"And the high priest, rising up in the midst, asked Jesus, saying: Answerest Thou nothing to the things that are laid to Thy charge by these men? But Jesus held His peace and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked Him and said to Him: I adjure Thee, by the living God, that Thou tell us if Thou be the Christ, the Son of the blessed God. And Jesus said to him: Thou hast said it, I am. Nevertheless I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of Heaven. Then the high priest rent his gar ments, saying: He hath blasphemed; what further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now you have heard the blasphemy, what think you? But they all answering condemned Him and said: He is guilty of death." - Matthew 26:62-66; Mark 14:60-64
The witnesses did not deserve to be refuted; their best refutation, the only refutation of such as batten on untmth, is silence; to them, then, Our Lord answered nothing. But Caiaphas was at least a lawful judge; and though he could be ignored when he united himself with the false witnesses, still, when he spoke in his own name he had a right to be answered. Something seemed to tell him this; there is a consciousness of it in the words: "I adjure thee, by the living God." He knows with whom he is dealing; he knows that this Man will speak the truth; he knows how exactly to word his question; he words it as Peter worded his great confession: "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God." That he should know all this is a terrible confession, a confession of faith. Of all men in the Passion, none seems more to sin against the light than Caiaphas; so much does he seem to sin against it that one wonders how a man could be so audacious.
Caiaphas knew; and he knew, therefore, what would be the answer of Our Lord; if he had not known, he might have suspected he might get some other answer, and that would have ruined his place. He received the answer he expected; but he received something more. Yes, Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. And therefore the time would come when the tables would be turned; when He, not Caiaphas, would be the judge; when the mystery of Heaven, not the glamour of this court, would surround Him; and He recalls the description He had elsewhere given of His coming at the end of the world. Let it be noticed that this is the first time in Scripture that Our Lord is heard to state so explicitly that He is "Christ, the Son of the living God."
Then came the ending, and the universal condemnation. What can have been in the minds of the Council? Either they believed His words or they did not. If they did not believe that He was what He declared Him self to be, then they might indeed have had Him put to death, but at the same time they could only have treated Him as one who was mad as Herod treated Him, for instance, who was incapable of faith. Only a madman could have made such a claim, especially in such circumstances. But they did not laugh Him to scorn; they did not ridicule; they took Him seriously, bitterly; they "did protest too much "; and their cry, "He is guilty of death," can only be taken as their own terrible death sentence.
- from The The Crown of Sorrow: Meditations on the Passion of Our Lord, by Archbishop Alban Goodier, SJ. It has the Nihil Obstat of Canon Franciscus M Wyndham, Censor Deputatus, and the Imprimatur of Canon Edmund Surmont, Vicar General, Diocese of Westminster, England, 16 May 1918