Two are the most tragic events in human history. One is the fall of the proto-makers and their expulsion from the Garden of Trophies and the second and more terrible is the murder of God on the part of man, as a horrible result and final downfall due to his absolute consumption by sin and corruption. The condemnation and death on the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, our God incarnate, not only constitutes the most heinous criminal act of all time, but it absolutely justifies the necessity of the salvation of the human race through the redemptive work of our Savior.
The first who opposed God, questioned His absoluteness and wanted to usurp the throne of His majesty, was Lucifer. Fallen man, now subject to the devil, darkened by the sting of sin and completely worn out from his original nature, considered it natural to oppose God, as his deceitful submitter did, and even worse, to attempt to kill Him! The modern Nietzschean "killing of God", beyond paranoid ideology, is the expression of the eternal satanic will of fallen man to kill God!
The great opportunity was given him, in order to realize this horrible inner desire of his, in the person of the incarnate Son and Word of God. While He agreed to become a man, in order to realize the salvation of the world, as the supreme benefactor of the human race, he, persisting in an incredible ignorance, did not accept the grace of his redemption and thought of killing Him! After all, the Lord, throughout His presence on earth, faced an incessant pursuit for extermination! The climax took place under the Praetorium, where lords and people shouted with all the might of their souls "cross, cross" (John 19,6), demanding His death from the representative of the most corrupt worldly power! Finally they managed to carry out their criminal mood. The Lord of glory, amid indescribable humiliations, was led to the horrible Golgotha and nailed to the wood of the cross! This was the wretched image of humanity, which Christ came to save, utterly corrupt and impoverished! For her sake he willingly accepted the shameful passion of death on the cross. He took upon Himself the whole of human guilt and blotted it out on the cross. He became, according to the apostle Paul, himself "curse" to annihilate the human curse, which was born of sin (Gal. 3,13).
The divinely inspired holy evangelists saved us several details from the Divine Passion, with the aim of making them an inexhaustible source of living doctrine for the faithful of all ages. It is no coincidence that the holy Gospels have dedicated most of their texts to the last days of the Lord's life and activity, because these are the culmination of the process of the redemption of the world.
Among these details is the account of the wondrous supernatural phenomena which occurred on that Good Friday, when theocide was committed and the perfectly dispassionate Son and Word of God suffered and died as a criminal on the cross. In a clear way the holy evangelists mention the shocking disturbance of the natural balance. In contrast to the animate and rational humanity the inanimate and horseless creation appeared more prudent than it. Staring in horror at the Creator's unheard of slaying
her, from His supreme building, man, was thoroughly shaken. The sacred writers mention how "And from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour... and behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the stones were split" (Matthew 27,45:53-15,33; Mark 23,44:XNUMX; Luke XNUMX:XNUMX).
The magnitude of human misdeeds was such that even this lifeless creation was shaken, unable to bear to see the unjust passion of its Creator. The operation of the eternal natural laws was seriously disturbed at the sight of theocide. Only the hard hearts of the ignorant crusaders remained impassive and unyielding before the Crucified God. And not only that, but "I blasphemed him, moving their heads and saying, 'Oh, you catalyzed the temple and in thirty days of construction, save yourself and come down from the cross.' In the same way, the high priests, speaking to each other after the scribes, said, ``He saved others, he cannot save himself. Let Christ the king of Israel come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe. And those who were crucified with him reviled him" (Mark 15,29-32).
The holy hymn writer of Good Friday wonderfully rendered the shock of creation before the divine drama: "Through the fear of God, all creation saw you hanging on a cross, Christ, the sun was darkened and the foundations of the earth were shaken; all things are related to the creator of all things" (trope of the Epistles of the Holy Passions). The same with the hymn writer of M. Savvatos: "He who sustains everything on the cross was lifted up, and all creation mourns seeing him hanging naked on the tree; the sun hid its rays, and the sky and the stars were expelled; the earth was shaken with much fear, the sea left, and stones broke through…”.
The first supernatural phenomenon was the inexplicable darkness that prevailed over the whole earth, being noon (six o'clock), without the conditions for an eclipse of the sun, because it was a full moon, the sun suddenly went dark. The Fathers of our Church say that the luminary of the day could not bear to illuminate the divine sufferings and therefore shed its light to cover the horrible event. The second was the tearing of the veil of the temple of Jerusalem, where the holy and awesome place of the Holy of Holies was seen by all, which clearly declared the end of the mission of the Mosaic religion and especially of the bloody sacrifices, because the Great Sacrifice of the Messiah is now the only effective sacrifice, as an eternal high priest "in the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 7,17). The third shocking event was the great world earthquake, which shook the planet. The earth, which had become the footstool of God incarnate and had been sanctified, because it could not withstand the murder of God. She was shocked and disturbed because the most horrible event in history was happening to her. The fourth was the splitting of the rocks. The eternal and unsalted granites of the holy land were chipped and torn as "potter's ware", remaining witnesses to the murder. The last and most terrible supernatural phenomenon was the opening of the monuments and the resurrection of holy men of old. A shocking proof that Christ was "firstborn of the dead" and "beginning (of the resurrection) of the sleeping ones(15,20 Cor. XNUMX:XNUMX).
The late professor P. Trebelas wrote about this supernatural disruption of the natural world: "nature seemed to be afraid of the criminality of men and in this way manifested its sympathy for the death of Christ" (P. Trembela, Commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew, Athens 1951, p. 513).
The crusaders remained tragically apathetic before these miraculous phenomena. "Their hearts were harder than rocks. Those dead who seemed alive, did not rise with the supreme cry" of Christ, wrote G. Papini. Only the Roman centurion at the head of the executioners felt the great crime and seeing "the child glorified God saying, indeed this man is righteous" (Luke 23,47:XNUMX). The centurion is the first pagan, who believed in Christ! On the contrary, the Jews who were present, who attended out of curiosity at the place of the crucifixion, hypocritically knocked "their own breasts" (Luke 23,47:XNUMX), without any remorse, driven by temporary emotional charge and superstitious fear!
The tradition of the Church saved us in the holy synaxary of Saint Dionysios the Areopagite, the story that this eminent Athenian man was in Egypt on the day of the Lord's crucifixion, he saw the supernatural phenomena and exclaimed: "either God suffers, or everything is lost"! That terrible experience accompanied him throughout his life! There are also non-Christian testimonies, even Jewish ones, about this fact. According to the testimony of the historian Josephus, a few years before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. had been damaged for an inexplicable reason! Accounts of the supernatural events of Jesus' crucifixion later passed into the Talmudic tradition as part of a more general anti-Christian tactic. They were considered the results of magical acts, since Christ was considered by the Jews to be a magician and work miracles "in the demon lord" (Matthew 12,24)!
The disturbance of the natural balance during that terrible day of the crucifixion of the Lord, involves enormous theological and moral parameters. The shock of the natural world in the face of theocide, is the most striking proof that the dehumanization of man had surpassed even the aphasia of the inanimate world. From a theological point of view this upheaval of nature lies in the fact that the whole world is diffused by the uncreated energy of God. Life and the eternal laws of the created world are governed and continually nourished by the life-giving divine energy, since, "and turning away his face they are troubled" (Psalm 103,23). In this case, the horrible disturbance of nature was due solely to the intelligent uncreated energy of God, which protested against theocide in this shocking way. This is also a clear answer to the pantheists, who believe in a "divine" and "rational" nature, as well as to the rationalists who deny any supernatural event, considering the natural world to be completely "insensitive"!
Before the divine passion, we Orthodox believers feel co-responsible (as humans) with the crusaders of the Lord. Our difference with them is that we confess our sinfulness and mourn the ultimate fall of our nature. Imitating the inanimate creation, we are shocked by the divine sufferings and decry our descent that sin has led us to. We stand in awe before the Crucified One and we humbly ask Him to open the philanthropic bowels of His goodness and to redeem us with His honest Blood, which He shed for the life and salvation of the world on the horrible Golgotha. With the beautiful secret cry of our soul, we declare to our Redeemer Christ, that He is our only savior, only to Him do we look and only to Him do we depend on our lives. We receive His graceless sufferings as supreme gifts, culminating in the slaying of our death with His own death!
