A face in the crowd

Ecce Homo ("Behold the man")
 by Valentin de Boulogne

For all our prized intellect and will, for all our cherished individuality and freedom, we human beings do occasionally reveal that at least partially we are herd animals.  No, nobody enjoys flying coach or ‘cattle class’ and the feeling of being treated as less than human.  But it is hard to go even a day without video from nearby or some faraway country showing a broad public space filled with thousands or even tens of thousands of people, massed and moving and often shouting as one single beast.  

Sports rivalries and packed stadiums are at the light end of the mob spectrum that runs thence toward dark and dangerous.  Even in a lighthearted assembly, people can get worked up with victory or defeat and do something en masse that none of them would ever do solo.  When the mood does turn dark, the words and the deeds can become truly terrifying and even, in a peculiar way, inhuman.  

This madness of crowds can appear spontaneously or after careful connivance and manipulation, and while it is exhilarating for the participants to be swept up into ‘something bigger than themselves,’ it is properly terrifying for any bystanders who manage to maintain some personal and emotional distance from the frenzy.  What begets that fear is not only the danger that the roiling crowd presents, but also the evident change that has overtaken its members who mere moments earlier were so recognizably and fully themselves.  A tremor of a different sort of fear can shake the participants when the mob disperses, and its members remember themselves and wonder with revulsion what came over them.

Rather than warning you  to excuse yourself from such an assembly before it become a riot, I invite you to enter the mob as its bloodlust rises.  Only one specific mob, I should clarify; the one that gathers round the praetorium and roars for the blood of the innocent man Jesus.

In this our annual experiment in crowd psychology we try on, like a garment, the madness that all too easily fits us tailor-made, woven as it is of fear and self-preservation, colored by indignation at the mere suggestion that we be sinful, and cut to the false consensus of mutual congratulation.  All these vices inhibit our intellect and our will and constrain our freedom; together they fabricate the false fraternity of hypocrites.  We are not proud of them nor even comfortable with them, but we are afraid to find ourselves naked without them. 

The One who has none of these vices nor any other stands alone before us stripped, beaten, and bleeding in His mute pity for us, which only fuels our rage.  Yes, rage.  How dare anyone suggest we be the guilty ones.

It is the Passion of the Lord, not merely read but inhabited by us who are the Body of Christ.  We do this to ourselves on purpose, in a controlled environment and with a strong lifeline round us all to pull us out of the abyss.  Recognizing after the fact our role in the events of this day, a tremor of a different sort of fear shakes us when we come to ourselves and wonder with revulsion at how we could ever have been a part of such an action. 

The One being manhandled to His death by the savage crowd directs to their highest purpose both intellect and will, placing individuality at the service of the multitude to whom He is bound by His human nature, and perfecting freedom in obedience.  While we rush on helpless to save ourselves from ourselves, He anchors the lifeline that draws us up from the abyss, retrieves and restores us to our own humanity, and delivers us from the madness of the crowd.

Monsignor Smith