Jesus Will Break Your Leg If He Has To
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - April 30, AD 2012 5:59 PM MST
Oh, how fortuitous. After our discussions about
how Marxist-homosexualists have attempted to drain all of the
masculinity out of the Church, and also out of Christ Himself, today I
find the most wonderful thing via Fr. Z. at Fr. Ray Blake's blog.
The context of Fr. Blake's original piece is about heresy in the Church,
but it applies not only to full-blown heretics, but really everyone,
because every sin is, in a sense, a heresy.
Long story short: When a shepherd would go out and search for a lost
sheep that had wandered off, when he found the lost lamb, he would BREAK
OR DISLOCATE ITS LEG, and then carry it back to the flock on his
shoulders. This husbandry technique is called "hobbling." We have all
seen that image. Yeah. He wasn't carrying it because it was fun. He
was carrying the lamb because he had intentionally crippled it.
Why? Why break the animal's leg? First, to keep it from wandering off
again. Second, in order to train it to stay with the flock. While the
leg was mending, the lamb would NOT wander off and learned to stay with
the fold. This was done not just to protect the straying lamb, but also
to protect the rest of the flock. Sheep are very gregarious. If one
is heady and heads off on some tangent, the rest of the flock might go
after it instead of staying with the shepherd.
You know, KINDA LIKE PEOPLE.
In terms of the actual breaking of the leg, you might be thinking that a
broken leg would kill an animal or be massively cruel. You would be
wrong. The folks who taught me the cattle business used to herd and
drive wild animals like elk and reindeer up on the tundras of Canada.
One time they came across a large herd of elk and one of the animals had
a totally fractured hind leg. The bone was totally severed and the leg
was flopping completely free as the animal ran with the herd on three
legs. When they came back to that herd a few weeks later, they spotted
the animal, and its leg was almost fully healed. It had a slight
deformity, but it was running on the broken leg. The point is that
animals have a massive pain tolerance such that their perception of pain
is fundamentally different than that of human pain. Additionally, they
have a capacity for physical healing that humans likewise do not have.
A untreated compound fracture in a human leg would kill the human. But
animals are different, so the shepherding technique of breaking or
dislocating the leg of a straying lamb would have been standard
operating procedure.
I looked this up, and sure enough, up until
just within the last century, people understood the symbolism of the
Good Shepherd fairly widely, as many people were still involved in
animal agriculture on roughly the same technological level as that of
2000 years ago. The Church, and thus the people understood that if God
gently guides you back to the fold, but you keep persistently wandering
off and being disobedient to God's perfect will, endangering not only
yourself but the rest of the flock as well, JESUS WILL PROVERBIALLY
BREAK YOUR LEG, hoist you on His shoulders and haul you back to the
flock. The alternative would be to let you get eaten by the wolves, and
entice the wolves to attack the rest of the flock.
When Jesus says, "I am the Good Shepherd," He MEANS IT. CRACK!
Finally, this also illuminates the prophecy in Numbers 9:12 that the Passover Lamb shall not have any of its bones broken:
They shall not leave any thing thereof until morning, a nor break a bone thereof, they shall observe all the ceremonies of the phase. --Numbers 9:12
This was specifically emphasized by John in his Gospel:
For these things were done, that the scripture might be fulfilled: You shall not break a bone of Him. --John 19:36
Jesus is the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei), slain for the sins of the world
(Qui tollis peccata mundi). He was slain without any of His bones being
broken because He is the prefect Lamb, in perfect union with the Will
of the Father, Who never, ever strayed, and thus His bones, in
particular His legs, were not broken. If you remember the narrative
from Calvary, when Jesus had died on the Cross, the Romans, spurred by
an earthquake and the desire to get the three crucified Jews off of
Golgotha before the beginning of the Passover (also prophesied in
Numbers 9:12 - "They shall not leave any thing thereof until morning"),
were ordered to break the legs of the three men in order to hasten
death. If their legs were broken, they couldn't hold themselves up on
their crosses to breathe, and would thus asphyxiate in a matter of
minutes. The two thieves had their legs broken with a cudgel by the
Romans. When the Roman came to Christ, he saw that Our Lord was already
dead. In order to make sure that Jesus was dead, the Roman, Longinus,
took a spear and stabbed Jesus in His side, through to His Heart. This
pierced the pericardial sac of water that had formed around His Heart as
He went into shock and asphyxiated. Out of Jesus' side poured first
water (Baptism) followed by Blood (The Eucharist). So, while the good
thief and the bad thief both had their legs broken, Jesus' legs were NOT
broken at the last second because He is the perfectly submissive Lamb
to the Will of the Father.
Again, this symbolism would have
been obvious to previous generations. It is only today that it has been
lost. Beware of any clergy today who try to paint Jesus as utterly
benign, effette and passive. He is anything but. Jesus will BREAK OUR
LEG if that is what is required to get us safely to heaven and save us
from the wolves. Priests and bishops would do very, very well to heed
this example. The fact that there have been no excommunications in the
wake of the pro-abort culture in government, especially now among such
"c"atholics as Kathleen Sebilius, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden
and every member of the Kennedy clan is a testimony to the utterly
piss-poor job of shepherding that today's episcopacy is doing. UTTERLY.
PISS. POOR.
For the love of God, and in the name of Christ the Good Shepherd, BREAK SOME LEGS! CRACK!
(Isn't this image incredibly moving now that we know the full story and context?)
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