Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb

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

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

Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus who had kept his faith hidden out of fear of the Jewish authorities, asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Pilate granted permission. Nicodemus also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in linen cloths with the spices, according to Jewish burial custom. Now there was a garden in the place where he had been crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. There they laid Jesus, because the Jewish Sabbath preparation day was drawing near (John 19:38-42).

The Scriptural Stations end where the Traditional Stations end: at the sealed tomb, in silence, on the threshold between death and whatever comes next. Both forms of the Via Crucis honor this silence. They do not rush past the tomb to the Resurrection. They hold the community of faith in the darkness of Holy Saturday — the day of waiting, the day when God seems absent, the day when the tomb is sealed and the stone is rolled and the guards are posted and nothing moves.

John's careful note — "a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid" — is theologically significant. Just as Jesus was born in a manger where no child had lain before, he is buried in a tomb that has received no other body. The King does not share a throne room; the tomb that held the body of the Son of God was uniquely his. And because it was uniquely his, what happened to it on the third day was uniquely his — and, in him, becomes the promise to all who die in faith. "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live" (John 11:25). The Scriptural Way of the Cross ends at the tomb. The story does not.