What Jesus Saw from the Cross

It was called Golgotha, the place of the skull where the timber beam the victim carried was slowly hoisted up along the rough tree trunk. It carried his mangled body along with it because he was attached to the slab of wood with ropes and nails.

When it finally jolted into place it formed the shape of a cross mirroring the cruciform body of the condemned man. Through the crack in his swollen eyelid he could see the blood drip from his feet to the ground below. His eye level was about ten feet above the ground.

He raised his face slightly toward the southeast in the afternoon sky and took in the horizon with the city walls of Jerusalem and the glimmering white and gold temple flashing in the fading sunlight.

There was a small mostly quiet crowd gathering below him and two men grunting and groaning already crucified along either side of him. In the distance pilgrims in a caravan could see the men crucified. They became a visible warning to those who might be tempted to sympathize with rebels.

As Jesus, the man in the middle, searched the faces in the crowd below, a soldier climbed up beside him and nailed a sign above his head. In some of the faces below him, Jesus beheld the malice of enemies who spat mocking, venomous curses up at him. He saw soldiers laughing and pointing. He saw anonymous sinners in the distance of time and space looking to see if anyone noticed their evil deeds. Jesus did. With a burst of love in his heart, he cried out, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”  

Unimpressed with his words of forgiveness, one of the men crucified next to him began to test him and challenged him to save them if he really was the King as the sign above his crown of thorns proclaimed.  The strange truth was that Jesus was happy to be powerless and persecuted. He pitied those who were stuck in the mire of all worldly desires.

The other man crucified with them believed in Jesus and cried out, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom”. Jesus turned and looked into his sorrowful eyes saying meekly, “Amen Dismas, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

He saw the dismay of friendly bystanders. Some who heard him speak words of mercy and love fell to their knees in an ecstasy-like wonder. Many others were unaware of the moment and shown by their casual, indifferent demeanor. Some were only there for the spectacle of execution.

Still others came for the chance to inherit what was left behind of the crucified, soon to be dead, men’s meager possessions. When it came to Jesus’ things, the soldiers took his clothes and divided them into four shares, a share for each soldier. They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top down. So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be,”

As they rolled the dice for the last of his material possessions, Jesus found comfort in the tender love revealed in the sorrowful face of His Blessed Mother and his beloved disciple John who stood by his mother faithfully bracing her like a human scaffold.

The voices of the other women reached his ears with a melody of their familiar words of adoration and kindness. In this critical hour, he was left with just four friends. They would never abandon their Teacher and Lord as many others had. 

When Jesus made eye contact with his mother he recalled the many days as a child that he sat on her lap and looked into her intense, motherly eyes.  He now said to his mother mournfully, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” 

Hearing this, Mary, his mother broke down to the lowest brink of human suffering. She felt all his pains in her heart. She began to comprehend that mighty paradox that in his agony, he was happy to be free of any worldly pleasures and desires making himself a gift for others.

Mary Magdalene was slightly less stoic as she wailed loudly reaching her fingers out to his feet. Mary the wife of Clopas, horrified at the sight of Jesus crucified, remained silent as she huddled close to the other women. 

Jesus looked across Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives and remembered just hours ago he prayed in a garden in a state of anguish, crushed like an olive by the weight of sin, as his friends who fled slept nearby. He warned them of the temptation to run away in fear but overcome with sleep by the heavy meal they did not heed his words.

He also saw the road to Bethany and the outline of the Upper Room within the walls. He remembered raising Lazarus and the similar crowd which now gathered around being amazed by his power to overcome death as he repeated in his mind the words from the Upper Room, ‘This is my body given for you’. 

As our Lord looked at the rocky, thorn-laden sandy patch at Golgotha he recalled the forty days he spent alone in the desert. How, when the tempter came he stood before him blown by the wind and sand, and defiantly drew his sword, the Word of God as his only defense. 

He remembered how he hungered and how his mouth was so dry. At that moment he cried out just as he had in the desert, “I thirst!” His desire for the salvation of souls remained a greater thirst within. 

As he saw below a young couple he remembered the marriage at Cana and the feast that followed, the water and the wine. Just then a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop was raised to his holy, swollen lips. 

With love in his heart he gazed on Mount Zion the "City of David" nestled  within the walls of Jerusalem. He recalled the battles that were fought by David’s men and how David, surrounded by his enemies, wrote the psalm of the innocent man. In the spirit of loud lamentation, Jesus echoed David, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

He heard the crowd below saying he was calling for Elijah, but Jesus ignored them and continued to pray silently in his heart the prayer he knew so well, “Abba, like water my life drains away all my bones are disjointed. My heart has become like wax,  it melts away within me. As dry as a potsherd is my throat, my tongue cleaves to my palate”. 

He focused on the tip of the soldier’s lance in front of his eyes. As it stood on the ground, held by the soldier below, it reflected the sun overcome by the clouds. Jesus continued to pray, “You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs surround me; a pack of evildoers closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and my feet”. 

As the sting of the sweat and blood blurred his vision, one by one scenes from his life began to flash before him. Like a theater displaying these vivid moments the sky began to grow darker. He recalled his baptism by John, the calling of the Apostles, and the other events of His holy ministry, now brought to fearful consummation on the Cross. From the cross Jesus saw everything. He saw you and he saw me. He saw our thoughts, our words and our actions all the good and all the bad and everything in between. He saw that it was his opportunity to give his last breath making satisfaction for our redemption and atonement for our sins. 

Finally, he then looked up to heaven and spoke slowly, pausing in between words,  “It …is… finished!”. He then heard a liturgical chorus of men and angels chanting back through time, 'Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.'.

His eyes closed and his head fell then he exhaled his last breath.