“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These words are some of the most profound and mysterious in all of Scripture. Don’t miss how important they are. Jesus is true God and true man. This cry from Christ on the Cross means that God enters into the experience of God-forsakenness. As Venerable Fulton Sheen observed, at this moment on Good Friday, even God sounded like an atheist.
What is the relevance for us? Paradoxically, Jesus’ fourth “word” proves that God has not in fact forsaken us. He has descended to the darkest places. He is present in every human experience, including those we feel He is most absent. As one theologian put it, “When I am in endless darkness, so much so that I cannot stand myself anymore, it is there that I am forced to go to the very bottom of it and recognize another.” That presence of “another” is Christ.
Consider three places of apparent God-forsakenness: unbelief, sin, and death. When we fail to “see” God’s plan (we all do from time to time), when our faith is tested, where is God? Why does He permit the questioning? Wouldn’t it be easier to give us perfect faith? Wouldn’t that make us more effective, more convincing evangelists? Instead, scripture exhorts us to rejoice when faith is tested, that it “may prove to be for the praise, glory, and honor” of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:7). If we do not resist the trials and testing, but rather abandon ourselves to Providence, we find God, not in spite of, but because of the challenges to faith.
Sin, above all, separates us from God. When we fall (we all do from time to time), where is God? The Devil seeks two victories in sin. The second is more dangerous than the first. He aims first to lead us to sin. The next move is to convince us that there is no way out. The difference between Peter and Judas is the difference between hope and despair. Peter, even at his lowest moments, maintained a stubborn hope in the mercy of God. It was his salvation. We find God in our struggle against sin by turning to Him as often as we need, most especially in the Sacrament of Confession. As Pope Francis has reiterated, “It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness. But He does not tire of pardoning us.”
What about death? The empty tomb on Easter heralds the Good News of Resurrection, but a tomb is still a tomb. There was first a death. While our Christian faith teaches that “the burying is only a planting,” we can’t escape the burial (we will all die someday). Our contemporary world is uneasy around death. Are we grim or morbid for receiving ashes on our forehead while the priest instructs us to, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return?” Confronting the reality of our mortality must be balanced by a strong conviction in the existence of heaven. Meditating on heaven is good preparation for Easter. It is rooted in the hope of heaven that we maintain our joy even in the face of death. As St. Paul reminds us, “What will separate us from the love of Christ?” Nothing if we remain in Him.
Father Christopher J. Murphy is the Rector of Our Lady of Providence Seminary and Director of Pre-Ordination Formation.
