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Translation
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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
"Having therefore received it, He saith, It is finished." Seest thou how He doth all things calmly, and with power? And what follows shows this. For when all had been completed, "He bowed His head, (this had not been nailed,) and gave up the ghost." That is, "died." Yet to expire does not come after the bowing the head; but here, on the contrary, it doth. For He did not, when He had expired, bow His head, as happens with us, but when He had bent His head, then He expired. …
Cyril of Alexandria
When this indignity had been added to the rest, the Saviour exclaimed, It is finished; meaning that the measure of the iniquity of the Jews, and of their furious rage against Him, was completed. For what had the Jews left untried, and what extremity of atrocity had they not practised against Him? For what kind of insult was omitted, and what crowning act of outrage do they seem to have left undone? Therefore rightly did He exclaim, It is finished, the hour already summoning Him to preach to the spirits in hell. …
Cyril of Jerusalem
When he had drunk the wine mingled with myrrh and vinegar, he said, "It is finished." For the mystery has been fulfilled. The things that are written have been accomplished. Sins are forgiven.
Western Saints
Augustine of Hippo
"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished." What, but all that prophecy had foretold so long before? And then, because nothing now remained that still required to be done before He died, as if He, who had power to lay down His life and to take it up again, had at length completed all for whose completion He was waiting, "He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost." Who can thus sleep when he pleases, as Jesus died when He pleased? …
Gregory the Dialogist
Ghost is put here for soul: for had the Evangelist meant any thing else by it, though the ghost departed, the soul might still have remained.
Hilary of Poitiers
Further, what terror had the pain of death for Him, to Whom death was an act of His own free will? In the human race death is brought on either by an attack upon the body of an external enemy, such as fever, wound, accident or fall: or our bodily nature is overcome by age, and yields to death. …
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