Posted on 10/19/2025 2:32:33 PM PDT by ebb tide
The second essential principle of the correct interpretation of sacred texts refers to the existence of at least one meaning in every fact recorded in the Bible. Having God Himself as its author, Holy Scripture is not only free from any error, but it also “overflows” with meaning. Even the smallest details recorded in the Gospels contain messages that God wishes to transmit to us. For He, the Divine Author, is the One who encrypted them into the fabric of the words, with the purpose of inviting us to seek them in prayer and to pray as we seek them. Only in meditation, which is one of the advanced stages of prayer, can we receive from God the light needed to understand them.
Why, out of all possible forms of death, did God the Word, Jesus Christ, choose one of the most terrible and most horrific—the death on the Cross? The Son of God chose every detail of His Passion and His death with the purpose of teaching us something. In other words, every detail, every aspect contains at least one message worth deciphering.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) has shown, anyone who reads and meditates on the sacred texts experiences spiritual growth directly proportional to the measure of his understanding. Reading and meditating on Holy Scripture truly functions as essential nourishment for our souls. This is why God wants us to read Holy Scripture seeking answers to the questions stirred in our minds. This is made very clear in the famous episode of the loss and finding of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the temple among the teachers, when He was twelve years old. Narrated by the Evangelist Luke, the account contains highly significant details:
“After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers” (Luke 2: 46-47).
By challenging the teachers of the Law to answer Him, the young Jesus raised questions which, I assure you, were among the most important. Moreover, He Himself also answered them. The very same thing happens with us when, reading Holy Scripture, we see certain questions arise in our minds: “How is it that God created light first, and only afterward the sun and the moon? What kind of bodies did Adam and Eve have in Eden? Did the serpent speak? Then what kind of animal was it? What happened to human languages after they were confused? Why did the Savior Christ sometimes preach from a boat set a little way from the shore? Why did He walk on water?” etc.
If we persist in praying, reading, praying again, and studying the great masters of biblical exegesis, we will receive the answers of our Lord Jesus Christ and will often be astonished—just like the teachers in the temple—by them. Today we will meditate on just one such question, guided by one of the most brilliant interpreters of the sacred texts of all time: Saint Athanasius the Great (c.296–373). The question to which he gives us an answer is full of meaning: why, out of all possible forms of death, did God the Word, Jesus Christ, choose one of the most terrible and most horrific—the death on the Cross?
The hidden premise of this question, raised by Saint Athanasius in his treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (On the Incarnation of the Word), is unique: being all-powerful, and having become incarnate only in order to reopen the gates of Paradise for us, the Son of God chose every detail of His Passion and His death with the purpose of teaching us something. In other words, every detail, every aspect contains at least one message worth deciphering.
For only he that is perfected on the cross dies in the air. Whence it was quite fitting that the Lord suffered this death. For thus being lifted up He cleared the air of the malignity both of the devil and of demons of all kinds. - St. Athanasius
This is all the more true since the death He chose was absolutely voluntary: the teaching of the Holy Fathers on this point is unanimous—God chose when to die and how to die. Otherwise, no one would ever have been able to touch Him. This is clearly seen in the episode when the people of His own native places wanted to kill Him by throwing Him down from a height. The scene is astonishing. Without fear, He told His fellow countrymen to their face that they were hypocrites:
“Amen I say to you, that no prophet is accepted in his own country. In truth I say to you, there were many widows in the days of Elias in Israel, when heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there was a great famine throughout all the earth. And to none of them was Elias sent, but to Sarepta of Sidon, to a widow woman. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet: and none of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4: 24-27).
The consequence of such a frontal attack of vices and hypocrisy could only be one:
“All they in the synagogue, hearing these things, were filled with anger. And they rose up and thrust him out of the city; and they brought him to the brow of the hill, whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he passing through the midst of them, went his way” (Luke 4: 28-30).
I emphasize the ending: as if He had simply taken a peripatetic stroll, our Lord Jesus Christ walks away from the midst of the raging crowd determined to kill Him. The tone of the text is as calm as possible. It is as if I were to tell you right now that I have just brushed a speck of dust off the keyboard on which I am writing this text. Something simple, easy, without any consequence. Similarly, Jesus Christ, God, the Creator King of the universe, departs in the simplest way from the midst of a raging tsunami. He passes through the screaming crowd that later, in Jerusalem, will be able to kill Him. Reading the account of the Evangelist Luke, where we see how He passed through them without a single hair of His head being harmed, we can be certain—absolutely certain—that this was His will in Nazareth, just as later His will in Jerusalem would be to die on the Cross. But if this is so, then the question “Why the Cross of all deaths?” is absolutely legitimate.
In seeking answers with his brilliant mind, and at the same time enlightened by divine grace, Saint Athanasius proposes two major answers. The first points to the spatial level of the death chosen by God: the air. For He willed to die suspended in the air. Well then, what is the significance of this? The explanation is fascinating:
“If the devil, the enemy of our race, having fallen from heaven, wanders about our lower atmosphere, and there bearing rule over his fellow-spirits, as his peers in disobedience, not only works illusions by their means in them that are deceived, but tries to hinder them that are going up (...); while the Lord came to cast down the devil, and clear the air and prepare the way for us up into heaven, as said the Apostle (...Hebrews 10:20...) — well, by what other kind of death could this have come to pass, than by one which took place in the air, I mean the cross? For only he that is perfected on the cross dies in the air. Whence it was quite fitting that the Lord suffered this death. For thus being lifted up He cleared the air of the malignity both of the devil and of demons of all kinds.” [i]
Following the thought of Saint Athanasius, we could say that the exorcism of the atmosphere is the first reason for the death at height, in the air, lifted up on the Cross, of our Lord Jesus Christ. From this starting point we could continue with many other meditations, enriched with numerous biblical texts, where we are told that our struggle is not a physical one. It is an unseen war with the spirits of wickedness that fill the air. Yet here we learn that God has already dealt with this problem: He has already begun the battle, contributing decisively to the purification of the spiritual “air.”
It is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out His hands, that with the one He might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in Himself. For this is what He Himself has said, signifying by what manner of death He was to ransom all: ‘I, when I am lifted up, He says, shall draw all men unto Me’.
The second reason for His death on the Cross is one meant to warm our hearts:
“It is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out His hands, that with the one He might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in Himself. For this is what He Himself has said, signifying by what manner of death He was to ransom all: ‘I, when I am lifted up, He says, shall draw all men unto Me’.” (John 12: 32)
The outstretched hands of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross are the ones that uphold both the converted members of the chosen people and us, who come from the “pagan” nations. What can be more overwhelming than to realize the profound reason for the suffering of the crucifixion (for His palms, which hold us, are pierced by nails), together with the understanding of the incomprehensible generosity and love of God?
If we remember that the greatest saints and doctors, with Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori at the forefront, teach us that a single tear shed before the Cross of the Savior Christ is worth more than any mortification or ascetic practice, then I believe we know what we can do with the meditation of Saint Athanasius the Great—which I wholeheartedly recommend you read in its entirety. In this way, not only will we learn how to interpret the sacred texts, but we will also heal our hearts with the compassion and gratitude that can erupt when we become aware—however little and imperfectly—of what God have done for us all.
Ping
I believe Jesus chose to die on the cross in order to provide an example of true, sacrificial love. This same act also showed to us how fallen we are that we could do such a horrific thing to a sinless man.
He loves us despite the evil we are capable of. His love for us is truly beyond comprehension.
“Forgive them father, they know not what they do’’.
“And He spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower.”
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