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Dio LansingREAD: DAY FOUR | THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF CHRIST FROM THE CROSS w/ BISHOP BOYEA: Today is Tuesday of Holy Week. Today we continue our prayerful pilgrimage with Jesus towards Golgotha. En route, Bishop Earl Boyea is leading us in a daily meditation reflecting upon the last seven words of Christ from His Holy Cross. Today: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Bishop Boyea writes:
At three o’clock in the afternoon on that Friday Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” This quotation from Psalm 22 (2a) comprises the only words spoken by Jesus on the cross according to the accounts of Matthew and Mark.
This is an incredible thing for our Lord to cry out at the end of his earthly life. Yet, it really is the fulfillment of what he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before. Remember that three times he separated from his closest apostles and prayed to the Father: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” The second time he prayed: “My Father, it if is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done.”
It is the Father’s will which is being accepted here by Jesus. Let us look at that for a moment. St. Paul notes at one point that it is rare that any one of us would be willing to die for someone, though for a really good person we may be willing to do so. It seems to me that many would willingly die for a spouse or for one’s children or parents, maybe even for a sibling. And certainly many are willing to die for their country or for their faith. The question we have to ask ourselves, however, is not for whom would I be willing to die. Rather, the question is for whom would I be willing to let my child die?
The model here is Abraham and his son, Isaac. Abraham, in obedience to the will of God, was willing to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. As we know, God did not let him complete that sacrifice. Still this account of Abraham and Isaac was meant as a preparation for the way God the Father would eventually save us. God so loved the world that not only did he send his son into the world, but he willed that his son die for our salvation. That is love!
Another difference from the Abraham-Isaac story is that Isaac did not know what his father, Abraham, intended, did not know why they were going to Mt. Moriah. Here, however, Jesus is fully aware; he even prays that the Father would let the cup pass, but he knows that love, both the Father’s love for Jesus and the Father’s and Jesus’ love for us, demands this sacrifice which both the Father and the Son will make with Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus accepts this will because he loves the Father and because he loves us.
The entire account of Christ’s passion is summed up in that prayer in Gethsemane and in that final prayer on the cross, issued as a great cry. It is the prayer of embracing the Father’s will, of embracing us with love, and of embracing death to its dregs.
My sisters and brothers, can we understand this love with which we have been loved? When Jesus was carried by that ass into Jerusalem, the whole city asked, “Who is this?” Others replied, “This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” But he is so much more than that. He is love; he shows the love of the Father; he tasted death completely, even to feeling the separation, the abandonment, the loneliness of death all out of love for us, for you and for me.
