Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

When the soldiers confirmed that Jesus was dead, Joseph of Arimathea — a member of the Sanhedrin who had not consented to the decision to condemn Jesus and who was himself a disciple — went to Pilate and asked for the body. Pilate granted his request. Joseph, together with Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night and who now brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, took the body of Jesus down from the cross and prepared it for burial. Mary, his mother, received her Son's body into her arms in the scene that Christian art has immortalized as the Pietà — the image of grief made holy.

The Pietà is one of the most powerful images in the history of human art and devotion. Mary holds in her arms the same body she held in the stable at Bethlehem — but what has changed between these two moments of holding! She cradled an infant, small and new and full of promise. Now she holds a man broken by violence, drained of life. Yet both times, she holds him with the same love, the same faith, the same total surrender to the Father's will. She does not understand the Resurrection yet. She holds only grief — and she holds it with the full force of a mother's love.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are worthy of notice here too. Both were members of the Jewish establishment, secret disciples who had not declared themselves publicly during Jesus' ministry. It is only at the cross — when there is nothing to gain by following Jesus and everything to lose — that they come forward. The death of Christ draws out of them a courage they had not shown in life. So it is with many who encounter the Cross: it changes everything.