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Writer's pictureAndy McIlvain

Death on a Friday Afternoon: 'My God, My God Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

Updated: Aug 12, 2023



Death on a Friday Afternoon: 'My God, My God Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

Christ screamed with a loud cry, " My God, My God, Whay Have You forsaken Me?".

The cry of dereliction, abandonment.

The Book of Luke goes on to say," And having cried out with a loud cry, Jesus said, ' Father into your hands I place my spirit.'

In the book of John is recorded, ' Jesus said, 'It is finished, and after having bowed his head, he gave over his spirit.'


Christ forsaken, abandoned, cast aside!


Post-modernism, our refined nihilism assumes without consideration that God is missing in action or just never was really there. After all with science and materialism being the anchor of our reality what could a god actually do?


The mystery of how the Son of God could be abandoned is not resolved. Did the very human Jesus in his suffering feel abandonment? Would we in that type of suffering feel it? I think so! In Mark's Gospel we find the affirmation of a pagan soldier, ' Truly this man was the son of God!'


Death on a Friday Afternoon!


Jesus was aware that all had been foreordained but that did not diminish the reality and agony of the suffering to come.

So it seems that the Son gave up his power in some temporary way and that God the Father and the Person of the Holy Spirit were ate work. The workings of Satan had served God by helping place Christ where he needed to be to atonefor our sins.

Although we have compassion for Jesus we really do not know what he felt or was thinking.


Our modern world denies Christ was even crucified. Gnosticism is prevalent everywhere especially here in America. The Qur'ran denies Jesus was crucified. There are many conspiracy theories and stories without end that try to explain in human terms what really happened.


“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” ( “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) the reality we often miss is that the abandonment by God is actually the abandonment to God! Christ received in some way we will never know the totality of the worlds sin, every humans sin that has lived or will ever live.


On Good Friday Hans Urs von Balthasar said Christ descended into the heart of human desolation, he himself experienced damnation as he entered the extreme limits of humanity's alienation from God. So for all of us we find that even the most forsaken among us is not devoid of hope for the one who defeated death, defeated the forsaken and hopelessness of the Cross is at work in us and for us!


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