Christ's ascent to Golgotha. The path of Jesus Christ from Gethsemane to Golgotha

Christ was crucified during his lifetime - this was foretold throughout many prophecies.

But why did the crucifixion of Jesus Christ happen and could it have been avoided?

Here is what contemporary sources say about it.

Why Jesus Christ Was Crucified Briefly

In Judea, they were waiting for a messiah who was supposed to free the people of God from Roman slavery. Then the Jews were slaves, their empire was in the power of the Roman ruler, there were endless wars and suffering.

However, the people of God knew that one day the Savior of the world would come and be able to free them from the sins that caused all the evil on earth - disease, death, poverty and slavery. And it was predicted that such a person would be born and free the world from universal evil.

And then Jesus Christ was born, whose birth was associated with the signs of the birth of the mission.

At the age of 33, he began to preach the word of God and perform miracles. If in childhood Jesus was in the temple and even people with a rabbinic education were surprised how he knows everything more than they do.

However, despite the signs and wonders, people did not believe that Christ was acting from a good power. They considered him a heretic who confuses the people.

The Jewish government did not pay too much attention to this, but then the preaching of Christ began to cause envy, irritation, and they began to despise Jesus, they even wanted to kill him. This happened due to the betrayal of Judas, who betrayed his Teacher for 30 coins, as it was said in the prophecies.

The crucifixion of Jesus happened just in time for the Jewish Passover. At this time, it was customary to release one sinner. And the Jews released Baravan, who was a robber and a murderer. As a result, Christ was not pardoned and he was crucified.

Place of the crucifixion of Christ

Christ was crucified on the mountain of the city of Golgotha. Together with other sinners, he carried the cross on which he was crucified.

Since then, such a word in literature means suffering, torment, pain. Calvary appears on the canvases of many artists as a symbol of the suffering that every person must endure in his life.

Hence the expression - "bear your cross." The cross is understood as a life test with which a person cannot cope in any way and which cannot be avoided. You should just endure it with dignity and try to get rid of it at the first opportunity.

Path to Calvary

Jesus walked to Calvary for several hours. During this time, he walked with a crown of thorns on his head and fell 3 times.

Today, the path to Calvary to the place of execution is considered holy. Those who do it will be able to see the future and find their way in life.

Those places where Christ fell are considered holy and there is a monument on them. Christ walked along them almost to the very place of his execution. And only after the last fall, a warrior named Simen helped him carry the cross.

Why Jesus was crucified

The Jewish preachers did not understand the teachings of Christ and his holiness. They expected from him an earthly reign - liberation from slavery, disease and death, paradise on earth, but they did not receive it.

His teaching is a preparation for the spiritual paradise that every soul will attain after death. And the Jews were waiting for specific miracles and therefore did not accept Christ, hated him and crucified him.

Icon of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ photo and meaning

The Church reveres Jesus Christ more than other icons, except for God the Father, the creator of all living things. Therefore, the crucifixion icon has historical significance and is revered as a place of forgiveness of the sins of all mankind.

The cross is considered the main symbol of death, because Christ took upon himself all sins in order to free humanity from this.

However, until the reappearance of Christ, each person is responsible for their sins, and children and grandchildren even pay for some sins.

Who Helped Jesus Carry the Cross

No one helped he himself carried his own cross. And only at the end of the journey, the warrior Simen helped him bring the cross to the place of death.

Crying of the Mother of God during the suffering of Jesus Christ on the Cross

When Christ was and his Mother.

The Mother of God read prayers and suffered, the texts of her words were put not only in the words of passions in Great Lent, but also in church hymns. Many of them are performed in secular church music concerts.

What happened to Jesus after the resurrection

For some time he preached on earth, performing miracles and knowledge. He could even walk through walls talking about the Kingdom of God.

Then he ascended to heaven, promising the second coming.

The life of the apostles after the crucifixion of Christ

The apostles dispersed throughout the earth and began to preach the word of God in all countries.

They received a special gift to understand all languages ​​and preach in each of them.

It was they who helped create the church and became the most holy disciples of Jesus, who led many followers.

PROCESSION TO GOLGOTHA

(Christ carrying His cross; Way of the Cross;

"Via Dolorosa")

(Matthew 27:31-32; Mark 15:20-21; Luke 32:26-32; John 19:16-17)

(31) And when they mocked Him, they took off the purple robe from Him, and put on Him his garments, and led him to be crucified. (32) Going out, they met one Cyrene, named Simon; this one was made to bear His cross.

(Matthew 27:31-32)

(16) Then at last he handed Him over to them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led him away.

(17) And, carrying His cross, He went out to a place called Skull, in Hebrew Calvary.

(John 19:16-17)

W the last path of Christ from the house of Pilate to Calvary, the Sorrowful Path -Via Dolorosa, - is narrated in all four Gospels, although there is a significant difference in the testimonies of weather forecasters, on the one hand, and John, on the other.

From John's point of view, it was impossible to give an assistant to Christ to carry the cross - Christ, this Lamb of God, who Himself bore the sins of the world. After all, Christ, as a substitute for mankind, Himself took upon Himself its suffering and the most cruel punishment. And now, if He is replaced in carrying the cross, then He could be replaced on the cross (the Gnostic Basilides, by the way, taught that instead of Christ, the same Simon of Cyrene was crucified).

This seemingly inexplicable discrepancy in the description of the Way of the Cross, which has always served as proof of the alleged inauthenticity (fictitiousness) of the entire story, is in fact by no means a contradiction. Simon could join in the bearing of the cross, as many commentators claim, later, at the moment when the forces began to leave Jesus. Thus, the stories of the evangelists do not contradict each other, but complement each other, as has happened more than once.

D. Strauss explains the difference in the stories about the bearing of the cross among the Evangelists in the following way: “But if the story of the weather forecasters cannot be refuted by the John story and if the story of John arose on the basis of dogma, then we naturally face the question: did the story of the weather forecasters also arise on the basis of dogmatic considerations? The cross of Christ became a characteristic symbol of Christianity when the prejudice and temptation that was previously associated with it disappeared. To take on the cross of Christ meant now to imitate the example of Jesus Christ, and to do this, according to the evangelist, Jesus Himself commanded (Matt. 16:24), saying: “Whoever wants to follow Me, then deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me." In general, this kind of “figurative speech” has the property that it always leads to the assumption of some kind of actual incident. In fact, the cross of Christ could be carried after Him only when He was already being led to the crucifixion, so the following scene easily arose in the imagination of the ancient Christians: on the way to the place of execution, a man appears who lays and bears the “cross of Christ”, following Jesus and thereby fulfilling the will of Christ, expressed by him in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:41). However, it is also quite possible that someone else really carried the cross of Christ, following Jesus to the Execution Ground: it is not without reason that all weather forecasters agree with each other in indicating the name and homeland of the person who carried the cross of Jesus to Golgotha ​​”( Strauss D., With. 456).

Both Gospel versions of the Way of the Cross are reflected in Western European painting. Simon of Cyrene is usually depicted as gray-haired, with a rounded beard and in a short dress (Duccio).

Duccio. Procession to Golgotha ​​(altar "Maesta") (1308-1311). Sienna. Cathedral Museum.

This version was often adopted by the Italian artists of the Early Renaissance, but disappeared over time - subsequently Simon was depicted only as an assistant to Christ (Tamas from Kolozsvár, Fouquet).

Tamas from Kolozhvar. Procession to Calvary (1427). Esztergom. Christian Museum .

Jean Fouquet. Procession to Golgotha ​​(from the Book of Hours by Etienne Chevalier) (1450-1460).

Chantilly. Conde Museum.

But such an image is based on a false interpretation of the words of Luke: “to bear the cross for Jesus” (Luke 23:26). Based on these words, some thought that Simon supported only the back of the cross, while the front, the heaviest, was carried by Christ Himself. The words of Luke in no way defend this point of view and this type of depiction of the way of the cross, since carrying the cross behind Jesus or behind It's not the same as carrying a cross together with him. Therefore, this opinion was constantly rejected by the Fathers of the Church. In painting, when the artist chooses this program, Simon is often depicted walking with the cross in front of rather than behind Christ.

The image of Christ, independently carrying his cross, has become more widespread in Western art. IN XIII-XIV For centuries, Christ has been depicted in this scene walking or standing straight and proud. In later art, the cross becomes more massive and heavier, which radically changes the nature of the interpretation of the plot: now it is not a triumph, but a tragic pathos that emphasizes suffering. Christ falls under the weight of His burden, and the Roman soldier drives Him forward ( Durer, Pieter Brueghel the Elder).

Albrecht Durer. Procession to Golgotha ​​(from the series of engravings "Great Passions", leaf VI)

(1497-1500).

Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Procession to Calvary (1564).

Vein. Historical and Art Museum

This was the most common motive, although it had no basis in any of the Gospels. From a historical point of view, however, this is justified: under Roman rule, the condemned to execution really carried his own cross, though not all, but only its cross -patibulum, while the vertical pole was pre-installed at the place of execution. The old masters did not know this feature of the ritual or ignored it.

For His last journey, Christ is again clothed in His garments taken from Him in the scene of the Crowning with Thorns. The colors of His garments are blue and red (El Greco). He still wears the crown of thorns. Christ can be dragged on a rope by a Roman soldier (El Greco, Durer). The image of the procession often includes other Roman soldiers carrying standards with letters inscribed on them. S. P. Q. R- Senatus populusque Romanus(lat. - The Senate and the Roman people) (Rubens) (cf. JUDGMENT OF CHRIST: Christ before Pilate; CROWNING WITH THE CROWN OF THORNS; "SE, MAN!"; CRUCIFICATION OF CHRIST).

Peter Paul Rubens. Procession to Calvary (1634-1636).

Brussels. Royal Museum of Fine Arts

Sometimes the image of the Way of the Cross results in a multi-figure composition in accordance with the story of Luke: “And a great multitude of people followed Him (...)” (Luke 23:27). Among those accompanying Christ, one can see His disciples - Peter, James the Greater, John.

A highly original interpretation of this plot is given by Pieter Brueghel the Elder: the action takes place in a vast space, and the figure of Christ, as it happened more than once in other crowded compositions of the artist, seems to be lost in the background; around, many scenes unfold - some of them are deliberately ordinary genre situations: the artist presents one of the greatest events in world history in the form of something everyday, thereby calling on the viewer - his contemporary - to wake up from spiritual hibernation and see this great: it is happening here and Now!

Luke, and only he, says that on the way to the Place of the Skull, women followed Christ among a great multitude of people, “(27) who wept and sobbed for Him. (28) But Jesus, turning to them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem! do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children, (29) for the days are coming in which they will say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never gave birth, and the breasts that did not feed! (30) Then they will begin to say to the mountains: fall on us! and hills: cover us! (31) For if they do this to a green tree, what will happen to a dry one? (Luke 23:27-31). The features with which Jesus describes, according to Luke, the future fate of Jerusalem, are borrowed in part from Jesus’ great speech on the end of the world, where, according to the testimony of all weather forecasters, Jesus said: “Woe to those who are pregnant and breastfeeding in those days,” as He said it is in this case as well. But the wish expressed immediately that the mountains fall on the sufferers and the hills cover them is taken almost verbatim from the book of Hosea (10:8). In painting, there is often an image of Christ carrying His cross and addressing the women in the crowd with the words transmitted by Luke ( Tamas from Kolozsvar; on the parcel that comes from the mouth of Christ, this text is given in Latin: “Filiae Hierusalem, nolite flere super me: sed super uos ipsas flat, et super filios westros"- Luke, 23:28; Behind Christ is the Virgin Mary in her characteristic mournful pose (for more on this pose, see below). CRUCIFICATION OF CHRIST); the appearance of Christ is also rather mournful than suffering; behind Mary, one of the Holy Wives; the end of the cross is supported by Simon of Cyrene).

The introduction of the characters of the paintings The Procession to Golgotha ​​of the Virgin Mary is based on the Gospel of Nicodemus, and on its expanded presentation, which has become widespread in the West in XV century. According to this literary source, John informed the Virgin Mary about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Golgotha. Mary, who appeared here with other Holy Wives, lost her senses at the sight of a terrible sight (for more details, see below). CRUCIFICATION OF CHRIST). However, artists often transform this story and transfer its scene to the road along which Christ walked to Golgotha. Thus, Mary faints at the moment when Christ falls - the first of three times - under the weight of the cross ( Pieter Brueghel the Elder). In Italian painting, the episode of loss of feelings by the Virgin Mary occurs as an independent plot, which became known as "Lo Spasimo"(" Fainting ").

Another female character that has gained popularity in Western European painting since XV centuries under the influence of the religious mysteries of that time - Veronica. There is no mention of it in the canonical gospels. In the Gospel of Nicodemus, Veronica is identified with a woman who was cured of bleeding from which she suffered for twelve years: “And a certain wife named Veronica said:“ I bled for twelve years and only touched the edge of His robe - and the flow of my blood stopped ”(The Gospel of Nicodemus, VII ; cf. Matt. 9:20-22; Mk. 5:25-34; OK. 8:43-48). The legend tells that Veronica left the house when Jesus passed by, exhausted under the weight of the cross. She wiped the sweat from His face with a handkerchief. His face was displayed on the handkerchief. According to another version, Veronica, having met Jesus Christ on His way to Golgotha, asked Him to leave her something to remember, and He gave her His Image Not Made by Hands on a handkerchief. This version of the legend was embodied in the mysteries of the Passion of the Lord played out in France, Germany and England. Veronica kneeling before Christ, who fell under the weight of the cross, is a frequent additional motif in the Procession to Golgotha ​​( Durer, Rubens). The board on which the face of Christ is displayed is the board of Veronica, or, in Latin,sudarium- became one of the symbols of the Passion of the Lord.

Among the crowd that accompanied Jesus Christ on His Way of the Cross, there were, of course, Roman soldiers with their standards, on which, according to tradition, S. P. Q. R - abbreviation of words: "Senatus populusque Romanus"(lat. - The Senate and the Roman people), which has already been encountered more than once in the "Roman" scenes of the Passion (see. JUDGMENT OF CHRIST: Christ before Pilate; CROWNING WITH THE CROWN OF THORNS; "SE, MAN!"; CRUCIFICATION OF CHRIST). The soldiers, besides Christ, lead two thieves, sentenced along with Christ, to crucifixion. Their names - Dismas ("good") and Gestas ("bad") - have come down to us only in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. There is no evidence of their crimes. It has been suggested that they were from the society of Barabbas. Mark notes that Barabbas was in "chains" "with his accomplices, who committed murder during the rebellion" (Mark 15:7). This crime of theirs, of course, was punishable by crucifixion, and they, like Jesus, had to carry each of their crosses to Golgotha. In painting, however, they are often depicted as led Roman soldiers without their crosses ( Rubens).

In the first centuries of Christianity, and then later in the era of the Crusades, there was a tradition of pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Countless pilgrims rushed to the Holy Sepulcher, intending to follow the path of Christ to Golgotha. Returning to their countries, the pilgrims often noted - as a reminder to themselves and as a warning to others who had yet to go to the Holy Land - the path of Christ with the cross. At first, the number of Stops of the Cross varied, and only to VI fourteen of them were established in the century - the number that has remained to this day. IN XIV century, thanks to the Franciscans, a special cult of the Stops of the Cross developed. These stops began to correspond to certain prayers and religious rites. The cycle of paintings on these subjects became especially popular in XV century, and by the XVII century, a cycle of fourteen paintings on this topic has become an indispensable element of the decor of every Catholic church. “Art finally gives up its arrogant dispassion,” writes the famous French historian Lucien Febvre. - To replace the triumphant Christ XIII age comes suffering, tormentedtortured and crucified Christ XV century. The drama of the Passion of the Lord, the drama, as if slowly moving from stop to stop, to the last limit - Golgotha ​​- art XV century retells it with all the details, mercilessly, not concealing a single sore of Christ, not a single fall, not a single tear. It takes this drama even beyond the limits of the Cross of Christ and continues it with the Cross of Mary - a crucifixion, perhaps even more painful; really favorite topic. XV century - " Pieta": on the knees of the tormented Virgin - the body of Christ, bloodied and pitiful" ( Febvre L., With. 319).

The stops of the Cross, which it was customary to depict in this cycle of paintings, are as follows.

1. Jesus is sentenced to death.

2. Jesus accepts His Cross.

3. Jesus falls for the first time under the weight of the Cross.

4. Jesus meets His grieving Mother Mary.

5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry His Cross.

6. Veronica wipes Jesus' face with her handkerchief.

7. Jesus falls for the second time under the weight of the Cross.

8. Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem.

9. Jesus falls for the third time under the weight of the Cross.

10. They take off Jesus' clothes.

11. Jesus is nailed to the Cross.

12. Jesus dies on the Cross.

13. The body of Jesus is taken down from the Cross.

14. The body of Jesus is placed in the tomb.

These scenes, executed in a single artistic manner, can be seen in Catholic churches in the form of paintings of a single cycle, hung in the above compositional sequence on the columns (if there are enough of them) or on the walls of the naves clockwise, starting from the altar.

EXAMPLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS:

Giotto. Procession to Calvary (1304-1306). Padua. Scrovegni Chapel.

Duccio. Procession to Golgotha ​​(altar "Maesta") (1308-1311). Sienna. Cathedral Museum. .

© Alexander MAYKAPAR

This is the entrance to the King David Synagogue, above which is the hall of the Last Supper. I tried to go there, but in the hall I was met by concrete walls, building materials and an angry worker who quickly kicked me back

Here was the last meal of Jesus Christ with His twelve closest
disciples, during which he predicted the betrayal of one of the disciples.

Garden of Gethsemane

In this garden, Jesus loved to relax and communicate with his disciples. Here, after
treacherous kiss of Judas He was arrested. Here grow 8 very ancient
olives, which may be about 2000 years old

Jesus was led into Jerusalem through the Lion's Gate

Somewhere here he was judged by Pontius Pilate

That stone platform on which Pontius Pilate sat, judging the Prisoner, did not survive.
As much as Pilate wanted to save Jesus, he had no choice. Church then
had serious weight in the state

Dungeon

Jesus was kept here, and the robber Barabbas was sitting in the cave (lower right corner of the photo).

Stops on the Way of the Cross

The Way of the Cross passed along Via Dolorosa. Now guidebooks divide it into 14 stops.
(stations), each of which reports on some episode of the tragic path of Jesus. Pro
I won’t tell each parking lot, but as an example I’ll say a few

Church of the Flagellation

It was here, according to legend, that the Roman soldiers beat Jesus Christ.

“Then Pilate took Jesus and ordered him to be beaten. And the soldiers, having woven a crown of thorns, put it on His head, and dressed Him in purple, and said: Hail, King of the Jews! And they struck him on the cheeks"

Opposite this church is the first station of the Way of the Cross,
reminiscent of the scourging of Jesus

Periodically, pilgrims make a religious procession

How beautiful and fun this ceremony is for Catholics!

On that day, life was just as noisy on the streets of Jerusalem, everyone was minding their own business, and
Jesus carried his cross to Calvary. The cross, by the way, was an order of magnitude heavier than this

The street is going up

It's hard to imagine how a wounded person can drag a cross uphill,
weighing about one hundred kilograms

Station III.
Jesus falls for the first time

Exhausted by the night judgment and scourging, Jesus fell under the weight of the Cross.
Angels look down on Him

Station IV.
Jesus meets his mother

The Mother of God came here to see her Son, and saw Him carrying
cross to the place of execution. Now there is an Armenian Catholic
Church of the Sorrowful Mother

Cafe in the courtyard of the church

Station V
Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Christ carry the cross

Here the Roman soldiers forced Simon of Cyrene, who had come to Jerusalem to
Easter, help Jesus carry the cross

“And when they led him away, they seized a certain Simon of Cyrene, who was walking from the field, and laid a cross on him to carry after Jesus.”

Station VI.
St. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus

"Veronica, full of sympathy, came up and wiped the face of Jesus with a handkerchief and was surprised to see that the miraculous "true image" of the face of Jesus remained on the handkerchief."

Here Jesus leaned his hand against the wall

Since then, a recess has appeared in the wall, where all believers put their hands. A

Deacon Andrew

On Easter night, it was supposed to cut the lambs and eat them. The Passover meal necessarily included roast lamb. But the rules of kosher (permitted by Judaism) food suggest that there should be no blood in the meat. According to Josephus, 265,000 lambs were slaughtered at Easter in Jerusalem. Herod Agrippa, in order to count the number of pious families, ordered to separate the victims to the hearth - there were 600 thousand of them ... Of these hundreds of thousands of sacrificial animals, all the blood had to be poured out. Given that Jerusalem did not have a sewer, one can imagine how much blood the city's sewers carried to the Kidron Stream.

The Kidron flows between the Jerusalem Wall and the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ was arrested. On the eve of Easter, Kidron was filled not so much with water as with blood. Before us is a symbol born of reality itself: Christ, the New Testament Lamb, is being led to execution across a river full of the blood of Old Testament lambs. He comes to shed His blood so that there is no need to kill anyone anymore. All the terrible power of the Old Testament cult could not seriously heal the human soul. "By the works of the law no flesh will be justified"...

The suffering of Christ begins in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here He spent the last hours of His earthly life in prayer to the Father.

Evangelist Luke, a doctor by training, describes the appearance of Christ in these moments with the utmost accuracy. He says that when Christ prayed, the blood, like drops of sweat, flowed down His face. This phenomenon is known to physicians. When a person is in a state of extreme nervous or mental stress, then sometimes - (extremely rarely) this happens. The capillaries that are closer to the skin break and the blood seeps through the skin through the sweat ducts, mixing with sweat. In this case, large drops of blood are really formed that flow down the person's face. In this state, a person loses a lot of strength. It is at this moment that Christ is arrested. The apostles are trying to resist. The Apostle Peter, who carried with him a “sword” (maybe it was just a big knife), is ready to use this weapon to protect Christ, but hears from the Savior: “Return your sword to its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword; Or do you think that I cannot now plead with My Father, and He will present Me with more than twelve legions of angels? The apostles run away. Waking up, no one was ready to follow Christ. And only one of them, hiding behind the bushes, follows for some time the temple guards leading Christ into the city. This is the evangelist Mark, who later in his Gospel will tell about this episode. While Christ was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, the apostles, contrary to the requests of Christ, slept. In those days, it was customary to sleep naked, and Mark had no clothes on. Jumping up, the young man threw something hastily on himself, and in this form followed Christ. They nevertheless noticed the flashing of this spot behind the bushes, the guards tried to catch him and Mark, leaving the cape in the hands of the temple guards, ran away naked (). This episode is worthy of mention because, several centuries before, it was, in fact, already foretold in the Old Testament. In the book of the prophet Amos (2.16) it was said about the day of the coming of the Messiah: "And the bravest of the brave will flee naked on that day." Mark really turned out to be the most courageous, he is the only one trying to follow Christ, but still he is forced to flee naked from the guards ...

Jesus, betrayed by Judas, was seized by the guards of the Sanhedrin, the supreme governing body of the Jewish religious community. He was brought to the house of the high priest and hastily tried, resorting to both false witness and slander. Calming the conscience of those gathered, the high priest says: "... it is better for us that one person should die for the people, than that the whole nation should perish." The Sanhedrin seeks to show the Roman authorities that he himself is able to tame "troublemakers" and not give the Romans a reason for reprisals.

Further events in the Gospel are described in sufficient detail. The judgment of the chief priests followed. The Roman procurator (viceroy) Pontius Pilate does not find the guilt that the Sanhedrin lays on Jesus: “Corruption of the people, a call to refuse to pay tribute to Caesar, the emperor of Rome, claims to power over the Jewish people.” However, the high priest Caiaphas insisted on the execution, and in the end Pilate gives his consent.

Let us pay attention only to that part of the verdict, where the Sanhedrin says: "He makes himself God." This means that even those who did not at all sympathize with the preaching of Christ believed that He equated Himself with God, i.e. asserted his divine dignity. Therefore, naturally, in the eyes of the faithful Jews, who profess the purely unity of God, this was indeed blasphemy, precisely this, and by no means a claim to messianic dignity. For example, Bar Kaaba, who at about the same time claimed the messianic title, was not crucified and his fate is much more prosperous. So, the court is over, the night before the execution begins.

Golgotha, a low hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem, was the traditional site of public executions. It was for these purposes that several pillars constantly stood on the top of the hill. According to custom, those sentenced to crucifixion had to carry a heavy beam from the city, which served as a crossbar. Christ also carried such a beam, but, as the Gospel says, he was unable to carry it to Golgotha. He was too weak. Before this, Christ had already been executed once: he was scourged.

Today, based on the data of the Shroud of Turin, we can say that scourging is thirty-nine blows with a five-tailed scourge with lead balls that are tied to the ends of each of the belts. Upon impact, the whip wrapped around the entire body and cut the skin to the bone. Jesus received thirty-nine of them because Jewish law forbade more than forty blows. It was considered deadly.

However, the law has already been broken. Christ was punished twice, while any law, including Roman law, forbids punishing a person twice for the same act. Flagellation is the first, and in itself the heaviest punishment. After him, not everyone survived. And yet the first punishment is followed by the second - the crucifixion. Apparently, Pontius Pilate really tried to defend the life of Jesus and hoped that the sight of a bloody preacher, beaten to a pulp, would satisfy the bloodthirsty instincts of the crowd.

However, this did not happen. The crowd demanded execution, and Jesus was led to Golgotha. Beaten and exhausted, He fell several times along the road, and at the end the guard forces a peasant named Simon, who was standing nearby, to take the cross and carry it to Golgotha. And on Golgotha ​​the Lord is nailed to the cross. The feet are nailed to the post that was dug in, and the hands are nailed to the crossbar that He carried on Himself, and then the crossbar is set up on a vertical post and nailed.

For two thousand years, the word "crucifixion" was repeated so often that its meaning was lost to some extent, dimmed. The enormity of the sacrifice that Jesus brought for all people, past and future, has also dimmed in the consciousness of those living today.

What is a crucifixion? Cicero called this execution the most terrible of all the executions that people came up with. Its essence lies in the fact that the human body hangs on the cross in such a way that the fulcrum is in the chest. When a person's arms are raised above shoulder level, and he hangs without leaning on his legs, the entire weight of the upper half of the body falls on the chest. As a result of this tension, blood begins to flow to the muscles of the pectoral girdle, and stagnates there. Muscles gradually begin to stiffen. Then the phenomenon of asphyxia occurs: the pectoral muscles, cramped, squeeze the chest. The muscles do not allow the diaphragm to expand, the person cannot take air into the lungs and begins to die from suffocation. Such an execution sometimes lasted several days. To speed it up, a person was not just tied to a cross, as in most cases, but nailed. Forged faceted nails were driven between the radius bones of the hand, next to the wrist. On its way, the nail met a nerve node, through which the nerve endings go to the hand and control it. The nail interrupts this nerve node. In itself, touching a bare nerve is a terrible pain, but here all these nerves are interrupted. But not only does he have to breathe in this position, he has only one way out - he needs to find some kind of support in his own body in order to free his chest for breathing. A nailed person has only one possible point of support - these are his legs, which are also pierced in the metatarsus. The nail enters between the small metatarsal bones. The person should lean on the nails with which his legs are pierced, straighten his knees and lift his body, thereby relieving pressure on the chest. Then he can breathe. But since at the same time his hands are also nailed, the hand begins to rotate around the nail. In order to breathe, a person must turn his hand around a nail, which is by no means round and smooth, but completely covered with jagged and sharp edges. Such a movement is accompanied by pain on the verge of shock.

The gospel says that the suffering of Christ lasted about six hours. To speed up the execution, guards or executioners often broke the crucified's shins with a sword. The man lost his last point of support and quickly suffocated. The guards guarding Golgotha ​​on the day of the crucifixion of Christ were in a hurry, they had to finish their terrible work before sunset, for the reason that after sunset the Jewish law forbade touching a dead body, and it was impossible to leave these bodies until tomorrow, because a great holiday was coming - Jewish Passover, and three corpses were not supposed to hang over the city. Therefore, the executioner team is in a hurry. And here, St. John specifically notes that the soldiers broke the legs of two robbers who were crucified together with Christ, but they did not touch Christ himself, because they saw that He was dead. It is not difficult to see this on the cross. As soon as a person stops moving up and down endlessly, it means that he is not breathing, it means that he is dead ...

The Evangelist Luke reports that when the Roman centurion pierced the chest of Jesus with a spear, blood and water poured out of the wound. According to the doctors, we are talking about fluid from the pericardial sac. The spear pierced the chest on the right side, reached the pericardial sac and the heart - this is a professional blow of a soldier who aims at the side of the body that is not protected by a shield and hits in such a way as to immediately reach the heart. An already dead body will not bleed. The fact that blood and water poured out means that even earlier, even before the last wound, the cardiac blood mixed with the fluid of the pericardial sac. The heart could not bear the pain. Christ died of a broken heart earlier.

They manage to remove Jesus from the cross before sunset, they manage to hastily entwine him in funeral clothes and lay him in the tomb. This is a stone cave carved into the rock near Golgotha. They put him in a tomb, fill up the entrance to a small cave with a heavy stone and put guards so that the students do not steal the body. Two nights and one day pass, and on the third day, when the disciples of Christ, full of sorrow because they have lost their beloved Teacher, go to the tomb to finally wash His body and complete all the funeral rites, they find that the stone has been rolled away, the guards no, the tomb is empty. But their hearts do not have time to be filled with new grief: not only was the Teacher killed, and now there is not even an opportunity to bury Him humanly - as at this moment an Angel appears to them, announcing the greatest news: Christ is risen!

The gospel describes a series of encounters with the risen Christ. It is amazing that Christ, after His resurrection, does not appear to either Pontius Pilate or Caiaphas. He does not go to convince people who did not recognize Him during his lifetime by the miracle of his resurrection. He appears only to those who believed and managed to receive Him earlier. This is a miracle of God's respect for human freedom. When we read the testimonies of the apostles about the resurrection of Christ, we are struck by one thing: they talk about the resurrection not as an event that happened somewhere with some stranger, but as an event in their personal lives. “And it’s not easy: the person dear to me has risen.” No. The apostles say: "And we rose together with Christ." Since then, every Christian can say that the most important event in his life took place during the time of Pontius Pilate, when the stone at the entrance to the tomb was rolled away, and the Conqueror of death emerged from there.

The cross is the main symbol of Christianity. The cross is the center of grief. And the cross is protection and a source of joy for a Christian. Why was the Cross needed? Why were neither Christ's sermons nor His miracles enough? Why was it not enough for our salvation and union with God that God the Creator became a man-creature? Why, in the words of the saint, did we need God, not only incarnate, but also slain? So - what does the Cross of the Son of God mean in the relationship between man and God? What happened on the Cross and after the crucifixion?

Christ repeatedly said that it was for this moment that He came into the world. The last enemy, the ancient enemy that Christ fights is death. God is life. Everything that exists, everything that lives - according to the convictions of Christians and the experience of any developed religious philosophical thought - exists and lives by virtue of its participation in God, its relationship with Him. But when a person commits a sin, he destroys this connection. And then the divine life ceases to flow in him, ceases to wash his heart. The person begins to choke. Man, as the Bible sees him, can be compared to a diver who works at the bottom of the sea. Suddenly, as a result of careless movement, the hose through which air enters from above is pinched. The person begins to die. It can be saved only by restoring the possibility of air exchange with the surface. This process is the essence of Christianity.

Such a careless movement that broke the connection between man and God was original sin and all subsequent sins of people. People erected a barrier between themselves and God—not a spatial barrier, but in their hearts. People were cut off from God. This barrier had to be removed. So that people could be saved, could gain immortality, it was necessary to restore the connection with the One Who alone is immortal. According to the apostle Paul, only God has immortality. People have fallen away from God, from life. They needed to be “saved”, it was necessary to help them to find exactly God – not some mediator, not a prophet, not a missionary, not a teacher, not an angel, but God himself.

Could people themselves build such a ladder from their merits, their virtues, along which they, like the steps of the Tower of Babel, would rise to heaven? The Bible gives a clear answer - no. And then, since the Earth itself cannot ascend to the Sky, the Sky inclines towards the Earth. Then God becomes man. "The Word became flesh." God came to people. He did not come to find out how we live here, not to give us some advice on how to behave. He came so that human life could flow into the Divine life, could communicate with it. And so Christ absorbs into himself everything that is in human life, except for sin. He takes the human body, the human soul, the human will, human relationships, in order to warm Himself, warm the person and change him.

But there is another property that is inseparable from the concept of "man". During the epochs that have passed since the expulsion from paradise, a person has acquired one more skill - he has learned to die. And God also decided to absorb this experience of death into Himself.

People tried to explain the mystery of Christ's suffering on Golgotha ​​in different ways. One of the simplest schemes says that Christ sacrificed Himself in our place. The Son decided to appease the Heavenly Father so that, in view of the immense sacrifice made by the Son, he would forgive all people. This was the opinion of Western medieval theologians, popular Protestant preachers often say this today, such considerations can be found even in the Apostle Paul. This scheme comes from the ideas of medieval man. The fact is that in archaic and medieval society, the severity of an offense depended on the one against whom this offense was directed. For example, if a person kills a peasant, one punishment is due. But if he kills the prince's servant, a different, more serious punishment awaits him. This is how medieval theologians often tried to explain the meaning of biblical events. In itself, Adam's offense may be small - think, he took an apple - but the fact is that it was an act directed against the greatest ruler, against God.

A small, in itself insignificant value, multiplied by the infinity against which it was directed, itself became infinite. And, accordingly, in order to pay this endless debt, an infinitely huge sacrifice was needed. A person could not bring such a sacrifice for himself, and, therefore, God himself pays it for him. This explanation was fully consistent with medieval thinking.

But today we cannot recognize this scheme as intelligible enough. In the end, the question arises: is it fair that instead of the real criminal, the innocent suffer? Would it be fair if a certain person quarreled with his neighbor, and then, when an attack of philanthropy came upon him, he suddenly decided: okay, I won’t be angry with my neighbor, but in order for everything to be according to the law, I’ll go slaughter my son, and after that we will consider that we have reconciled.

However, questions about this kind of popular theology arose even with St. Fathers of the Orthodox Church. Here, for example, is the argument of St. : “It remains to investigate the question and dogma, left unattended by many, but for me very much in need of research. To whom and for what was the blood shed for us, the great and glorious blood of God and the Bishop and the Sacrifice, shed? We were in the power of the evil one, sold under sin and lust bought ourselves damage. And if the price of redemption is given to none other than the one in power, I ask: to whom and for what reason was such a price brought? If to the evil one, how insulting! The robber receives the price of redemption, receives not only from God, but God himself, takes such an immeasurable payment for his torment that it was fair to spare us for it! And if to the Father, then, firstly, for what reason is the blood of the Only Begotten pleasing to the Father, Who did not accept even Isaac, who was offered by the father, but replaced the sacrifice by giving a ram instead of a verbal sacrifice? Or from this it is clear that the Father accepts, not because he demanded or had a need, but because of the dispensation and because man needed to be sanctified by the humanity of God, so that He Himself would deliver us, overcoming the tormentor by force, and raise us to Himself through the Son of the mediator and who arranges everything in honor of the Father, to whom he turns out to be submissive in everything? Such are the deeds of Christ, and more will be honored by silence.

There have been other attempts to explain the mystery of Golgotha. One of these schemes, in a sense deeper and rather bold, speaks of a deceived deceiver. Christ is likened to a hunter*. When the hunter wants to catch some animal or fish, he scatters the bait or masks the hook with bait. The fish grabs what it sees - and stumbles upon what it did not want to meet.

According to some Eastern theologians, God comes to earth in order to destroy the kingdom of Satan. What is the realm of death? Death is emptiness, nothingness. Therefore, death cannot be simply driven away. Death can only be filled from within. The destruction of life cannot be overcome by anything other than creation. In order to enter this void and fill it from within, God assumes a human form. Satan did not recognize the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the Son of God made man. He considered Him simply a righteous man, a saint, a prophet, and believed that, like any son of Adam, Christ is subject to death. And so, at that moment, when the forces of death rejoiced that they had managed to defeat Christ, anticipating a meeting with another human soul in hell, they met with the power of God Himself. And this divine lightning, having descended into hell, begins to unfold there and smashes the entire hellish crypt. This is one of the images quite popular in ancient Christian literature*.

The third image likens Christ to a doctor. The saint says so: God, before sending His Son to earth, forgave our sins to all of us. Christ, however, comes in order, like an experienced doctor, to bind together the disintegrated human nature. Man must himself, from within his own nature, remove all the barriers that separate him from God. That is, a person must learn to love, and love is a very dangerous feat. In love, a person loses himself. In a sense, all serious love is close to suicide. A person ceases to live for himself, he begins to live for the person he loves, otherwise it is not love. He goes beyond his own limits.

However, in every person there is a particle that does not want to go beyond its limits. She does not want to die in love, she prefers to look at everything from the point of view of her own little good. The dying of the human soul begins with this particle. Could God simply remove with some kind of angelic scalpel this cancer nesting in the human soul? No, he couldn't. He created people free (in His own image and likeness) and, therefore, would not disfigure His own image, which He put into man. God works only from within, only through man. The son of the Eternal Father two thousand years ago became the son of Mary, so that here, in the human world, at least one soul would appear capable of saying to God: “Yes, take me, I don’t want to have anything of my own. Not my will, but yours be done."

But then begins the mystery of the deification of the human nature of Christ. He has been God since birth. He has, on the one hand, the divine consciousness, the divine "I", and on the other hand, the human soul, which has developed, like every child, youth, young man. Naturally, in every living being, God put the fear of death. Death is something that is not God. God is life. It is common for every human soul, every living soul in general, to be afraid of what is most obviously not God. Death is clearly not God. And the human soul of Christ is afraid of death - it is not afraid, but opposes it. Therefore, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the human will and soul of Christ turn to the Father with the words: “My soul is grieving to death… If possible, let this cup pass from Me; however, not as I want, but as You ... "().

At this moment, the last line is crossed that could separate a person from God - the experience of death. As a result, when death approaches the life of Christ, tries to break it up and destroy it, it does not find any material for itself in it. According to the definition of a saint, with which not only Christians of the 2nd century, when the saint lived, but also believers at all times, agreed, death is a split. First of all, the split of the soul and body, as well as the second death, which, according to Christian terminology, is the split of the soul and God. Eternal death. So, when this schism, this wedge, tries to establish itself, to find its place in Christ, it turns out that it has no place there. He gets stuck there, because the human will of Christ, through the Gethsemane prayer, submitted to the divine will, completely united with it. The wedge of death could not separate the soul of Christ from the Divine nature of the Son of God, and, as a result, the human soul of Christ was inseparable from His body to the very end. This is why the almost immediate resurrection of Christ takes place.

For us, this means that from now on, the death of a person becomes nothing more than an episode of his life. Since Christ found a way out of death, this means that if a person follows him, figuratively speaking, "clings to his clothes", then Christ will drag him through the corridors of death. And death will not be a dead end, but just a door. That is why the apostles say that the death of Jesus Christ is the most important event in their personal lives.

Thus, we do not receive salvation by the death of Christ, but by His resurrection. Death is driven out by the onslaught of life. Christ doesn't just "suffer" torments. No. He invades the realm of death and creates humanity to the source of immortal life - to God.

There is a fourth image that explains the events of Golgotha. The land where people live can be likened to an occupied planet. It so happened that in the heavenly world at some time, about which we know nothing, an event of apostasy took place...

We do not know its motives, we do not know how it proceeded, but we know its consequences. We know that there has been a division in the angelic world. Part of the heavenly spiritual forces refused to serve the Creator. From a human point of view, this is understandable. Any being who realizes himself as a person sooner or later faces a dilemma: love God more than himself, or love himself more than God. Once upon a time, the angelic world faced this choice. Most of the angels, both biblical and ecclesiastical experience suggests, "stood" in purity and "stood" in God, but some part broke away. Among them was an angel, created the most beautiful, the most wise, the most powerful. He was given a wondrous name - the Lightbearer (lat. "Lucifer", Slav. "Dennitsa"). He was not just one of the singers of the glory of God. He was entrusted by God with the control of the entire universe.

According to Christian views, every person, every nation has its own guardian angel. Lucifer was the guardian angel of the entire Earth, of the entire human world. Lucifer was "the prince of the Earth", the prince of this world.

The Bible from the first pages indicates that the most terrible events in the cosmic annals occur because of man. From the point of view of geology, man is nothing more than mold on the surface of an insignificant celestial body located on the outskirts of the Galaxy. From the point of view of theology, man is so important that it was because of him that the war broke out between God and Lucifer. The latter believed that in the economy entrusted to him, people should serve the one who manages this economy. That is, to him, Lucifer.

Through the fall, man, unfortunately, let evil into his world, and the world turned out to be separated from God. God could speak to people, could remind them of His existence. The whole tragedy of the pre-Christian world can be expressed in a simple phrase: “there was God - and there were people”, and they were apart, and between them there was a kind of thin, invisible, but very elastic wall that did not allow the human heart to truly unite with God, not allowing God to stay with people forever. And so Christ comes "in the form of a servant" (in the form of a slave) as the son of a carpenter. God comes to people in order to, in a sense, "from within" raise a rebellion against the usurper.

If you carefully read the Gospel, it becomes clear that Christ is not at all such a sentimental preacher as it seems in our time. Christ is a warrior, and He directly says that He is waging war against the enemy, whom he calls "the prince of this world" () - "arhon tou kosmou". If we look at the Bible, we will see that the Cross, Golgotha ​​is the price that had to be paid for people's fascination with the occult, "cosmic revelations."

And then a careful reading of the Bible reveals another amazing mystery. From the point of view of ordinary mythological thinking, the habitat of demons is a dungeon, a dungeon. The popular notion places hell underground, where magma boils. But in the Bible, it is more likely that “spirits of evil” dwell in the heavenly world. They are called so - "spirits of malice in the heavenly", and by no means "underground". It turns out that the world that people used to call the “visible sky” is by no means safe, it seeks to subdue the human heart. “Forget about God, pray to me, return my rewards!” - as the demon said about this in Zhukovsky’s ballad “Thunderbolt”. It is this heavenly blockade that Christ wants to break through. For this he comes here unrecognized, and for this he dies.

The monk asks: why did Christ choose such a strange type of execution? and he himself answers: "to purify the airy nature." As explained by Rev. Maximus the Confessor, Christ accepts death not on earth, but in the air, in order to abolish "the hostile forces that fill the middle place between heaven and earth." The cross sanctifies the "airspace" - that is, the space that separates people from the One Who is "higher than the heavens." And now, after Pentecost, the First Martyr Stephen sees the heavens open - through which we see "Jesus standing at the right hand of God" (). The Calvary Cross is a tunnel pierced through the thickness of demonic forces that strive to present themselves to man as the last religious reality.

Therefore, if a person can approach the zone that Christ cleared from the dominance of evil spirits, if he can offer his soul and body for healing to Christ as a doctor who heals human nature in Himself and through Himself, then he will be able to gain that freedom. that Christ brought, that gift of immortality which He had in Himself. The meaning of the coming of Christ is that the life of God should be available to people from now on.

Man was created to be with God, and not with cosmic impostors. Created in the image of the Creator, he is called to go to the Creator. God Himself has already taken His step towards man. In order to free people from the cosmic blockade, from the muddy revelations of "planetary logoi", astral "mahatmas" and "masters of the cosmos", God broke through to us. Broke through all the space debris - for the Virgin Mary was pure. And pulled us out of the power of space "aliens" with his Cross. The cross connected heaven and earth. The cross united God and man. The cross is the sign and instrument of our salvation. That is why it is sung on this day in churches: "The Cross is the guardian of the whole universe." The cross is raised. Get up and you, man, do not sleep! Do not get drunk on surrogates of spirituality! May the Creator's Crucifixion not be fruitless for your destiny!

The Way of the Cross is an integral part of the Passion of the Lord, including the Carrying of the Cross, culminating in the Crucifixion. In Catholicism, a divine service that recreates in the memory of believers the main moments of the suffering of Jesus Christ.

gospel narrative

All four evangelists narrate about the way of the cross, and Matthew and Mark are exactly the same:

“We met a Cyrenean named Simon; this one was made to bear His cross.”

John describes this episode very briefly, saying nothing about Simon of Cyrene, but saying about Jesus that he

“Carrying His cross, He went out to a place called Skull, in Hebrew” (John 19:17).

Luke tells the most about the way of the cross:

“And when they led Him away, they seized a certain Simon of Cyrene, who was walking from the field, and laid a cross on him to carry after Jesus. And a great multitude of people and women followed Him, weeping and weeping for Him. Jesus, turning to them, said: Daughters of Jerusalem! do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children, for the days are coming in which they will say: blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not given birth, and the breasts that have not fed! then they will begin to say to the mountains: fall on us! and hills: cover us! For if they do this to a green tree, what will happen to a dry one? (Luke 23:26-31).

Description of worship

The liturgy consists of 14 stations, representing various moments of the Passion of Christ, as well as an introduction and conclusion.

Traditionally, on the walls of Catholic churches, fourteen paintings or sculptural compositions are placed around the perimeter, corresponding to the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross.

Thus, the worshipers during the service bypass the entire temple.

Stations of the Cross

• VIII:
• XIII:

Each position consists of the following elements:

• Proclamation of the name of the station.
• Prayer of the Cross. Various texts of similar content can be used as a prayer of the cross:

“We worship You, Christ, and we bless You. For by Your Holy Cross You have redeemed the world.” “We adore You, Christ, and we bless You. For You redeemed the world with Your Holy Cross” “We worship You, Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Your churches that are in the whole world, and we bless You, for You redeemed the world with Your Holy Cross”, etc.

• Reading meditation. Meditation is a text of free form, prompting the participants of the divine service to think more deeply about one or another moment of the Passion of the Lord.
• Prayer (Our Father, Hail Mary or other).
• Procession to the next station.

Traditions

Usually the Divine Services of the Way of the Cross are held during Great Lent, especially on Fridays. It is obligatory to conduct the Way of the Cross on Good Friday - the day of the crucifixion and death of Christ.

In many Catholic countries, where there are monasteries or revered temples located in mountains or remote places, sculptural or pictorial images of the stations of the Cross are installed along the road leading to the sanctuary. The worship of the Way of the Cross can thus be combined with a pilgrimage.