"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

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Hyfrydol

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Hi everyone –

I’ve got a friend who comes to me with all the religious questions she has, and just recently she asked me about Matthew 27:46, when Jesus on the cross says “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Her question was basically, why did he say that? Doesn’t that make it sound like God had actually abandoned Him? Why would He/did He really think that? In short, what was that all about?

I know it’s a line from Psalm 22, and I read up on it online, and I wrote back to her with a few musings of my own, but I thought it would be good to get some feedback from the forums, as every so often I’ll be reading through something and get a really good insight from someone…

So, thanks for anything you can help me with! God bless!
 
My husband and I have talked about it, and we both had the same answer come to us immediately. I don’t know how correct it is, but we both feel that it was Jesus revealing and experiencing his humanity.

We often think of Jesus our God, but we often forget Jesus the Man.

Jesus came to Earth fully human, and as such experienced everything we do: temptation, joy, frustration, etc. He also felt abandoned by God at the moment of his death. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know there has been moments in my life where I’ve felt utterly and completely abandoned by God. I know in my heart and in my head that he never would, but that doesn’t prevent me from having the emotional experience that makes me doubt that.

🙂
 
This is from the Quick Questions section of the July/August 2004 issue of This Rock Magazine:
**Q: Do Jesus’ words from the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” mean that God the Father abandoned his Son even though, as God, he could have helped him? **

A: If someone were to say, “I pledge allegiance to the flag” or “Our Father who art in heaven,” most people could either finish the quotation or prayer or at least understand the ideas being expressed. That is because certain quotations in our culture, whether secular or religious, are known and even memorized because of their importance.

This was true of the psalms in Jesus time. He needed only to say the first line, and most Jews would have known the rest, or at least the message.

Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, a messianic psalm that vividly describes the agony the suffering servant would endure. God the Father did not abandon his Son in his Son’s suffering but allowed him in his humanity to experience the sense of divine abandonment that humans often feel during times of need, and especially when in sin. Just as we often feel that God has abandoned us when we are suffering (even though this isn’t the case), so the Son of God in his humanity experienced that aspect of human suffering as well. He died for our sins, and the weight of those sins—and thus the feeling of abandonment—must have been exceedingly heavy at that point.

By quoting this psalm, Jesus shows that he is the fulfillment of that prophecy and that he will be vindicated, which is evident in the psalm’s triumphant ending
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PF
 
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WanderAimlessly:
This is from the Quick Questions section of the July/August 2004 issue of This Rock Magazine: PF
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Regarding that quote: AMEN!!!

NotWorthy
 
I have briefly looked at the other replys and hopefully I will build on their wisdom. For me I believe this passage which must have been the actual words of Jesus, show to us two things. First, what others have called the “Dark night of the soul” I feel he felt truely alone, as any human in history as ever felt and more given that he had taken on the sins of the world. I cannot over stress how this feeling of being alone must have felt. However, and this is my second point, I find here although there was this deep emotion of being alone it never gave into despair rather it lead him (humanly speaking) into a closer relationship (if that was possible - but don’t forget even the NT tells us He grew in wisdom) with the Father, a relationship of complete Hope and Trust in the Father’s Love.
 
As PF quoted above, he was praying Psalm 22. Devout people, then as now, often pray from the psalms, and that is what he was doing.
 
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TOME:
I I feel he felt truely alone, as any human in history as ever felt and more given that he had taken on the sins of the world. I cannot over stress how this feeling of being alone must have felt. However, and this is my second point, I find here although there was this deep emotion of being alone it never gave into despair rather it lead him (humanly speaking) into a closer relationship (if that was possible - but don’t forget even the NT tells us He grew in wisdom) with the Father, a relationship of complete Hope and Trust in the Father’s Love.
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We are told that since Jesus had a fully human nature, He would experience the same feelings as the rest of humanity does; thus the bloody sweat in the agony of the garden and that beautiful lament to His Father: let this cup pass from me, but Thy will be done. Ecce homo!
 
One of my favorite scenes in the movie “Jesus of Nazareth” is when this event is taking place while two members of the sanhedrin are watching and the one says “he is quoting scripture, even now here on the cross, near death, he still quotes scripture”
Just another example of Jesus showing his humanity and yet displaying for us all that he is, in fact, the Messiah.
 
I always get a kick out of this scene. I imagine the Jewish Sanhedrin, as mentioned above, realizing the Psalm Jesus quoted. Then I imagine them mentally going through the Psalm and realizing that Jesus is talking about THEM! Even dying on the Cross, Jesus is still able to condemn them and their actions!

Then I envision Mary and John recognizing the same Psalm, and as they go through the Psalm in their heads, they realize that this is all part of God’s plan. Maybe these words by Jesus are the anchor that keeps their faith rooted in God and His Salvation Plan.

In any event, there is so much more to this scene then we, as typical Catholics, fully appreciate.

NotWorthy
 
There are many meditations based on the Psalm that Jesus was quoting, as mentioned in the preceding posts.

In Hebrews it says that ‘for the joy that was before him, Jesus rejected the shame of the cross.’ Jesus had fulfilled the will of His Father and had accomplished the task of redemption.

In good evangelical protestant fashion, the verse reminds us that we are the ones who are guilty and should be there on the cross, but we will never be there, because Jesus paid the price, once and for all. He took the shame, the pain, and the desolation away from us.
 
He was quoting from Psalm. The first line is the title of the psalm. The psalm foretold what was happening at the moment Jesus was on the cross.
 
I have heard it said that it was at that moment that Jesus took on the sins of mankind and probably felt the abandonment associated with sin.
 
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