"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
The profound meaning behind Jesus' cry from the cross and its prophetic victory.
A Piercing Cry
Christ on the Cross, Peter Paul Rubens
Of all the Seven Last Words spoken by Jesus Christ on the cross, perhaps none is more piercing, more shocking, or more misunderstood than the cry recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).
To the modern ear, this cry can sound terrifying. Did the Son of God lose faith? Did the Father truly abandon the Son? Was the Holy Trinity somehow broken in that dark hour on Calvary?
The Catholic Church offers a profound and beautiful answer to these questions: Christ was not abandoning hope or giving way to despair. Instead, He was doing two incredible things simultaneously; embracing the absolute depths of human suffering, and pointing us toward a glorious, prophetic victory.
Biblical Context
The Key to the Mystery: Psalm 22
To truly understand what Jesus meant, we must look at how Jewish people prayed in the first century. They did not have Bibles with numbered chapters and verses. To reference a specific psalm, a rabbi would simply recite its opening line, and his listeners would immediately recall the rest of the song.
When Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", He was directly quoting the first line of Psalm 22, a psalm written by King David centuries earlier.
Jesus was not just crying out in pain; with His dying breaths, He was leading the people at the foot of the cross in a specific prayer, directing their attention to the Scriptures so they would recognize that the ancient prophecies were being fulfilled right before their eyes.
The Themes of Psalm 22
When we look closely at Psalm 22, we see that it reads like an exact, eyewitness account of Good Friday. The psalm begins with a cry of deep pain. It describes an innocent person who is being mocked by a crowd, suffering from terrible thirst, and having their hands and feet pierced. The Gospels also note that Jesus cried out at the "ninth hour" (3:00 PM). In the Jerusalem Temple, this was the exact time the evening Tamid, the perpetual daily sacrifice of an unblemished lamb, was offered. As the literal lamb was slain in the Temple, the true Lamb of God was fulfilling Psalm 22 on Calvary.
The Prophetic Parallels
| Psalm 22 (The Prophecy) | The Crucifixion (The Fulfillment) |
|---|---|
| Psalm 22:1 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" | Matthew 27:46 & Mark 15:34 Jesus cries out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" |
| Psalm 22:7-8 "All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer; they shake their heads at me: 'He trusted in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him.'" | Matthew 27:39, 43 "Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads... 'He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him.'" |
| Psalm 22:15 "My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth." | John 19:28 Knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I thirst." |
| Psalm 22:16 "Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet." | John 20:25 The physical piercing of Christ's extremities, later confirmed by the Apostle Thomas: "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands..." |
| Psalm 22:18 "They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment." | John 19:23-24 "Let’s not tear it," they said to one another. "Let’s decide by lot who will get it." |
The Theology of Solidarity
Was Jesus Actually Forsaken by the Father?
With this prophetic context in mind, we can understand the deep theology of His cry. Christ offered a sacrifice of supreme, loving obedience that made up for all human sin. In this dark hour, God the Father did not literally cut Himself off from God the Son. The Holy Trinity cannot be broken.
"For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh."Romans 8:3
Building on this biblical foundation, the Church explains exactly how Christ took on the full weight of human desolation—the feeling of absolute separation that sin produces—without bearing the guilt of personal sin:
"Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned. But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'"Catechism of the Catholic Church, 603
St. Thomas Aquinas & The Hypostatic Union
St. Thomas Aquinas dives deep into the mechanics of this mystery in his Summa Theologica. First, he emphasizes that the "Hypostatic Union", the unbreakable union of divine and human natures in the one person of Christ, was never severed. The divine nature never abandoned Him on the cross. Instead, Aquinas explains a crucial distinction: the Father withdrew His protection, allowing the executioners and the physical agony to run their course, but He never withdrew His love.
Furthermore, Aquinas teaches that Jesus miraculously restrained the infinite joy and comfort of His divine nature from spilling over into His human emotions. He intentionally permitted His "lower" human faculties (His physical body, senses, and emotions) to experience the absolute depths of fear, pain, and psychological abandonment, even while His "higher" faculties (His deepest reason and will) remained perfectly united to God in a sacrifice of supreme, loving obedience.
St. Augustine & The Whole Christ
St. Augustine teaches that Christ prays this psalm as the Totus Christus (the Whole Christ). He joins His divine voice to the cries of every human being who has ever felt crushed by despair, illness, or abandonment. Because He is the head of the Church, when we suffer, Christ is literally crying out in us, having already united our personal despair to His cross two thousand years ago.
Yet, even in this profound darkness, His cry remains a prayer of relationship: He still cries out to "My God." He does not lose faith, but rather clings to the Father even from the abyss of human suffering.
For us as Christians, this becomes the ultimate model we are called to imitate. Even in our own moments of profound suffering, grief, or spiritual darkness, we must not lose faith. Like Jesus, we must choose to cling to God, continuing to cry out to Him and trusting in His presence even when He feels completely silent.
The Crimson Worm
"But I am a worm and no man..." (Psalm 22:6)
In verse 6, the psalmist uses the Hebrew word tola'ath for "worm," specifically referring to the crimson worm (Coccus ilicis) used to make scarlet dye in the ancient world. This offers a breathtaking biological prophecy of the crucifixion:
- The Sacrifice: When ready to bear young, the mother worm attaches herself permanently to the wood of a tree.
- The Blood: As she dies, she secretes a crimson fluid that stains the wood and covers her young, giving them their scarlet identity (a type of Christ's redeeming blood).
- The Resurrection: After three days, the dead body dries up, turns pure white, and flakes off like snow (Isaiah 1:18).
- The Eucharist: The young worms feed on the mother's body for their initial life and sustenance.
The Triduum Liturgy
Living the Psalm in the Church
The Catholic Church does not leave Psalm 22 in the past. On Holy Thursday, during the solemn rite of the Stripping of the Altar (Denudatio Altaris), the sanctuary is laid entirely bare. Linens, candles, and vessels are removed, leaving only the cold stone. While this takes place, the choir traditionally chants Psalm 22 in its entirety. Just as the altar, which represents Christ, is stripped of its beautiful vesture, so too was the Lord stripped of His garments, His dignity, and His friends. We enter physically into His abandonment before witnessing the joy of Easter morning.
A Pastoral Promise: Popes like St. John Paul II and Pope Francis continually remind us that Christ went to the absolute limits of human desolation so that none of us would ever feel alone. When believers experience physical ailments, depression, or spiritual "dryness," they are invited to unite it to the cross. Christ has undone the forsakenness of Adam, transforming our suffering into a profound conduit of grace.
Ending in Triumph
If Jesus had only intended to express despair, Psalm 22 would be a tragic poem. But midway through the psalm, the tone shifts dramatically. The suffering servant praises God for hearing him, and the psalm becomes a triumphant hymn of victory.
"All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him... Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!"Psalm 22:27, 30-31
By invoking this psalm, Jesus was announcing His resurrection before it even happened! The cross is not a defeat; it is the very instrument by which God saves the world.
When Jesus said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", He was holding onto the Father in perfect trust. He was entering into the darkest depths of human suffering so that He could redeem it. He assures us that when we face our own dark nights of the soul, we are never truly abandoned. The resurrection—the final victory of God—is always coming.