Main news for 7 June 2025

What so amazed this centurion about the death of the Lord Jesus? After all, the centurion was a soldier who had seen many deaths and executions in his lifetime... We can only wonder.

Three evangelists testify to the darkness that covered the earth during the execution, and Matthew speaks of an earthquake at the moment of Christ's death. Perhaps these natural phenomena became signs for the centurion, because in the Greco-Roman "Olympian" religion the immortal gods often react in similar ways to the death of their mortal children. This is how Matthew and Luke understand the centurion's reaction. Mark, however, says that the death itself, the way Jesus died, became for the centurion a sign of the unusual nature and distinctiveness of this Executed One.

Death on a cross is terrible and agonizing. A crucified person dies very slowly, gradually suffocating and losing strength. By the moment of death he has no strength left even to breathe in, much less to cry out. The centurion had surely seen this many times. But this Crucified One dies unexpectedly quickly, before they even had time to break His legs, as if the One who has authority over the times of life and death revealed His love for Him even in death. Jesus dies, giving His spirit into the hands of the Father, and the centurion hears these words. And finally, His cry before death testifies, as modern doctors explain it, that Christ dies not from suffocation but from a ruptured heart: in the view of a Roman centurion, not a shameful death, but a noble one.

We do not know whether this is so or not. But what matters is that the contemplation of the cross of Christ touched the heart even of a hardened and not at all sentimental pagan. Are we losing this ability to respond from the heart to the suffering of the Savior? For only by being crucified with Him can we also be raised with Him...