As you might surmise, the next passage in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ our Friend Crucified, which we'll discuss on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, March 16, begins dramatically, as Benson sets the scene:
The darkness of Calvary, spiritual as well as physical, draws on to its deepest. Christ has prayed for those who have outraged and repudiated His Friendship: He who was always the Friend of Sinners has added one more to the company [the Good Thief, Saint Dismas]: He who was always the Friend of Saints has united two of them yet more closely than ever by the wedding of Pain [His Mother and Saint John the Apostle].
Benson describes Jesus as drawing into Himself in this Word and choosing to experience this desolation:
Now He draws inwards from the world for which He has done so much: He directs this consciousness into His own Sacred Humanity; and in a Word at which heaven and earth tremble together, reveals to us that that Sacred Humanity, as a part of that process by which He chose to "taste death for all"{1} and to learn "obedience by the things which He suffered,"{2} has to experience the sorrow of dereliction. He who came to offer that Sacred Humanity as the bond of Friendship between God and man, wills that His own Friendship with God should be obscured. He becomes indeed the Friend of fallen man, for He chooses to identify Himself with the horror of that Fall. The Beatific Vision which was lost to man through that fall, and which Jesus Christ can never lose, is now obscured to the eyes of Him who comes to restore it through Redemption.
"My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" is the only of the Seven Last Word reported in two Gospels, Mark (Mark 15:34) and Matthew (Matthew 27:46) and occurs at the "Ninth Hour".
Benson admits that this Word is hard to understand and to apply to ourselves because we can and do distract ourselves from the deepest realities:
This Word is the one that, above all others, is most difficult of application to ourselves. For the state in which it was uttered is simply inconceivable to us who find our consolation in so much that is not God, and to whom sin means so little. If physical comforts are wanting to us, we find refuge in mental comfort; if mental comforts are wanting, we lean upon our friends. Or, more usually, when the higher pleasures are withdrawn, we find relief, with scarcely an effort, in lower. When religion fails us, we console ourselves with the arts; when love or ambition disappoint us, we plunge into physical pleasures; when the body refuses to respond, we take refuge in our indomitable pride; and when that in its turn crumbles to nothing, we look to suicide and hell as a more tolerable environment. There seems no depth to which we will not go, in our passionate determination to make ourselves tolerable to ourselves.
I agree that we (I) do often accept our faults pretty easily and can tolerate and excuse our weaknesses readily. Perhaps we're sometimes a little less tolerant of ourselves when we make a good examination of conscience before Confession, but:
This Word, then, is meaningless to most of us; for to Jesus Christ, when the Beatific Vision was overlaid with sorrow, there was nothing in Heaven or upon earth. . . . "I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: for one that would comfort me, and I found none."{6} The tragedy goes on, up there in the darkness: we hear the groan; we catch glimpses of the tortured, colourless Face behind which the Soul itself hangs crucified; . . . we grope, we conjecture, we attempt to form lower images of the august reality; but that is all.
Without referring to the Dark Night of the Soul, Benson says we can and probably will experience this sorrowful loneliness:
Then it all depends on what we do. Do we retreat into those other pleasures, as listed above?(i) Occasionally even we ourselves rise to the point in the spiritual life where our Friendship with Christ is our chief joy, among all the other and lesser consolations that God gives. The fact that we know Him and can speak with Him is reckoned by us as sufficiently sweet as to make its apparent withdrawal the most acute of all our sorrows. (I need hardly say that this requires no particular proficiency in spiritual things. It is, in fact, impossible to be sincere and persevering in our religion, without sooner or later experiencing it.) Well, such a point is reached by us, let us say; and then, on a sudden, without our being conscious of anything more than our usual faithlessness and lethargy, this spiritual pleasure in religion is swiftly and completely withdrawn.
Suddenly care a lot about opera and ballet, maybe?
Instead, Benson advises:
How is our hold upon our Friend to be tightened unless now and again it seems as if He were slipping from our grasp? How is real faith to throw out its roots and clench its fibres into the Rock, unless the desolating wind of trouble at times threatens to uproot us altogether? For the keener the tribulation and the more bitter the dregs, the more honourable is the draught. To hold our lips to that Cup which our Saviour drained, even though its bitterness is diluted by His mercy -- the honour of this should surely be enough to make us hold our peace, for very shame.
Secondly, Benson reminds us:
Religion is not one of the departments which make up our life -- (that is Religiosity) -- but Religion is that which enters into every department, the fabric on which every device, whether of art or literature, or domestic interests, or recreation, or business, or human love, must be embroidered. Unless it is this, it is not Religion as it is intended to be. . . .
Now this, let us remind ourselves, is actually intended to be the life of every human soul; and, in proportion as we approximate to it, we are more or less fulfilling our destiny. For it is only to a soul that has reached this state that God can be All. He becomes "All" because nothing is any longer alien to Him. "Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." {7} The whole of life becomes illuminated with His Presence; everything is seen to subsist in Him: Nothing has any value except so far as it is in relations with Him. . . .
This, then, is the state for which a Christian soul is bound to strive and aspire. This and this only is the entirety of the Friendship of Christ; to a soul in this condition, and to her alone, can Jesus truly be said to be All. And this, further, is the only state in which real "Dereliction" is possible. . . .
As usual, there's too much here for the time we'll have on Monday morning, but with broadcast professionals and good friends like Anna and Matt, we'll do what we can!
Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo: Crucifixion of Christ, 1540
Crucifix in St. Pierre des Chartres, copyright (2026) Stephanie A. Mann
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