Fourth Sunset: The Death Sentence

To punish and to impose a penalty has been in society from ancient times as a coercive instrument to accomplish basically two things: the common good and the conversion of the criminal. Now, you can witness that I have learned well a lesson in penal law. Obviously, all of us know that to reach the point of punishment one must commit an offense. It should be grave enough to cause public disorder, scandal and harm to others. Therefore, the offender deserves the punishment so he may correct his behavior and order and justice are restored.

We understand the sense of justice and its application and necessity are seen from the domestic level of a family to the large system of a society. There are penalties given in proportion to the offense perpetrated. The problem is when there is an innocent offender in a system with a capital penalty. Following the same reasoning and logic of offenses and penalties, we can deduct that if a society imposes a death penalty, it is because there is not hope for the rehabilitation of the criminal. It sentences that even the existence of the offender is a threat for society and the reestablishment of order. Is it ever possible? Is it ever possible that someone’s conversion is impossible?  Is it ever possible that someone’s existence, in control of the authorities, is a threat for everyone else? I know it is a controversial topic worth of much debate. But I think yes. It is possible. It is always possible to preserver the order of society without the elimination of the person. Death penalty never has been necessary. Rather, it always has been a sign of weakness of the State.

Anyway, this is neither the space nor the moment to debate how opportune or unnecessary death penalty is. I think that the point I want to make is that Jesus was an innocent death penalty victim.  Jesus is condemned to death, we pray in the first station of the cross, and it is our fourth sunset. Now it is becoming darker. We are closer to the night of death. Now it is official, unjustly but official. The way to death has been marked. Jesus is victim as much of our offenses as of an imperfect judicial system. It is a capital penalty which is unjust and unnecessary in itself. It is unknown what the end is going to look like for Jesus and his followers. Only the confidence in God is enough to endure and wait for the end result. Jesus is an offender who does not need any correction. There is not crime. They only pretend the scandal. There is not enough light that illuminates as the eyes as the mind. Only God is enough in a situation like this. While the accuser rejoices on his apparent victory, he does not count with God’s last card. God precisely takes advantage of this horrendous evil to take possession of the Devil’s most precious power. God takes possession not only of the sentence of a broken judicial system, neither only of its tortures and agonies, but above all of death itself. God is in the process of becoming the owner of the Devil’s most cherished possession to destroy it.

The sunset of the sentence kisses the night itself of death. Only there rest to wait to witness the destruction of the enemy to laugh on his misfortune.