St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER IV. The third fruit to be drawn from the consideration of the fourth Word spoken by Christ upon the Cross.

When our Lord exclaimed on the Cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He was not ignorant of the reason why God had forsaken Him. For what could He be in ignorance of, Who knew all things? And thus St. Peter, when he was asked by our Lord, “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?” replied, ” Lord, Thou knowest all things: Thou knowest that I love Thee.”[1] And the Apostle St. Paul, speaking of Christ, says, “In Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”[2] Christ therefore asked, not in order that He might learn anything, but to encourage us to inquire, so that by seeking and finding we might learn many things that would be useful, perhaps even necessary for us. Why, then, did God abandon His Son in the midst of His trials and bitter anguish? Five reasons occur to me, and these I will mention in order that those who are wiser than I may have the opportunity of investigating better and more useful ones.

The first reason that occurs to me is the greatness and the multitude of the sins which mankind have committed against their God, and which the Son of God undertook to expiate in His own Flesh: “Who His own self,” writes St. Peter, “bore our sins in His Body upon the tree; that we being dead to sins, should live to justice; by Whose stripes you were healed.”[3] Indeed, the enormity of the offences which Christ undertook to atone for in His Passion is in a certain sense infinite, by reason of the Person of infinite majesty and excellence which has been offended; but, on the other hand, the Person of Him Who atones, which Person is the Son of God, is also of infinite majesty and excellence, and consequently every suffering willingly undertaken by the Son of God, even if He spilt but one drop of His Blood, would be a sufficient atonement. Still it was pleasing to God that His Son should suffer innumerable torments, and sorrows most severe, because we had committed not one but manifold offences, and the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the world, took upon Himself not the sin of Adam only, but all the sins of all mankind. This is shown in that abandonment of which the Son complains to the Father: ” Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The second reason is the greatness and the multitude of the pains of hell, and the Son of God shows how great they are by wishing to quench them in the torrents of His Blood. The prophet Isaias teaches us how terrible they are, that they are clearly intolerable, for he asks: ” Which of you can dwell with devouring fire? Which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”[4] Let us therefore return thanks to God with our whole heart, Who was willing to abandon His Only-Begotten Son to the greatest torments for a time, to free us from flames which would be eternal. Let us return thanks, too, from the bottom of our heart to the Lamb of God, Who preferred to be abandoned by God under His chastising sword than abandon us to the teeth of that beast, who would ever gnaw and would never be satisfied with gnawing us. The third reason is the high value of the grace of God, which is that most precious pearl which Christ, the wise merchant, purchased by the sale of everything He had, and restored to us. The grace of God, which had been given to us in Adam, and which we lost through Adam’s sin, is so precious a stone that whilst it adorns our souls, and renders them pleasing to God, it is also a pledge of eternal felicity. No one could restore to us that precious stone, which was the gem of our riches, and of which the cunning of the serpent had deprived us, except the Son of God, Who overcame by His wisdom the wickedness of the devil, and Who gave it back to us at His own great cost, since He endured so many labours and sorrows. The dutifulness of that Son prevailed, Who took on Himself a most laborious pilgrimage to recover for us that precious gem. The fourth cause was the exceeding greatness of the kingdom of heaven, which the Son of God opened for us by His immense toil and suffering, and to Whom the Church gratefully sings, “When Thou hadst overcome the sting of death, Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to believers.” But in order to conquer the sting of death it was necessary to sustain a hard contest with death, and that the Son might triumph the more gloriously in this contest, He was abandoned by His Father. The fifth cause was the immense love which the Son had for His Father. For in the redemption of the world and in the wiping away of sin, He proposed to make an abundant and a superabundant satisfaction to the honour of His Father. And this could not have been done if the Father had not abandoned the Son, that is, had not allowed Him to suffer all the torments which could be devised by the malice of the devil, or could be endured by a man. If, therefore, any one asks why God abandoned His Son on the Cross when He was suffering such an extremity of torments, we can answer that He was abandoned in order to teach us the greatness of sin, the greatness of hell, the greatness of Divine grace, the greatness of eternal life, and the greatness of the love which the Son of God had for His Father. From these reasons there arises another question: Why, forsooth, has God mixed the martyrs’ chalice of suffering with such spiritual consolation as that they preferred to drain their chalice sweetened with these consolations, than be without the suffering and the consolation, and allowed His dearly beloved Son to drain to the dregs the bitter chalice of His suffering without any consolation? The answer is, that in the case of the martyrs none of the reasons which we have given above in reference to our Lord have any place.


ENDNOTES

1. St. John xxi. 17.
2. Coloss. ii. 3.
3. 1 St. Peter ii. 24.
4. Isaias xxxiii. 14.