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Liz Kay
Hello and welcome to the Providence College Podcast. I'm Liz Carey. During Holy Week, reflect on the arrest and trial of Jesus from the perspectives of eight different people with this episode of Wordplay Theater for the Ear and the Imagination. Reverend Matthew Powell, Opie, associate professor emeritus of theater, directs word plays, audio plays in monologues, which reflect the dignity and spiritual nature of the human person.

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Liz Kay
The cast members of Eight Voices are Providence College alumni or instructors in the Department of Theater, Dance and Film. After you listen to this episode, subscribe to Wordplay wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Rev. Matthew Powell, O.P.
Wordplay Theater for the Ear and the Imagination presents eight voices The Arrest and Trial of Jesus. A short, dramatic performance for audio. It consists of monologues spoken by people associated with the arrest and trial of Christ. The actors in our production are in order. Kevin Sullivan. Kate Joseph Michael Joseph, Patrick, Mark Saunders, Michael Prop Sturt, Donald Powell, Shelley Ramsey and Danny Kaplan.

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Rev. Matthew Powell, O.P.
Father Matthew Powell directed the production and compiled the script from works by several authors, including Nick Warburton, William E Brooks and Khalil Gibran.

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Speaker 3
The my name is Malcolm X. I was a servant to Caiaphas, the high priest Sometimes I take it out and look at it unrecognizable now, unless one knew it full of blood and sound shriveled like an old heel of bread or a piece of fungus. I was certainly not prepared. I knew my master. Caiaphas had it in for some itinerant preacher and it seemed to me that his high priest fear and anger exceeded anything the Galilee Galilean might do.

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Speaker 3
But my master was always given to extremes and what could I do but go along with him and the others on that warm, crucial night? It would have been simpler to take the man by day. So less dramatic We came to an agreed on place where an ill named friend approached to kiss him, so we'd be certain we had the right man.

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Speaker 3
After a sudden flurry of torches and shouting, a stunning pain slash my head, the roar of anguish within me was louder than my scream and then he touched me. The strange man we've trapped and the intolerable roaring cleared. And I heard the small song of our night bird and the wind moving in the olive trees beyond the heavy breathing of frightened men.

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Speaker 3
I bent down and picked it up, then lifted my hands, felt my head and two ears warm and hearing and my life was shattered, turned around and changed forever. I left the high priest never to return there is danger now. Often we do not understand our freedom and the fresh blood flowing in our lives. That is why I sometimes take it out and look at it unrecognizable now, unless one knew it full of song and sound.

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Speaker 4
When I was a girl in Nazareth, a woman in our village was stoned to death. She wasn't much more than a girl herself, and she was slight and timid. Everyone ran out into the streets, shouting her name and calling for her to be killed. I remember thinking she looks harmless, and yet she's a sinner. Everyone says she is a sinner.

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Speaker 4
Everyone. So she must be. They can see what I can't. That she's evil in the sight of God. And they all went out to watch her killed. I couldn't go with them. Whatever she'd done. I couldn't watch I thought of that girl today when my son was arrested. I couldn't piece together what was going on, where he was or what was happening.

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Speaker 4
Someone said he'd been taken by the temple guard. I said, Why? On what charge? And I was shaking. My hands and legs were shaking because I didn't know what was happening to my son. And because I was afraid to find out when he was a child, I held him and felt the same fear that there was something out in the world waiting to harm him.

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Speaker 4
And it was as if that thing was closing on us and running through the streets as if I was going to see it at last. Eventually, a crowd came, pushing by Romans and prisoners and the usual crowd shouting and spitting. And I saw him, my son, and everyone was shouting like they did back when the girl was killed.

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Speaker 4
And I turned away. Only this time, I couldn't turn away. He's my son. I knew I had to follow the.

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Speaker 5
After Jesus was taken, they entrusted him to me. Captain of the guard. I was ordered by punchers pilot to keep him in custody until the following morning. My soldiers led him as a prisoner, and he was obedient to them. At midnight, I left my wife and children and visited the arsenal It was my habit to go about and see that all was well with my battalion in Jerusalem.

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Speaker 5
And that night, I visited the arsenal where he was held Some of my young soldiers were making sport of him. They had stripped him of his garment, and they put a crown of last year's Brier thorns upon his head. They had seated him against a pillar and they were dancing and shouting around him. They had given him a reed to hold in his hand.

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Speaker 5
As I entered, someone shouted, Behold the captain, the King of the Jews.

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Speaker 5
I stood before him and looked at him, and I was ashamed. I knew not why I had fought in Galicia and in Spain. And with my men I had faced death. Yet never had I been in fear, nor been a coward. But when I stood before that man and he looked at me, I lost heart. It seemed as though my lips were sealed.

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Speaker 5
And I cannot utter a word and straight away I left the arsenal this chance. 30 years ago, my sons, who were babes then, are men now. And they are serving Caesar in Rome. But often in counseling them. I have spoken of him, a man facing death with the sap of life upon his lips and with compassion for his slayers in his eyes.

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Speaker 5
Now I am old. I have lived the years fully, and I think that neither Pompey nor Caesar was so great a commander as that man of Galilee. For since his on resisting death, an army has risen out of the earth to fight for him, and he is better served than ever. Was Pompey or Caesar.

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Speaker 6
He was of the rabble, a brigand, a mountain bank and a self trumpeter He appealed only to the unclean and the disinherited. And for this he had to go the way of all the tainted and the defiled. He made sport of us priests and of our laws, and of me and us. He mocked at our honor and jeered at our dignity.

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Speaker 6
He even said he would destroy the temple and desecrate the Holy places. He was shameless. And for this he had to die a shameful death. He was a man from Galilee, from the North country. He whose tongue halted when he spoke. The words of our prophets was allowed when he spoke the bastard language of the Lobo and the vulgar.

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Speaker 6
What else was there for me to do but to decree his death? Am I Anis not a guardian of the temple? Am I not a keeper of the law? Could I have turned my back on him saying in all tranquility. He is a mad man among mad men. Let him alone to exhaust himself raving for the mad and the crazed.

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Speaker 6
And those possessed with the devil shall be nothing in the path of Israel. Could I have been deaf to him when he called us? Liars, hypocrites, wolves, vipers, and the sons of vipers No, I could not be deaf to him, for he was not a mad man. He was self-possessed. And in his sanity, he denounced and challenged us all for this.

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Speaker 6
I had him crucified and his crucifixion was a signal and a warning to the others who are stamped with that same damned seal. I know well, I have been blamed for this even by some of the elders in the Sanhedrin. But I was mindful then, as I am mindful now, that one man should die for the people rather than the people be led astray.

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Speaker 6
By one man.

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Speaker 7
And so, Jesus, the magic worker, comes to me. King Herod at last three years, he's shown his wondrous might to men. They say his touch has power. That fever flees before his fingers, even blind eyes. See, today, perhaps he'll show that power to me. Youth slips from me, my body growing old, older, than my years warrant. I have lived with wine and song and merry Roman.

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Speaker 4
Girls.

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Speaker 7
And very grown men. Boys and Caesar's house. And now I pay the price. Perhaps this man will touch me and bring me youth again. I'll try him, seek a sign, and then I'll draw him close beside me. Offer him his freedom. All he desires as well. If he will work the miracle that brings me youth again. He has his price, I'm sure, like any man.

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Speaker 7
Then Rome once more while Caesar stares agape at my new strength and nights of wine and song. He stood and looked and answered. Not a word, but oh, how deep he looked into my soul. Past places that I had not looked for years. Such men as he and the Baptist would drive me mad. And so he goes to pilot and his end.

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Rev. Matthew Powell, O.P.
Even years later, I pontious pilot cannot forget my encounter with the man called Jesus I wonder why that scene comes back tonight. That long forgotten scene of years ago. Perhaps it's this touch of spring, that full white moon. It was spring and spring's white moon hung low above my garden on the night he died. I still remember how I felt disturbed that I must send him to a Phelan's cross On such a day when spring was in the air and in his life before he was young to die.

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Rev. Matthew Powell, O.P.
How strong and tall he stood. How calm his eyes fronting me straight while I questioned him. His fearless heart spoke to me through his eyes. Could I have won him as my follower? And 100 beside my way had led to Caesar's Palace and I'd wear today the Imperial Purple, but he would not move one little bit from his madcap dream of seeking truth.

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Rev. Matthew Powell, O.P.
What once a man with truth when he is young and spring is at the door, he would not listen. So he had to go. One mad you less meant little to the state and pleasing Anas made my task the less. And yet for me he spoiled that silver night remembering it was spring and he was young.

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Speaker 8
I was one of their neighbors and Nazareth. I warn the parents, you know, when he was a child, I said, this boy must really not be allowed to argue at the law with the lawyers or about God with the theologians. And he seems I said to fancy himself a doctor to it. Will come to no good. I said, but one gets no thanks later.

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Speaker 8
I admit I was half convinced. Well, you see, it has come to no good. As I told his parents, children must listen and lawful authority speak. Still, this is very sad news.

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Speaker 9
By what strange whims is a man's fate. Sweet. I barabbas free to go while he goes to his cross. I know his life. No evil. Has he done for many a day in the towns of Galilee? Have I stood in that crowd that swarmed around him while his fingers healed the leper with the touch or at his word, the devils fled away.

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Speaker 9
Oh, man. No, my life. Oh, my evil fame. Now I stand free while he goes there to die. Well, what was there in this man that Ennis feared and that dull Roman with his oily face? He would be king. No, rather, he would not. Such men as he would never bind with crowns and all the stiff seclusion of a throne.

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Speaker 9
Their right to mix with ordinary men some deeper thought lay in that false priest brain could it have been he feared the words Jesus spoke about God about men grown to the stature of God's sons, one brotherhood that banished self from earth no priest could control a race that held such thoughts. Nor was there a place for pilot in such a plan.

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Speaker 9
Nor for Barabbas. No wonder. And this feared a world he could not mold for his own gain. But as he think he can end Jesus with a cross.

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Liz Kay
Thank you for listening to the Providence College Podcast. Episodes are available in all of the usual places, as well as the college's YouTube channel and on your smart speaker producer Chris Judge, and I wish you and your family a blessed and peaceful Easter until next time.