- 40 - Hence, it is also not correct that Christ exclaimed to his mother from the Cross, ‘Mother, behold your son!’ and to the disciple John: ‘Son, behold your mother.’ He did, in fact, speak similar words to Mary and John as he was being led from the courthouse after Pilate had pronounced the death sentence and while his mother and John clung to him in anguish until they were torn away by the soldiers. His mother had been present at the trial, as had the disciples. And had never lost hope that it would end in his favour. She constantly thought of the story of Abraham, whose son was spared from sacrifice at the last instant, even as the knife with which he was to be slain was drawn. To this day there is not a mother who would not attend a trial in which her child’s life hung in the balance, but no mother who would go to witness the execution of her own child. To see his mother on the verge of swooning from agony and terror cut Jesus to the soul, and all he thought of was to spare her any further sight of his own suffering. He therefore begged John to take her to his home until everything was over, and spoke lovingly to her, urging her to go with John and to implore God for strength in this hour of tribulation, telling her that it was his Heavenly Father’s will that he undergo these things and that after three days she would see him again. John willingly acceded to his Master’s request and took Jesus’ mother, pierced by a thousand sorrows and keeping to her feet only with the utmost effort, to his home. He did not take her into his home permanently, as might be gathered from the text of your Bible, but for the time being, to remove her from this harrowing scene. One after another all the other faithful followers of Jesus came there too. Some time later, when it was fair to assume that the Crucifixion had been carried out, some of them, including Mary Magdalene, went to a spot from which the site of the execution could be seen, and returned to relate the death of Jesus. Jesus’ mother stayed at John’s home only so long as she remained in Jerusalem. Afterwards, she returned to Nazareth, her home and that of her other children. Naturally, she often revisited Jerusalem to see the Apostles, in particular John, as long as they continued to live there. As Christ had been confirmed as God’s emissary by the power of God during his life, so was he in the hour of his death. The sun darkened for three hours. It was not a darkness by reason of natural causes, but one effected by the power of God. At the moment when Jesus gave up his spirit, the curtain in the temple was rent from top to bottom, as a symbol that the wall dividing the realm of God from that of Satan had been torn down by Jesus’ death. The earth shook and rocks burst. But the story recorded in your version of the Gospel of Matthew that the dead arose from their tombs and were seen by many in Jerusalem is a falsification of the originally accurate text, which read: ‘The curtain in the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent, and the tombs were opened; and many corpses of those who had passed on were cast forth. Many who had come from the holy city saw the corpses lying there.’ This text, which is accurate, therefore records what naturally would and did happen, namely that the tombs carved into the rocks were cracked open by the earthquake shocks and that the corpses were cast out upon the surface. There they were, of course, in plain sight of the many who had come from
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