By Clement Harrold

April 2, 2026

The Gospels inform us that Jesus spent several hours on the cross. During that time, He is recorded as offering seven last sayings, each of which is imbued with profound meaning.

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)

We often take these words as applying only to Christ’s executioners, but in reality He delivers them on behalf of the whole world. The Doctors of the Church inform us that on the cross Jesus grieved for every sin ever committed since the fall of Adam.

This brings us to the deeper meaning of His intercession to the Father.

On the cross Jesus offers to the Father the full grief and sorrow that our sins deserve. And He asks the Father to look kindly upon us, because we do not know what we do. For we do not realize, as He does, the true blasphemous horror of sin.

Here lies the mystery of redemption: The only being worthy enough to compensate God for the offense caused by our sin was God Himself. And so God sent His only beloved Son so that He, as true God and true man, could achieve for us that reconciliation with the Father which we could not achieve on our own.

But if we are to share in this reconciliation, we must still show contrition for our sins, imperfect though that contrition is. Only then can we receive the fruits of the Father’s forgiveness that has been won for us by Christ.

“Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
 

This promise from Christ to the good thief can seem confusing.

Doesn’t our faith tell us that Jesus descended to hell, rather than ascending to heaven, on the day of His death? St. Thomas Aquinas makes sense of Christ’s statement this way:

Our Lord’s expression is not to be understood of the earthly corporeal paradise, but of a spiritual one, in which all are said to be who enjoy the Divine glory. Accordingly, the thief descended locally into hell with Christ, because it was said to him: “This day thou shalt be with Me in paradise”; still as to reward he was in paradise, because he enjoyed Christ’s Godhead just as the other saints did. (ST III.52.4.ad3)

The Good Thief did not go directly to heaven on Good Friday, for the righteous departed souls could not enter heaven until Jesus led them there on the day of His Ascension. But the Good Thief did experience Paradise after his death, insofar as he was allowed to enjoy the presence of Christ in the underworld.

“Woman, behold your son… Behold your mother.” (John 19:26–27)

It strains credulity to say that Jesus’ only concern in this passage is to take care of last-minute logistical arrangements before His death, as if He somehow forgot to jot down His last will and testament prior to His arrest.

As early as the third century, in around 225 A.D., the great biblical exegete Origen pointed out that more is going on in this passage:

No one can apprehend the meaning of [John’s Gospel] except he have lain on Jesus’ breast and received from Jesus Mary to be his mother also. Such [a] one must he become who is to be another John . . . Is it not the case that every one who is perfect lives himself no longer but Christ lives in him [see Gal 2:20]; and if Christ lives in him, then it is said of him to Mary, “Behold your son Christ.” (Commentary on John, 1.6)

Origen helps us to see that to be a Christian is to become a beloved disciple of Christ, and in doing this, each of us is called to embrace Mary as our spiritual mother.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34)

As the end draws near, Jesus recites the mournful words of Psalm 22.

In this moment, the Savior stands in place of you and me, speaking to the Father on our behalf, expressing the troubled cry of every human heart that feels abandoned and beyond saving.

In doing so, the Son makes a definitive act of trust: a trust that knows that God exists and that He is still listening even when we feel forsaken; a trust that invokes a psalm that begins in despair but ends by affirming the Father’s faithfulness.

From this place of trust, Jesus realizes that His desolation on the cross is bearing fruit for a time, now fast approaching, when all will be fulfilled: “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (Ps 22:24).

“I thirst” (John 19:28)

Our Lord is dizzy from dehydration.

His tongue is parched, and the cramping in His muscles is excruciating.

Even so, the drink for which He longs is primarily spiritual, not physical. The divine Bridegroom thirsts for our hearts. The Catechism captures this mystery beautifully in its section on prayer:

“If you knew the gift of God!” [John 4:10] The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.  (CCC, 2560)

On the cross, we discover the truth that “[w]e love, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). All our love, all our spiritual thirsting, finds its source and its end in the love God has for us.

“It is finished” (John 19:30)

What is finished?

The Greek verb is tetelestai, which harks back to John 13:1: “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end [eis telos].”

Again the Catechism offers wisdom:

It is love “to the end” [John 13:1] that confers on Christ’s sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction. He knew and loved us all when he offered his life. Now “the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.” [2 Cor 5:14] No man, not even the holiest, was ever able to take on himself the sins of all men and offer himself as a sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine person of the Son, who at once surpasses and embraces all human persons, and constitutes himself as the Head of all mankind, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all. (CCC, 616)

On the cross, the Son’s love is completed and consummated.

It is a love that is at once universal and yet deeply personal, as St. Paul discovered: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)

Christ’s final words are a cry from the heart, adapted from Psalm 31: “Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, Lord, God of truth” (Ps 31:6 NABRE).

This psalm, thought to have been written by King David when he was fleeing from Saul, begins in lament and ends in praise.

From the cross, Jesus reveals that His relationship with His Father is unshakeable.

In Luke’s Gospel, the very first words we hear from the Savior’s mouth highlight the depths of this relationship: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Lk 2:49). Now, as darkness covers the earth, the faithful and obedient Son commits His spirit—His life breath (see Gen 2:7)—to the Father whom He loves.

In that moment, the veil of the Temple is torn in two.

Because of the God-man’s perfect sacrifice, the dividing line between God and man is overcome (see Heb 10:19-20). And because of what the Son has done for us, we too can become sons and daughters of the Father.