Stripping Jesus Naked again.

Fr Giles Ngwa Forteh
When we pray the Stations of the Cross, we are told at the tenth station that when they came to the top of Calvary, his cruel tormentors stripped him naked. His executioners pulled off every cloth from His wounded body. They pulled so roughly that the skin came away with the clothes.

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Jesus had to stand naked and bleeding in a public place. This was public humiliation, and the dignity of Jesus, as a human being, was terribly vilified. He stood in the scorching sun, helplessly exposed to the hostilities of a wicked crowd. They jeered at him, and pelted him with the filth of abuses. The stripping of Jesus was a follow-up to the injury that had been done to his human reputation and dignity. They had stigmatized him as a rebel and a criminal. No person with a kind disposition can witness such a scene and fail to condemn the inhumanity of Jesus’ persecutors. We abhor it; we deplore it.

But another sad aspect of this event is that it is being reproduced all the time. Jesus continues to suffer in the least of his brothers who are victims of those gruesome acts which seriously injure their dignity and their reputation. Our thoughts turn compassionately towards the multitude of nameless and innocent sufferers whose reputation has been destroyed, by means of detraction and calumny. Among these afflicted persons, are the many scapegoats who are now languishing in prison. The damage could sometimes be irreparable. A person’s reputation and honour are the clothes which he wears. Destroy his reputation, and you will find him standing naked in the hostile glare of our permissive society.  Honour is the social witness given to human dignity, and everyone enjoys a natural right to the honour and respect due his name and reputation.
In Shakespeare’s play Othello, two of his characters underline the inestimable value of a person’s reputation. While Cassio considers his reputation as ‘the immortal part of myself,” the schemer, Iago, sees it as “the immediate jewel of the soul”.        
“Good name in man and woman, dear my Lord,   Is the immediate jewel of their souls;                       Who steals my purse steals trash;                       ‘tis something, nothing! …..                        But he that filches from my good name                        Robs me of that which not enriches him                        And makes me poor indeed.”                        (Iago, in Othello, Act III, Sc. 3)
The eight commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour” (Ex. 20:16), forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others. This moral prescription flows from the vocation of the holy people to bear witness to their God who is truth. Offenses against the truth expressed by word or deed, a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness: are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of the covenant. Christ’s disciples have “put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24). By “putting away falsehood,” they are to “put away all malice and all guile and insincerity and envy and all slander.” (Eph. 274) The willful wrecking of a person’s reputation constitutes an offence against the truth. “False witness and perjury, when it is made publicly, a statement contrary to the truth takes on a particular gravity.

In court it becomes false witness. When it is under oath, it is perjury. Acts such as these contribute to the condemnation of the innocent,  the exoneration of the guilty or the increased punishment of the accused. They gravely compromise the exercise of justice and the fairness of judicial decisions. Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty: - of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbour; - of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them; - of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion to false judgments concerning them.” (CCC, 2476-2477) Detraction and calumny destroy the reputation and honour of one’s neighbour and, thus, constitute offences against the virtues of justice and charity.

Let us never forget that each time we destroy someone’s reputation, we strip that person naked and, what is more sorrowful, we repeat one of the enormities of Calvary. St. Ignatius of Loyola gives us the following advice:
“Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favourable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that all may be saved.” (Spiritual Exercise, 22)