Commentary on the Gospel of
Over the centuries, our understanding of the crucifixion has become sanitized and idealized. We have forgotten what it meant during Jesus’ time. Crucifixion was designed to be a painful and humiliating death. Only the worst criminals. mostly those who threatened Roman dominance, were subject to this method of execution. The condemned were executed in places where people could see them, increasing their humiliation and letting their pain and suffering serve as a deterrent.
By willingly accepting this death, Jesus embraced the worst of human experience: pain, loneliness, fear, humiliation, abandonment. By embracing the worst, Jesus redeemed it and made it holy. Jesus allowed his own body to become a bridge, uniting the depths of human experience with the divine. Because Jesus experienced the worst, nothing in our lives is excluded from God’s all-enveloping love. The love that includes even crucifixion can encompass whatever we experience, no matter how painful or dehumanizing it may be. In Christ, all we have and are is assumed into God, purified, and made holy.
