St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

BOOK II: ON THE LAST FOUR WORDS SPOKEN ON THE CROSS


CHAPTER I. The literal explanation of the fourth Word, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

We have explained in the preceding Part the three first words which were spoken by our Lord from the pulpit of the Cross, about the sixth hour, soon after His crucifixion. In this Part we will explain the remaining four words, which, after the darkness and silence of three hours, this same Lord from this same pulpit proclaimed with a loud voice. But first it seems necessary briefly to explain what, and whence, and for what end arose the darkness which intervened between the three first and the four last words, for thus does St. Matthew speak: “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth, until the ninth hour; and about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? that is, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”[1] And that this darkness arose from an eclipse of the sun is expressly told us by St. Luke: “And the sun was darkened,”[2] he says.

But here three difficulties present themselves. In the first place, an eclipse of the sun takes place at new moon, when the moon is between the earth and the sun, and this could not be at the death of Christ, because the moon was not in conjunction with the sun, as it is when there is a new moon, but was opposite to the sun as at full moon, as the Passion occurred at the Pasch of the Jews, which, according to St. Luke, was on the fourteenth day of the lunar month. In the second place, even if the moon had been in conjunction with the sun at the time of the Passion, the darkness could not have lasted three hours, that is, from the sixth to the ninth hour, since an eclipse of the sun does not last long, particularly if it is a total eclipse, when the sun is so entirely hidden that its obscuration is called darkness. For as the moon moves quicker than the sun, according to its own proper motion, it consequently darkens the whole surface of the sun for a short time only, and, being constantly in motion, the sun, as the moon recedes, begins to give its light to the earth. Lastly, it can never happen that through the conjunction of the sun and moon the whole earth should be left in darkness. For the moon is smaller than the sun–smaller even than the earth, and therefore by its interposition the moon cannot so obscure the sun as to deprive the universe of its light. And if any one should maintain the opinion that the Evangelists speak of the whole land of Palestine, and not of the whole world absolutely, he is refuted by the testimony of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who, in his Epistle to St. Polycarp, declares that in the city of Heliopolis, in Egypt, he himself saw this eclipse of the sun, and felt this horrid darkness. And Phlegon, a Greek historian and a Gentile, refers to this eclipse when he says: ” In the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, there took place a greater and more extraordinary eclipse than had ever happened before, for at the sixth hour the light of day was changed into the darkness of night, so that the stars appeared in the heavens.” This historian did not write in Judaea, and he is quoted by Origen against Celsus, and Eusebius in his Chronicles for the thirty-third year of Christ. Lucian the martyr bears witness to the fact thus: “Look into our annals, and you will find that in the time of Pilate the sun disappeared, and the day was invaded by darkness.” Ruffinus quotes these words of St. Lucian in the Ecclesiastical history of Eusebius, which he himself translated into Latin. Tertullian, also, in his “Apologeticon,” and Paul Orosius, in his history–all, in fact, speak of the whole globe, and not of Judaea only. Now for the solution of the difficulties. What we said above, that an eclipse of the sun happens at new moon, and not at full moon, is true when a natural eclipse takes place; but the eclipse at the death of Christ was extraordinary and unnatural, because it was the effect of Him Who made the sun and the moon, the heaven and the earth. St. Dionysius, in the passage to which we have just referred, asserts that the moon at mid-day was seen by himself and Apollophanes to approach the sun by a rapid and unusual motion, and that the moon placed itself before the sun and remained in that position till the ninth hour, and in the same manner returned to its own place in the east. To the objection that an eclipse of the sun could not last three hours, so that throughout that time darkness should overspread the earth, we may reply, that in a natural and ordinary eclipse this would be true; this eclipse, however, was not ruled by the laws of nature, but by the will of the Almighty Creator, Who could as easily make the moon remain, as it were, stationary before the sun, moving neither quicker nor slower than the sun, as He could bring the moon in an extraordinary manner and with great velocity from its position in the east to the sun, and after three hours make it return to its proper place in the skies. Finally, an eclipse of the sun could not be perceived at the same moment in every part of the world, since the moon is smaller than the earth and much smaller than the sun. This is most true if we regard the interposition of the moon alone; but what the moon could not of itself do, the Creator of the sun and moon did, merely by not cooperating with the sun in illuminating the globe. Nor, again, can it be true, as some suppose, that this universal darkness was caused by dense and dark clouds, as it is evident, on the authority of the ancients, that during this eclipse and darkness the stars shone in heaven, and dense clouds would obscure not only the sun, but also the moon and stars.

Various are the reasons given why God desired this universal darkness during the Passion of Christ. There are two special ones. First, to show the very great blindness of the Jewish people, as St. Leo tells us in his tenth sermon on the Passion of our Lord, and this blindness of the Jews lasts till this moment, and will last, according to the prophecy of Isaias: “Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and a mist the people:”[3] darkness, forsooth, the most dense shall cover the people of Israel, and a mist which is lighter and easily dissipated shall cover the Gentiles. The second reason, as St. Jerome teaches, was to show the enormity of the sin of the Jews. Formerly, indeed, wicked men were wont to harass, and persecute, and kill the good; now impious men have dared to persecute, and crucify God Himself, Who had assumed our human nature. Formerly men disputed with one another; from disputes they came to oaths; from oaths to blood and slaughter; now servants and slaves have risen up against the King of men and angels, and with unheard-of audacity have nailed Him to a Cross. Therefore the whole world is filled with horror, and in order to show its detestation of such a crime, the sun has withdrawn its rays and has covered the universe with a terrible darkness.

Let us now come to the interpretation of the words of our Lord: “Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani.” These words are taken from the twenty-first Psalm: “O God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me?”[4] The words “look upon me,” which occur in the middle of the verse, were added by the Septuagint interpreters: but in the Hebrew text those words only are found which our Lord pronounced. We must remark that the Psalms were written in Hebrew, and the words spoken by Christ were partly Syriac, which was the language then in use amongst the Jews. These words: “Tabitha cumi–“Damsel, I say to thee, Arise,” and Ephphetha–“Be thou opened,” and some other words in the Gospel are Syriac and not Hebrew. Our Lord then complains that He has been abandoned by God, and He complains crying out with a loud voice. Both these circumstances must be briefly explained. The abandonment of Christ by His Father might be interpreted in five ways, but there is only one true interpretation. There were indeed five unions between the Father and the Son: one the natural and eternal union of the Person of the Son in essence: the second, a new bond of union of the Divine nature with the human nature in the Person of the Son, or what is the same thing, the union of the Divine Person of the Son with the human nature: the third was the union of grace and will, for Christ as man was “full of grace and truth,”[5] as He testifies in St. John: “I do always the things that please Him:”[6] and of Him the Father spoke: “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.”[7] The fourth was the union of glory, since the soul of Christ from the moment of conception enjoyed the beatific vision: the fifth was the union of protection to which He refers when He says: “And He that sent Me is with Me, and He hath not left Me alone.”[8] The first kind of union is inseparable and eternal, because it is founded in the Divine Essence, so our Lord says: “I and the Father are One:”[9] and therefore Christ did not say: My Father, why hast Thou forsaken Me? but “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” For the Father is called the God of the Son only after the Incarnation and by reason of the Incarnation. The second kind of union never has nor can be dissolved, because what God has once assumed He can never lay aside and so the Apostle says: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all;[10] and, St. Peter, “Christ suffered for us,” and “Christ therefore having suffered in the flesh:”[11] all which proves that it was not a mere man, but the true Son of God, and Christ the Lord Who was crucified. The third kind of union also still exists and ever will exist: “Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust,”[12] as St. Peter expresses it; for the death of Christ would have profited us nothing had this union of grace been dissolved. The fourth union could not be disturbed, because the beatitude of the soul cannot be lost, since it embraces the enjoyment of every good, and the superior part of the soul of Christ was truly happy.[13]

There remains then the union of protection only, which was broken for a short period, in order to allow time for the oblation of the bloody sacrifice for the redemption of mankind. God the Father indeed could in many ways have protected Christ, and have hindered the Passion, and for this reason in His Prayer in the Garden Christ says: “Father, all things are possible to Thee: remove this chalice from Me, but not what I will, but what Thou wilt:”[14] and again to St. Peter: “Thinkest Thou that I cannot ask My Father, and He will give Me presently more than twelve legions of angels?”[15] Christ also as God could have saved His Body from suffering, for He says “No man taketh” My life “away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself[16] and this is what Isaias had foretold: “He was offered because it was His own will.”[17] Finally, the blessed Soul of Christ could have transmitted to the Body the gift of impassibility and incorruption; but it was pleasing to the Father, and to the Word, and to the Holy Spirit, for the accomplishment of the decree of the Blessed Trinity, to allow the power of man to prevail for a time against Christ. For this was that hour to which Christ referred when He said to those who had come to apprehend Him: “This is your hour and the power of darkness.”[18] Thus then God abandoned His Son when He allowed His Human flesh to suffer such cruel torments without any consolation, and Christ crying out with a loud voice manifested this abandonment so that all might know the greatness of the price of our redemption, for up to that hour He had borne all His torments with such patience and equanimity as to appear almost bereft of the power of feeling. He did not complain of the Jews who accused Him, nor of Pilate who condemned Him, nor of the soldiers who crucified Him. He did not groan: He did not cry out: He did not give any outward sign of His suffering; and now at the point of death, in order that mankind might understand, and that we, His servants, might remember so great a grace, and value the price of our redemption, He wished publicly to declare the great suffering of His Passion. Wherefore these words: “My God, why hast Thou abandoned Me?” are not words of one who accuses, or who reproaches, or who complains, but, as I have said, they are the words of One who declares the greatness of His suffering for the best of reasons, and at the most opportune of moments.


ENDNOTES

1. St. Matt. xxvii. 45, 46.
2. St. Luke xxiii. 45.
3. Isaias lx. 1, 2.
4. Psalm xxi. 1.
5. St. John i. 14.
6. St. John viii. 29.
7. St. Matt. iii. 17.
8. St. John viii. 29.
9. St. John x. 30.
10. Romans viii. 32.
11. 1 St. Peter ii. 21; iv. 1.
12. 1 St. Peter iii. 18.
13. St. Thomas, 3. p. q. 46. art 8.
14. St. Mark xiv. 36.
15. St. Matt. xxvi. 53.
16. St. John x. 18.
17. Isaias liii. 7.
18. St. Luke xxii. 53