Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up his spirit.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
In Serm., non occ.: When now nought of suffering remains to be endured, death still lingers, knowing that it has nothing there. The ancient foe suspected somewhat unusual. This man, first and only, he found having no sin, free from guilt, owing nothing to the laws of his jurisdiction. But leagued with Jewish madness, Death comes again to the assault, and desperately invades the Life-giver. "And Jesus, when He had cried again with aloud voice, yielded up the ghost. "The second was that He might abolish with yet more justice the sentence of death which He had with justice passed. For as the first man had by guilt incurred death through God’s sentence, and handed down the same to his posterity, the second Man, who knew no sin, came from heaven that death might be condemned, which, when commissioned to seize the guilty, had presumed to touch the Author of sinlessness. And it is no wonder if for us He laid down what He had taken of us, His life, namely, when He has done other so great thing...
But Jesus, when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. "Again" refers to the former words on the Cross. He first cried out, and then expired. S. Luke gives the exact words, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." In the Greek, "I will lay down My life; I will consign it into Thy hands as a deposit, to take it back when I am raised up on the third day." Hence the faithful use this verse when dying, as David first used it when in suffering ( Psalm 31:5 ).[ Psalm 30:6]
It was by a miracle that Christ cried with a loud voice, for the dying lose their voice, so that they can hardly speak. For though S. Thomas says (par. iii. q47) that Christ preserved the vigour and strength of His body to the last; yet others suppose, more correctly, that His strength had so failed by what He had gone through, that He could not cry out naturally, but only by a miracle, for otherwise He would not have died through the violence of His sufferings, but merely by His own voluntary sev...
Ad Polycarp. Ep. 7: When we were together at Heliopolis, we both observed such an interference of the moon with the sun quite unexpectedly, for it was not the season of their conjunction; and then from the ninth hour until evening, beyond the power of nature, continuing in a direct line between us and the sun. And this obscuration we saw begin from the east, and so pass to the extreme of the sun's orb, and again return back the same way, being thus the very reverse ofan ordinary eclipse.
With a loud voice. In this our Redeemer confirms what he had said to Pilate; I have the power to lay down my life, and I have the power to take it up again: for he cried with a loud voice, and at the very hour of the evening sacrifice, to show that it was by the effect of his own will that he died. (St. John Chrysostom, hom. lxxxix.)
Non occ.: God is said to have forsaken Him in death because He exposed Him to the power of His persecutors; He withdrew His protection, but did not break the union.
De Trin. x. 50: From these words heretical spirits contend either that God the Word was entirely absorbed into the soul at the time it discharged the function of a soul in quickening the body; or that Christ could not have been born man, because the Divine Word dwelt in Him after the manner of aprophetical spirit. As though Jesus Christ was a man of ordinary soul and body, having His beginning then when He began to be man, and thus now deserted upon the withdrawal of the protection of God’s word cries out, “My God, my God, whyhast thou forsaken me?”.
Vinegar is wine, which has turned sour either from neglect, or the fault of the vessel. Wine is the honour of immortality, or virtue. When this then had been turned sour in Adam, He took and drunk it at the hands of the Gentiles. It is offered to Him on a reed and a spunge; that is, He took from the bodies of the Gentiles immortality spoiled and corrupted, and transfused in Himself into amixture of immortality that in us which was spoiled....
It follows, “Some of them that stood by,”; “some,” not all; whom I suppose to have been Roman soldiers, ignorant of Hebrew, but from the words "Eli, Eli,” thought that He called upon Elias. But if we prefer to suppose them Jews, they do it after their usual manner, that they may accuse the Lord of weakness in thus invoking Elias.
It was a mark of Divine power in Him thus to dismiss the Spirit as Himself had said, “No man can take my life from me, but I lay it down and take it again.”
“When Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he yielded up the spirit.” This refers to what he had earlier said: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again,” and “I lay it down of myself.” So for this cause he cried with the voice, that it might be shown that the act is done by his own power. The Gospel of Matthew, Homily
In Hom. de Cruce et Latr.: Creation could not bear the outrage offered to the Creator; whence the sun withdrew his beams, that he might not look upon the crime of these impious men.
Hom. lxxxviii: This darkness lasted three hours, whereas an eclipse is transient, and not enduring, as they know who have studied the matter.
Or otherwise; The wonder was in this, that the darkness was over the whole earth, which had never come to pass before, save only in Egypt what time the Passover was celebrated; for the things done then were a type of these. And consider the time when this is done; at mid-day, while over the whole world it was day, that all the dwellers on the earth might perceive it. This is the sign He promised to them that asked Him, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketha sign, and there shall no sign be given it save the sign of Jonas the Prophet,” alluding to His cross and resurrection. And it was amuch greater marvel that this should come to pass when He was fastened to the ...
This is what He said, I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again, and, I lay it down of myself. John 10:18 So for this cause He cried with the voice, that it might be shown that the act is done by power. Mark at any rate says, that Pilate marvelled if He were already dead: Mark 15:44 and that the centurion for this cause above all believed, because He died with power. Mark 15:39
This cry rent the veil, and opened the tombs, and made the house desolate. And He did this, not as offering insult to the temple (for how should He, who says, Make not my Father's house a house of merchandise), John 2:16 but declaring them to be unworthy even of His abiding there; like as also when He delivered it over to the Babylonians. But not for this only were these things done, but what took place was a prophecy of the coming desolation, and of the change into the greater and higher state; and a sign of His might.
And together with these things He showed Himself also by what...
Or, The Saviour said this as bearing about with Him our feelings, who when placed in dangers think ourselves forsaken by God. Human nature was forsaken by God because of its sins, and the Son of God becoming our Advocate laments the misery of those whose guilt He took upon Him; therein shewing how they who sin ought to mourn, when He who never sinned did thus mourn.
The soldiers misunderstanding the sound of the Lord’s words, foolishly lookedfor the coming of Elias. But God, whom the Saviour thus invoked in the Hebrew tongue, He had in ever inseparably with Him.
Or otherwise; The Jews as degenerating from the wine of the Patriarchs and Prophets were vinegar; they had deceitful hearts, like to the winding holes and hollows in spunge. By the reed, Sacred Scripture is denoted, which was fulfilled in this action; for as we call that which the tongue utters, the Hebrew tongue, or the Greek tongue, for example; so the writing, or letters which the seed produces, we may call a reed.
