THE VICTORY OF THE CROSS

During Great Lent, we Orthodox Christians of the Western discipline do a weekly service entitled “the Stations of the Cross.” This is a service which focuses upon Christ being condemned, sentenced, abused and crucified. It relates fourteen different scenes in the story of our Lord’s “passion,” or suffering, and it offers prayers and hymns to God, wherein we pray that we may give ourselves to Him as He has given Himself to us.

One of the most powerful moments in the Stations is the singing of the hymn called “Trisagion.” This hymn, which praises our “holy God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal One,” is sung immediately after the reading of the story which accompany each station. For example, when we hear of Pontius Pilate condemning Jesus to be crucified, we then sing the Trisagion. When we do, one cannot help but be struck by the irony that He who is condemned is He who is Lord of the universe. The Liturgy of the Stations makes this point very clear.

It is not just the Stations of the Cross which points this out, however, but all of the Liturgies of Lent, Passiontide [the two weeks before Easter] and Holy Week. In each of these celebrations we remember something of what exactly happened on that fateful day and to Whom it actually happened.

Consider what happened. The man Jesus was condemned to be crucified. Crucifixion was a practice adopted by the Romans from the Persians. The victim could be either tied or nailed to a cross, wherein death would ensue by suffocation. Once mounted upon the cross, the victim’s arms were pulled outward, causing the muscles to be tightened around the lungs, making breathing difficult, if not impossible. In fact, breathing was eased only if the victim pushed upward from the footpace, and as in the case of Christ, nails were driven through the feet, making this action extremely painful. In Christ’s case, as well, His back was lacerated from the whipping he had received the night before; thus pushing upward to breathe also caused His open wounds to be rubbed against the rough wood of the cross. In addition, the whipping was done with a whip called a “flagellum,” which was a leather whip with bone chips or metal fragments woven into the strands. The intention of this tool was to tear flesh and rend muscle tissue. The open wounds on the back would have been significant.

In Jesus’ case, there was the additional trauma which He had experienced the night before. He had been blindfolded, spat upon and beaten by guards. He was marched across Jerusalem to Pilate, then back across Jerusalem to Herod, and then returned to Pilate, a journey of perhaps 2-5 miles. He was whipped by the Romans with the flagellum and had a crown of long thorns forced into the flesh of His head. He was kept awake all night, and the next morning was forced to carry the crossbeam, called a “patibulum” to Calvary. The patibulum weighed perhaps 75-100 lbs and the journey was up to one third of a mile for a man already exhausted from abuse. The Stations of the Cross remind us that He fell at least three times.

Upon arriving at the scene of crucifixion, He was subjected to the indignity of being stripped before the multitudes of onlookers and gawkers, and His hands and feet were mercilessly nailed to the cross. He was then left there for six hours to suffocate to death. That is what happened. Now let us see to Whom it happened.

You may have noticed that I use upper case letters at the beginning of all pronouns referring to Jesus. This is because we Orthodox Christians believe Him to be God Incarnate, that is, God become man. This is a foundational doctrinal principle of being a Christian. The use of upper case letters on pronouns reminds us of the essential fact that it is God Incarnate Who suffers on the Cross, Who endures the abuse described above. It would be tragic enough if the victim were simply some poor individual who happened to run afoul of the Roman system. In this case, however, it is our Lord and Savior who, having become Incarnate for our salvation, must also transform the effect of death by entering into it Himself. He chooses not just any death, but one of the most brutal. No one can ever again say that God doesn’t understand our suffering.

This is Whom and what we celebrate as we pray the liturgies of the Stations of the Cross and the Passiontide and Holy Week liturgies. God’s love for His creation is such that He is willing to reach to any depth to redeem mankind, and, indeed, He has. That is a wonderful thing to know, and why we focus upon His Passion [1 Cor. 11:26] but there is one additional part to the story.

Not only did the Incarnate God experience death on behalf of His creation, but He rose bodily from the grave. In entering death, the experience of death found itself united to Deity. St. John Chrysostom tells us that death “took a body, and face to face it met God.” Because Deity has entered into death, it [death] can no longer be the final separation of man from God or from his original living nature. In addition, when Christ was resurrected, death was left with no power to hold man in separation from God. Thus St. Paul could say, and we proclaim this in Orthodox Resurrection liturgies, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” [1 Cor. 15:54-55]

God became Incarnate and united ALL of the human experience to Himself, including the worst forms of suffering, and the end of all suffering, death itself. As we commemorate the events in which this truth was accomplished, we are reminded of one essential and great fact. If we believe in and live for this God who so loves us, then “neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anthing else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” [Rms. 8:38-39]