Fifth Sunset The Solitude on the Cross

Indeed Jesus is alone on the cross; around it his solitude has been intensified. We all die alone even if we die surrounded by love and friendship. The dying person knows in the intimacy of intimacies that he is by himself, no matter how much he reaches to touch somebody else’s hand. We are most definitely alone in our death. It is the most human moment of our existences. It is part of the great paradox that precisely when we are much human is when much solitude we experience. But it is not the solitude of the absence of others. It is the solitude of the things that nobody else can do for us, but me.

Jesus cries out with intense pain. It is a cry from the cruelty of his agony. This is a moment of total nakedness in which he does not have anything to rely on. It is the most intense desolation. The night of an unspeakable anguish sieves his heart. Jesus invokes the Father from the deepest part of his soul, from the silence, from a terrible loneliness: He prays with his same prayer from psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why so far from my call for help, from my cries of anguish? It is a call to God who seems distant, far away; a God who does not respond.

The prayer asks to be listened to and answered. It asks for a contact point. It seeks a relationship that can offer consolation and salvation. If God does not respond, the cry for help would be lost in empty space and the solitude would become unbearable. But, these words are prayer. Therefore, it reaches God. The psalms are deeply personal prayers, formed while wrestling with God. They are prayed in the presence of suffering, and yet they already contain within themselves the gift of an answer to prayer, the gift of transformation. They cry of extreme anguish is, at the same time, the certainty of an answer from God, the certainty of salvation – not only for Jesus himself, but for many

In this most lonely moment of his time among us, Jesus worships the Father with unquestionable confidence and faith. The solitude expressed with his words is not to complain. It is the embodying of his prayer. Yes, death is the most terrible lonely moment of our existences, but it is the joining point of our transcendence.

Jesus lonely on the cross, pray for us in our solitudes.