Jesus’ words from the Cross can also be understood in a mystical sense. For
love of man, Jesus of His own free will chose to place no human limit on
His suffering, pouring out His Blood to the very last drop. It is possible to
speculate that Jesus also endured and offered up a suffering that would
have been greater than any other––the sensation in His human intellect of
total abandonment even by His Father in heaven. Of course, God never
abandons any of His servants, let alone His only Son. Nevertheless, in the
history of the Church, a number of the most elevated Saints endured such a
sensation of abandonment in the so-called ‘dark night of the soul.’ The
purpose of such is to purify the soul of every vestige of self-love so that it
loves God for God’s sake alone, not for any consolation He may confer.
For Jesus, it would have been not an opportunity for total purification but a
demonstration of the greatest love for His Father at a time when all things
for Him seemed humanly lost. His certain knowledge of the Father’s love
and unity with Himself is evident in His dying words, “Father, into thy
hands I commit my spirit” (St. Luke 23:46).
The Fathers
St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 1, 1 (c.
110 AD)
“…you are confirmed in love by the Blood of Christ, firmly believing in
regard to our Lord that He is truly of the family of David according to the
flesh, and God’s Son by the will and power of God, truly born of a Virgin,
baptized by John so that all justice might be fulfilled by Him, in the time of
Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch truly nailed in the flesh on our
behalf…”
Letter of Barnabas 7, 2 (c. 117-132 AD)
“If, then, the Son of God, being the Lord and destined to judge the living
and the dead, suffered so that His being wounded might make us live, let us
believe that the Son of God could not suffer, except for our sake.
Furthermore, when he was crucified He was given gall and sour wine to
drink … The Lord commanded this because He Himself was about to offer
the vessel of His spirit as a sacrifice for our sins, so that the type
established in Isaac, who was offered on the altar, might be fulfilled.”
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