By: Nancy Escalante

It was in the ninth hour, after three hours of darkness: “And about three o'clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27, 46).

These words show us how Jesus experienced great anguish and suffering during His last hours on earth. His wounds were deep and the bitterness of His pain was every time more and more intense, but also His love was so immense that it gave him the strength to endure all that and to do His Father’s will in order to save our souls.

But, why if Christ knew everything he cried: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Is it that He doubted His Father for a moment? We can find in the Scriptures: "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." (John 21, 17). “In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2, 3). Is it possible that God abandoned his Son in the middle of His proofs and His bitter anguish?

It is just at this point, where Jesus Christ’s love is shown to us: “He himself bore our sins in his body upon the Cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2, 24). God wanted His Son to suffer a number of tortures and the hardest pains, for we had committed not one, but numerous sins, and the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, carried all the sins of humanity. Jesus Christ willingly accepted all these sufferings; however, there is a moment when He cries: “Why have you forsaken me?” This shows Christ’s human part and the intensity of His suffering, He preferred to feel abandoned by His Father for a moment than leaving us as slaves of the sin and prisoners in hell.

Christ knew how it felt to have been abandoned by His Father to teach us the immensity of sin, the immensity of hell, the immensity of the Divine Grace and the immensity of the love of God’s Son for His Father.

On the other hand, this passage shows the humbleness of Jesus Christ our Lord, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves”. (Matthew 11,29). It means that when He said: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus shows His humbleness virtue in the most heroic level, because being the Son of God, He accepted to go through all that. It seemed as though if the Passion had ended up with the Power and all the Gifts God had given Him. “Save yourself, if you are the Son of God, (and) come down from the Cross!" "He saved others; he cannot save himself.” (Matthew 27, 40 – 42).

How much humbleness and patience Jesus had to have to bear insults and humiliations! “It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens.” (Hb 7, 26).

What our Lord had promised so often “he, who humbles will be glorified”, “he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a Cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that on hearing the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Philippians 2, 8-10). If men followed Christ’s example of humbleness in this life, we would not be tied up by pride, which makes us all so unhappy.

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