"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). The ultimate measure of Jesus’ love was when He felt forsaken and abandoned on the cross. He loved us to the end. That is why He invites us to love as He loved us, to deny ourselves, to carry our crosses and to follow Him. (Luke 9:23) The Son of God felt crushed and lonely because He had a taste of failure and abandonment. 

It is when we are suffering that we make time to love God and our neighbour. Every suffering, big or small, is a moment when we talk to Jesus and say I love you crucified and forsaken. We rejoice to offer our sufferings in unity with Him. Then, as we move on embracing God’s will and loving every neighbour we meet, the suffering becomes lighter. It leads us to experience the joy of the Risen One as St. John said: “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers.” (1John 3:14)

I remember that after hearing a talk on Jesus Crucified and Forsaken, I gave my yes to Him. Little did I know that Jesus would count on my resolution. On a business trip the following week, I had an accident resulting with the fracture of the big bone on my right leg, disabling me and rendering me unable to work and to walk for close to six months. As I underwent a number of surgeries in order to recover from the fracture, I felt it was my opportunity to love Jesus in His abandonment. Every day at mass I would make my offering which turned my pain into joy. I realized it was a special season of God’s love for me in which I could see Jesus in every person who came to visit me.

St. Pope John Paul II said, “Embracing the suffering Jesus in our daily trials immediately unites us with the spirit of the risen one and his strengthening power.” He further notes that “It is through the stripping of Christ even to forsakenness and death that we have been made one with him and with each other.”

I wish to close this column with words from Igino Giordani, “Let every deed and every word be love, including breathing, working, together with each human relationship. Let it be love, even if with him, the crucified one you have to cry out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”