The Seven Last Words: 4. Abandonment

ABANDONMENT.
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"My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?"
- Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34

For someone who have not yet experienced being away from or being left behind for a long time by a loved one, it may not be so easy to explain. For those who have experienced separations especially when the separation is caused by the death of a loved one, it's not hard to relate. Separations cause us sadness and sorrow. How much more if the separation is so great that nothing could bridge the gap? Can you imagine how much suffering could a person ever endure due to such separation? 

Jesus' final humiliation and abasement was becoming sin so that sin many be crucified upon the cross. Jesus became sin for us so that we may be freed from its bondage. Since God and sin cannot be united, Jesus was abandoned by God. And Jesus felt the great anguish of being separated from God; Jesus experienced the great emptiness of existence without God.

St Augustine wrote, "Our hearts are made for thee, O Lord, and they shall be restless until they rest in thee!" God made us for Himself, and we can only find fulfillment in union with God. God made this purposely because only He can give us true happiness and eternal joy; nothing and no one else could ever substitute God in our lives. Only God could satisfy our deepest longings and quench our greatest thirsts!  

So it is not God who actually abandons us when we commit sin; instead, it is us who distances away from God when we sin. We block the flow of grace from God into our lives by sinning and we cut the source of divine life in us by offending Him. We commit spiritual suicide by committing sin for we ourselves deny God's love to consume our hearts and existence. 

It is only by abandoning sin totally that we can be in perfect union with God ultimately. Unless we commit to live for and in God, we shall never be truly freed from bondage to sin. For even if Jesus Christ our Lord has already given up Himself to be crucified and become sin in our behalf, the fact remains that grace is still a free gift from God, not forced upon us, so we can totally accept by becoming Christians or reject it by holding on to sin: the final choice is ours, either to be like Joshua who said, "But for me and my household, we shall serve the Lord" [Joshua 24:15] or be like Judas who had the chance to repent but decided to take his own life instead [see Matthew 27: 3-5].

The Third Word: Entrustment 

The Fifth Word: Longing