Never Forsaken

Yesterday I was listening to Catholic radio and the question was asked, what did Jesus mean when he said, “May God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The father who was answering questions had an interesting take on it. He said in American culture, we can hear a line from a TV theme song and immediately know the rest of it. For example, “Here’s the story… of a lovely lady…” And pretty much anyone can finish the song. Well, the same was true of the Jewish tradition. They were a culture that orally passed down stories from one generation to the next. They knew the scriptures and the stories; thus, when Jesus was on the cross and cried out that statement, they would have immediately known that He was quoting the beginning of Psalm 22. They would have remembered the end where David speaks of the character of God and the victory of love.

We read this line today, not knowing the full significance of what was being said. So often we think that God turned his back on Jesus during this time – thus forsaking Him. I think we fail to understand the incredible complexity of the holy trinity — truly it is one of the great mysteries beyond our capacity. Jesus said, “I and the Father are ONE. If you have seen Me, then you have seen the Father.” Is it then possible for the Father to forsake Jesus? At the same time, in His moment of agony, the Father did not rescue Jesus from His incredible pain and suffering — both the physical and the spiritual weight of sin that was placed upon His shoulders at the crucifixion. Father John Echert said, “Some people wrongly assume that Jesus despaired in his final moments. Not so. Jesus was quoting the opening words from Psalm 22, which has great significance as to the messianic identity of Jesus. [He] would have identified not only with the opening lines, but the entire text and sentiment of the psalmist.”

Pope Benedict VVI addressed this question in a catechesis on February 8, 2012. “A question arises within us: how is it possible that such a powerful God does not intervene to save his Son from this terrible trial? It is important to understand that Jesus’ prayer is not the cry of one who meets death with despair, nor is it the cry of one who knows he has been forsaken. At this moment, Jesus makes his own the whole of Psalm 22, the Psalm of the suffering People of Israel. In this way he takes upon himself not only the sin of his people, but also that of all men and women who are suffering from the oppression of evil and, at the same time, he places all this before God’s own heart, in the certainty that his cry will be heard…. In this prayer of Jesus are contained his extreme trust and his abandonment into God’s hands, even when God seems absent, even when he seems to be silent, complying with a plan incomprehensible to us. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read: “in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” His is a suffering in communion with us and for us, which derives from love and already bears within it redemption, the victory of love. At the supreme moment, Jesus gives vent to his heart’s grief, but at the same time makes clear the meaning of the Father’s presence and his consent to the Father’s plan of salvation of humanity.”