Miraculous Signs and Their Consequences

As long as the God-man remained alive, nature seemed unwilling to disturb His last moments with extraordinary events, and suffered with her Lord in silence: only the sun, in Chrysostom’s phrase, could not bear to shine upon so inhuman a spectacle. But no sooner had the Lord given up His spirit into the Father’s hands than a whole series of signs began to unfold, showing the entire world that one of the crosses now standing on Golgotha was incomparably holier than the Temple of Jerusalem.

The first sign was an earthquake, so violent that many of the rocky cliffs common to the Judean landscape split apart, and the tombs cut into them opened, to receive the power of the One whom His own tomb could not contain… This event might, in a certain sense, already have been expected after the extraordinary darkening of the air, to which it was evidently connected; nevertheless, it stood as a striking testimony from heaven itself to the innocence and divine dignity of the crucified Jesus. If the Lord makes the natural forces of nature His own angels and servants, then, for all their limitation, they become direct heralds of God’s will and glory, and mortals must heed their message as the voice of God Himself. Only the great Ruler of the world, who commands «the earth to shake», could command it to shake at the very moment Jesus Christ gave up His spirit.

Terrible in itself, the earthquake was more terrible still if the tremors underground (as may be supposed) followed immediately upon Jesus Christ’s death. The crosses, shaken by the earthquake, made for a dreadful sight at that moment: from a distance it might have seemed that the crucified were straining to come down from their crosses.

Three centuries later, Cyril of Jerusalem said, before the assembled Christians of Jerusalem, that the rocks surrounding Golgotha still bore the cracks made by the earthquake at the time of Christ’s sufferings. Josephus, too, tells of an earthquake in Judea occurring at the same time as the one we are describing, which, in his words, caused great devastation.

The unconquerable power of the cross did not stop at the trembling earth, but reached into the Temple of Jerusalem, and produced an event which, to «those who have eyes to see», showed most plainly that the Messiah awaited by the Jewish people had already come. The inner veil of the temple, which separated the Holy of Holies from the sanctuary, suddenly tore from top to bottom (so that the ark of the covenant, the cherubim, and the other holy objects kept in the Holy of Holies, which no one was permitted to see on pain of death, now became, of necessity, visible to every priest present in the temple).

To grasp fully the inward relation of this event to the Messiah’s death, and the effect it might have had on the minds of the Jews, one must call to mind the structure of the Temple of Jerusalem, the Jews’ own way of thinking about the temple and the Messiah, and the whole spirit of the religion of Moses.

The «Holy of Holies» was the last of the temple’s three sections, inaccessible even to the priests themselves, who were permitted to enter only the Holy Place (the second section), and, in the Jews’ understanding, represented heaven, where God Himself dwells. The veil separating the Holy of Holies was woven of every possible color, and, according to Josephus, represented the whole world; it was lifted only for the high priest, once a year, on the «Day of Atonement», when he came into the very presence of God with the blood of a bull slain for the sins of the whole people (Hebr 9:7). Above the ark of the covenant was supposed the unseen dwelling of Jehovah, who, as King of the Hebrew people, chosen by Him as His special possession, sometimes revealed His will from that very place. In this section of the temple there was no light at all: a symbol of the incomprehensibility of Jehovah, who had told even Moses that no man could see His face and live (Ex 33:20). For this reason, entry into the Holy of Holies, except by the high priests, was forbidden to everyone on pain of death.

On the other hand, the Jews expected that the Messiah would redeem the people of Israel from all its sins, so that no more sacrifices would be needed (Lk 1:76-77), which is why, among His other names, they called Him the great high priest. They believed, too, that the Messiah would unveil the face of Jehovah, resolve every doubt concerning religion, and establish a new, better worship; that the structure of the temple would, in consequence, either change or be done away with entirely; for He Himself would take the place of the temple, and His flesh the place of the veil.

And so the veil, torn by the hand of God Himself, and the Holy of Holies laid open by His own unseen power, showed everyone—the priests above all—that God no longer desired to dwell in darkness (Hebr 8:5-6), no longer wished to be honored as He had been honored until now, with the blood of goats and bulls (Hebr 10:4, 5, 7); that the true, sole sacrifice—the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world—had now been offered on Golgotha for the whole world, and that the once-inaccessible throne of the dread Jehovah must now become a throne of grace, accessible to all (Hebr 10:29, 7:19-20).

The priests on duty in the temple must have been struck with horror at this event, unprecedented in their experience. The torn veil was, no doubt, soon replaced with a new one, and the people never saw it; but word of the event could not remain confined to the narrow circle of the temple’s own ministers, and no doubt spread among the people, creating a favorable disposition toward Christianity.

As for the manner in which the veil was torn, there is no need to see here a separate miracle. When, by the action of God’s own omnipotence, the whole earth shook and the rocky cliffs split apart, the veil—which, by the strict requirements of the law regarding the inaccessibility of the Holy of Holies, was fastened tightly on every side to the entrance it covered—could easily have torn at the same moment. According to Jerome’s testimony, the Gospel to the Hebrews (which has not come down to us) recorded that the very lintel of the Holy of Holies, to which the veil was fastened, split in two. This account, entirely consistent with the circumstances of the earthquake, explains how the veil was torn.

At last, the effects of what seemed a merely natural earthquake extended beyond the bounds of nature itself—as though so that unbelief, whether Jewish or Christian, might have no way to suppose that these extraordinary signs had simply gathered of themselves around Jesus’s cross. We speak of the resurrection of the dead, with which, according to St. Matthew’s testimony, the series of miraculous signs at Golgotha came to its close. The more extraordinary this event, the more some would wish to know it in every detail; but revelation, as in many other cases, does not answer to curiosity. It remains for us, then, only to set down a few accounts of this event from the ancient teachers of the Church. But first let us repeat the evangelist’s own words: «And the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection» (of Jesus Christ) «they entered the holy city and appeared to many» (Mt 27:52-53).

Who were these risen ones, and how many were there?

From St. Matthew’s words it is clear only that they were many, and that all of them were saints; who exactly, and how many, is not shown. Some of the ancient teachers, therefore, supposed that at this time many patriarchs and prophets rose—especially those bound to Jesus Christ by kinship, such as Abraham and David, or those who had served as a type of His own person, such as Job and Melchizedek. Others, considering how hard it would be to recognize those long dead, thought that the saints raised at this time belonged to the number of the recently deceased, such as Simeon who received the Christ Child, Anna the prophetess, Joseph the Betrothed, and the like. It may be added that only those buried in the vicinity of Jerusalem rose; for the most ancient tradition says that the rocks (in which the tombs lay) split apart only in the area around Jerusalem. The so-called Gospel of Nicodemus points specifically, in this case, to the resurrection of two sons of Simeon who received the Christ Child.

When did the resurrection of the saints take place?

Here too some of the ancients believed that they rose together with Jesus Christ, who, after His own death, descended into hell and led them out from there with Him. The chief ground of this belief, besides their own understanding of Jesus Christ’s descent into hell and of hell itself, was the apostle’s words: «He» (Christ) «is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything He might have first place» (Col 1:18). But the greater part of the Fathers of the Church have always held that the resurrection of the saints followed immediately upon Jesus Christ’s death. This opinion agrees far better with the evangelist’s own words, which do not separate this event in time from the earthquake and the tearing of the veil. The apostle’s words quoted above do not contradict it; otherwise they would contradict the resurrection of all those who miraculously rose from the dead before Christ’s own Resurrection, or were taken up into heaven, like Elijah and Enoch.

The remaining questions—concerning the saints’ appearance in Jerusalem, the persons to whom they appeared, their subsequent life, and the like—will meet us in the history of Jesus Christ’s own Resurrection, to which they properly belong. Rather than indulging curiosity, it is far more useful to consider how magnificent these signs were that announced the God-man’s death, and how well they matched the dignity of the Son of God, the purpose of His coming into the world, and the spirit of the religion He proclaimed.

Abandoned by everyone, mocked, covered with wounds, dying on the cross among criminals, this Sufferer is the only-begotten Son of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made and all things are held together, the God of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible: and now His dying cry shakes heaven and earth, all of nature bears Him witness of submission as its Master, and solemnly acknowledges Him as its Lord, even on the cross!..

This Sufferer, dying amid abuse and torment, is the great Mediator of God and men, who, having taken upon Himself the sins of the whole human race, must enter the sanctuary once, not with the blood (Hebr 9:8-12) of goats and bulls, but with His own, to appear before the face of God (Hebr 10:24), and then, having abolished every sacrifice by His own offering, leave behind Him, open to all, a way to the throne of grace once inaccessible (Hebr 10:19). And so, when the sacrifice of Golgotha has been offered, the Temple of Jerusalem—the tabernacle of the Old Covenant, which was to stand only until the Mediator of the New Covenant should come (Hebr 9:10)—now shakes to its very foundation, «signifying the removal of what is shaken, as of things that have already been made» (Hebr 12:27). The veil hiding the Holy of Holies is torn from top to bottom; the throne of Jehovah comes forth from the darkness surrounding it—let the «priests of the order of Aaron» know, let the whole people of Israel know, that the «High Priest of the order of Melchizedek» has already come and offered His sacrifice, that the time of the New Covenant has come for the sons of Israel—a covenant to be written, not on tablets of stone, but on hearts (Hebr 8:9-10, 10:16).

The Sufferer dying on the cross is the resurrection and the life of all who believe in His name; He tasted death for this very purpose, that by His own death He might destroy the «power of death, and deliver those who, through fear of death, had been subject to bondage all their lives» (Hebr 2:14-15). And so, no sooner had Jesus Christ entered the realm of death than its power began to give way: tombs opened, the bodies of the departed rose, and by their rising bore witness that all authority had been given to Jesus Christ, not only on earth but in heaven as well (Mt 28:18), that He holds «the keys of hell and of death» (Apok 1:18), and that the day will surely come when all who are in their graves will hear the voice of the Son of God, and, hearing it, will live (Jn 5:25). The appearance of the risen ones in Jerusalem must have convinced everyone that the Sadducees, who at that time were quite lively with their comfortless doctrine, both deceived and were deceived, «saying that there is no resurrection» (Act 23:8).

The dying Jesus is the Founder and Head of the new covenant of grace, in which sin no longer overcomes love for mankind, in which, where «sin increased, grace increased all the more» (Rom 5:20), in which the Son of God appears not only as Judge of the world, but as its Savior; and how gentle were the signs that surrounded the cross of Jesus the Savior! The sky darkens, but pours out no fire and brimstone on unfaithful Jerusalem, as it once poured out on the cities that had provoked God to wrath; the earth trembles, but the murderers of Jesus Christ stand upon it just as safely as His weeping friends. The very tombs open—not to swallow up alive the persecutors of the Son of God, who deserved eternal death—but from them rise hosts of the righteous, to preach, by their very appearance, repentance to Jerusalem, and faith in the Messiah it had rejected.

Not such were the signs of the Old Testament. There, small children mocked an aged prophet’s natural infirmity—and suddenly a she-bear came out of the wilderness and tore apart the children the prophet had cursed (2King 2:24). There, two sons of Aaron brought strange fire to the altar instead of the sacred fire—and were themselves consumed at once by fire from heaven, and their own father was forbidden even to mourn their punishment (Num 3:25). There, those who despised the person of Moses—only a faithful servant in God’s house, as the apostle observes (Hebr 3:5)—went down alive into hell (Num 16:35); here, those who despised, who murdered, the only-begotten Son of God remain alive.

Such are the signs of God the Redeemer! Such is the beneficent spirit of Jesus’s religion, unrecognized for a time even by the apostles themselves! (Mt 12:4.) Such is the sacrifice of love, before which the wrongs of men are remembered no more! (Jer 31:31-34; Hebr 8:12.)

The example of trembling creation was not lost on rational beings either. Many of the Jews standing at Golgotha, seeing these terrible signs, were struck with bewilderment and dread. In place of abuse and slander, silence and stillness now reigned around the cross of the sleeping Jesus. Everywhere, people could be seen returning to the city with bowed heads. Those more easily moved wept and beat their breasts (Lk 23:48). The belief that the crucified Jesus was the Son of God began once more to stir with its full force. Many now, even among those who had reviled Him, would have said, from the bottom of their hearts: «Come down from the cross; we will believe in You»—but the lion of Judah had already fallen asleep; and who would rouse Him now?..

The Roman soldiers, too, now saw that the One whose dead body they were guarding was hardly less than the greatest of all their own gods. They did not know the God of Israel, but the God of all nature, at whose command the earth was now shaking, is known to everyone. Standing on the trembling ground of Golgotha, and conscious of their own guilt before the dead Righteous One, the guards, overcome with terror, did not know what to do, but declared with one voice that the crucified Sufferer must be the «Son of God» (Mt 27:54).

The Roman centurion, the officer in charge of the guard, was struck with especial awe and wonder. His attention had been drawn to Jesus Christ even before (Mk 15:39) these terrible signs—probably owing to the procurator’s own verdict of His innocence, and to the remarkable words the Lord had spoken on the way to Golgotha, and from the cross. If he did not forbid his soldiers from joining the chief priests in mockery, he himself took no part in it. As St. Mark notes (Mk 15:39), the centurion stood directly opposite the cross when Jesus Christ gave up His spirit, watching, no doubt, not only His last words but the very expression of the God-man’s face. Jesus’s loud cries before His death greatly astonished him. Inferring from them an abundance of bodily strength still remaining in Him, he could explain the death that immediately followed only as the favor of the gods, who had chosen to end their favorite’s sufferings. At last, the terrible earthquake, scattering whatever doubts still lingered in the centurion’s soul, brought his faith to its full strength and completeness. Acknowledging, together with the other soldiers, that Jesus truly was the Son of God, he did not stop at this cold acknowledgment, but aloud «glorified» (Mk 15:39) God, who was now showing mortals, in so terrible a manner, that sooner or later He rewards virtue and punishes evil, that He sometimes allows the righteous to suffer, even to die, but even in death itself shows that «their hope is full of immortality» (Solom 3:4).

This immediate passage from fear and wonder to the glorifying of God proves that the centurion had already been marked by piety before this, and, by his own cast of mind, deserved the honor of standing guard at Christ’s cross. There is no doubt that the words «Son of God», on his lips at that moment, carried no higher a meaning than the one Pilate himself had given them; but ancient tradition affirms that Longinus (the centurion’s name) later came to know, in Jesus, the true Son of God, and sealed with his own blood the firmness of the confession he had made on Golgotha. The Church celebrates his sufferings on October 16.

With the centurion’s confession, the visible effect of these terrible signs on the hearts of those surrounding Jesus’s cross came to its end.

But did these wondrous events have no effect at all on the chief priests and elders of the Jews—the very men who, one might say, were their chief cause, having, in their madness, lifted the Lord of glory onto the cross?

Sadly, one cannot but answer this important question in the negative. At the very moment when the sky was darkening, the earth was shaking, the rocky cliffs were splitting apart, the tombs were opening, and the dead were rising, at that very same moment the chief priests were occupied with the propriety of the feast, which required that the bodies of the crucified not remain too long before the eyes of a triumphant Jerusalem! — with how to shorten the lives of the unfortunate men! — with a fresh disgrace for Jesus, intending to bury His body together with the bodies of the criminals! A sight terrible to any heart that loves mankind, that does not wish to see, among men, monsters worthy of hell!

«Such—St. Chrysostom exclaims—is the power of envy! Jesus Christ’s enemies had, once and for all, doomed themselves to every kind of wickedness». But envy alone did not rule the hearts of the chief priests and scribes; in them, too, lived a superstitious attachment to the traditions of the elders, to their own opinions, which Jesus Christ had constantly rejected as harmful; in them was a greedy love of gain, bound up with the oppression of their neighbors, which He had often exposed; there was personal hatred and malice; and there was, at last, shame—at appearing before the whole Jewish people as the murderers of the Messiah, or, at the very least, of a prophet. So many demons (for the holy Fathers rightly call the passions by this name)—to what blindness and hardness could they not bring hearts already long hardened, cold to truth and virtue, given over to fanaticism or to sensuality, accustomed to turning religion itself into an instrument of the basest passions! Pharaoh, Dathan, and Abiram had long ago given an example of the very blindness and stubbornness now seen in the Jewish elders. An evil heart is never at a loss for objections against even the plainest truths, when those truths are unbearable to it. And what could have been more unbearable to Jesus’s persecutors than His divine dignity? In the minds of the scribes and Pharisees there already lay a ready store of objections against Jesus Christ’s own miracles; the very same objections they could use against the wonders now worked for His sake. Nothing prevented these coarse fanatics from thinking and saying that the present signs, if not natural occurrences, were the work of dark powers, embittered at the loss of their own confederate, as their malice had long painted Jesus to be (Mk 3:22; Mt 9:34; Lk 11:15). For the Sadducees, who denied the existence of spirits and the immortality of the soul, these signs might carry no particular weight, if only because Jesus Christ had died: for, by their own teaching, everything ended with a man’s death. The signs had produced no visible change at all in Jesus Christ’s own fate: His body remained quietly on the cross, His wounds lay open; it was subjected to every abuse. «A plain sign—the scribes might have reasoned—that the darkening of the sun and the earthquake have nothing to do with Jesus’s death». Besides, among all the signs, not one had brought ruin upon any of Jesus’s enemies: they all remained alive, unharmed, untouched—one more proof, to coarse hearts, that these signs were not divine, were not for Jesus’s sake; for, recalling the events of their own history, they had seen that men who provoked God to anger were struck down at once by death. That God’s omnipotence now spared them, granting them time for repentance, that it is not proper for the Redeeming Messiah to avenge Himself on His personal enemies by execution—such thoughts were beyond Caiaphas, who could purchase the dignity of high priest with silver, but could not acquire a true knowledge of God and His perfections, of the Messiah and the great purpose of His coming into the world. Nor should we forget that the most striking of the signs that followed Jesus Christ’s death—the resurrection of the dead—was not yet known at this time.

If, despite all that has been said, the chief priests’ hardness of heart should still seem incomprehensible to anyone, one must remember that history, unable to see into the heart, judges a man by his deeds; and deeds do not always agree with the heart, or at least often fail to express with precision the true state of the heart of the one who acts. Many of the enemies of Jesus humbled will, for a time, remain enemies of Jesus glorified; no visible change will yet occur in their lives, but from this one cannot conclude that no change at all had occurred in their hearts. Suppose that Caiaphas’s own heart was struck hard by the thought: are the signs that took place at Golgotha not from God? Even if no complete change occurred in his way of thinking, mere cunning alone would have led this proud Sadducee, given over to sensual pleasure (Act 5:17), to conceal his own doubts, to continue, even against his conscience, a business once begun with such solemnity, and to follow, willingly or not, the course of events. After the Lord’s Ascension into heaven, history itself shows a considerable change in the chief priests’ conduct toward Christianity: they became less harsh toward the apostles, less resolute in persecuting Christians. It is quite likely that such a change in conduct (though still ambiguous) had long been preceded by some change of mind. Besides, we see that, after the Lord’s Ascension, a great many of the Jewish priests were converted to Christianity (Act 6:7); and yet it is well known that the priestly order had been among Jesus Christ’s chief persecutors. What led these men to believe in the Crucified One? Probably not only the report of Jesus’s Resurrection, but also the terrible signs of which they themselves had been witnesses.