C8 - Crucifixion and Burial of Jesus

Preliminary Reflection: Word and Event in the Passion Narrative

All four Gospels tell of the hours that Jesus spent hanging on the Cross and of his death - they agree on the broad outlines of what happened, but there are differences of emphasis in the detail. What is remarkable about these accounts is the multitude of Old Testament allusions and quotations they contain: word of God and event are deeply interwoven. The facts are, so to speak, permeated with the word - with meaning; and the converse is also true: what previously had been merely word - often beyond our capacity to understand - now becomes reality, its meaning unlocked.

Underpinning this particular way of recounting events is the learning process that the infant Church had to undergo as she came into being. At first, Jesus’ death on the Cross had simply been an inexplicable fact that placed his entire message and his whole figure in question. The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35) presents this journeying, talking and searching together as the process by which the soul’s darkness is gradually illumined by walking with Jesus (v. 15). It becomes clear that Moses and the Prophets - “all the Scriptures” - had spoken of the events of Christ’s Passion (vv. 26-27): the “absurd” now yields its profound meaning. In the apparently senseless event, the real sense of human journeying is truly opened up: meaning triumphs over the power of destruction and evil.

What we find concisely expressed in Jesus’ great dialogue with the two disciples is the process of searching and maturing that was to take place in the infant Church. In the light of the Resurrection, in the light of this new gift of journeying alongside the Lord, Christ’s followers had to learn to read the Old Testament afresh: “No one had reckoned with the possibility of the Messiah dying on the Cross. Or had the relevant indications in sacred Scripture merely been overlooked?” (Reiser, Bibelkritik, p. 332). It was not the words of Scripture that prompted the narration of facts: rather, it was the facts themselves, at first unintelligible, that paved the way toward a fresh understanding of Scripture.

This discovery of the harmony between word and event not only determines the structure of the Passion narratives and the Gospels in general: it is constitutive of the Christian faith. Without it, the emergence of the Church could not be understood, the Church whose message acquired - and continues to acquire - its credibility and historical importance precisely from this interplay of meaning and history: where that connection is severed, the fundamental structure of Christian faith collapses.

A great many Old Testament allusions are woven into the Passion narrative. Two of them are of fundamental significance, because they span, as it were, the whole of the Passion event and shed light upon it theologically: Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. So let us begin by briefly examining these two texts, which are fundamental for the unity between Scripture (Old Testament) and Christ-event (New Testament).

Psalm 22 is Israel’s great cry of anguish, in the midst of its sufferings, addressed to the apparently silent God. The word “cry”, which is of central importance, especially in Mark’s account, for the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, sets, as it were, the tonality of this psalm. “Why are you so far … from the words of my groaning”, we read in the opening lines. In verses 2 and 5 this idea of calling out comes back. Now we can hear the great anguish of the one suffering on account of God’s seeming absence. Simply calling out or pleading is not enough here. In extreme anguish, prayer inevitably becomes a loud cry.

Verses 6-8 speak of the mockery directed at the psalmist. This mockery becomes a challenge to God and thus an even sharper ridicule of the one who is suffering: “Let [the Lord] rescue him, for he delights in him”: helpless suffering is cited as proof that God takes no delight in the one being tortured. Verse 18 speaks of casting lots for his garments, as actually happened at the foot of the Cross.

But then the cry of anguish changes into a profession of trust, for in the space of three verses a resounding answer to prayer is anticipated and celebrated. First: “From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear [God]” (v. 25). The early Church recognized herself in that great assembly which celebrates the granting of the suppliant’s prayer, his rescue - the Resurrection! Two further surprising elements now follow. Not only does salvation come to the psalmist, but it leads to the “afflicted [eating] and [being] satisfied” (v. 26). There is more: “All the ends of the earth shall … turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him” (v. 27).

In these last two verses, how could the early Church fail to recognize, in the first place, the “afflicted [eating] and [being] satisfied” as a sign of the mysterious new meal that the Lord had given them in the Eucharist? And secondly how could she fail to see there the unexpected development that the peoples of the earth were converted to the God of Israel, to the God of Jesus Christ - that the Church of Christ was gathered together from all peoples? Eucharist (praise and thanksgiving: v. 25; eating and being satisfied: v. 26) and universal salvation (v. 27) appear as God’s great answer to prayer in response to Jesus’ cry. It is important always to keep in mind the vast span of events portrayed in this psalm, if we are to understand why it occupies such a central place in the story of the crucifixion.

The second fundamental text - Isaiah 53 - we have already considered in connection with Jesus’ high-priestly prayer. In Marius Reiser’s meticulous analysis of this mysterious passage, we can relive the early Christians’ astonishment on seeing how one step after another of the path of Jesus Christ is foretold here. The Prophet - viewed through the lens of all the methods of modern critical textual analysis - speaks as an evangelist.

Let us now move on to a brief consideration of the essential elements of the crucifixion accounts.

Jesus on the Cross

The first of Jesus’ words from the Cross: “Father, forgive them”

The first of Jesus’ words from the Cross, spoken almost at the very moment when the act of crucifixion was being carried out, is a plea for the forgiveness of those who treat him thus: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). What the Lord had preached in the Sermon on the Mount, he now puts into practice. He knows no hatred. He does not call for revenge. He begs forgiveness for those who nail him to the Cross, and he justifies his plea by adding: “They know not what they do”.

This theme of “not knowing” returns in Saint Peter’s sermon in the Acts of the Apostles. He begins by reminding the crowd that had gathered after the healing of the lame man in the portico of Solomon that they had “denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer” to be granted to them (3:14). You “killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (3:15). After this painful reminder, which forms part of his Pentecost sermon and which cut his hearers to the heart (cf. 2:37), he continues: “Now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers” (3:17).

Once again, the theme of “not knowing” appears in one of Saint Paul’s autobiographical reflections. He recalls that he himself “formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted” Jesus; then he continues: “but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim 1:13). In view of his earlier self-assurance as a perfect disciple of the Law who knew and lived by the Scriptures, these are strong words; he who had studied under the best masters and who might reasonably have considered himself a real expert on the Scriptures, has to acknowledge, in retrospect, that he was ignorant. Yet his very ignorance is what saved him and made him fit for conversion and forgiveness. This combination of expert knowledge and deep ignorance certainly causes us to ponder. It reveals the whole problem of knowledge that remains self-sufficient and so does not arrive at Truth itself, which ought to transform man.

In a different way again, we encounter this same combination of knowledge and failure to understand in the story of the wise men from the East. The chief priests and scribes know exactly where the Messiah is to be born. But they do not recognize him. Despite their knowledge, they remain blind (cf. Mt 2:4-6).

Clearly this mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of material expertise and deep incomprehension, occurs in every period of history. For this reason, what Jesus says about ignorance, and the examples that can be found in the various passages from Scripture, is bound to be unsettling for the supposedly learned today. Are we not blind precisely as people with knowledge? Is it not on account of our knowledge that we are incapable of recognizing Truth itself, which tries to reach us through what we know? Do we not recoil from the pain of that heartrending Truth of which Peter spoke in his Pentecost sermon? Ignorance diminishes guilt, and it leaves open the path to conversion. But it does not simply excuse, because at the same time it reveals a deadening of the heart that resists the call of Truth. All the more, then, it remains a source of comfort for all times and for all people that both in the case of those who genuinely did not know (his executioners) and in the case of those who did know (the people who condemned him), the Lord makes their ignorance the motive for his plea for forgiveness: he sees it as a door that can open us to conversion.

Jesus is mocked

Three groups of mockers are mentioned in the Gospel. The first are the passers-by. They remind the Lord of his words about the destruction of the Temple: “Aha, you who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” (Mk 15:29-30). By taunting the Lord in this way, they express their contempt for his powerless state; they bring home to him once more how powerless he is. At the same time they try to lead him into temptation, as the devil himself had done: “Save yourself!” Exercise your power! They do not realize that at this very moment the destruction of the Temple is being accomplished and that the new Temple is rising up before them.

At the end of the Passion, as Jesus dies, the veil of the Temple is torn in two - so the Synoptics tell us - from top to bottom (Mt 27:51; Mk 15:38; Lk 23:45). Probably it is the inner of the two Temple veils that is meant here, the one that seals off the Holy of Holies from human access. Only once a year is it permitted for the high priest to pass through the veil, to enter the presence of the Most High, and to utter the Holy Name.

This veil, at the very moment of Jesus’ death, is torn in two from top to bottom. There are two things we learn from this: on the one hand, it becomes apparent that the era of the old Temple and its sacrifices is over. In place of symbols and rituals that point ahead to the future, the reality has now come, the crucified Jesus who reconciles us all with the Father. At the same time, though, the tearing of the Temple veil means that the pathway to God is now open. Previously God’s face had been concealed. Only in a symbolic way could the high priest once a year enter his presence. Now God himself has removed the veil and revealed himself in the crucified Jesus as the one who loves to the point of death. The pathway to God is open.

The second group of mockers consists of members of the Sanhedrin. Matthew mentions all three elements: priests, scribes, and elders. They formulate their mockery using language drawn from the Book of Wisdom, the second chapter of which tells of the just man who stands in the way of the wicked life of the others, who calls himself a son of God and is handed over to suffering (Wis 2:10-20). The members of the Sanhedrin, taking their cue from these words, now say of Jesus, the Crucified One: “He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’ ” (Mt 27:42-43; cf. Wis 2:18). Without realizing it, the mockers thereby acknowledge that Jesus is truly the one of whom the Book of Wisdom speaks. His situation of outward helplessness proves him to be the true Son of God.

We may add that the author of the Book of Wisdom could have been familiar with Plato’s speculations from his work on statecraft, in which he asks what would become of a perfectly just person in this world, and he comes to the conclusion that such a person would be crucified (The Republic II, 361e - 362a). The Book of Wisdom may have taken up this idea from the philosopher and introduced it into the Old Testament, so that it now points directly to Jesus. It is in the mockery that the mystery of Jesus Christ is proved true. Just as he refused to be induced by the devil to throw himself down from the parapet of the Temple (Mt 4:5-7; Lk 4:9-13), so now he refuses to yield to a similar temptation. He knows that God will indeed deliver him, but not in the way these people imagine. The Resurrection will be the moment when God raises him from death and accredits him as Son.

The third group of mockers consists of the two men crucified alongside Jesus, to whom Matthew and Mark refer using the same word - lestes (robber) - that John uses for Barabbas (cf. Mt 27:38; Mk 15:27; Jn 18:40). This clearly shows that they are regarded as resistance fighters, to whom the Romans, in order to criminalize them, simply attach the label “robber”. They are crucified with Jesus because they have been found guilty of the same crime: resistance to Roman power.

The offense attributed to Jesus, though, is of a different kind from that of the two “robbers”, who may have taken part in Barabbas’ uprising. Pilate is well aware that Jesus had nothing like that in mind, and so he adopts a particular formulation of Jesus’ “crime” in the charge that is placed above the Cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (Jn 19:19). Up to this point, Jesus had avoided the title Messiah or king, or else he had immediately linked it with his suffering (cf. Mk 8:27-31) in order to prevent false interpretations. Now the title “king” can appear quite openly. In the three great languages of that time, Jesus is publicly proclaimed king.

It is understandable that the members of the Sanhedrin object to this title, in which Pilate clearly wants to express his cynicism toward the Jewish authorities and to take his revenge on them post factum. But this inscription now stands before world history, and it amounts to a proclamation of kingship. Jesus is “exalted”. The Cross is his throne, from which he draws the world to himself. From this place of total self-sacrifice, from this place of truly divine love, he reigns as the true king in his own way - a way that neither Pilate nor the members of the Sanhedrin had been able to comprehend.

Of the two men crucified with Jesus, only one joins in the mockery: the other grasps the mystery of Jesus. He knows and he sees that the nature of Jesus’ “offense” was quite different - that Jesus was nonviolent. And now he sees that this man crucified beside him truly makes the face of God visible, he is truly God’s Son. So he asks him: “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power” (Lk 23:42). What exactly the good thief understood by Jesus’ coming in his kingly power, and what he therefore meant by asking Jesus to remember him, we do not know. But clearly, while on the Cross, he realized that this powerless man was the true king - the one for whom Israel was waiting. Now he wanted to be at this man’s side not only on the Cross, but also in glory.

Jesus’ response goes beyond what is asked of him. Instead of an unspecified future, he speaks of that very day: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43). This too is a mysterious saying, but it shows us one thing for certain: Jesus knew he would enter directly into fellowship with the Father - that the promise of “Paradise” was something he could offer “today”. He knew he was leading mankind back to the Paradise from which it had fallen: into fellowship with God as man’s true salvation.

So in the history of Christian devotion, the good thief has become an image of hope - an image of the consoling certainty that God’s mercy can reach us even in our final moments, that even after a misspent life, the plea for his gracious favor is not made in vain. So, for example, the Dies Irae prays: “Qui … latronem exaudisti, mihi quoque spem dedisti” (just as you answered the prayer of the thief, so you have given me hope).

Jesus’ cry of abandonment

Both Matthew and Mark recount that at the ninth hour Jesus called out in a loud voice: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34). They give the text of Jesus’ cry in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic and then translate it into Greek. This prayer of Jesus has prompted constant questioning and reflection among Christians: How could the Son of God be abandoned by God? What does this exclamation mean? Rudolf Bultmann, for example, comments as follows: Jesus was put to death “because his activity was misconstrued as a political activity. In that case it would have been - historically speaking - a meaningless fate. We cannot tell whether or how Jesus found meaning in it. We may not veil from ourselves the possibility that he suffered a collapse” (The Primitive Christian Kerygma, p. 24). What are we to reply to all this?

First of all, we must remember that, in each of these Passion narratives, the bystanders failed to understand Jesus’ cry and took him to be calling upon Elijah. There have been scholarly attempts to reconstruct Jesus’ exact words in such a way that they either could be construed as a call to Elijah or could have reproduced the cry of abandonment from Psalm 22 (cf. Pesch, Markusevangelium II, p. 495). Be that as it may: it was only the community of the faithful, with hindsight, who recognized Jesus’ cry, misheard and misinterpreted by the bystanders, as the opening verse of Psalm 22, and on that basis they could understand it as a truly Messianic cry.

It is no ordinary cry of abandonment. Jesus is praying the great psalm of suffering Israel, and so he is taking upon himself all the tribulation, not just of Israel, but of all those in this world who suffer from God’s concealment. He brings the world’s anguished cry at God’s absence before the heart of God himself. He identifies himself with suffering Israel, with all who suffer under “God’s darkness”; he takes their cry, their anguish, all their helplessness upon himself - and in so doing he transforms it.

As we have seen, Psalm 22 pervades the whole Passion story and points beyond it. The public humiliation, the mockery and shaking of heads by the scoffers, the pain, the terrible thirst, the piercing of Jesus’ hands and feet, the casting of lots for his garments - the whole Passion is, as it were, anticipated in the psalm. Yet when Jesus utters the opening words of the psalm, the whole of this great prayer is essentially already present - including the certainty of an answer to prayer, to be revealed in the Resurrection, in the gathering of the “great assembly”, and in the poor having their fill (cf. vv. 24-26). The cry of extreme anguish is at the same time the certainty of an answer from God, the certainty of salvation - not only for Jesus himself, but for “many”.

In recent theology, there have been many serious attempts, based on Jesus’ cry of anguish, to gaze into the depths of his soul and to understand the mystery of his person in his final agony. Ultimately, all these efforts are hampered by too narrowly individualistic an approach.

I think that the Church Fathers’ way of understanding Jesus’ prayer was much closer to the truth. Even in the days of the Old Covenant, those who prayed the Psalms were not just individual subjects, closed in on themselves. To be sure, the Psalms are deeply personal prayers, formed while wrestling with God, yet at the same time they are uttered in union with all who suffer unjustly, with the whole of Israel, indeed with the whole of struggling humanity, and so these Psalms always span past, present, and future. They are prayed in the presence of suffering, and yet they already contain within themselves the gift of an answer to prayer, the gift of transformation.

On the basis of their belief in Christ, the Fathers took up and developed this fundamental theme, which modern scholarship calls “corporate personality”: in the Psalms, so Augustine tells us, Christ prays both as head and as body (cf., for example, En. in Ps. 60:1-2; 61:4; 85:1, 5). He prays as “head”, as the one who unites us all into a single common subject and incorporates us all into himself. And he prays as “body”, that is to say, all of our struggles, our voices, our anguish, and our hope are present in his praying. We ourselves are the ones praying this psalm, but now in a new way, in fellowship with Christ. And in him, past, present, and future are always united.

Again and again we find ourselves caught up in the unfathomable depths of suffering “here and now”. Yet the Resurrection and the poor having their fill are also always “here and now”. This perspective takes nothing away from the horror of Jesus’ Passion. On the contrary: it increases it, because now it is not merely individual, but truly bears within itself the anguish of us all. Yet at the same time, Jesus’ suffering is a Messianic Passion. It is suffering in fellowship with us and for us, in a solidarity - born of love - that already includes redemption, the victory of love.

The casting of lots for Jesus’ garments

The evangelists tell us that the execution squad, consisting of four soldiers, divided Jesus’ garments among them by casting lots. This was following Roman custom, according to which the clothing of those who had been executed fell to the executioners. John quotes Psalm 22:18 in this regard: “This was to fulfil the Scripture, ‘They parted my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots’ ” (19:24).

In keeping with the parallelism typical of Hebrew poetry, by which a single idea is expressed in two ways, John presents two distinct elements: first the soldiers sorted Jesus’ clothes into four bundles and distributed them among themselves. Then they also took his tunic, which “was without seam, woven from top to bottom; so they said to one another, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be’ ” (19:23-24).

The reference to the seamless tunic (chiton) is formulated in this precise way because John evidently wanted to highlight something more than a casual detail. Some exegetes make a connection here with a piece of information provided by Flavius Josephus, who points out that the high priest’s garment (chiton) was woven from a single thread (cf. Antiquitates Judaicae III, 7, 4). Thus we may detect in the evangelist’s passing reference an allusion to Jesus’ high-priestly dignity, which John had expounded theologically in the high-priestly prayer of chapter 17. Not only is this dying man Israel’s true king: he is also the high priest who accomplishes his high-priestly ministry precisely in this hour of his most extreme dishonor.

The Church Fathers drew out a different aspect in their consideration of this passage: in the seamless garment, which even the soldiers were reluctant to tear, they saw an image of the indestructible unity of the Church. The seamless garment is an expression of the unity that Jesus the high priest implored for his followers on the evening before he suffered. Indeed, Jesus’ priesthood and the unity of his followers are inseparably linked together in the high-priestly prayer. At the foot of the Cross we hear once more the poignant message that Jesus had held up before us and inscribed on our souls in the prayer that he uttered before setting out on that final journey.

“I thirst”

At the beginning of the crucifixion, Jesus was offered the customary anaesthetizing drink to deaden the unbearable pain. Jesus declined to drink it - he wanted to endure his suffering consciously (Mk 15:23). At the climax of the Passion under the burning midday sun, stretched out on the Cross, Jesus called out: “I thirst” (Jn 19:28). According to custom, he was offered sour wine, which was commonly found among the poor and could also be described as vinegar: it was considered thirst-quenching.

Here we find a further example of the interweaving of events and scriptural allusions on which we reflected at the beginning of this chapter. On the one hand, the account is quite factual - we have the thirst of the crucified Jesus and the sour drink that the soldiers customarily administered in such cases. On the other hand, we hear a direct echo of the “Passion Psalm” 69, in which the victim laments: “for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (v. 21). Jesus is the just man exposed to suffering. The Passion of the just, as presented in Scripture through the great experiences of praying amid suffering, is fulfilled in him.

This scene can hardly fail to remind us also of the song of the vineyard in the fifth chapter of the Prophet Isaiah, which we considered in connection with the parable of the vine (cf. Part One, pp. 254-57). Here God brings his lament before Israel. He had planted a vineyard on a fruitful height and had taken every possible care over it. “He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes” (Is 5:2). The vineyard of Israel fails to yield for God the noble fruit of justice, which is grounded in love. It yields the sour grapes of man, who is concerned only for himself. It yields vinegar instead of wine. God’s lament, which we hear in the song of the Prophet, is brought to fulfillment as the vinegar is proffered to the thirsting Savior.

Just as Isaiah’s song portrays God’s suffering over his people in a way that far transcends the historical moment, so too the scene at the Cross far transcends the hour of Jesus’ death. It is not only Israel, but the Church, it is we ourselves who repeatedly respond to God’s bountiful love with vinegar - with a sour heart that is unable to perceive God’s love. “I thirst”: this cry of Jesus is addressed to every single one of us.

The women at the foot of the Cross - the Mother of Jesus

All four evangelists, in their different ways, speak of the presence of women at the foot of the Cross. Mark puts it like this: “There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem” (15:40-41). Even if the evangelists do not mention it explicitly, one can sense the shock and grief of these women over what had happened simply from the reference to their presence.

At the end of his crucifixion account, John quotes a line from the Prophet Zechariah: “They shall look on him whom they have pierced” (Jn 19:37; Zech 12:10). At the beginning of the Book of Revelation, he will return to this same expression, here referring to the crucifixion scene, and he will apply it prophetically to the end time, to the moment when the Lord comes again, when all will look upon the one coming on the clouds - the Pierced One - and beat their breasts (cf. Rev 1:7).

Now it is the women who look upon the Pierced One. We may also reflect on the words of the Prophet Zechariah that follow immediately afterward: “They shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn” (12:10). While up to the moment of Jesus’ death, the suffering Lord had been surrounded by nothing but mockery and cruelty, the Passion narratives end on a conciliatory note, which leads into the burial and the Resurrection. The faithful women are there. Their compassion and their love are held out to the dead Savior.

We need not hesitate to add the concluding words of Zechariah’s text: “On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness” (13:1). Gazing upon the Pierced One and suffering with him have now become a fount of purification. The transforming power of Jesus’ Passion has begun.

John not only tells us that there were women at the foot of the Cross - “his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (19:25) - but he continues: “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (19:26-27). This is one of Jesus’ final acts, an adoption arrangement, as it were. He is the only son of his mother, who will be left alone in the world after his death. He now assigns the beloved disciple to accompany her and, as it were, makes him her son in his place; from that time onward, John is responsible for her - he takes her to himself. The literal translation is stronger still; it could be rendered like this: he took her into his own - received her into his inner life-setting. In the first instance, then, this is an entirely human gesture on the part of the dying Savior. He does not leave his mother alone; he places her in the custody of the disciple who was especially close to him. And so a new home is also given to the disciple - a mother to care for him, a mother for him to look after.

If John takes the trouble to record such human concerns, it is because he wants to set down what really happened. But his concern always goes deeper than mere facts of the past. The event points beyond itself to that which endures. What is he trying to say?

The first clue comes from his form of address to Mary: “Woman”. Jesus had used this same form of address at the marriage feast of Cana (Jn 2:4). The two scenes are thus linked together. Cana had been an anticipation of the definitive marriage feast - of the new wine that the Lord wanted to bestow. What had then been merely a prophetic sign now becomes a reality.

The name “Woman” points back in the first instance to the account of creation, when the Creator presents the woman to Adam. In response to this new creation, Adam says: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman. . .” (Gen 2:23). Saint Paul in his letters interprets Jesus as the new Adam, with whom mankind begins afresh. In the figure of Mary, Saint John shows us “the Woman” who belongs now to this new Adam. In the Gospel the allusion is a hidden one, but it was gradually explored in the context of the Church’s faith.

When the Book of Revelation speaks of the great sign of a Woman appearing in heaven, she is understood to represent all Israel, indeed, the whole Church. The Church must continually give birth to Christ in pain (cf. Rev 12:1-6). Another stage in the evolution of this idea is found in the Letter to the Ephesians, where the saying about the man who leaves his father and mother to become one flesh with his wife is applied to Christ and the Church (cf. 5:31-32). On the basis of the “corporate personality” model - in keeping with biblical thought - the early Church had no difficulty recognizing in the Woman, on the one hand, Mary herself and, on the other hand, transcending time, the Church, bride and mother, in which the mystery of Mary spreads out into history.

Just like Mary, the Woman, so too the beloved disciple is both a historical figure and a type for discipleship as it will always exist and must always exist. It is to the disciple, a true disciple in loving communion with the Lord, that the Woman is entrusted: Mary - the Church.

These words spoken by Jesus as he hung upon the Cross continue to be fulfilled in many concrete ways. They are constantly repeated to both mother and disciple, and each person is called to relive them in his own life, as the Lord has allotted. Again and again the disciple is asked to take Mary as an individual and as the Church into his own home and, thus, to carry out Jesus’ final instruction.

Jesus dies on the Cross

According to the account of the evangelists, Jesus died, praying, at the ninth hour, that is to say, around 3:00 P.M. Luke gives his final prayer as a line from Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46; Ps 31:5). In John’s account, Jesus’ last words are: “It is finished!” (19:30). In the Greek text, this word (tetélestai) points back to the very beginning of the Passion narrative, to the episode of the washing of the feet, which the evangelist introduces by observing that Jesus loved his own “to the end (télos)” (13:1). This “end”, this ne plus ultra of loving, is now attained in the moment of death. He has truly gone right to the end, to the very limit and even beyond that limit. He has accomplished the utter fullness of love - he has given himself.

In our reflection on Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives in chapter 6, we encountered a further meaning of this same word (teleioun) in connection with Hebrews 5:9: in the Torah it means consecration, bestowal of priestly dignity, in other words, total dedication to God. I think we may detect this same meaning here, on the basis of Jesus’ high-priestly prayer. Jesus has accomplished the act of consecration - the priestly handing-over of himself and the world to God - right to the end (cf. Jn 17:19). So in this final word, the great mystery of the Cross shines forth. The new cosmic liturgy is accomplished. The Cross of Jesus replaces all other acts of worship as the one true glorification of God, in which God glorifies himself through him in whom he grants us his love, thereby drawing us to himself.

The Synoptic Gospels explicitly portray Jesus’ death on the Cross as a cosmic and liturgical event: the sun is darkened, the veil of the Temple is torn in two, the earth quakes, the dead rise again.

Even more important than the cosmic sign is an act of faith: the Roman centurion - the commander of the execution squad - in his consternation over all that he sees taking place, acknowledges Jesus as God’s Son: “Truly, this man was the Son of God” (Mk 15:39). At the foot of the Cross, the Church of the Gentiles comes into being. Through the Cross, the Lord gathers people together to form the new community of the worldwide Church. Through the suffering Son, they recognize the true God.

While the Romans, as a deterrent, deliberately left victims of crucifixion hanging on the cross after they had died, Jewish law required them to be taken down on the same day (cf. Deut 21:22-23). Hence the execution squad had to hasten the victims’ death by breaking their legs. This applied also in the case of the crucifixion on Golgotha. The legs of the two “thieves” are broken. But then the soldiers see that Jesus is already dead. So they do not break his legs. Instead, one of them pierces Jesus’ right side - his heart - and “at once there came out blood and water” (Jn 19:34). It is the hour when the paschal lambs are being slaughtered. It was laid down that no bone of these lambs was to be broken (cf. Ex 12:46). Jesus appears here as the true Paschal Lamb, pure and whole.

So in this passage we may detect a tacit reference to the very beginning of Jesus’ story - to the hour when John the Baptist said: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). Those words, which were inevitably obscure at the time as a mysterious prophecy of things to come, are now a reality. Jesus is the Lamb chosen by God himself. On the Cross he takes upon himself the sins of the world, and he wipes them away.

Yet at the same time, there are echoes of Psalm 34, which says: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken” (vv. 19-20). The Lord, the just man, has suffered much, he has suffered everything, and yet God has kept guard over him: no bone of his has been broken.

Blood and water flowed from the pierced heart of Jesus. True to Zechariah’s prophecy, the Church in every century has looked upon this pierced heart and recognized therein the source of the blessings that are symbolized in blood and water. The prophecy prompts a search for a deeper understanding of what really happened there.

An initial step toward this understanding can be found in the First Letter of Saint John, which emphatically takes up the theme of the blood and water flowing from Jesus’ side: “This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree” (5:6-8).

What does the author mean by this insistence that Jesus came not with water only but also with blood? We may assume that he is alluding to a tendency to place all the emphasis on Jesus’ baptism while setting the Cross aside. And this probably also meant that only the word, the doctrine, the message was held to be important, but not “the flesh”, the living body of Christ that bled on the Cross; it probably meant an attempt to create a Christianity of thoughts and ideas, divorced from the reality of the flesh - sacrifice and sacrament.

In this double outpouring of blood and water, the Fathers saw an image of the two fundamental sacraments - Eucharist and Baptism - which spring forth from the Lord’s pierced side, from his heart. This is the new outpouring that creates the Church and renews mankind. Moreover, the opened side of the Lord asleep on the Cross prompted the Fathers to point to the creation of Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, and so in this outpouring of the sacraments they also recognized the birth of the Church: the creation of the new woman from the side of the new Adam.

Jesus’ burial

All four evangelists recount that a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Mark (15:43) and Luke (23:51) add that Joseph was one “who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God”, whereas John (19:38) speaks of him as a secret disciple of Jesus, who had hitherto kept quiet about this for fear of the ruling Jewish circles. John also mentions the involvement of Nicodemus (19:39), whose night conversation with Jesus about being born and reborn John had reported in 3:1-8. After the drama of the trial, in which everything seemed to conspire against Jesus and there seemed to be no one left to speak up for him, we now encounter the other Israel: people who are waiting, people who trust God’s promises and await their fulfillment, people who recognize in the words and deeds of Jesus the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, the incipient fulfillment of the promises.

Up to this point in the Gospels, we have encountered such people mainly among simple folk: Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna, and also the disciples, none of whom, while they came from a variety of cultural backgrounds and movements in Israel, actually belonged to the leading circles. Now - after Jesus’ death - we meet two highly regarded representatives of the educated class of Israel who had not yet dared to profess their discipleship, but who nevertheless were blessed with the kind of simple heart that makes man capable of the truth (cf. Mt 10: 25-26).

Whereas the Romans would leave the corpses of crucifixion victims to the vultures, the Jews were anxious that they should be buried, and suitable places were assigned for this purpose by the authorities. Joseph’s request was therefore in keeping with normal Jewish practice. Mark says that Pilate was surprised to learn that Jesus was already dead and that he immediately inquired of the centurion whether it was true. Once Jesus’ death had been confirmed, he handed over Jesus’ body to Joseph.

Regarding the burial itself, the evangelists supply a number of important pieces of information. First, they emphasize that Joseph arranged for the Lord’s body to be laid in a new tomb that belonged to him, a tomb in which no one had yet been buried (Mt 27:60; Lk 23:53; Jn 19:41). Here we see a mark of respect for this dead person. Just as on “Palm Sunday” Jesus availed himself of a donkey on which no one had yet ridden (Mk 11:2), so now he is laid to rest in a new tomb.

Equally important is the indication that Joseph bought a linen cloth in which he wrapped the corpse. Whereas the Synoptics speak simply of a linen sheet in the singular, John uses the plural “linen cloths” (cf. 19:40) in keeping with Jewish burial customs - the Resurrection account will return to this matter in greater detail. The question of matching this description to the Turin Shroud need not detain us here; in any case, the shape of that relic can in principle be harmonized with both accounts.

Finally, John tells us that Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, “about a hundred pounds’ weight”. He continues: “They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews” (Jn 19:39-40). The quantity of balm is extraordinary and exceeds all normal proportions: this is a royal burial. If Jesus was manifested to us as high priest by the casting of lots for his robe, so now he is revealed to us as king by the manner of his burial: just when it seems that everything is finished, his glory mysteriously shines through.

The Synoptic Gospels tell us that some women observed the burial (Mt 27:61; Mk 15:47), and Luke reports that they were the ones “who had come with him from Galilee” (23:55). He adds: “then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments” (23:56). After the Sabbath rest, on the morning of the first day of the week, they would come to anoint the body of Jesus and thus to carry out the definitive burial. Anointing is an attempt to hold death at bay, to preserve the corpse from decomposition. And yet it is a vain effort: anointing can only maintain the dead person in death; it cannot restore him to life.

On the morning of the first day, the women will see that their concern for the dead body and its preservation was all too human a concern. They will see that Jesus is not to be held captive by death, but lives anew - now he is truly alive for the first time. They will see that God has preserved him from decomposition in a definitive way, possible only to God, and has thereby preserved him from the power of death. Nevertheless, in the loving care of these women, Easter morning - the Resurrection - is already proclaimed.

Jesus’ Death as Reconciliation (Atonement) and Salvation

In this concluding section I shall attempt to show, in broad terms, how the early Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, slowly penetrated more deeply into the truth of the Cross, in order to grasp at least remotely why and for what purpose it happened. One thing was astonishingly clear from the outset: with the Cross of Christ, the old Temple sacrifices were definitively surpassed. Something new had happened.

The expectations expressed in the Prophets’ critique of Temple worship, and particularly in the Psalms, were now fulfilled: God did not want to be glorified through the sacrifices of bulls and goats, whose blood is powerless to purify and make atonement for men. The long-awaited but as yet undefined new worship had become a reality. In the Cross of Jesus, what the animal sacrifices had sought in vain to achieve actually occurred: atonement was made for the world. The “Lamb of God” took upon himself the sins of the world and wiped them away. God’s relationship to the world, formerly distorted by sin, was now renewed. Reconciliation had been accomplished.

Paul provides a synthesis of the Christ-event, the new message of Jesus Christ, in these words: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:19-20). It is principally in Saint Paul’s letters that we read of the sharp disagreements in the early Church over the question of the continuing validity of the Mosaic Law for Christians. This makes it all the more remarkable, then, that on one matter - as we have seen - there was agreement from the outset: the Temple sacrifices, the cultic heart of the Torah, were a thing of the past. Christ had taken their place. The Temple remained a venerable place of prayer and proclamation. Its sacrifices, though, were no longer relevant for Christians.

But how exactly is this to be understood? In the New Testament literature there are various attempts to explain Christ’s Cross as the new worship, the true atonement and the true purification of this corrupted world.

We have spoken a number of times already of the fundamental text in Romans 3:25, where Paul, evidently drawing upon a tradition of the earliest Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem, refers to the crucified Jesus as “hilasterion”. This, as we have seen, was the name given to the covering of the Ark of the Covenant, on which the expiatory blood was sprinkled on the great Day of Atonement during the expiatory sacrifice. Let us explain straightaway how the Christians now interpreted this archaic ritual: it is not through the blood of animals touching a holy object that God and man are reconciled. In Jesus’ Passion, all the filth of the world touches the infinitely pure one, the soul of Jesus Christ and, hence, the Son of God himself. While it is usually the case that anything unclean touching something clean renders it unclean, here it is the other way around: when the world, with all the injustice and cruelty that make it unclean, comes into contact with the infinitely pure one - then he, the pure one, is the stronger. Through this contact, the filth of the world is truly absorbed, wiped out, and transformed in the pain of infinite love. Because infinite good is now at hand in the man Jesus, the counterweight to all wickedness is present and active within world history, and the good is always infinitely greater than the vast mass of evil, however terrible it may be.

If we reflect more deeply on this insight, we find the answer to an objection that is often raised against the idea of atonement. Again and again people say: It must be a cruel God who demands infinite atonement. Is this not a notion unworthy of God? Must we not give up the idea of atonement in order to maintain the purity of our image of God? In the use of the term “hilasterion” with reference to Jesus, it becomes evident that the real forgiveness accomplished on the Cross functions in exactly the opposite direction. The reality of evil and injustice that disfigures the world and at the same time distorts the image of God - this reality exists, through our sin. It cannot simply be ignored; it must be addressed. But here it is not a case of a cruel God demanding the infinite. It is exactly the opposite: God himself becomes the locus of reconciliation, and in the person of his Son takes the suffering upon himself. God himself grants his infinite purity to the world. God himself “drinks the cup” of every horror to the dregs and thereby restores justice through the greatness of his love, which, through suffering, transforms the darkness.

As it happens, these very ideas are explored in Saint John’s Gospel (especially through the theology of the high-priestly prayer) and in the Letter to the Hebrews (through its interpretation of the Torah cult in terms of the theology of the Cross). At the same time, these texts explain how the inner meaning of the Old Testament is fulfilled on the Cross - not just the Prophets’ critique of the cult, but also the positive content that had always been signified and intended in that cult.

From the great riches contained in the Letter to the Hebrews I would like to propose just one fundamental text for our reflection. The author describes Old Testament worship as a “shadow” (10:1) and gives this as his reason: “It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins” (10:4). He then quotes Psalm 40:6-8 and interprets these psalm verses as a dialogue between the Son and the Father in which the Incarnation is accomplished and at the same time the new worship of God is established: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,’ as it is written of me in the roll of the book” (Heb 10:5-7; cf. Ps 40:6-8).

In this brief psalm quotation, there is an important modification of the original text, which represents the conclusion of a threefold development in the theology of worship. Whereas in the Letter to the Hebrews we read; “a body have you prepared for me”, the psalmist had said: “but you have given me an open ear.” Obedience had already replaced the Temple sacrifices here: living within and on the basis of God’s word had been recognized as the right way to worship God. In this respect, the psalm was reflecting a strand of Greek thought from the period immediately prior to the birth of Christ: the Greek world also sensed more and more acutely the inadequacy of animal sacrifices, which God does not require and in which man does not give God what he might expect from man. So here the idea of spiritual sacrifice, or “sacrifice in the manner of the word”, was formulated: prayer, the self-opening of the human spirit to God, is true worship. The more man becomes “word” - or rather: the more his whole existence is directed toward God - the more he accomplishes true worship.

In the Old Testament, from the early Books of Samuel to the late prophecy of Daniel, we find constantly new ways of wrestling with this idea, which becomes linked more and more closely with love for God’s guiding word, the Torah. God is rightly venerated when we live in obedience to his word and are hence thoroughly shaped by his will, thoroughly godly.

Yet, on the other hand, a feeling of insufficiency still remains. Again and again our obedience proves patchy. Our own will imposes itself repeatedly. The deep sense of the inadequacy of all human obedience to God’s word causes the urgent desire for atonement to break out again and again, yet it is not something we can accomplish by ourselves or on the basis of our “rendering of obedience”. Repeatedly, therefore, alongside talk of the insufficiency of sacrifices and offerings, the longing for them to come back in a more perfect form breaks out anew (cf., for example, Ps 51:18-19).

The version given in the Letter to the Hebrews of these verses from Psalm 40 contains the answer to this longing: the longing that God will one day be given what we cannot give him, and yet that it should still be our gift, is now fulfilled. The psalmist had prayed: “Sacrifice and offering you do not desire; but you have given me an open ear.” The true Logos, the Son, says to the Father: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.” The Logos himself, the Son, becomes flesh; he takes on a human body. In this way a new obedience becomes possible, an obedience that surpasses all human fulfillment of the commandments. The Son becomes man and in his body bears the whole of humanity back to God. Only the incarnate Word, whose love is fulfilled on the Cross, is perfect obedience. In him not only does the critique of the Temple sacrifices become definitive, but whatever longing still remains is also fulfilled: his incarnate obedience is the new sacrifice, and in this obedience he draws us all with him and at the same time wipes away all our disobedience through his love.

To put it yet another way: our own morality is insufficient for the proper worship of God. This Saint Paul stated quite emphatically in the dispute over justification. Yet the Son, the Incarnate One, bears us all within himself, and in this way he gives what we ourselves would not be able to give. Central to the Christian life, then, are both the sacrament of Baptism, by which we are taken up into Christ’s obedience, and also the Eucharist, in which the Lord’s obedience on the Cross embraces us all, purifies us, and draws us into the perfect worship offered by Jesus Christ.

What the early Church is saying here about the Incarnation and the Cross as she reflects prayerfully upon the Old Testament and the path of Jesus must be seen against the background of the dramatic struggles of that period for a proper understanding of man’s relationship with God. It answers not only the question “why the Cross?” but also the urgent questions, arising in both the Jewish and the Gentile world, about how man can become just before God and, conversely, how he can understand God aright, the mysterious and hidden one, insofar as this is possible for man at all.

In all that we have said so far, it is clear that not only has a theological interpretation of the Cross been given, together with an interpretation, based on the Cross, of the fundamental Christian sacraments and Christian worship, but also that the existential dimension is involved: What does this mean for me? What does it mean for my path as a human being? The incarnate obedience of Christ is presented as an open space into which we are admitted and through which our own lives find a new context. The mystery of the Cross does not simply confront us; rather, it draws us in and gives a new value to our life.

This existential aspect of the new concept of worship and sacrifice appears with particular clarity in the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [word-like] worship” (v. 1). The idea of worshipping God in the manner of the word (logike latreía) is taken up here, and it means the offering of one’s whole existence to God, in which, so to speak, the whole person becomes “word-like”, “god-like”. In the process, the physical dimension is emphasized: it is our physical existence that must be penetrated by the word and must become a gift to God. Paul, who places so much emphasis on the impossibility of justification on the basis of one’s own morality, is doubtless presupposing that this new form of Christian worship, in which Christians themselves are the “living and holy sacrifice”, is possible only through sharing in the incarnate love of Jesus Christ, a love that conquers all our insufficiency through the power of his holiness.

If, on the one hand, we should acknowledge that Paul in no way yields to moralism in this exhortation or in any sense belies his doctrine of justification through faith and not through works, it is equally clear that this doctrine of justification does not condemn man to passivity - he does not become a purely passive recipient of a divine righteousness that always remains external to him. No, the greatness of Christ’s love is revealed precisely in the fact that he takes us up into himself in all our wretchedness, into his living and holy sacrifice, so that we truly become “his body”.

In the fifteenth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, Paul takes up the same idea quite emphatically once more when he interprets his apostolate in terms of priesthood and describes the Gentiles who have become believers as the living sacrifice that is pleasing to God: I have written to you “because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (vv. 15-16).

In more recent times, this way of speaking about priesthood and sacrifice has been dismissed as pure allegory. It has been claimed that the language of priesthood and sacrifice is meant only in a figurative, purely spiritual, not in a real, cultic sense. Paul himself and the whole early Church viewed this matter exactly the other way around. For them, the truth was that the material sacrifices were only figuratively sacrifices and worship - they were an attempt to reach out toward something that they themselves could not bring about. True worship is the living human being, who has become a total answer to God, shaped by God’s healing and transforming word. And true priesthood is therefore the ministry of word and sacrament that transforms people into an offering to God and makes the cosmos into praise and thanksgiving to the Creator and Redeemer. Therefore Christ, who makes an offering of himself on the Cross, is the true high priest, anticipated symbolically by the Aaronic priesthood. Hence his self-giving - his obedience, which takes us all up and brings us back to God - is the true worship, the true sacrifice.

To this extent, entering into the mystery of the Cross must constitute the heart of the apostolic ministry, the heart of the proclamation of the Gospel designed to lead people to faith. If on this basis we may identify the central focus of Christian worship as the celebration of the Eucharist, the constantly renewed participation in the priestly mystery of Jesus Christ, at the same time the full scope of that worship must always be kept in mind: it is always a matter of drawing every individual person, indeed, the whole of the world, into Christ’s love in such a way that everyone together with him becomes an offering that is “acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:16).

Finally, on the basis of these ideas, a further dimension of Christian thought regarding worship and sacrifice is opened up to view. It comes across clearly in the following verse from the Letter to the Philippians, in which Paul anticipates his martyrdom and at the same time offers a theological interpretation of it: “Even if I am to be poured as a libation upon the sacrificial offering [literally: sacrifice and liturgy] of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all” (2:17; cf. 2 Tim 4:6). Paul views his expected martyrdom as liturgy and as sacrificial event. Once again, this is no mere allegory or figurative way of speaking. No, in martyrdom he is drawn fully into the obedience of Christ, into the liturgy of the Cross, and hence into true worship.

On the basis of this understanding, the early Church was able to grasp the true depth and nobility of martyrdom. Thus it has been handed down to us that Ignatius of Antioch, for example, described himself as the grain of wheat of Christ, ground through martyrdom in order to become the bread of Christ (cf. Ad Rom 4:1). In the account of the martyrdom of Saint Polycarp, it is reported that the flames in which he was to be burned formed themselves into the shape of a sail billowing in the wind; the fire “formed a wall round about the martyr’s figure; and there was he in the center of it, not like burning flesh, but like a loaf baking in the oven”, and it spread “a delicious fragrance, like the odor of incense” (Martyrdom of Polycarp, 15). The Christians of Rome also arrived at a similar interpretation of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, who was burned to death on the gridiron. They saw it not only as Lawrence’s perfect union with the mystery of Christ, who in martyrdom became bread for us, but also as an image of Christian life in general: in the trials of life we are slowly burned clean; we can, as it were, become bread, to the extent that the mystery of Christ is communicated through our life and our suffering, and to the extent that his love makes us an offering to God and to our fellowmen.

In living out the Gospel and in suffering for it, the Church, under the guidance of the apostolic preaching, has learned to understand the mystery of the Cross more and more, even though ultimately it is a mystery that defies analysis in terms of our rational formulae. The darkness and irrationality of sin and the holiness of God, too dazzling for our eyes, come together in the Cross, transcending our power of understanding. And yet in the message of the New Testament, and in the proof of that message in the lives of the saints, the great mystery has become radiant light.

The mystery of atonement is not to be sacrificed on the altar of overweening rationalism. The Lord’s response to the request of the sons of Zebedee for seats at his right hand and at his left remains a key text for Christian faith in general: “The Son of man … came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).