Jesus on the Cross

After Jesus Christ, two criminals were also crucified, one on His right and the other on His left. This arrangement was chosen deliberately, so that the Holy of Holies might appear, even on the cross, as though He were the most criminal of the wrongdoers. The devil, as St. Chrysostom observes, meant by this to dim the Lord’s glory; but, without knowing it, only increased it, for through this one of the prophecies was fulfilled, that Jesus Christ would be «numbered with the lawless» (Is 53:12).

Once the execution had been carried out, whitened tablets were nailed, as usual, above the heads of the crucified, on which their name and their crime were recorded. In the inscriptions of the two robbers there was no departure from the ordinary form. But over the Lord’s head, instead of a statement of guilt, there appeared, quite unexpectedly, these ambiguous words: «Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews». Moreover, this inscription was not merely in Latin, or in some foreign tongue, as was usually done, but in all the principal languages of the time—that is, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. This was done deliberately, by Pilate’s own order. The inscription contained the very same charge for which Jesus Christ had been condemned to death: the assumption of the dignity of King of the Jews; only it left unresolved whether He had assumed this dignity lawfully or unlawfully, and whether the Jews had acknowledged Him as their king or not. Judging by the inscription, anyone might more readily suppose that this was indeed the King of the Jews, whom his subjects had failed to defend from the Romans, or who had been treacherously abandoned by them. Pilate used three languages for the inscription because foreigners, and many of the Jews who had come to the feast from distant lands, knew Hebrew poorly. Besides, such solemnity made it all the easier to suppose that the Crucified was an important political figure, and so exposed the proud Sanhedrin to still greater ridicule. «See—people might say—how they treat the kings of the Jews! Behold the Messiah the Jews are waiting for! How senseless, how blind they are!..»

The chief priests grasped the sense of the inscription at once, and hurried to Pilate with a request that he change it. «Do not write—they said—King of the Jews, but write, as He says: I am King of the Jews. That is, let everyone know that we did not acknowledge Him as king, but that He set Himself up as the Messiah».

«What I have written, I have written»—was the procurator’s answer, and the chief priests, in shame and vexation, returned to Golgotha to feed their thirst for revenge.

It is clear that Pilate, in composing the inscription—and still more in refusing to change it—meant to spite the chief priests. And yet, as the Fathers of the Church observe, the Roman judge, even here, without knowing it, served as the instrument of a higher decree. «Pilate—Blessed Augustine reasons—wrote what he wrote, just as the Lord said what He said. He said: ‘I am set as king over Zion, His holy mountain’ (Ps 2:3); He said that He must suffer, to enter into His glory; and now, by nailing Him to the cross, they have, so to speak, themselves raised Him to His throne; it remained only to proclaim the new King, and the pagan Pilate, by a three-language inscription, solemnly proclaims Him, in defiance of the Jewish authorities, before all the nations—a prophetic symbol of things to come! The Jewish people, still rejecting the yoke of Christ’s kingdom, has seen, and to this day, to its own shame, still sees, how the pagan nations, one after another, acknowledge the crucified Jesus as their King, Savior, and Lord».

The particular inscription placed on Jesus Christ’s cross, as Chrysostom observes, later served to distinguish it from the other crosses buried alongside it in the ground, when Constantine the Great’s mother, St. Helena, resolved to find the life-giving Tree.

Once the crucifixion was finished, the soldiers at once set about dividing among themselves the clothing of the crucified, which, by law, became their own property. Jesus Christ’s outer garment and the rest of His clothing they divided among the four of them (Jn 19:23), tearing into pieces what could not belong to one man alone; but the tunic, or undergarment, could not be divided, could not even be torn, since it was not sewn, but woven in one piece from top to bottom. Seeing this, and judging the tunic’s quality, the soldiers decided, rather than tearing it, to cast lots for it.

This circumstance, seemingly of no great importance, becomes highly significant when we learn that through it, too, one of the most ancient prophecies of the Messiah was fulfilled. St. David, as a type of his great Descendant according to the flesh, describing his own troubles, says that his garments were divided by his enemies, and lots were cast for his tunic (Ps 21:19). What could apply to David’s own condition only indirectly, as a foreshadowing of things to come—since no one ever actually cast lots for David’s own tunic—was now, over Jesus Christ, being fulfilled in full reality. With such precision was Providence pleased to depict, centuries in advance, even the smallest details of Christ’s sufferings! And if the prophecies of the Old Testament were ever fulfilled, it was above all at the cross; for there, as at a center, all the scattered rays of prophetic vision converge of themselves; and the radiance of this light entirely dispels the darkness surrounding Jesus’s cross, showing that it was, in all its details, not the work of human folly, but of divine wisdom.

From the division of Jesus Christ’s clothing, among other things, one can see that it was of good quality and fitting, and that among the things belonging to Him, not one was poor. The woven tunic even shows a certain abundance and refinement, and, as tradition relates, was the work of His Mother’s own hands. If one compares Jesus Christ’s clothing with John the Baptist’s harsh, ascetic garb, a considerable difference is apparent—as in the whole outward manner of life of Jesus and His Forerunner.

Having divided the clothing, the soldiers remained at the cross as a guard, of the kind assigned to the crucified so that their bodies could not be taken down prematurely by relatives or acquaintances for burial; and now it was all the more necessary, since the crowds streaming to the place might have caused a disturbance.

While the Lord was being crucified, His enemies apparently did not mock Him. The people, too, simply stood and watched (Lk 23:35). The appearance of the inscription over His head served as a kind of signal for the general mockery to begin.

The crowd—always turbulent—reading the inscription, shook their heads and shouted: «Aha! You who would tear down the temple and raise it in three days! Aha! King of Israel! Why do You delay saving Yourself? Some Son of God You are, unable even to come down from the cross (Mk 15:29)!»

The chief priests and elders not only did nothing to stop the mob from mocking the dying Lord, but themselves joined in reviling and abusing Him in every way. Mockery and abuse remained the only weapon they had left to answer Pilate’s cunning, which had sought to ridicule them by means of the inscription. But something else, far weightier than the inscription, lay on the chief priests’ hearts, and drove them to take part in the vilest mockery of all. It had by now become known to everyone that they, and they alone, were the cause of so terrible an execution for Jesus, and that Pilate had long refused to condemn Him. It was necessary to justify their crime before the people, and to shape public opinion so that the foreign Jews, gathered from every corner of the world for the feast, would not carry abroad the story of how the Sanhedrin, out of base ambition, had handed a righteous man—perhaps even the Messiah—over to a shameful death. For this purpose, abuse and mockery seemed the best means of all: for experience proves that even the most worthy men lose their authority once they are, for whatever reason, made objects of ridicule.

The hypocrites, as usual, put on the appearance of the most zealous servants of the God of Israel, the strictest keepers of the law, and, turning to the people, said:

«Look—He saved others, but He cannot save Himself! Did we tell you in vain that nothing good could be expected from this Man? That the friend of tax collectors and sinners would sooner or later find his place among criminals? That the profaning of the Sabbath would not go without heaven’s vengeance? You did not believe us; you thought Him holy—now the very facts have shown whether we spoke the truth, or He did! Who is not waiting for the Messiah? We would give our own lives for His coming. But are we truly bound to believe in a Messiah on a cross? And is much proof really needed? If He is really King of Israel, let Him come down from the cross this instant, and we will believe in Him at once» (Mk 15:32).

«Indeed—the rest of the elders jeered—this is no royal throne at all. Now it is plain what sort of Son of God He is, and what His miracles are worth. Would the Father have left His own Son in such a state? He trusted in God; let God deliver Him now, if God is pleased with Him» (Mt 27:39-43; Mk 15:29-32; Lk 23:35).

These last mockeries are the very same words David, in the psalm quoted above, puts into the mouths of the enemies of the righteous man he describes. So exactly were the prophecies fulfilled in the actions—even the unwitting actions—of the very men who fulfilled them. Amid mockery so shamelessly repeated by the Jewish authorities themselves, it is no wonder that the coarse soldiers standing guard also said to Jesus Christ: «If You are King of the Jews, why do You not save Yourself?» Such mockery, on the lips of Roman soldiers, could only be the fruit of the most mindless imitation. When a Jew shouted this way, the words «King of Israel, why do You not save Yourself» had a certain sense and force for him, since the Messiah, in his view, was supposed to be a wonder-worker, and so able to help himself in any circumstance; the pagan soldier, by contrast, understood by King of the Jews merely an ordinary man, from which it did not follow at all that he should be able to come down from a cross by himself. But the coarse soldiers cared nothing at all for the sense of their own words, mindlessly repeating what they had heard from others. St. Luke also mentions (Lk 23:36) that the soldiers offered Jesus Christ a sour drink—no doubt the very drink they were accustomed to using to quench their own thirst, standing as they were under the open sky in the heat of midday. So even amid their mockery, they did not entirely forget a certain compassion for the crucified, who, from their torments, must have felt thirst even more keenly than they did: the usual mixture, in coarse men, of good and evil, of humanity and brutality. Silence, at least, might have been expected from those wretched men who themselves hung on crosses. But even among them, one, according to the evangelists’ testimony, reviled Jesus, demanding that He, as the Messiah, save both Himself and them. Did this unfortunate man, his reason clouded by the myrrh, wish only to amuse himself by joining in the general mockery? Or did he truly, in his ignorance, consider Jesus Christ guilty and deserving of execution? Or did he even take pride in having taken part in an uprising for freedom, and think little of One who, calling Himself the Messiah, had brought about no revolution at all? In any case, one sees a corrupted heart, a sinner determined to pass, unrepentant, into the other world as well (Lk 23:39-43).

Still more, a lofty cast of mind showed itself in the other crucified man. Blasphemy against Jesus Christ was, to him, more unbearable than the cross itself. «Have you—he said to the one blaspheming—no fear of God in you at all, that you mock a man who is suffering the very same thing you are? And we are justly condemned, we are suffering for what we have done; but He—He has done nothing wrong!»

These words seemed to give him the courage to declare, before the Lord Himself, the feeling of faith and reverence hidden in his heart. «Remember me, Lord, when You come into Your kingdom!» «Truly, I say to you—the Lord answered—today you will be with Me in paradise».

There is no doubt that the repentant thief’s understanding of Jesus Christ’s kingdom was not yet free of all the notions with which it was usually bound up in a Jewish mind. The thief could hardly have been more advanced than the apostles, who, as we have seen, still pictured Jesus Christ’s kingdom as an earthly, worldly one. And so a sense not exceeding his own understanding must be supposed in the thief’s words. I believe, he seemed to be saying to the Lord, that the cross will not prevent You from triumphing over Your enemies: You will rise, and, raising with Yourself all who awaited Your coming, will then establish the kingdom of Israel on earth. Do not forget me then, unworthy as I am; raise me too along with the rest, and give me a place in Your kingdom!

And taking the repentant thief’s words, of necessity, in this sense, one cannot fail to see, in the Lord’s answer, a wise condescension to the weakness of human understanding. The Jews called paradise one of the divisions of Sheol, which, in their view, served as the dwelling place of the souls of the righteous. And so the Lord promises the repentant man a place in paradise—that is, He promises a blessed state after death—but says not a word about His own kingdom, for to say, «now you will be with me in my kingdom», would have meant reviving in the thief’s mind the idea that the visible kingdom of the Messiah was to be set up that very same day.

Thus the divine Teacher of truth, even on the cross, continued to spare the weakness of human understanding, disclosing the truth only so far as His hearers could take it in, looking not only to soundness of thought but, above all, to purity of heart and its disposition toward good. Before, during His ministry, surrounded by miracles, He had called Himself Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the temple; from the cross He shows Himself Lord of paradise and of hell, to whom belongs all power, not only on earth but in heaven as well. The chief priests demanded that, having stopped saving others, He save Himself; the Lord goes on saving others, disregarding His own disgrace. St. Fulgentius rightly calls Jesus Christ’s answer to the repentant thief His last testament to all repentant sinners—a testament written not with a pen, but with a cross.

The triumph of slander and abuse did not last long: soon after the Lord’s crucifixion, Providence began to show that He «would not let His Holy One see corruption» (Act 2:27). In the full brightness of midday, the sky was suddenly covered with darkness (Mt 27:45; Mk 15:33; Lk 23:44), as though bearing witness that the great work of darkness was already drawing near its own midnight. This darkness resembled a solar eclipse; yet it could not have been one, since the Jewish Passover was always kept at the time of the full moon, when the moon cannot stand between the earth and the sun to cause an eclipse. In the opinion of Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Euthymius, the darkness at Jesus Christ’s crucifixion arose from a thickening of clouds between earth and sun, brought about by a supernatural power.

St. Matthew says that «there was darkness over all the land». Though this expression should not be taken literally, as the ancient teachers of the Church themselves rightly noted, since in the sacred writers the land often denotes some one particular country, especially Judea, or even a single city; there is, nevertheless, no reason to confine the darkening of the air to Palestine alone. It no doubt spread, to a greater or lesser degree, as far as the earthquake that followed it, which, as contemporary testimony shows, covered a great part of Asia, Africa, and Europe.

It is remarkable that the ancient Jewish writers, who in their own works usually either deny or distort the Gospel miracles, raise no objection to the account of the sun’s darkening during Christ’s sufferings. It is remarkable, too, that the pagan historian Phlegon, whose words are cited by Eusebius, Origen, and Julius Africanus, agrees with the evangelists so closely in describing an extraordinary darkening of the sun that occurred in the reign of Tiberius that he gives the very same hour for it (the sixth, or, by our reckoning, noon). In general, one must suppose that this event, like the other wonders that followed it, was known to everyone at the time: otherwise Tertullian, citing them as proof of the divine origin of the Christian religion, would not have appealed, before the Roman senate and people, to the public archives, where records of such phenomena were kept.

The extraordinary darkening of the air that followed the Lord’s crucifixion must have silenced the blaspheming mouths of His enemies, and made on them the gloomiest of impressions. Even if they did not take this event to be a consequence of the inhumanity shown toward the Righteous One, they could not, given the prevailing notions of the time, fail to see in it an omen of public calamity, all the more mournful and terrible for having occurred on the very day of the brightest of feasts. At that time, peoples in general believed that extraordinary phenomena in the sky, especially a darkening of the sun, foretold evil, and the Jews held to this belief all the more, since the prophets, in foretelling national disasters, often joined to them a darkening of the sun. This darkness, especially, may have opened the eyes of many of the Jews, when they saw that, having begun with Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, it ended with His life; for this circumstance showed most clearly that a seemingly natural event was governed by a supernatural, divine power, and that the light of the material world grew dim because, on the cross, the Light of the spiritual world was going out.

For those devoted to Jesus Christ, the darkening of the air, and the stillness in nature that came with it, offered a welcome chance to draw nearer to the cross, where it had now grown quieter. Such, according to the evangelists’ testimony, were all who knew the Lord—in particular, many Galilean women who had come for the feast, who, as Mark notes, had followed Him even while Jesus was in Galilee (Mk 15:41), and had supported Him from their own means (Mt 27:55): Salome, the wife of Zebedee, mother of James and John (Mk 15:40; Mt 27:56); Mary Magdalene; Mary, the sister of the Mother of God, the mother of Clopas (Jn 19:25), of James and Joses; John, Jesus’s disciple and friend; and the Mother of the Lord.

Joseph, the betrothed of the Mother of God, was probably no longer even alive, let alone present at Golgotha. From the very time when Jesus Christ, at twelve years old, went up with His parents to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover (Lk 2:41-51), Joseph is never once mentioned again in the Gospel, though on several occasions it would have been quite natural to mention him, had he still been living.

Jesus’s disciples, apart from John, are likewise nowhere to be seen at the cross: at least, this is what the evangelists’ silence leads one to think. Their absence is all the more excusable since the Lord and Teacher Himself had forbidden them to put themselves in danger. Peter had his own cross to bear: he wept in solitude…

Nor could Lazarus appear among Jesus’s enemies without putting his own life in danger. Ancient tradition relates that, soon after his own resurrection, he withdrew from Judea to escape the Sanhedrin’s persecution.

Of all who stood by the Lord’s Mother, none was more inseparable from her than John: an equal sorrow, and an equal love for the Crucified, bound them together. Already, by the feeling of his heart, the disciple had come to occupy a son’s place for the inconsolable Mother.

The rest of the Lord’s admirers still kept some distance from the cross (Mk 15:40), perhaps on one of the heights surrounding Golgotha. But the Mother of God, St. John, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, disregarding fear and danger, came so close that the Lord could not only see them, but speak with them as well (Jn 19:25). A terrible sight for a mother’s heart—and such a mother as St. Mary was! The sword foretold by Simeon, in the hour of her joy and exaltation (Lk 2:35), now pierced her soul through. John’s own loving heart was likewise torn with grief. Seeing his beloved Teacher and Friend hanging on the cross, among criminals, he could not help but recall his own rash request. It was plain to him now how completely he had not known what he was asking of Jesus, when he had wished to sit at His right hand, and how bitter was the cup he had once so resolutely promised to drink with Him (Mt 20:22).

The evangelists do not say, however, that the Lord’s Mother and His friends wept aloud, as the women of Jerusalem had done. Their weeping would have disturbed the last moments of a face so tenderly loved. Their very grief was above tears: whoever can still weep has not yet been pierced by the full force of the sorrow the human heart is capable of.

For Jesus Christ, too, the sight of His Mother was a fresh torment. Constantly traveling from one country to another to preach, He had not been able to fulfill the ordinary duties of a son, yet He had still been His Mother’s hope and comfort, even in an earthly sense. Now Mary was Mother no longer of a Jesus loved and honored by all, feared even by the Sanhedrin itself, the object of all Israel’s hopes—but of a Jesus abandoned by everyone, disgraced, ending His life at Golgotha, together with criminals!..

Some comfort had to be given her—yet given in such a way that, while serving as a solace for the whole of her life to come, it would not now bring down upon her the mockery and persecution of His enemies, many of whom still stood at the cross. What insolence might they not have allowed themselves, had they learned that the Mother of Jesus was among them? The Lord did not call her Mother.

«Woman» — He said to His Mother — «here is your son.» A glance at John explained these words.

Then, indicating His Mother with His gaze, He said to John: «Here is your mother» (Jn 19:26, 27).

This meant that the dying Sufferer’s last will was that Mother and disciple should remain undivided even after His death, just as they had now been joined together at His cross; that John should take on a son’s duty, and St. Mary show him a mother’s love. The disciple carried out his dying Teacher and Friend’s will with perfect faithfulness; and from that very hour, as he himself testifies in his Gospel, he took the Mother of God into his own home, cared for her until her very death, as tradition relates, and was, to the end, her loving son. It was all the easier for St. John to receive the Mother of God into his household, since his house was rich and well-ordered. For Jesus’s disciples, though they had given up all their possessions to follow Him, had not thereby lost their rights of property, and, when they could, returned to their homes and attended to their own affairs. And for Salome, John’s mother, her son’s adoption by Jesus’s own Mother was itself a source of great joy. For although she had held certain prejudices concerning the Messiah’s earthly kingdom (who had not?), and had received from Jesus Christ, as we have seen, a refusal and a rebuke for asking the impossible (Mt 20:20-22), she had not changed her feelings toward Him in the least, and now, forgetting all danger, stood at Golgotha to witness His last moments.

St. John’s adoption of the Mother of God serves as further proof that St. Joseph was no longer living, and that the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the Gospel (Jn 7:5) were not His blood brothers, as certain heretics have supposed.

At the taking-down from the cross and the burial of Jesus, the evangelists no longer mention the Mother of God, though they speak again of the other women. From this it is concluded that the Mother of God withdrew from Golgotha even before the Lord’s death, soon after John’s adoption took place. Perhaps the Lord Himself gave His disciple a sign to lead His Mother away. For all the firmness of spirit and submission to the will of Providence that her presence at Golgotha, and her approach to the cross, sufficiently attest, a mother’s heart might not have been able to endure the last struggle of life against death still awaiting the God-man. John, too, whose presence was so needed by her, must have withdrawn along with the Mother of God. Yet he appears again at Golgotha, it seems, just before his divine Friend’s death; for, describing the Lord’s last moments in his Gospel as an eyewitness, and supplementing the other evangelists on this point, he relates the Lord’s thirst immediately after the account of the adoption.

In giving comfort to others, the Lord Himself stood in the greatest need of it. Some three hours had now passed since the crucifixion (Mt 27:46); the pain of the wounds, the heaviness in His head, the faintness of heart, the burning throughout His whole body had grown to the utmost degree. Never were prophecies fulfilled with such force as St. David’s words about the Messiah were now being fulfilled in Him: «I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart has become like wax, melting within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and You have brought me down to the dust of death. They pierced my hands and my feet; they have numbered all my bones. Many dogs have surrounded me; they have looked and stared at me» (Ps 21:15-18).

The divine Sufferer, most likely, dwelt Himself on this very prophecy… Strength was ebbing away together with life… His fading gaze still strained toward heaven, but heaven was dark—not a single ray of light, not a single comfort… The righteous Father seemed to have abandoned the Son, suffering for the sins of men… This thought filled to the brim a measure of suffering already terrible: human nature gave way…

«Eloi, Eloi» — the divine Sufferer cried out — «lama sabachthani!» (My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?)

There was no answer… It lay in our own sins: the Lord, as St. Cyprian observes, asked the Father this so that we might question ourselves, and come to know our own sins. «For—the hieromartyr continues—why was the Lord forsaken? So that we might not be forsaken by God; He was forsaken to redeem us from sin and eternal death; forsaken to show the greatest love for mankind; forsaken to prove God’s justice and mercy, to draw our hearts to Him, as an example to all who suffer».

This is the only interpretation of Jesus’s mournful prayer that His followers need to know, and must always remember. The full meaning of this prayer is, and must remain, a mystery to us… Yet there is no trace of doubt or resentment in it. The very repetition of the words, «My God, My God», shows the opposite. What is seen is only a lament over the weight of His sufferings, both outward and inward, and above all over what seemed an eclipse of His divine oneness with the Father, which until now had replaced every comfort, and which, now interrupted, formed the last limit of His inward sufferings and the very summit of the cross; that is, one sees a feeling as truly proper to His humanity as impassibility is proper to His divinity.

The Lord’s prayerful cry gave His enemies fresh occasion for mockery. The monsters pretended not to understand His words, and, on the strength of a certain resemblance in sound between Eloi and the name Elijah, took them as an appeal to that prophet: «Look—they shouted to one another—He is calling Elijah to help Him»—that is, look how, even in dying, He goes on presenting Himself as the Messiah: for everyone believed that Elijah, together with the other prophets, was to appear before the Messiah’s coming, and to be His forerunner and servant; they also believed that this prophet sometimes appears to help those who call upon him.

To the Lord’s other torments was now added a deadly thirst, the consequence of great loss of blood—a herald, in the crucified, of approaching death. Sinking under this new torment, the divine Sufferer cried out: «I thirst!»

This mournful cry, foreseen and foretold by the prophet as well (Ps 69:22), moved one of the soldiers. He at once dipped a sponge in vinegar, fixed it on a hyssop branch, and raised it to Jesus’s lips… The centurion did not hinder his subordinate’s humanity, being ready to allow even more, since the crucified Righteous One drew his attention and respect more and more with each passing hour.

But Jesus’s enemies showed their inhumanity here too. «Leave Him alone—they shouted at the soldier in vexation—He is hoping for Elijah; let us see whether Elijah will come to take Him down from the cross». Even the soldier who had given Jesus Christ the drink, as though afraid of appearing too sympathetic, said: «What does it matter; perhaps Elijah will be slow in coming».

Having tasted a little of the refreshing drink, the Lord then cried out loudly: «It is finished!» This was the last boundary of the divine decrees now being fulfilled upon the Mediator of God and men, and of His very sufferings as well; for His most pure body, for which suffering, by its very perfection, had been unspeakably agonizing, was now ready to part from His soul. Raising His eyes to heaven, Jesus said: «Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit!..» At these divine words His head bowed (as usually happens with the dying), and He «gave up His spirit» (Jn 19:30; Lk 23:46)…

So ended a life the like of which has never been, and never will be, on earth!

Everything the Lord said before His death shows that His mind, in these decisive moments, was fixed on the word of God. In His first struggle, which, as the second Adam, He had to endure in the wilderness at the start of His ministry, the word of God had been His only shield against Satan’s fiery darts (Mt 4:1-10). And now, in His last struggle with the weaknesses of human nature, with the sufferings of body and spirit, the Lord turns again for comfort to that same word of God. In it, as in the very design of His own life and ministry, He sees present, past, and future: He sees what still remained to be endured for mankind’s good; He sees, at last, the fulfillment of all God’s great decrees, and, as a conqueror who «has already trodden the winepress of God’s fury» (Is 63:2), cries out: «It is finished!» Need one point out how much this cry means? The whole history of the human race must serve as its explanation; but eternity alone will fully unfold what was accomplished now on the small hill of Golgotha. The apostle Paul says that on the cross the handwriting of mankind’s sins was torn apart (Col 2:13-14): it was torn apart in that very instant when the Lord uttered: «It is finished!»

Amid all the ferocity of His sufferings, amid all His humiliation, the Son of Man appears, right up to His last moment, in full consciousness of His divine dignity and great purpose. His last glance is fixed on heaven, His last cry addressed to the Father! We see the almighty Envoy of God, from whom, as He Himself said, no one can take life against His own will (Jn 10:18). And so, if He now gives it up, He gives it up Himself, freely, and only once His great work is finished—gives it up not to the angel of death, but to the Father, who gave Him «to have life in Himself» (Jn 5:26)…

The opinion, however, that the God-man’s death on the cross was hastened by a supernatural divine act, so that His body, which was to rise again, might not undergo the breaking of the legs, cannot be accepted, though it has been voiced even by ancient teachers of the Church, and seems to be supported by certain circumstances of the Gospel history itself (the shortness of the Lord’s time on the cross, Pilate’s surprise that He was already dead, and the centurion’s surprise that His death followed so suddenly after His loud cries, and the like). Is such an opinion worthy of the divine Sufferer? We have seen how resolutely He refused every supernatural means of His own defense; can one, after this, suppose that He made use of something supernatural to shorten His own sufferings—that His inward cross should remain, so to speak, unfinished? No! He who taught others that «whoever endures to the end will be saved» no doubt endured to the end Himself: the leader in the contest cannot fall short of those who contend under him. The Author of our salvation was made perfect through sufferings (Hebr 2:10); and so, by shortening His sufferings, we would, in effect, be shortening His perfection. And are there not enough natural causes that could have hastened the God-man’s death on the cross? Scourging alone, as we have noted, not infrequently ended in the death of the one scourged. Is it any wonder that life gave out in One who, besides scourging, endured a multitude of other torments—who, even in the garden of Gethsemane, had been so exhausted by His bloody sweat that He needed a strengthening angel, and who, on the way to Golgotha, grew so weak under the weight of the cross that even His inhuman enemies noticed His life was in danger? If the cross sometimes did not kill quickly, one must remember whom it failed to kill quickly, and what sort of men were usually crucified. The loud cries of the crucified, far from showing an excess of vital strength, are, as experienced physiologists observe, an unmistakable sign of approaching death. Those crucified with the Lord were bound to remain alive longer, if only because they had not been subjected to scourging, and for a few other reasons besides.