The Body of the Dead Christ In the Tomb

I hope that my intentions are pure in posting a picture of this painting -- that this is not an immature attempt to shock or sensationalize, but to fully point toward the life-giving cross by also acknowledging its tragedy. That in this event death was truly overcome by death.

The following excerpt gives some background on Hans Holbein the Younger's painting and the full article is linked here:

"Portraits apart, this is perhaps Holbein's most striking image. Since Dostoevsky's observations in the nineteenth century, which dwelt on the forbidding aspects of physical decay and bodily corruption, the painting has been seen as the product of a mind steeped in the apocalyptic horrors that were unleashed by the first phase of the Reformation. But what is known of Holbein's phlegmatic interpretation of the human condition belies this interpretation. Modern authorities suggest that Holbein intended to stress the sheer miracle of Resurrection and its imminence, since the minutely-observed level of decay in the gangrenous wounds suggests that we see Christ's body three days after death."

And a quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann in For the Life of the World:

"Yes, as we have already said, Christianity was on the one hand, the end of all natural joy. It revealed its impossibility, its futility, its sadness -- because by revealing the perfect man it revealed the abyss of man's alienation from God and the inexhaustible sadness of this alienation. The cross of Christ signified an end of all 'natural' rejoicing; it made it, indeed, impossible. From this point of view the sad 'seriousness' of modern man is certainly of Christian origin, even if this has been forgotten by that man himself. Since the Gospel was preached in this world, all attempts to go back to a pure 'pagan joy,' all 'renaissances,' all 'healthy optimisms' were bound to fail. 'There is but one sadness,' said Leon Bloy, 'that of not being a saint.' And it is this sadness that permeates mysteriously the whole life of the world, it's frantic and pathetic hunger and thirst for perfection, which kills all joy. Christianity made it impossible simply to rejoice in the natural cycles -- in harvests and new moons. Because it relegated the perfection of joy to the inaccessible future -- as the goal and end of all work -- it made all human life an 'effort,' a 'work.'"