Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Meditations for the Seven Last Words of Jesus
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City
Good Friday 2025
April 18, 2025
To watch a video of this word, please click below:
To listen to an audio recording of the homily based on this word, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- As we ponder together how each of Jesus’ seven words on the Cross is a message of hope that he fought through excruciating pain to enunciate, we come to what he said at the end of three hours of darkness over the whole land. The Prophet Isaiah had said, “Behold the day of the Lord shall come.… The sun shall be darkened in its rising” (Is 39) and Joel had stated, “The sun and moon are darkened, … for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can stand it?” (Joel 2:10-11). There was external darkness because of eclipse of the sun. But Jesus’ fourth word give the appearance of an interior darkness. He had already been betrayed by Judas, abandoned by ten of the apostles and all but his mother and two women. He had been stripped of his clothing. He was quickly losing most of his internal fluids due to the over 200 open wounds. He was in a state of pain with nails through his nerves and limbs that few can fathom. And he cried out with words that at first glance make it seem as if he was feeling forsaken even by God the Father himself. St. Matthew records his cry in Hebrew, St. Mark in Aramaic, but in either ancient language the question, “My God, my God, who have you abandoned me?” suggests that his awareness of his Father’s presence had been occluded. Had Jesus, hope incarnate, in fact, lost hope at that moment? Was Jesus, in order to take away the sins of the world, being permitted to enter into the experience of alienation that can happen when one commits serious sin? Was he experiencing at an emotional or spiritual level the sense of desertion that the great Carmelite doctors of the Church called the dark night of the soul and spirit?
- These fourth words from the Cross, when understood in context, are actually a great expression of hope. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22, which is a psalm of lament that becomes a psalm of thanksgiving. Jesus intones the first line, but a good Jew would have known the rest of the Psalm, in a way similar to if in the heat of battle an American soldier said the words, “O say can you see by the dawn’s early light?,” one would know that such words would not be an eye test as the sun was rising but in fact an expression of patriotic hope. Jesus was making his own the whole of the Psalm, which he was fulfilling upon Calvary.
- The psalm begins with an expression of forsakenness, the cry of someone who feels alone, with God seemingly not helping. Then it turns to the various sufferings he was enduring as the words written centuries before were being on display. “I am a worm, hardly human, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer; they shake their heads at me: ‘You relied on the Lord — let him deliver you; if he loves you, let him rescue you.’ … Trouble is near, and there is no one to help. Like water my life drains away. … As dry as a potsherd is my throat; my tongue sticks to my palate. … So wasted are my hands and feet that I can count all my bones. They stare at me and gloat; they divide my garments among them; for my clothing they cast lots.” It was an expression of the type of human desolation that puts into relief the hope, the trust, the praise, and the thanksgiving that comes immediately after.
- In a dramatic shift, the Psalm then prays: “But you, Lord, do not stay far off; my strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver me. … Save me from the lion’s mouth. … Then I will proclaim your name to the assembly; in the community I will praise you: ‘You who fear the Lord, give praise! All descendants of Jacob, give honor; show reverence, all descendants of Israel! For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out. I will offer praise in the great assembly; my vows I will fulfill before those who fear him.’ All the ends of the earth will worship and turn to the Lord; All the families of nations will bow low before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, the ruler over the nations. All who sleep in the earth will bow low before God; All who have gone down into the dust will kneel in homage. And I will live for the Lord. … The generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.”
- Far from being a Psalm expressing a sense of abandonment by God the Father, it is a song of abandonment to Despite the sense of human isolation he was enduring, in the midst of so much physical pain, Jesus was utterly certain intellectually of the Father’s closeness. He who had said, “The Father and I are one” and who had prayed the night before, “May they be one, Father, as you are in me and I in you,” still very much knew of that communion, regardless of what he was experiencing emotionally. And he was teaching us all to trust in the love of God our Father even and especially when we feel totally abandoned. This fourth word was an expression of great hope not just in the Lord’s power to save but in his will to save. It is a lesson for all men and women, especially those who are suffering from oppression by evildoers human or diabolical, not to give up their confidence that God is nevertheless there and will definitively rescue. Jesus was entering into what many go through in prison, or in hospitals, or in war torn areas, or who endure calumny or persecution, or who are oppressed by the weight of daily life.
- That’s why this word is so important for us to grasp in the Jubilee of Hope. Hope is, as we’ve mentioned, living with God in the world. No matter what we have to endure, if we know God is truly there with us, whispering to us, “Do not be afraid!,” and “I’ve got this” and “We’ll face this together,” and “Nothing is impossible for God,” we know that the problems won’t seem so intimidating. This is one of the reasons why a Jubilee of Hope is so needed, because many do feel abandoned and alone. We see it in the high rates of despair from so many. We see in the movements of those pushing for what is euphemistically dubbed Medical Assistance in Dying, Physician Assisted Suicide, and other forms of euthanasia. We see it in the Fetanyl epidemic, and how many are seeking regular escapes from the difficulties of life through getting high on pot, now legalized and poisonously incensing our streets. We’ve seen it in the loss of the desire to transmit life, with collapsing birthrates in the West; having children is an act of hope in the future, and many make the decision not to bring children into the world because of fear for the future and despair over what they would be born into. We’ve seen it in the results of a ten year survey of high school students by the Centers for Disease Control between 2011-2021, which showed that 42 percent of U.S. high school teens in 2021 said they felt persistently sad or hopeless, 22 percent seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year, 18 percent had come up with a concrete plan on how they would end their life, and ten percent actually tried to carry out that plan (and thankfully failed), rates that have skyrocked by 60 percent in just ten years, with results much worse for our girls. There’s a crisis of hope and ultimately faith underneath the persistent sadness and the consideration of ending one’s life. That’s why the Jubilee of Hope is so needed. That’s why we Christians need to be strengthened in hope by Christ on the Cross so that we can give the explanation for the reason of our hope to others.
- Many saints have shown us how to have receive this gift of hope and live by it to the end, even in the midst of great difficulties.
- Next week the Church will canonize St. Carlo Acutis. I’ll have the privilege to help broadcast the Mass in Rome for EWTN. When he, at 15, got the diagnosis of acute promyelocytic leukemia and grasped that he would have only a few days to live, he responded, “The Lord has given me a wake-up call” and resolved, “I offer all the sufferings I have to suffer to the Lord for the Pope and for the Church.” When the doctors asked him if he were in pain, he said, “There are people who are suffering much more than I.” He wasn’t afraid to die, because, he said, “with the incarnation of Jesus, death becomes life. In eternal life, something extraordinary awaits us.”
- We see it in St. Damian of Molokai giving hope to the lepers through the way he himself stayed close to the Lord when he caught the infectious disease.
- We see it in St. Pio of Pietrelcina who knew of the Lord’s presence not just in the midst of his suffering the sacred stigmata but also misunderstanding, calumny and persecution within the Church.
- We see it in Blessed Chiara Luce Badano, who died at 18 of cancer in 1990. When she was losing her hair as a result of intensive chemo and radiation, just said, “Jesus, if you want this, then I want it as well.” Every time she lost another lock, she said, “Another gift to you, Jesus.” She would go around the oncology ward visiting other patients and trying to encourage them with hope. She chose to refuse painkillers, because she said, “All I have left is my suffering. If that’s taken away, what will I offer Jesus?” When her mother was at her deathbed full of grief, she told her, “Mama, be happy because I’m happy.” She had hope until the end.
- We see in it St. Paul le Bao Tinh, a 19th century Vietnamese priest martyr, who in the midst of cruel shackles, iron chains, manacles, hatred, vengeance, calumnies, blaphemies, and various forms of anguish and grief in prison, wrote to his fellow Christians: “The prison here is a true image of everlasting Hell. … But the God who once freed the three children from the fiery furnace is with me always; he has delivered me from these tribulations and made them sweet, for his mercy is for ever. In the midst of these torments, which usually terrify others, I am, by the grace of God, full of joy and gladness, because I am not alone —Christ is with me. … In the midst of this storm I cast my anchor towards the throne of God, the anchor that is the lively hope in my heart.”
- There are lots of other examples we can point to. St. Anna Schafer and Blessed Alexandrina da Costa both who are icons of hope in the midst of paralysis. Or St. Benedict Joseph Labre, an image of hope in the midst of mental illness. Or Blessed Benedetta Bianchi Porro, a brilliant medical student who had a degenerative condition that would ultimate rob her of all five of her senses. But despite the pain, she never despaired. Before dying in 1964 at age 27, she wrote, “I do not lack hope. I know that at the end of the road, Jesus is waiting for me … I have discovered that God exists, that He is love, faithfulness, joy, certitude, to the end of the ages. My days are not easy. They are hard. But they are sweet because Jesus is with me.”
- In his fourth word on the Cross, Jesus teaches us all how to have hope even and especially in the circumstances that humanly seem most forlorn. And he seeks to lead us on the interior pilgrimage for which Psalm 22 is the itinerary, from a sense of abandonment to proclaiming God’s praise in the midst of the great assembly for never in fact leaving us but in fact being with us in the midst of all and ultimately delivering us just like he did his beloved Son.
- And so we pray, “Hail, O Cross, shrouded in darkness, yet where God sustains us. You are are only hope. Help us to lift high that cross every day!”
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