It was written by David, and later spoken by Jesus. Yet this anguished prayer has a universal appeal. Each one of us, at some point of time, had experienced a feeling of being forsaken by God. Of course, God in his abundant kindness, responded to our appeals and the proof is that we are still alive. Like St Faustina, we also acknowledge God’s help in times of adversity saying; ‘I would have died if the omnipotence of God had not supported me.’
St Faustina got that divine help in time. We too often get it. But there was a man whose prayer for help was not answered. It was Jesus and this makes him unique in the sense that in spite of being so dear to the Father, his prayer was not heard.
There is a reason for it and unfortunately it is something we forget even while meditating on his passion. It is because, even in our wildest dreams, it is difficult or rather impossible to imagine the sufferings of Jesus. Often we give more weight to his physical suffering and the devil is happy seeing us concentrate on it instead of what he suffered in spirit. The poignancy of “I am deeply grieved, even to death’ (Mk 14:34) tells it all.
Jesus embraced death on the cross, but much before it, he was deeply suffering in spirit. Anyone who meditates on the spiritual suffering of Jesus would become saints, and those saints who continue meditating become better saints. In St Bernard’s words, there is no better way to heal our conscience, purify our spirit, and to take it to the realms of perfection than a continuous meditation of our Lord’s passion.
Thomas a Kempis, who gave us many a a practical lesson to follow the Lord wrote; ‘A religious person that exercises himself seriously and devoutly in the most holy life and passion of our Lord shall there abundantly find whatsoever necessary and profitable for him; neither shall he need to seek any better thing out of Jesus’ (Imitation of Christ, Book I, chapter 25).
Saints are unanimous in acknowledging the role of meditating on the passion of our Lord in our spiritual growth. What they propose is not the ritual remembrance of his physical sufferings, but a deeper journey into what Jesus suffered in spirit. It started in the garden of olives, where he was left alone to have a taste of what the burden of the collective sins of humanity would be. It was beyond human understanding, but Jesus was an ordinary human being like any of us at the time of his passion.
In fact it was this spiritual suffering that brought us salvation. Because sin is a disease affecting the soul and the remedy also should be a spiritual one. Jesus suffered the pain, the anguish, the forlornness, and the separation from God that a sinner is destined to accept. He liberated us from the punishment of sin not by excusing it, but by paying for it.
It is impossible for man to describe the sufferings of Jesus that started at Gethsemane and ended in Calvary, because no human being presently on earth has ever experienced it and those who lived here before us will never return to tell us about its severity. During those three hours in cross, what Jesus experienced was exactly the same punishment that a person dying in sin would have to undergo for all eternity. When the prophet wrote about the punishment that the suffering servant would undergo to make us whole (Isa 53:5) or he bearing the iniquities and sins of many (Isa 53:11-12) he was seeing the crucified Jesus going through unimaginable sufferings on cross for the sake of all humanity.
The biggest punishment in heaven is the knowledge that a soul is separated from God forever. It was this pain that Jesus – who was one with the Father- endured for us. This punishment that lasted three hours was voluntarily accepted by Jesus for the entire humanity from Adam to the last man on earth. He suffered in spirit, because his union with the Father was spiritual. In other words, the price Jesus paid for us was spiritual, and his physical suffering was just complementary to it.
This is why we are encouraged to contemplate on his spiritual passion. Many saintly persons like St Bridget of Sweden, St Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Therese of Lisieux, St Catherine of Sienna, and Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich were allowed to have a glimpse of what Jesus suffered in spirit.
This holy week, may our spiritual life be centred around the meditation of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Departing from the usual practice of ritually enumerating what he suffered in body, may this Easter be the culmination of a fruitful week spent in mediating on our Lord’s spiritual passion rather than his physical suffering. For ‘it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless’ (Jn 6:63).
When Jesus uttered ‘ El El lema sabachthani?’ (Mt 27:46) the bystanders understood it as an appeal for help from Elijah (Mt 27:46). It is natural for us to assess everything in a human way and this is why we give more importance to the physical part of Jesus’ suffering. The one who understood the true meaning of Jesus’ appeal was the heavenly Father, who left the Son alone to fulfil His will. ‘It was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain’ (Isa 53:10).
This week let us pray; ‘Thy will be done’, and surrender ourselves to become Lord’s instruments to get his will done in this world by meditating on the passion our Saviour had undergone to liberate us from death.
