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| "The Apokathelosis" (The Unnailing) icon by Photios Kontoglou |
Threnody Over The Tomb
By Photios Kontoglou
"It is finished," cried the much-tortured Christ from the cross and bowed His weary head.
That great day was Friday and the Sabbath was dawning. Well, that Sabbath He rested in the embrace of the earth that He Himself created. On this hallowed day the eyelids of His body were closed, His wounded limbs lay down. According to the prophecy that Jacob spoke about Christ, nineteen hundred years prior: "He lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse him?"
So the soldiers went, but they did not touch Christ because they saw that He was already dead, and only one of them pierced a spear into His side, and from the wound flowed blood and water.
In the meantime, an official man named Joseph of Arimathea, who was a secret disciple of Christ, went to Pilate and begged him to take the body of the Lord and bury it. And Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So the blessed Joseph went with another disciple of Christ, Nicodemos, and with some others who helped them, and they unnailed and took down the immaculate and most holy body of the Lord. With them went the holy women, the Panagia, her sister, Mary Magdalene and Salome, who had followed Him to Galilee and cared for Him and who stood and looked at the Crucified One from afar like frightened birds.
With what lamentation they laid their beloved Master on the sheet they had spread, kissing His tortured body and wiping the all-holy blood from His wounds. Every person weeps as if they had lost their beloved, bringing to mind their behavior and their words, when they were alive. But who has lost such a beloved as Christ? Who was loved more than Him, the Master of Love, who was crucified for love, a young man, thirty-three years old?
Source: From an article in ELEFTHERIA, Friday, 4/7/1961. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.