The first words of the Lord were the prayer for the crucifiers, which is quoted by St. Luke (23:34): "Father, forgive them! Forgive them, for they know not what they do." None of those who crucified Christ knew that He was the Son of God. "For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:8), says St. Paul. Paul. Even to the Jews of St. Ap. Paul said in his second sermon at the healing of the lame man: "You, like your rulers, did it out of ignorance" (Acts 3:17). The Roman soldiers, of course, did not know that they were crucifying the Son of God; the Jews who condemned the Lord to death were so blinded in their malice that they really did not think that they were crucifying their Messiah. However, such ignorance does not justify their crime, for they had the opportunity and the means to know. The Lord's prayer bears witness to the greatness of His spirit and serves as an example for us, so that we too do not take revenge on our enemies, but pray to God for them.

"Pilate wrote the inscription..." St. John testifies that by order of Pilate a tablet was written indicating the guilt of the Lord, as was customary (John 19:19-22). Wanting to once more hurt the members of the Sanhedrin, Pilate ordered the writing: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." Since the members of the Sanhedrin accused the Lord of arrogating to Himself the royal dignity, Pilate ordered this His guilt to be written, to the shame of the Sanhedrin; The king of Judah was crucified at the request of the representatives of the Jewish people. Contrary to custom, the inscription was made in three languages: the local Hebrew, the national language, Greek (then common), and Roman, the language of the victors. The purpose of this was so that everyone could read this inscription. Without thinking about it, Pilate thereby fulfilled the highest providential goal: in the moments of His most extreme humiliation, the Lord Jesus Christ was proclaimed King for the whole world. The Lord's accusers took this as a malicious mockery and demanded that Pilate change the inscription, but the proud Roman sharply refused them, making them feel his power.

"Those who crucified Him divided His garments, casting lots..." Roman law gave the clothes of the crucified as the property of the soldiers who carried out the execution. According to Philo, there were four people who performed the crucifixion. St. John, who tells more than others about the division of the Lord's garments, says that the soldiers tore the outer garment into four parts, "To each soldier a part," and the lower garment – the tunic – was not sewn, but woven, or knitted from the top, that is, starting from the hole for the head downwards. If such a tunic is broken, then its parts will have no value. Therefore, the soldiers cast lots for him, so that he would go to him alone in a whole form. According to legend, this tunic was woven by the Most-Pure Mother of God. In doing this, the soldiers unconsciously, of course, fulfilled the ancient prophecy about the Messiah from Psalm 21:19, which St. John quotes when he tells about it: "They divided My garments among themselves, and cast lots for My garments."

Further, the first three Evangelists tell about the ridicule and blasphemy to which the Lord was subjected both by soldiers and by His passing enemies from the people, and especially, of course, by the chief priests with the scribes, elders and Pharisees. These blasphemies had one common basis in comparing the past with the present. Remembering everything that the Lord had said and done in the past, they pointed to His present helplessness and mockingly suggested that He perform a miracle that was obvious to everyone – to come down from the cross, promising, hypocritically, of course, in such a case to believe in Him. In these blasphemies, according to St. Matthew, the robbers who were crucified on the right and left sides of the Lord also took part.

The Repentance of the Wise Thief

(Luke 23:39-43).

Supplementing the narrative of the first two Evangelists, St. Luke tells about the repentance and conversion to the Lord of one of the two thieves. While one of them, apparently even more embittered by the tortures and looking for an object to which to direct his anger, began, following the example of the enemies of the Lord, to blaspheme Him, imitating them, the other thief, evidently not so depraved, who retained a sense of religiosity, began to admonish his comrade. "Do you not fear God, when you yourself are condemned to the same thing? And we are justly condemned, because we have received what is worthy according to our works; but He has done nothing wrong." Evidently he heard the weeping and torments of the women of Jerusalem as they accompanied the Lord to Golgotha; perhaps he was impressed by the inscription made on the cross of the Lord, he pondered over the words of the enemies of the Lord: "He saved some," but perhaps the most important sermon about Christ for him was Christ's prayer for His enemies, the crucifiers.

In any case, his conscience spoke strongly, and he was not afraid to speak openly in defense of the Lord amid blasphemy and ridicule. Moreover, there was such a decisive change in his soul that he, vividly expressing his faith in the crucified Lord as in the Messiah, turned to Him with the words of repentance: "Remember me, O Lord, when you come into Your Kingdom!" He does not ask for glory and blessedness, but prays for the least, like the Canaanite woman who wanted to receive at least a grain of the Lord's table. The words of the wise thief have since become an example of true deep repentance for us, and have even come into our liturgical use. This amazing confession clearly testified to the strength of faith of the repentant thief. He recognizes the suffering, the tormented, the dying as the King who will come into His Kingdom, the Lord Who will establish this Kingdom. This is a confession that was beyond the power of even the Lord's closest disciples, who could not contain the thought of the suffering Messiah. Undoubtedly, there is also a special action of God's grace, which illumined the thief, so that he would be an example and instruction to all clans and peoples. This confession of his deserved the highest reward imaginable. "Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise," the Lord said to him, that is, today he will enter paradise, which will be reopened to people through the redemptive death of Christ.

The Mother of God at the Cross

(John 19:25-27).

Only the Evangelist John, as a witness and even a participant in the event, tells how the Lord Jesus Christ from the cross entrusted him to the care and care of the Most-Pure Mother of God. When the evil enemies had sated their malice and began to move away from the cross little by little, the Most Holy Mother of God, her sister Mary of Cleopas, Mary Magdalene, who had been standing a little farther away, approached the cross, "and the disciple standing there, whom Jesus loved," as St. John the Theologian usually calls himself in his Gospel. With Christ's departure from this world, His Most-Pure Mother was left alone, and there was no one left to care for Her, and therefore with the words: "Woman! Behold thy son" and to the disciple: "Behold thy Mother!" "And from that time this disciple took Her to himself" – from that time the Most-Pure Mother until Her very death, as Church tradition also testifies, lived with St. John, who cared for Her like a loving son. This is especially important and significant in the following respect. Protestants and sectarians, who do not miss an opportunity to blaspheme the Most-Pure Mother of God, deny that She was and remains a Virgin, and say that after Jesus She had other children born naturally from Joseph, and that these were the "brothers of the Lord" mentioned in the Gospel. But the question arises: if the Most Holy Theotokos had children of her own, who, undoubtedly, could and should have taken care of Her as their Mother, then why would it have entrusted Her to a stranger, St. John the Theologian? It must be assumed that both the Most Holy Virgin Mary and St. John the Theologian remained at the cross until the very end, for St. John indicates in his Gospel that he himself was a witness to the Lord's death and all that followed (John 19:35).

The Death of Christ

(Matt. 27:45-56; Mark 15:33-41; Luke 23:44-49; John 19:28-37).

According to the testimony of the first three Evangelists, the Lord's death on the cross was preceded by darkness that covered the earth: "At the sixth hour darkness fell over all the earth, and lasted until the ninth hour," that is, according to our time, from noon to three o'clock in the afternoon. Luke adds that "the sun is darkened." It could not have been an ordinary solar eclipse, since there is always a full moon on the Jewish Passover on Nisan 14, and a solar eclipse occurs only at a new moon, but not at a full moon. This was a miraculous sign, which testified to an amazing and extraordinary event — the death of the beloved Son of God. This extraordinary eclipse of the sun, in the course of which the stars were even visible, is testified to by the Roman astronomer Phlegon. The Greek historian Phalos also testifies to the same extraordinary solar eclipse. St. Dionysius the Areopagite, then still a pagan, recalls him in his letters to Apollophanes. But it is remarkable, as St. Chrysostom and Bl. Theophylact that this darkness "was over the whole earth," and not only in any part, as happens in an ordinary eclipse of the sun. Apparently, this darkness followed the mockery and mockery of the crucified Lord; it also stopped these mockery, evoking the mood among the people about which St. Luke relates: "And all the people who came down to this spectacle, seeing what was happening, returned, beating their breasts" (Luke 23:48).