The Deposition

The Deposition by Caravaggio

From the Vatican Museum


When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead for some time. When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.

Mark 15:42-47


Good Friday Solemn Collect:

Let us commit ourselves to God, and pray for the grace of a holy life, that, with all who have departed this world and have died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to God alone, we may be accounted worthy to enter into the fullness of the joy of our Lord, and receive the crown of life in the day of resurrection. BCP p.280


Lately, in the blogosphere, there has been much discussion of the meaning of Jesus' death on the cross, atonement, salvation, and from Rmj, who likes to use fancy words, soteriology. I've put in my two cents here and there, but I've found it much easier to say what I don't believe than what I believe. I've been struggling over the last few days to come up with my own theory on the meaning of Jesus' death. First off, I find that I can't separate the death from the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Second, I have not come up with anything that could be called coherent.

In the comments to a post by Rmj, I found this from Boreas:

Fr. Armand Veilleux, O.C.S.O., a member of the General Council and Procurator General of the Cistercian Order in Rome, essayed an answer which seems germane to this conversiation [on salvation], and which I quote in part:

"Christ saved us by his life, not by his death. But his death is part of his life. It was because he was faithful to being the witness to his Father to the end that he had to accept death as the consequence of this witness. But he did not accept it joyfully. The agony was a tremendous difficulty for a young man who was facing death at thirty-three years of age. Also, if you analyze the New Testament very closely, you see that Jesus puts an end to the practice of sacrifices.... Christ was not killed as a sacrifice, he was murdered. Because he accepted to be murdered, it is his life -- including that consequence -- that has replaced all the sacrifices. And so in our life, we are not pleasing God by making sacrifices; we are pleasing God by living according to his message as Jesus did. And this, our life, is the only "sacrifice" that God wants. So when we celebrate the Eucharist, we celebrate the fact that Christ -- God incarnated as a human being -- has given himself as "food." We are not killing him; we are celebrating his life and the gift of life that he gives us as food -- as nourishment -- for our life."(pp. 231-32

From The Gethsemani Encounter in 1999 by the Continuum Publishing Co., of New York.

The words of Fr. Veilleux come closest to my thoughts on the meaning of the cross. Jesus' whole life, including his death, was the offering.