Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried.

By his perfect human life, and by his sufferings and death, our Lord brought together again what had been separated - God and man, heaven and earth. This is called the atonement (“at-one-ment,” “making at one two who were apart from each other”).

There was once a man who had a tremendous row with his wife, left her, and went and lived somewhere else. Both were my friends, and I don’t like to see my friends unhappy. One evening he came to see me in the clergy-house: the next evening she came: on the evening after that they both came together, and they made up the quarrel, were “at one” again. What I did for them was something like what our Lord did for the whole world

Only he, both God and Man, could have done it. Only he knew the holiness of God and the awfulness of sin. Only he could make a perfect act of sorrow for the sins of the whole world, for only he could know them all. In the Agony in the Garden of Gethsernane (St. Luke 22, 39 to 44), and during those three hours on the cross when, although it was midday, it was as dark as midnight (St. Luke 23,44), of his own free will he took into his pure and sinless soul all the sins of the whole wide world, including yours and mine (for there is no Time with God). This was so awful that he even thought God the Father had left him; and cried (St. Mark 15, 34).

But he made at-one-ment for you, me, anil all who will have it.

All our hope of heaven one day comes from Good Friday “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So now you know why we love the crucifix.