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).

"At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice: 'Eli, Eli! These words are rendered by St. Mark as "Eloi" instead of "Ili." This cry, of course, was not a cry of despair, but only an expression of the deepest sorrow of the soul of the God-Man. In order for the redemptive sacrifice to be accomplished, it was necessary that the God-Man should drink to the very bottom of the entire cup of human suffering. This required that the crucified Jesus should not feel the joy of His union with God the Father. All the wrath of God, which, by virtue of Divine truth, was to be poured out on sinful humanity, now seemed to be concentrated on Christ alone, and God seemed to have abandoned Him. Among the most grievous torments imaginable, physical and mental, this abandonment was the most painful, which is why this painful exclamation came out of the mouth of Jesus.

In Hebrew, "Elijah" was pronounced "Eliah." Therefore, the Lord's cry served as a new reason for mocking Him: "Behold, Elijah is calling." The sarcasm of this mockery was that before the coming of the Messiah, the Jews were waiting for the coming of Elijah. Mocking the Lord, they seemed to want to say: here He is even now, crucified and desecrated, still dreaming that He is the Messiah, and calling Elijah for His help. The first two Evangelists say that immediately one of the soldiers ran, took a sponge, filled it with vinegar and, putting it on a reed, gave him to drink. Obviously, it was a sour wine, which was the usual diet of Roman soldiers, especially in hot weather. According to St. John, the soldier put a sponge that absorbed the liquid on the cane, "hyssop", that is, the trunk of the plant bearing this name, since those hanging on the cross were quite high from the ground, and they could not simply be offered drink. The crucifixion produced an incredibly strong, painful thirst in the sufferers, and St. John reports that the Lord apparently said before this: "I thirst" (19:28-30), adding: "That the Scripture may be fulfilled." The Psalmist in 68 Ps. v. 22, depicting the suffering of the Messiah, actually predicted this: "And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." Having tasted the vinegar, according to the testimony of St. John, the Lord exclaimed: "It is finished!" that is: the work predestined in the Council of God has been accomplished — the redemption of the human race and its reconciliation with God through the death of the Messiah (John 19:30).

According to St. Luke, after this the Lord exclaimed: "Father! Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46), "and bowing my head, I gave up my spirit" (John 19:30). All three of the first Evangelists testify that at this moment of Jesus' death, "the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom," that is, the veil that separated the sanctuary in the temple from the Holy of Holies was torn in two by itself. Since it was the time of the evening sacrifice – about 3 p.m. our time – it is obvious that another priest was a witness to this miraculous self-tearing of the veil.

This symbolized the termination of the Old Testament and the opening of the New Testament, which opened the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven that had been closed to people until then. "The earth shook" – a strong earthquake occurred, as a sign of God's wrath on those who put to death His Beloved Son. From this earthquake "the stones were disintegrated," that is, the rocks were scattered, and the burial caves made in them were opened. As a sign of the Lord's victory over death — "many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were resurrected" — the bodies of the dead buried in these caves were resurrected, which on the third day, after the Lord's resurrection, appeared in Jerusalem to people who knew them.

All three Evangelists testify that these miraculous signs, which accompanied the death of the Lord, produced such a strong, shocking effect on the Roman centurion, that he said, according to the first two Evangelists: "Truly He was the Son of God!" and according to St. Luke: "Truly this man was a righteous man!"

According to the testimony of St. Luke, all the people gathered at Golgotha were also shocked: "He returned, beating his breast" – such abrupt transitions from one mood to another are natural in an excited crowd. All three Evangelists indicate that the witnesses of the Lord's death and the events that took place during it were "all who knew Him, and the women who followed Him from Galilee, who stood afar off and looked on," and among them, as St. Matthew and Mark list them by name, were: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Josiah, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, Salome.

What happened after the death of Jesus and before His burial is narrated only by St. John, who, as he immediately asserts, was himself a witness to all this, supplementing the first three Evangelists, as he always did. Since it was Friday, in Greek "paraskevi," which means "preparation," that is, "the day before the Sabbath," and that Sabbath was a "great day," since it coincided with the first day of the Passover, then, in order not to leave the bodies of those crucified on the crosses on this "great day," the Jews, that is, the enemies of the Lord, or the members of the Sanhedrin, asked Pilate to "break their legs," and having thus killed them, "they will take," that is, they will take it off and bury it before the evening, when it was already necessary to eat Pascha. According to the cruel Roman custom, the crucified, in order to hasten their death, broke their legs, that is, crushed their legs. Having received this permission from Pilate, the soldiers broke the legs of the robbers who were crucified with Jesus, who were still alive. "But when they came to Jesus, when they saw Him already dead, they did not break His legs; but one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out" (John 19:33-34; 1 John 5:8).