The Fourth Word: “Eli, eli, lamma sabacthani? Deus, deus meus, quare me derliquisti?”
“In a like manner also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders of the people, mockingly, said: ‘He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the king of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him now deliver Him if He will have Him; for He said: “I am the Son of God.”’ And the thieves who were crucified with Him reproached Him in the same manner. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth, until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying: ‘Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?’, that is, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’”
—Matthew 27:41–46
Saint Bonaventure’s Meditation on the Fourth Word70
The fourth leaf upon the mystical vine, or the fourth string upon our spiritual lyre, is the fourth utterance of Christ, when “at about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying: ‘Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?’, that is, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’”71 What eye can claim not to have perceived this leaf, and what ear may deny having heard the powerful resonance of this string? Why should Jesus have “cried out” this utterance, except to ensure that it should be clearly heard by all? And how overwhelmingly immense must have been the bitter pain which Our Lord experienced in crying out in such a manner, when His body was cruelly stretched out upon the wood of the cross!
But beware, O reader, that you do not imagine that Our Lord Jesus Christ said these words as if He resented what He was enduring! He continued to persevere throughout His most dire passion in perfect, unprotesting patience. His words therefore do not express complaint or resistance, but rather reveal the stupendous magnitude of His agony.
These words are spoken in the Person of Christ’s humanity. This genuine humanity was, nevertheless, absolutely and always one with His divine Sonship, as His words, “My God,” mysteriously reveal.
Why was it that He said, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Was the Father ever able to abandon His only-begotten Son? Certainly not! But Christ speaks here on behalf of His whole body—that is, the entire Church. Wishing to affirm the value of unity and charity, He shows Himself to be united to all the suffering members of the Church, and to be united in compassion with all those who feel abandoned. He who was not able to be abandoned declares Himself to be abandoned, for He grasps the immensity of the sufferings which shall befall a multitude of the members of His Church, and who (for a time) shall seem to have been abandoned.
O Jesus, wisdom and strength of the unbegotten Father!
Constancy and might of the unseen God!
With miraculous power, You multiplied loaves for the multitude;
With the same divine potency, even as a small infant,
You summoned a star to guide the Magi.
You raise the dead to life, healed the afflicted,
And cast out demons by Your word.
It was You who had created, by this very same word,
The earth out of nothingness so many eons ago.
But now, You are cruelly affixed to a cross.
In obedience to the Father, You are constrained,
And suffer more grievously than any human being has ever suffered before,
Or ever shall suffer.
Though Your divinity is unimpaired and undiminished,
Yet Your mortal nature cries out in anguish,
And thus, with resonant fervor and heartfelt pain,
You give forth a poignant lament on behalf of all mankind:
“My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?”72
Arnold’s Commentary on the Fourth Word
As Christ hung from the cross, dying and in agony, the crowd continued to insult and mock Him cruelly and unrelentingly.73 They exclaimed, “Ah! You claimed you could destroy the temple and in three days raise it up again. Well then, save yourself!”74 Witness how the common people had readily fallen under the sway of the error and malice of the high priests and Pharisees. For these hypocrites had cunningly conspired to bring about the death of Jesus, in the vain hope of utterly deleting His name and His memory. And as for the crowd, they had no hesitation in taking the appalling responsibility of His holy and innocent blood upon their own heads, and upon those of their children.75
Yet even then, Jesus looked upon the wicked crowd with eyes of tender mercy. In His heart, He sincerely desired their forgiveness and prayed to the Father accordingly. He hoped that the radiant charity of the Son could prevail over the dark blindness of the people. And yet, these people were not destined to be forgiven. For though the mercy of God is infinite, it cannot be efficacious where there is an adamant refusal to accept it—as was manifestly the case here. This refusal to accept the mercy of God rendered even Christ’s self-emptying humility to be without result, as far as the obdurate and unfeeling crowd was concerned. It meant that His precious blood, a single drop of which had the power to save the entire universe, could not save these unrepentant and cruel scorners.
And it was for this reason alone—since His burning desire to bestow mercy had been frustrated and rejected—that He cried out, “Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Certainly, Christ did not cry out to the Father as one complaining on His own behalf, as if He was protesting against His own agonies and pains. For He had willingly and bravely stretched out His arms upon the cross a little earlier, and offered His hands and feet to the piercing incisions of the iron nails without the slightest complaint or demur. Such, indeed, was His perfect submission to the will of the Father, which was both the foundation and the culmination of His obedience. And by this perfect submission He revealed Himself simultaneously as both one who completely and utterly emptied Himself of His heavenly splendor, and yet who remained always and supremely equal to and united with the unseen Godhead.
In this regard, true humility and eternal majesty were inseparably and eternally united and bound together. The total submission which Christ exhibited, which to the Jews appeared to be weakness and to the Greeks seemed like madness, shows itself to be, in fact, wiser than any human wisdom and stronger than any human strength.76
When Christ said “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”, He addresses the Father as “My God.” Yet in saying this, no one should imagine that He was speaking to the divinity of the Father as if it were separate from Himself. For this divinity was one, just as the God, whom Christ addresses as “My God,” was identical with Himself. For the common and shared divine nature of the Father and the Son does not admit any division or separation. While there is a distinction of Person, there is only ever one divinity and one divine essence.
By calling the Father “My God,” Jesus reveals and expresses the mystery of this unity—that the divinity of the Father is also truly His divinity. And thus there is no possible contradiction or divergence between the will of the Father and the will of the Son, and whatever the Son asks of the Father will necessarily be granted.
In this respect, Christ teaches us to have confidence in facing the judgment of God. For the Son, who is our advocate and who implores for our forgiveness, is perfectly united in will and nature with the One who is the judge. Thus the mercy of the Son shall always prevail in securing forgiveness and pardon, for whosoever sincerely desires to be forgiven and pardoned.
Also, when Jesus cried out, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?”, He illustrates the situation of one who is longing for the reward of His obedience. By describing Himself as “abandoned,” He reveals how much He yearns for this prize, and how arduous and difficult it is to wait for His heavenly glory. In doing this, He displays the form and pattern of our salvation to all those who heard Him. For, in the eyes of the world, His sufferings and struggles were all visible, yet the glory to which He was to attain remained invisible (although, in an eternal sense, it was His all along.) In this way, He teaches that none may enter into glory without undergoing suffering, sorrow, and struggle, as in an analogous way, according to the old law, no one could enter the sanctuary without an offering of blood for the expiation of their sins.
Yet all of the offerings and sacrifices for sanctification prescribed by this old law were but figures and images. The new and more perfect religion of Christ—that is, the Gospel—would be rendered vain and fruitless if it again resorted to images and shadows, rather than revealing the pure truth itself. No longer are sacrifices of goats and rams required, but rather the fragrance of pure and heartfelt devotion. No longer will offerings of pigeons and doves suffice, nor are they needed—but rather God now seeks the loving affection and innocence which these offerings served to represent in previous times.
Figuratively, Christ was abandoned in a way that was analogous to the events which befell the prophet Jonah, who, for a short time, was swallowed up and concealed within the belly of a whale. But even then, His emergence was imminent. Thus, in the Psalms, we hear the Father addressing the Son: “Arise, my glory!”77 And again, we hear the voice of the Son responding to the Father in the same verse, saying exultantly: “I shall arise at dawn.”78
It was as if the ship upon which He had been sailing was breaking apart, or the raft fractured; but the skillful captain (who is Our Lord Himself) quickly repairs the damage. Indeed, to all the world, it seemed as if Jesus had suffered a final defeat when He was laid in the tomb. Yet very soon He emerged victorious, coming forth with supreme authority to command all the elements of the universe—not only the wind and waves, but death and Hades itself! Thus the underworld gazed upon Him in stupefied amazement, as He rose alive and triumphant. For this shadowy realm of the dead had assumed that it had taken Him into its dark clutches, and yet it soon found out that it had no power to hold Him, who was the true Prince of Life itself.
It is to be noted that these words of Christ, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” are, in fact, a quotation from a psalm.79 This very same verse states that these are “the words of My sinners.”80 For the psalm passage reads in its entirety:
“God, my God, look upon me! Why hast Thou forsaken me?”
(These are) the words of My sinners, (who are) far from My salvation.81
Thus these words, though prayed by Christ, are actually not spoken on His own behalf, but in the person of the sinners whom He intends to redeem. And it is appropriate that He should give voice to these words, since He had united Himself with the condition of sinful humanity in His sufferings. For, indeed, He had made Himself “like us in all things, except for sin.”82
He describes sinful humanity as “My sinners,” for it was for the salvation of this sinful humanity that He had come. And in uniting Himself with humanity, He had become the head of a body, of which we are all members. And it was not fitting for the members of the body to undergo judgment separated from the head.
Thus Christ, as head, speaks on behalf of the whole body. Like a good physician, He is particularly solicitous for the welfare of those who are afflicted with various ailments and maladies, just as a head is always concerned for the pains and injuries in any part of its body. When Christ describes Himself as being “forsaken,” He speaks on behalf of the suffering members of His mystical body.
For in His own divine essence, He was impassible, and exempt from all injury. For pain and divinity cannot co- exist; rather, His pain pertains only to the flesh. Thus it was only in the incarnate Person of the Holy Trinity—that is, the Son—that God could possibly suffer in any way.
By uniting Himself to our human condition, He took upon Himself the burden of our sins and suffering. And it was only through His suffering and death as the incarnate Son that He could repay the debt of sin, and seize humanity from the voracious and villainous grasp of Satan’s demonic servitors. Although Christ appeared to be “forsaken” and described Himself as such (speaking in the person of the suffering humanity, to which He had united Himself), His abjection was always entirely voluntary, and thus in no way incongruous with, or contrary to, His divine omnipotence. Of His own choosing, He drained the cup of bitterness—the chalice of pain infected with the noxious venom of the ancient serpent—not to succumb to it, but rather to purge us all of this baneful poison.
With His arms extended upon the cross, He gathered all the redeemed into His embrace, as a hen gathers its chicks beneath its wings. There, He protects and nourishes us lovingly. And so the cross, upon which He appeared for a time to have been defeated, is transformed mystically into the banner of glorious victory. For through the cross, death lost all its power over both Him and all the redeemed, and the Father released His saving mercy upon the whole body (that is, the entire human race), because of the pleading of the head (that is, Christ Himself). May our eyes remain fixed upon this cross as a sign of the wonderful and unfathomable love of Jesus, and a living lesson and example to us all.
We poor human beings often feel “forsaken” when assaulted by the temptations, trials, and tribulations of this life. But why is it that we consider ourselves to be forsaken? If we examine ourselves, we shall frequently find pride and presumption to be the cause. For the mercy of God, secured through the passion of Christ, is always available to us. If we acknowledge our need for this mercy, it will unfailingly raise us up when we fall, even as Jesus Himself was raised up from the abject suffering of the cross and the desolation of the tomb.
Whenever the flames of trouble and sin burn within us, a single drop of divine grace, distilled in the blood of Christ, suffices to extinguish the fire of woe, and reduce it to harmless ashes. He who had the power to still the wind and the waves has likewise the power to still whatever gales of anxiety and anguish blow within our hearts. Whatever seems like a defeat for us can readily be transformed into a victory, just as the cross became the means of Our Lord’s own supreme triumph. And whatever we feel has been lost to us irreparably can, and will, be restored through the surpassing mercy of God; even as the life of Jesus, surrendered upon the cross, was completely and perfectly restored to Him in the glory of the resurrection.
Saint Bonaventure’s Prayer
“My God, My God, why hast Thou abandoned Me?”
O miraculous lamentation, bringing salvation to humanity!
O most innocent and humble heart, weeping for all this dark world’s pain!
Compassion draws me to You, for I know that You suffer for my sake.
I cast myself at Your feet,
And I rend my heart to join my lamentation with Yours.
For in such tears I found solace,
Knowing that they shall be transformed someday into eternal joy. Amen.83
Saint Bonaventure’s Hymn
On this grim and fateful day,
Thou, O Lord, were led away
To the knoll of Calvary,
There to mount that baleful tree!Bruised and pierced and cruelly nailed;
Never, though, Thy patience failed.
Lo, the cross becomes Thy throne,
Testament of grace unknown.Make us love Thee more and more—
Thee, sweet Jesus, to adore—
That one day we may find rest
In Thy realms of glory blest!84
_______________
69 “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
70 From Bonaventure’s Vitis Mystica.
71 Matthew 27:46.
72 From Bonaventure’s De Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
73 From Arnold of Bonneval’s Tractatus de Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
74 See Matthew 27:40–42 and Mark 15:29–30.
75 See Matthew 27:25.
76 See 1 Corinthians 1:23–25.
77 Psalm 56:9.
78 Psalm 56:9.
79 See Psalm 21:1.
80 The Latin text uses the expression “verba delictorum meorum,” which could be translated either as “the words of my sins,” or “the words of my sinners.” Arnold is employing the second (and slightly unusual) possibility in his interpretation here.
81 This translation is based on a particular interpretation of the Vulgate text, which reflects the sense suggested by Arnold in his present exposition.
82 Hebrews 4:15.
83 From Bonaventure’s De Septem Verbis Domini in Cruce.
84 From Bonaventure’s Officium de Passione Domini.