Grelot on Jesus in the face of death

"The death of Jesus is not that of Socrates, drinking the hemlock in a calm and impavid fashion:  Jesus suffers fear and anguish in full view of his closest disciples.  This is not the Stoic death of Seneca—opening up his veins—or of Cicero—extending his neck to the executioner—in acceptation of their Destiny.  It is not the death of a disciple of the Buddha, in whom the death of all desire would have prepared [the way for a] tranquil entrance into Nirvana.  It is not the death of a mystic in ecstasy or burning to encounter the God whom he desires (one thinks here of the execution of Hallâj).
     "It is above all the death of a Jew shaped in his comportment by the substance of the Scriptures, expressing in the perspective that they have opened up his faith and his questions ('Why have you abandoned me?'), his anguish and his hope.  The Scriptures are thus accomplished because Jesus assumes them.  But every man can also recognize in him the most intimate depths of his [own] experience, for this is the ineluctable destiny of the sinful humanity that he bore [right through] to the end [(bout)]."

     Pierre Grelot, Dictionnaire de spiritualité, s.v. Mort I. dans l'écriture sainte (t. 10 (1980), cols. 1753-1754).  Cf. St. Leo the Great on the Slave mentality.