After a significant episode, Fr Parker is still sort of absent! But he plans to upload his homilies for Holy Week 2022, so that's a thing. Full text below! There is so much of value in the readings from today’s Mass, but perhaps what has called to me the most is the Psalm Response, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” By the measure of the world, this response is sorrowful, dark, and maybe even seems evil, but our Christian imagination challenges us to read more deeply into this proclamation of faith, into the whole of the Psalm it points to, and how that relates to the whole of the Christian mystery which we celebrate today. I call the response to today’s Psalm a proclamation of faith because people who do not believe in God do not think he forsakes them; people who do not believe in God simply fail to consider God at all. For a true atheist, God is not absent, dismissive, good or evil, but rather, God simply does not exist. Thus, the Psalm response is a proclamation of faith, even if it’s a proclamation of faith in a God who seems distant or even entirely absent. In how the Psalm is presented in today’s liturgy, there are only four stanzas. The actual Psalm is much longer, but the Church presents this summarized version around the main themes of the full Psalm. This shortened version really emphasizes just how drastic the turn that occurs in the final stanza is. The speaker turns from describing the mockery of the crowd around him, the feebleness he feels, and the injustice he faces at the hands of those who have condemned him to a great proclamation of faith and desire to evangelize: I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you! You who [stand in awe of] the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him! Stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! The world would tell us that those who feel forsaken by God should do their best to change their feelings; the world would tell those who feel forsaken by God to forsake Him back. “If your God is really a God of love, why would you feel forsaken?” “Your God has abandoned you because you don’t fit into some idealized and impossible mould that you are supposed to embrace.” “If you really feel forsaken, if you really feel sentenced to death and despair, isolation and loneliness, ‘let this God rescue the one in whom he supposedly delights!’” In the world, even some of those who claim to have a faith in the same God might tell you to change your feelings if you feel forsaken by God. “God loves you, and that should be enough.” “God wouldn’t give you more than you can handle.” “You just need to deepen your faith so that you can know that this is all part of the great plan that God has for you.” I’m here to tell you that these pieces of atheistic advice and pious platitudes are both equally wrong and equally dangerous—equally wrong and dangerous to a lived authentic faith because the God whose scripture proclaims professions of faith like “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” can handle your feelings. Like a mother who nurses a fussy baby, a father who does not abandon a teenager who spits hatred at him, a true friend who can handle absence, or like sons and daughters who still fall deeply in love with their moms and dads as their physical and mental health declines in old age, the God whose scripture proclaims “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” can handle your feelings, whatever they are. The God of the Old Testament and the New Testament, the God of the Jews, the God Incarnate in Christ, Jesus Himself, embraces and loves you no matter your feelings and patiently bears them out beside you, embracing you in suffering in the same way that any lover embraces his or her beloved. While feelings of abandonment or forsakenness are legitimate, they certainly do not reflect the reality of an always-present God who loves each and every one of us. God will patiently bear your feelings as feelings do what feelings do: change and adapt to the circumstance. The circumstances of the Scriptures certainly point to the legitimacy of feelings that God has forsaken us. Isaiah speaks of the torment he endures for being a believer. He is beaten, his beard is pulled out, and he faces insults and is even spit at, but his faith endures, He knows the Lord helps him and he “shall not be put to shame.” St Paul’s great Philippian Hymn speaks of the humility of Christ, who is empty in the form of a slave and put to death on a Cross, yet “every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord.” The great Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to St Luke describes how Jesus’ suffering is so intense that “his sweat became like great drops of blood.” Even hanging on the Cross, Jesus is mocked by one of the criminals He is crucified beside. Our God can handle these feelings of forsakenness because He is a ...
