Following the soldiers who had been commanded to crucify Jesus, was a crowd of Jewish priests and scribes, the teachers of the law, and a multitude of the lowest of the people, all shouting aloud their rejoicing that Jesus was to be put to death, just as if he had been the wickedest man in all the land. But among these were a few friends of Jesus, and some of the women who had known him and loved him, and were now weeping over the wrongs done to him.
Jesus turned and spoke to these women:
"Women of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children! For the time is coming when they shall say, 'Happy are those who have no children to suffer and to die.' In those days they shall call out to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Hide us.' If this is what they do now in the beginning, what will they do then in the end?"
Even in those terrible moments Jesus was not thinking of himself and his own sufferings, but the sorrows that would soon come upon others.
There is a story told of Jesus on the way to Calvary, which is not found in any of the gospels, and may not be true. It is said that a good woman, named Veronica, was standing by the street when Jesus went by. Seeing his face covered with sweat, and dust, and blood, she went to him and wiped his face with a napkin. When she looked at her napkin, she found that on it had been printed the portrait of Jesus; and she kept it ever afterward as her greatest treasure.
They led Jesus out of the gate in the city wall, and up the side of the hill Calvary, wherever that hill was. There they laid the cross upon the ground and stretched Jesus out upon it. They drove nails through his hands and feet to fasten his body to the cross. Then they lifted it up with Jesus upon it, and dropped the lower end of it into a hole so that it would stand upright.
With Jesus they had brought two other men, who had been robbers, and sentenced to die by the cross. These two men they crucified with Jesus, one on his right hand and the other on his left, and Jesus between them, as if he had been the most wicked man of the three.
Jesus knew that the Roman soldiers who fastened him to the cross were not his enemies, as the Jews were, but were only obeying the orders that had been given them by their officers. He prayed to God for them.
"Father," said Jesus, "forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!"