My God! My God! Why hast Thou Forsaken me?
August 4, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? I thought I had finished working on this post last week by mistake. Yes, it was done but not completed. I just realized it now. Anyway, this post is delayed by two days. I had to do a new version of the book, ‘Give It One More Year, Sir’ so it could be printed soon. And just now I got distracted with my Jurassic Nokia phone. I was gluing the keypad buttons and then the phone stopped functioning. Glue got into contact with the circuit board.
This is an opportunity to learn and to get myself up to date with technology. And yet I still am hoping my Jurassic Nokia will be revived. Challenges come when there is already an ongoing challenge. Life is exciting and dynamic, right? I want to sing ‘I will survive’!
Let us now start the fourth word of Christ from the Cross (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
Fourth Word
My God! My God! Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
The first three words from the pulpit of the Cross were addressed to the three predilections of God: enemies, sinners, and saints. The next two words, the fourth and the fifth, betray the sufferings of the God-Man on the Cross. The fourth word symbolizes the sufferings of man abandoned by God; the fifth word the sufferings of God abandoned by man.
When Our Blessed Lord spoke this fourth word from the Cross, darkness covered the earth. It is a common remark that nature is indifferent to our griefs. A nation may be dying of famine, yet the sun starts and plays upon the stricken fields. Brother may rise up against brother in a war that turns poppy fields into Haceldamas of blood; yet a bird, safe from the fire and shell, chants its little song of peace. Hearts may be broken by the loss of a friend; yet a rainbow leaps with joy across the heavens, making a terrible contrast between its smile and the agony it shines upon. But the sun refused to shine on the Crucifixion! The light that rules the day, probably for the first and last time in history, was snuffed out like a candle when, according to every human calculation, it should have continued to shine. The reason was that the crowning crime of man, the killing of nature’s Lord, could not pass without a protest from nature itself. If the soul of God were in darkness, so should be the sun, which He had made.
Truly, all was darkness! He had given up His Mother and His beloved disciple, and now God seemingly had abandoned Him. “Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?” “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). It is a cry in the mysterious language of Hebrew to express the tremendous mystery of a God “abandoned” by God. The Son calls His Father “God.” What a contrast with a prayer He once taught: “Our Father, who art in heaven!” In some strange, mysterious way, His human nature seems separated from His Heavenly Father, and yet not separated, for otherwise how could He cry, “My God, My God”? But just as the sun’s light and heat can be withdrawn from us by the intervening clouds, though the sun remains in the sky, so there was a kind of withdrawal of His Father’s face in the terrible moment in which He took upon Himself the sins of the world. This pain and desolation He suffered for each of us, that we might know what a terrible thing it is for human nature to be without God, to be deprived of a divine remedy and consolation. It was the supreme act of atonement for three classes of people: those who abandon God, those who doubt the presence of God, and those who are indifferent to God.
He atoned first of all for atheists, for those who on that dark midday half believed in God, as even now at night they half believe in Him. He atoned also for those who know God but live as if they had never heard His name; for those whose hearts are like waysides on which God’s love falls only to be trampled by the world; for those whose hearts are like rocks on which the seed of God’s love falls only to be quickly forgotten; for those whose hearts are like thorns on which God’s love descends only to be choked by the cares of the world. It was atonement for all who have had faith and lost it; for all who once were saints and now are sinners. It was the divine act of redemption for all abandonment of God, for, in that moment in which He was forgotten, He purchased for us the grace of never being forgotten by God.
Soon after I read through this passage, I reworded my prayer during the Thanksgiving after Mass to the following:
Jesus, I want your sentiments on the Cross to be my sentiments
as well. I pray for the conversion of
all sinners. I was among the sinners who
nailed you to the Cross. I ask for
conversion many times during the day. I pray
that you grant your grace to the ignorant that they may seek the truth, find
the truth, know the truth and live according to the truth. I pray for your enemies, those who do not
believe in You, those who do not like to believe in You, those who even want to
take your place in the world, to destroy your creation and to persecute and
kill your children. They are the
atheists, the communists, socialists, totalitarians, Marxists, mafians, Jihadists,
terrorists, the evil state. Give them the gift of faith so that they may seek
You, find You, get to know You and your teachings and commandments, live accordingly
knowing that all that they are and have come from You and then start willing
their own redemption and happiness. I
pray that you reactivate the good seed that remains in the hearts of the
evildoers so that they start doing good, drown their evil tendencies and dispossess
themselves of the devil. For those whose
eyes are so green with envy and so yellow with jealousy, give them normal
objective colorless eyesight that they may appreciate and acknowledge what is
true, what is good and what is right and start cultivating it in themselves. Jesus, you died for each one of us that we
may all be saved.
It was also the atonement for that other class who deny the presence of God; for all those Christians who abandon all effort when they cannot feel God near them; for all who identify being good with feeling good; for all those skeptics, beginning with the first, who asked, “Why has God commanded you?” It was reparation for all the haunting questions of a doubting world: “Why is there evil?” “Why does God not answer my prayers?” “Why did God take away my mother?” Why, why, and why? And the reparation for all those queries was made when God asked a why of God.
Finally, it was atonement for all the indifference of the world that lives as if there had never been a crib at Bethlehem or a Cross at Calvary; it was atonement for all who shake dice while the drama of redemption is being enacted; for all those who feel themselves as gods beyond all duties of worship and religion, yet bound by none. I suppose that, after these twenty centuries, the indifference of our modern world is more torturing and crucifying than the pains of Calvary. One can well believe that a crown of thorns and steel nails were less terrible to the flesh of our Savior than our modern indifference, which neither scorns nor prays to the Heart of Christ.
Jesus! Thou art now atoning for those moments when we are neither hot nor cold, members neither of heaven nor of earth, for now, Thou art suffering between the two: rejected by the one, abandoned by the other. Because Thou wouldst not give up sinful humanity, Thy Heavenly Father hid His face from Thee. Because Thou wouldst not give up Thy Heavenly Father, sinful humanity turned its back to Thee, and thus in holy fellowship Thou didst unite us both. No longer can men say that God does not know what a heart suffers in abandonment, for now, Thou art abandoned. No longer can men complain that God does not know the wounds of an inquiring heart that feels not the divine presence, for now, that sweet presence is seemingly hid from Thee.
Jesus, now I understand pain, abandonment, and suffering, for I see that even the sun has its eclipse. But Jesus, why do I not learn? Teach me that just as Thou didst not make Thy own Cross, neither shall I make my own, but accept the one Thou makest for me. Teach me that everything in the world is Thine, except one thing, and that is my own will; and since that is mine, it is the only real and true gift that I can ever bestow. Teach me to say, “Not my will, but Thine be done, O Lord.” Even when I see Thee not, grant me the grace to believe and “although Thou slayest me, yet will I trust Thee.” Tell me, how long, how long, O Lord, will I keep Thee writhing on the Cross?
— The Seven Last Words
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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