a detective, the latter being tasked with picking the evildoer and sometimes even the evil deed out of a bewildering assortment of options. All of these essential elements are to be found in the Passion of Christ. The victim and the crime are obvious. So are at least some of the villains. But the role, much less the identity of the detective, may be a little more difficult to understand. This is because the Passion account is not a typical mystery in this sense, that rather than the mystery being a “whodunnit,” the real conundrum is “Who is Christ?”
In all reverence, it is precisely in the Passion account, out of the entirety of the Gospels, that the question “Who is Christ” is most pressing. For throughout the Gospels up to this point, has it not been perfectly clear to the reader that he is Man and God, if we take the angel Gabriel’s word, if we consider Peter’s profession of faith, and finally, if we have lingered on the great drama of the death and raising of Lazarus? But in the Passion, even we Christians are and ought to be confused. Why does Jesus remain silent at so many key points, such as when Pilate asks, “Whence art thou?” Why does a God submit to such humiliation? Why does he cry out, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?[*]” If these things do not disturb us, they should.
Then there are all the seeming red herrings, to beat any Agatha Christie novel. What is going on with Jesus making his Passover supper arrangements by sending his apostles after a random water-bearer? Is the only answer that he is a very busy host, who happens to have supernatural powers and who uses them rather inefficiently to help him complete his arrangements for a feast? What were the soldiers who apprehended Jesus thinking when he fully healed a severed body part (Malchus’s ear), and then gave himself in to their power again? What is the significance of the man who runs away naked from the soldiers? What does the clue of the Loud Voice from the Cross mean? That should be impossible, people who are crucified barely have the strength to breathe enough to stay alive, much less die with a shout like Jesus. Longinus, one of the murderers, also acts as detective in concluding, “Indeed this man was the son of God.”
The murder, though performed in the open, is itself a mystery. Why did the priests, scribes, and ancients think they would succeed in killing a man who had just brought Lazarus back to life (as a side note, why again did they start planning to kill Lazarus himself? There is beating a dead horse, and there is killing a man raised from the dead once already.) Why did a crowd that prostrated itself before Jesus on his arrival in Jerusalem now condemn him to death? Why did the chief priests spit such wild, spiteful, unguarded words at Christ on the Cross: “He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let Christ the king of Israel come down now from the cross, that we may be believe.” Isn’t this a mockery of belief itself, by men consecrated to God? And why, on the feast of Passover, are priests up on Calvary anyway, instead of supervising religious observances in the city?
Finally, there is a woman involved, as in most good mysteries; the woman who stands at the foot of the cross. Imagine watching the Passion occur without knowing how it ends. Do what the Church invites us to do at the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, accounts which end right before the Resurrection. Although we now know that Our Lord consecrated us to her care from the cross, what can we make of these words, “Behold your mother” and “Behold your son,” at the moment they are spoken?
If there is any aptness to looking at the passion and death of Our Lord as a mystery story, we still have to answer: Who, after all, is the detective? And here again this mystery is unique. It is the only first-person detective story. We are the detectives, like Longinus, and also the murderers. And this story will only be of use to us if we have solved the mystery of “Who is Christ” correctly.
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[*] Author’s note: Of course Our Lord is quoting Psalm 21, but this only increases rather than disperses the mystery: why did our Lord (in the voice of David) speak in such a way to begin with? Why does it seem to be that he only spoke the first verse of the psalm out loud on the cross?
Photo by Christoph Schmid on Unsplash
