"When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani" which means 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'''
What do these words of Jesus really mean?
Fr. James Martin, in "Seven Last Words," echoes many of our questions about Jesus' state of mind, emotions, and soul when he cried out these words to his Father:
"'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken (abandoned) me?') What are we to make of these extraordinary words? For some Christians, they are almost unbearable. Can it be true that Jesus thought that God the Father had forsaken him? Is it possible that Jesus doubted the love of the one he called Abba, Father? Did Jesus give up hope when he was crucified? Did he despair when he was on the cross?"
Fr. Martin explains that there are two main ways of understanding these words, which are a line from Psalm 22, a line which any Jewish person at the time who had received religious training would have instantly recognized. Fr. Martin explains,
"The first possibility is that Jesus' words are not an expression of abandonment but, paradoxically, an expression of hope in God. Although Psalm 22 begins 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' and expresses the frustration of someone who feels abandoned by God, the second part of the psalm is a hymn of thanksgiving to God, who has heard the psalmist's prayer:
"For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted;
He did not hide his face from me,
but heard when I cried to him."
"In this interpretation, Jesus is invoking the psalm in its totality as the prayer of one who cried out to God and was heard. An example based on a more well-known psalm might be someone who says, 'The Lord is my shepherd,' and trusts that hearers would be familiar with the rest of psalm 23...and its overall message."
In other words, Jesus spoke the opening line as shorthand for the whole psalm, knowing that God and his human listeners could complete the rest of it and understand the entirety of what he wanted to express.
But another possibility is that Jesus truly did feel abandoned. He didn't despair - it's important to realize that. Jesus had such an intimate relationship with his Father, his Abba, that he could not have lost belief in his Father's Presence during his agony and death. And he IS crying out to God, so he is still in relationship with his Father. But he may very well have not been able to feel or experience his Father's consoling Presence.
How often do we, during times of extreme physical, emotional, or spiritual pain and crisis, cry out "Where are you, God?" We believe God exists. But God seems hidden from us. In my life, I have experienced feeling as if God were absent from me when my son died, when my daughter suffered from breast cancer, when my mother developed dementia, when I was terribly depressed. Sometimes our pain is a dark, stormy night surrounding us, and God's Light can't seem to pierce through our storm.
It's important to realize that Jesus is experiencing a multitude of abandonments during his crisis on the cross. Maybe you have experienced similar abandonments! Fr. Martin explains:
"First, he's witnessed his betrayal by Judas....Today we tend to think of Judas as purely evil, always evil, but remember that Jesus had selected him as one of the twelve apostles, and so for a time Jesus must have been close to Judas. Judas was a friend who betrayed him. Also, the Gospel of Mark says that by this point all but one of the apostles have fled, whether out of terror, confusion, or shame. So Jesus almost certainly feels abandoned and experiences, perhaps not for the first time in his life, human loneliness."
How often have we felt betrayed by someone whom we thought was our friend? How often have we experienced acute loneliness because others don't - or can't - understand our situation, our crisis, our pain? Jesus understands all of this because he experienced these feelings, this terrible vulnerability and loneliness.
And Jesus is also experiencing terrible physical agony and its resultant weakness.
"Jesus has also been subjected to an exhausting series of late-night inquests, brutalized by Roman guards, and marched through the streets of Jerusalem under a crushing weight; he is now nailed to the wood and experiencing excruciating pain. So he could be forgiven for feeling abandoned. The one who abandoned himself to the Father's will in the garden of Gethsemane the night before, who had given himself entirely to what the Father had in store for him, now wonders on the cross: 'Where are you?'" (Martin)
In the garden, Jesus spoke to his father, saying "Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me..." Jesus called his Father "Abba," "Daddy," because of his closeness to his heavenly Father. How poignant it is that by this stage of agony on the cross, Jesus calls God "Eloi" ( in Aramaic) or "Eli"(in Hebrew) which is a much more formal word for God. How very far away his Father must have seemed to him, that he could no longer call him "Daddy"! Truly this sense of abandonment must have been the greatest spiritual suffering which Jesus endured in his life. Endured for us, for our sake. Because of his love and mercy for us.
Many of the saints have experienced a similar Dark Night of the Soul. Teresa of Calcutta, when young, enjoyed many mystical experiences of the intimate Presence of God. In fact, she even heard God's voice. This remarkable woman founded the Missionaries of Charity to work with the poorest of the poor and the dying in India, and her Order spread across the world. Yet for the last fifty years of her life until her death, she no longer could feel God's Presence. During her prayer, she experienced a great emptiness and dryness.
"At one point, she wrote to her confessor, 'In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss - of God not wanting me - of God not being God - of God not really existing." (Martin.)
Mother Teresa was experiencing human feelings of abandonment by God, human doubts. Yet in spite of this painful emptiness, these terrible doubts, she did not despair, did not lose her faith in God. "...She began to see this searing experience as an invitation to unite herself more closely with Jesus in his abandonment on the cross and with the poor, who also feel abandoned. Mother Teresa's letters do not mean that she had abandoned God or that God had abandoned her. In fact, in continuing with her ministry to the poor, she made a radical act of fidelity based on a relationship she still believed in - even if she could not sense God's presence. She trusted that earlier experience. In other words, she had faith." (Martin.)
When we have doubts about God's existence, when God seems uncaring and far away, when we are in a crisis and God seems hidden and we scream out "Where are you, God? Why have you abandoned me?" We can also call out to Jesus. We can say "Jesus, I know you understand what I'm feeling. You felt abandoned by our Father too. And you have not forgotten what you suffered. Jesus, remember me! Increase my faith, dear Jesus!" We can believe as Jesus believed, that after every one of our crosses there comes a resurrection, a transformation, an increase in faith and compassion and new life.
It's hard to meditate on Jesus' sufferings. Yet the more we meditate on them, the more clearly we can see how Jesus was truly human as well as divine, like us in all things but sin. His very human suffering supports us as we stumble under the weight of our own crosses. In "Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel," Cardinal Walter Kasper reflects
"Many today cannot bear to look at the cross and the crucified one.They regard displays of the cross in public to be no longer appropriate and they want to remove them. But such attitudes of advanced secularization in a pluralistic society must be questioned: Has suffering no longer a place in a world of wellness? Do we push suffering away and suppress it? What would our world be missing, especially what would the many who suffer be missing if this sign of love and mercy for all were no longer permitted to be publicly visible? Should we no longer be reminded that: 'By his wounds we are healed' (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2: 24)? To believe in the crucified son is to believe that love is present in the world and that it is more powerful than hate and violence, more powerful than all the evil in which human beings are tangled. 'Believing in this love means believing in mercy.'"
Perhaps Jesus' greatest wound which heals us is this unseen wound, this terrible anguish of feeling abandoned by his Father - and our Father. May we be healed in knowing that we are not alone when we experience similar feelings of abandonment. In those hours of darkness, may we trust in the faith of Christ to support and uplift us.