Fourth Word from the Cross: ‘My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?’

National Catholic Register, 31 March 2026

A President Preaches of Sin and Redemption

Editor’s note: Father Raymond J. de Souza recorded meditations on the Seven Last Words at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ogdensburg, New York. They will air on EWTN on Good Friday at 1 p.m. (EDT). It will also be available at ewtn.com and EWTN+. The Register will publish those meditations through Good Friday.

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“At the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ … And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. And the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Mark 15:33-34; 37-38).

The Fourth Word from the Cross can be perplexing. Jesus is not forsaken by the Father. And Jesus does not think that he has been forsaken. He is praying the opening lines of Psalm 22, which begins with the cry of dereliction, but concludes with a determination to praise God in the midst of the assembly (22:23).

St. Paul writes that Jesus was “made sin” even though he “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In experiencing the deepest consequences of sin, Jesus knows the estrangement that sin brings — estranged, abandoned, forsaken.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Generations of slaves surely prayed Psalm 22, wondering if God had forsaken them. They were strong in faith, praising God in the midst of the assembly. The Black church was one of the few institutions that preserved Black dignity, Black agency, Black identity, Black culture under slavery and segregation.

The Declaration of 1776 declared that “all men are created equal.” The founders themselves, including Washington and Jefferson, owned slaves. The Constitution of 1787 entrenched slavery, despite the Declaration. God did not forsake the slaves, but the Constitution did.

We lament now that generations of Christian preachers appealed to the Scriptures to justify slavery. Some of them even appealed to Matthew 22, to “render unto Caesar.” Here, under the nave window of that scene, is a historical panel of Abraham Lincoln and Archbishop John Hughes of New York. Lincoln sent Hughes to Europe as his envoy, to persuade European powers to support the Union cause. He likely chose an archbishop in order to make the moral case for the Union — that slavery was an offense against God.

Lincoln came to the abolition position gradually. Eventually, he came to see it with moral, and even theological, clarity. God would not forsake some of his people such that they would be enslaved by others. In 1863 at Gettysburg, Lincoln appealed not to the Constitution of 1787, which protected slavery, but to 1776 — “four score and seven years ago” — to the Declaration, which held that “all men are created equal.”

Sixteen months after the Gettysburg Address, and just six weeks before his own assassination, Lincoln would give an even greater speech — the finest political speech ever delivered in the English language. In his Second Inaugural address, the president became a preacher and delivered a sermon rather than a mere speech.

Lincoln addresses forthrightly the pernicious evil of slavery, practiced by the founders, entrenched in the Constitution, favored by many people and several states. How can this original sin be washed away? How can the nation be redeemed? How can the people be saved?

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