“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” - Good Friday - 3.29.24
St. Mark the Evangelist Parish (Cranberry/Mars/Butler, PA)
Mass Readings- https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032924.cfm
On this Good Friday, we remember what Christ Jesus did for us on the Cross as He suffered and died for us to save us from our sins. Christ wanted to share in our suffering and death. He wanted to experience everything that we experience in our humanity. This includes this feeling of being abandoned by God the Father. We think about the words of Jesus on the Cross - “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s amazing that Christ Himself experienced this same feeling of abandonment. Again, it shows that He wanted to experience the depth of our suffering.
This feeling of abandonment by God is one of the greatest sufferings that we can experience in this life. One could argue that it is a worse suffering than death itself. It is a suffering that touches us in the depths of our soul. At the very core of our being. We are in the image and likeness of God. We are made for God. We are made to love Him and be with Him forever. He is the source of our happiness. The source of our life. Not only that but He is our Father. We are His sons and daughters.
When we feel abandoned by God the Father it causes a deep pain within our soul. In this abandonment, we feel hopeless. We feel we have no purpose. We lose a sense of who we are. We feel all alone. Abandoned. By ourselves. No one around. No life. Only nothingness and death. Deprived of love. There is only darkness.
This pain is so great that we just want to die so the pain will go away. We feel there is no more reason to live. We feel destined for nothingness. Like there is nothing beyond us. We feel like we will cease to exist since we have been abandoned by Life and Love itself. All there is left for us is death and to fade into nothingness forever and to fall into the abyss.
I imagine most of us, if not, all of us in some capacity has felt abandoned by God the Father in various ways. Those words of Jesus on the Cross - “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” - this is the cry of our own heart at times. In those moments we feel abandoned by God. Something bad happens to us and we cry out to God, “Where are you Lord?” Where were you when my brother died? Where were you when my family fell apart? Where were you when I got cancer?
Maybe sometimes you look out at the world today and wonder where God is at. Maybe there is the belief that He has abandoned us. We see everything going on in our world and Church today and cry out- “where are you God? Why have you abandoned us?”
On this Good Friday, Christ gives us His response. He says to us, “I am here. I am here on the Cross suffering with you. I have never left your side. I know your pain. I experience your pain on the Cross. I suffer with you.”
The truth is, is that God has not abandoned us. He will never abandon us. He is with us. This is what the Cross promises us. If you are in that place of feeling abandoned by God. Know that He is with you. If you are deep in sin and feeling the depths of guilt and shame and feel completely separated from God. He is reminding you today that He is with you. He has not abandoned you.
Jesus goes to those areas of our heart where we feel abandoned, broken, wounded, and darkness, and He experiences the Passion with us. He dies with us in those places of our heart. He does this so that we too may rise again. So what was broken is restored and redeemed. What was wounded is now healed. What was filled with darkness is now a source of light. What was dead is now alive again.
The Cross is the answer to the suffering we see in our world, and the suffering we experience in our own lives. Christ came and experienced the depth of human suffering, so to give us comfort and suffer with us.
As we know, the Cross is not the end. As we suffer and die with Christ. We too will rise with Him. Our suffering will not last forever. He promises to bring an end to all suffering and death for all eternity.
Whatever suffering you are experiencing today, God says to you, “I am with you. One day it will all be over. One day soon you will experience the joy of the Resurrection. And you will experience the deepest desire of your heart, to spend eternity with me in heaven forever.”
