When Jesus said, "I thirst." One of the soldiers ran, took a sponge, soaked it with vinegar, put it on a cane and brought it to the withered lips of the Savior. Having tasted the vinegar, the Saviour said: "It is finished," that is, the promise of God is fulfilled, the salvation of the human race from the power of sin is accomplished. After that, He said with a loud voice: "Father! Into Thy hands I commend My spirit." And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit, that is, he died.

Thus the ancient prophecy "at-Taurat" (Old Testament, Bible) was fulfilled: "He was despised and rejected before men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with sicknesses, and we hid our faces from Him; He was despised, and we didn't care about Him. But he took upon himself our infirmities and bore our sorrows; but we thought that He was smitten, chastised, and despised by God. But He was wounded for our sins; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed. We were all wandering. Like sheep, each turned to his own path; and the Lord laid upon Him the sins of all of us. He was tormented, but he suffered voluntarily and did not open his mouth; like a sheep. He was led to the slaughter, and as the lamb is silent before his shearers, so he did not open his mouth. From bondage and judgment He was taken, but who can explain His generation? For He is cut off from the land of the living; but for the transgressions of my people he was put to death. A tomb with evildoers was assigned to Him, but He was buried with a rich man, because He had committed no sin, and there was no lie in His mouth. But it pleased the Lord to smite Him, and He gave Him over to torment; but when His soul offers the sacrifice of propitiation, He will see a lasting offspring, and the will of the Lord will be done by His hand" (Isaiah 53:3-11). Immeasurable is God's love for us, which shone forth from the Cross of His Son – Jesus!

As the Gospel (Injil) narrates, on the same evening, soon after all that had happened, the body of the Saviour was taken down from the cross, anointed with incense, wrapped in a clean shroud, and laid in a new tomb in the garden near Golgotha. This tomb was a cave that the rich man Joseph of Arimathea had carved out of the rock for his burial. Thus the Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled: "He was cut off from the land of the living; but for the transgressions of my people he was put to death. A tomb with evildoers was assigned to Him, but He was buried with the rich" (Isaiah 53:9). Then they rolled a huge stone to the door of the tomb and left.

After the Sabbath, on the third day after the crucifixion, early in the morning, the followers of Jesus, including Mary Magdalene, Salome, and others, came to the tomb of the Savior. Approaching it, they were surprised to find that the huge stone with which the entrance to the cave was blocked had been rolled away. In our time, Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre, located not far from each other, are located on the territory of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. Entering it and going down the steps, you find yourself in a dark, harsh round hall - a rotunda. In the center there is a small domed chapel made of pink marble, placed over the cave of the Holy Sepulchre. The Greeks call it the Edicule, that is, "bed". The chapel has two limits: the angel's limit, where Mary Magdalene saw him sitting on the tombstone. The body of Christ was not in the tomb – the Son of God had risen! "And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, having come down from heaven, came and rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb and sat on it; his appearance was like lightning, and his garments were white as snow" (Matt. 28:2-6). The angel said to the astonished women, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here: He is risen"

A cube-shaped pedestal with a part of the sacred stone rolled away that night by the Angel is located in the middle of the chapel and serves as a holy altar during the celebration of the hierarchal Orthodox liturgy. To the left and to the right, in the walls of the Angel's Chapel, there are gaping black oval holes – "pipes" for transmitting the holy fire that descends here on Holy Saturday. The second half of the Edicule is the tomb itself, where a low passage leads - walking along it, you involuntarily bow low. The Tomb, lit only by lamps, is dark and cramped, so the strict Greek monk lets the pilgrims inside strictly in twos or threes, so as not to cause a stampede. It is here that the main shrine of Christians around the world is located, a marble tombstone built into the wall - the Holy Sepulchre, the liberation of which from the Muslims was the main reason for the Crusades. It is a stone bed covered with a marble slab measuring 207 by 193 centimeters. This is a sarcophagus that is placed over the shrine to prevent its complete disappearance. The last person who saw the original uncovered bed of the Savior in 1810 during the repair of the Edicule, Maximos Simeos, testified that it was badly damaged by the unreasonable zeal of countless "God-lovers" who strove to break off, bite off, and take away a piece of the relic at any cost. So now we only see the modern slab over the bed of Jesus. But it is all "eaten up" and chipped by believers.

The Russian pilgrim Hegumen Daniel, who visited the Holy Land in the twelfth century, in his "Journey" gives detailed information about the church, which by that time was in the possession of the Crusaders. In 1099, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was formed in Palestine, which was headed by the leader of the First Crusade, Baldwin I. Here is what Hegumen Daniel wrote about the cave of the Holy Sepulchre, which was located in the Church of the Resurrection of Christ: "The Sepulchre of the Lord is carved in a stone wall, like a small cave, with small doors, so that a person can climb on his knees, bowing. The cave is square, four cubits long and four wide. And as soon as you get into this small cave with small doors, then on the right side there will be a small bench, carved out of the same cave stone. And on that bench lay the body of Jesus Christ. Now this holy shop is covered with marble slabs. To the side there are three round windows, and through these windows you can see the holy stone, and all Christians worship here."

Finding the Cross of the Lord

From the gallery running along the wall of the temple, to the right of the stairs leading to Golgotha, going down 30 steps, we find ourselves in the Greek Church of St. Helena. In the right corner of this church there is a staircase that leads to the Cave of the Finding of the Cross. A marble slab in it marks the place where, according to legend, the cross on which Christ was crucified was found.

The story of the finding of the Cross of the Lord is remarkable. After the destruction of Jerusalem predicted by Jesus (as a punishment for the Jews for rejecting the Son of God), the city remained in desolation until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire during the reign of Emperor Constantine (306-337). With the pilgrimage to Jerusalem of Constantine's mother, Helena, an ardent Christian, who was later elevated to the rank of saints, numerous churches and shrines began to be erected in the city, archaeological excavations were carried out.

When you look up from the bottom of the cistern carved in limestone, where His cross was dumped along with other garbage after the Crucifixion of the Lord, you understand how difficult it was to search for shrines in the years of St. Helena. In fact, by the time of excavations on Golgotha (the territory of the current Church of the Resurrection), three hundred years had already passed! By that time, most of the objects associated with Christ were buried and rested under a thick layer of earth. First of all, the hill of Golgotha was excavated, then the cave of the Holy Sepulchre. Not far from them, three crosses were found - the precious Cross of the Savior, as well as the crosses of the thieves crucified with Him. Christ's cross was determined by placing a dead man on it, and he immediately came to life. Part of the found Cross was left in the Holy City, and the rest of the life-giving tree was sent to Emperor Constantine the Great.

On the site of the discovery of the shrines, three majestic, incomparable in beauty temples were quickly erected. The main building was the Church of the Resurrection built on the site of the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord. Of particular beauty was the Edicule ("Tomb") located inside the temple, made of white marble, decorated with twelve columns with a silver capital. Unfortunately, none of this has survived to this day – too often over the past centuries, the main temple of Christians has become an arena of military operations, sometimes being destroyed to the very foundations. Nevertheless, due to the fact that in ancient times geographical maps were drawn not as they are now - symbols and numbers understandable only to the initiated, but with houses, fortress towers, palaces, we can form a certain idea of that distant era. A mosaic from the time of Emperor Justinian (6th century), found during excavations of a Byzantine church in the city of Medva in Jordan, has brought to us the appearance of Byzantine Jerusalem. It can be seen that behind the northern gate there was a semicircular square with a column in the center (hence the current Arabic name of the gate: Bab al-Amud - Gate of the Column). Two straight streets with covered colonnades on either side led to the southern part of the city. One of these streets faced the facades of the two main churches of Jerusalem: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the huge Church of St. Mary, built by the great Orthodox Emperor Justinian. Other temples and monasteries, the patriarch's palace, the forum, towers, and gates are also marked on the map. Temple Square, where the golden dome of the Mosque of Omar now stands, is still depicted only in the form of a wasteland with a small church in the lower right corner.