“After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished.”

That is, “that nothing was wanting to the Dispensation.” For He was everywhere desirous to show, that this Death was of a new kind, if indeed the whole lay in the power of the Person dying, and death came not on the Body before He willed it; and He willed it after He had fulfilled all things. Therefore also He said, “I have power to lay down My life; and I have power to take it again.” Knowing therefore that all things were fulfilled, He says,

“I thirst.”

Here again fulfilling a prophecy. But consider, I pray, the accursed nature of the bystanders. Though we have ten thousand enemies, and have suffered intolerable things at their hands, yet when we see them perishing, we relent; but they did not even so make peace with Him, nor were tamed by what they saw, but rather became more savage, and increased their irony; and having brought to Him vinegar on a sponge, as men bring it to the condemned, thus they gave Him to drink; since it is on this account that the hyssop is added.

“Having therefore received it, He says, It is finished.”

Do you see how He does 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 does. 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. By all which things the Evangelist has shown, that He was Lord of all. — Homily 85