In the liturgy of Good Friday, we contemplate the Lord Crucified and, driven by faith, we identify in the mystery of his passion the source of our salvation that is freely offered to us. This reflection is an attempt to understand this event from the interpretation of one of Christ's words on the cross, found in the Gospel of Matthew, in chapter 27, verse 46: "Eli, Eli, lemasabactani": "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

This question, which Jesus, crushed by suffering, poses to God, apparently contrasts with the filial trust that had previously characterized his relationship to the one he affectionately called "Abba," "Father." Indeed, he had lived all his life in constant communion with the Father; he knew He loved and supported him; "Whoever sent me is with me, and he does not leave me alone because I always do what he likes" (Jn 8: 29)

Now, on the cross this communion with the Father seems absent: God is terribly far away! To this God who has become a stranger, he asks a question loaded with the burdens of human suffering: "Why did you abandon me?" He would probably like to know why the Father, who has always supported him, and to whom he has abandoned himself completely out of love, now remains silent.

To understand Jesus' attitude, we must not lose sight of the fact that, as formulated, the question he asks the Father had already been expressed in the Old Testament, especially in Psalm 22. This begins as follows: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Salvation is far from me, far from the words I roar. »

As we can see, this psalm begins with a cry of despair. However, its final expresses confidence and trust: "You answered me!" said the psalmist, "And I proclaim your name before my brethren, I praise you in the midst of an assembly. You who fear him, praise the Lord, glorify him, all of you descendants of Jacob, all of you, fear him descended from Israel. For he did not reject, he did not repudiate the unfortunate in his misery; (Ps 22:  23-25)
Because the Psalm 22 is in fact a psalm of trust, Bible scholars have concluded that, to the extent that he recites it on the cross, Jesus proclaims his total trust in his Father. Saint Luke, in his gospel, reflects this trust by using another formula: "Abba, Father, in your hands I commend my spirit." (Lk 23: 46). It is therefore necessary, in order to interpret Jesus' experience on the cross judiciously, to take these two versions into account.

While in the text of saint Luke the crucified man calls God "Abba, Dad," in Matthew's, he calls him "Eli, El," thus using the name of God, which was pronounced only with "fear and tremor"; while in Luke the crucified Lord addressed a "Father" in Matthew, he addresses the "Almighty God." To this almighty God, he asks the question: "why?" This question is burden with the weight of suffering which he does not grasp the meaning. For him too, suffering is a mystery!

Bruno Forte, the Italian theologian and bishop, articulates the two texts, reaching this happy conclusion: "The crucified is the most desolate of the earth! But with painful abandonment, he responds with the offering: he is abandoned, but not hopeless (...) The experience of the Father's abandonment turns into abandonment to the Father»[1].

Indeed, faith does not protect against the anguish of the experience of suffering: it is the force that leads me, after I have expressed all my pains and uneasiness, to say to God: "Father, I commend and abandon myself in your hands!"

[1] Bruno Forte, Jésus de Nazareth. Histoire de Dieu, Dieu de l’histoire, Paris, Cerf, 1984, p. 26.