The Final Events at Jesus’s Cross

Meanwhile, as some repented more or less, and others remained obstinate, the terrible day was drawing toward evening—an evening already significant as the close of the first day of Passover, made still more sacred by the fact that it ushered in the Sabbath, which the Jews called the queen of feasts (Jn 19:31). For the great multitude celebrating the feast, who were in the habit of walking along the city walls and gathering on the hills surrounding it, it would have been most unpleasant if the crucified were to remain on their crosses the next day as well, in the middle of Golgotha, so near the gates of Jerusalem. Besides, this would have broken the law commanding that executed criminals be buried before sunset. The chief priests felt this impropriety, and resolved to shorten the lives of the crucified, so that their bodies might be buried before the Sabbath began. Since the execution now under way depended entirely on the procurator, his consent was needed to shorten the lives of the crucified as well. The chief priests were not ashamed to ask Pilate about this matter once more, a task better suited to the common executioners of criminals than to the chief ministers of the God of Israel. This shame was compensated by the malicious pleasure of causing the crucified Jesus fresh torment (the chief priests had gone to Pilate even before His death) and of having His dead body in their own hands. There is no doubt that they would have buried Him together with the criminals, in some vile place, or perhaps even denied Him burial altogether, to make Him an object of universal contempt, for nothing was more abhorrent to the Jews than an «unburied corpse».

Pilate, without the least objection, granted the chief priests’ request, which, by both Jewish and Roman custom, was entirely reasonable. Fresh soldiers were sent to carry out the order. St. John was still at Jesus’s cross when they arrived at Golgotha. His own account will now serve as the sole source for our narrative.

Both criminals crucified with Jesus were still alive, so the soldiers at once broke their legs. Something different met their eyes when they came to Jesus Christ: a complete absence of movement and breath, closed eyes, a bowed head—all bore witness that He had already died. The Roman soldiers did not undertake to torment a lifeless body, or to kill a dead man. Only one of them, wishing, no doubt, to make certain of His death, struck Jesus Christ in the side with a spear. Since no movement, no reflex of the nerves, followed this blow, and since the blow itself was (probably) forceful and lethal, no doubt remained, for either Jesus’s friends or His enemies, that He had truly died. Yet blood and water, or a watery fluid ordinarily found in the human body, at once flowed from the wound. Such a flow of blood, together with the words Jesus Christ spoke to Thomas after His Resurrection, «Bring your hand and put it into My side» (Jn 20:27), shows that the wound was deep, while the flow of a fluid resembling water suggests that Jesus Christ was pierced on the left side, in the region of the heart. Since a dead body, however many wounds it is given, never sheds blood, some of the Fathers of the Church, in godly wisdom, held that blood and water flowed from Jesus Christ’s body by the direct action of God’s own power, in token of the mystery of the Eucharist.

St. John, relating this event as an eyewitness, expresses himself with particular force, and draws the reader’s attention beforehand with these words: «And he who saw it (John) has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he tells the truth, so that you may believe» (Jn 19:35).

What is the purpose of this remark? Of what does the evangelist wish to convince his readers? Why was it necessary to point out, with such emphasis, the piercing of Jesus’s body on the cross with a spear, and the flow of blood and water from it?

To explain this, it has been supposed since ancient times that the evangelist’s thought and remark were directed against the Docetist heretics, who, holding the human body to be the product of an evil principle, maintained that Jesus Christ (in their view, one of the aeons) took upon Himself not a true human body, but only an (ethereal) phantom of one, which, though nailed to the cross, suffered no real torment at all. John, therefore, as an eyewitness, wished to assure his readers, as a warning against the Docetists, that Jesus Christ’s body, both during His life and after His death, was entirely like a real human body, made of flesh and blood. This view is confirmed not only by history (for the Docetist heresy arose in the first century, and existed precisely in Asia Minor, where John’s Gospel was written), but also by certain passages in John’s own epistles, which are likewise quite noticeably directed against Docetism (1Jn 4:1-3). It may also be, as some suppose, that at the time John’s Gospel was written there were people who doubted the reality of Jesus Christ’s death—either because He had remained on the cross only a short time and had not undergone the breaking of the legs, or because of a prejudice borrowed from the Jews, that death was unbefitting the Messiah’s dignity. To lead such people out of their error, John’s account of the piercing of Jesus’s side with a spear served as a most powerful means, one that must have convinced even the most doubting that the Son of God, in obedience to the Father, had humbled Himself not only to the cross, but to death on the cross.

But apart from these motives and aims, St. John could not but fix his own attention, and everyone else’s, on the event we are examining, if only because in it, as he himself observes, two important prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah were fulfilled. The first of these declared: «not a bone of his shall be broken»; the other: «they shall look on him whom they pierced».

The first of these prophecies, given by Moses (Ex 12:10), referred properly to the paschal lamb, which the Israelites were to roast whole, without breaking or crushing a single bone in it. In St. John’s understanding, the paschal lamb was, in this respect, a type divinely ordained beforehand of the true Lamb of God, now slain on Golgotha, of whom likewise not a single bone was broken. Without going deeply into the nature of the Old Testament types, many of which were fulfilled in Jesus Christ during His sufferings, and which were noted, around the time of Christ’s coming, even by the Jewish rabbis themselves, let us say only that the unbroken bones, entirely unnecessary in the paschal lamb, were not merely fitting but necessary for the true Lamb of God—Jesus Christ. St. John had all the more reason to dwell on this type, since he had heard John the Baptist call Him the Lamb of God, and since Jesus Christ’s death occurred on the day of Passover, when the paschal lamb was slain.

The second prophecy is taken from the prophetic vision of Zechariah (Zah 12:10), who, describing the future deliverance of the Hebrew people from the calamities surrounding it, says that at that time the repentant Israelites will look with weeping upon the One whom they had once hated, insulted, and pierced. From Zechariah’s prophecy it is not clear who exactly was, or would be, pierced by the unbelieving Jews, before whom they would later bring their repentance. But the whole description is such that, on reading it, one’s thoughts inevitably settle on Jesus Christ, pierced on the cross—all the more so since the history of the Hebrew people offers no other figure to whom the prophet’s words could plausibly be applied.