Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 74
? 74 patient turns pale. If you lay him down, he will feel an ago- nising dryness in the throat and in the mouth, and he will stammer or cry only the word ‘water’. A fit of fainting may change into death, and thus the dying person may have been crying for water, but usually a dying person does not ask for water. You can see how his lips are drying, some- times he would swallow a spoonful of water should you offer it to him, perhaps because the dying person has no power to refuse (though most often he does not refuse it). The fainting person, however (after an insufferable feeling of thirst), begins to lose consciousness. The earth seems to disappear under him, and he has a sensation of flying. Now he will cry as farewell warning perhaps, ‘I am dying. ’ But a dying person, totally exhausted by haemorrhage and torture, will only open his mouth and draw his breath; he will never use the dramatic words, ‘I am dying. ’ And Jesus said these words, ‘It is finished. I am dying. ’ He prayed for the persecutors. He saw the robbers on their crosses before they had put him on his. Then he thinks of his own and of all men’s liberation. Then he thinks of his mother, and her future, like a good son, so simple and natural. He had thought he was the Messiah, that he should build up the land of God. Perhaps he would bring it about by his suffering. He remembers a hymn by David, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ At last, distress and fainting force him to think of himself, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,’ and finally he cries, ‘Water, I am dying. ’ What did Jesus die of ? In the Gospels it is said only that ‘he gave up the ghost. ’ By this