XXII.

DARKNESS.

My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?--_Matt._ xxvii. 46.

_My God!_ as if You belonged to no one else in the wide world. As if You and I were alone in creation. As if neither in heaven above nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth, You had a single other creature!

_My God!_ as if for me alone you had done all in the orders of nature, grace, and glory; working for me from the beginning, through all causes, by all creatures, in all events. As if for me alone were the earth and the sea and all within them. For me all the ordering of Your Providence in the affairs of time. For me the heaven of heavens and all the concourse there. For me the Saints and Mary; the Incarnation, the Life, and death, and teaching of Christ; the Church and Sacraments; the Eucharist, and Mass, and Communion. For me life everlasting and the Blessed Vision of Yourself.

_My God!_ for Whom I am made. Without Whom happiness for me were the wildest of impossibilities. The Supreme Good able to satisfy to the full every want of my complex nature. Infinite Goodness providing for all and for each with an exquisite discrimination of my need.

_My God!_ in a sense known to myself and You alone--father, mother, sister, brother, lover, friend--all in all to me.

_My God!_ as if You belonged to me rather than to Yourself; belonged to me rather than I to You. As if You were for my sake rather than I for Yours. Or at least as if we so belonged to one another as of necessity to imply and supplement each other--as hill and valley, light and shade, the ocean and the void it fills.

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_My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?_ Why this darkness in which I grope for You in vain, in which I seek in vain to find Your Face? Why these nameless fears, this dread of You, this shrinking from You?

Or, harder still to bear, this heaviness of soul, this hardness of heart, this weariness of You, my God, this restlessness in Your presence, this impatience of Your ways--why all this inconsistency and perversity?

Why, O Supreme Good, do You show Yourself to me as infinitely desirable, only to elude my grasp when I stretch out my hands to feel for You and draw You to myself? Why do You brush past me in the darkness to leave me all the more desolate and disconsolate because You were so near? Why are You deaf when I cry? Why, here in this tabernacle, are You so near and yet so far away? Why do You make it more and more impossible for me to find rest out of You, and then deny Yourself to my soul? Why have You sought for me so persistently when I fled from You, to hide from me now that I seek You? _My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?_

Is Your answer to me this--that I have forsaken You first? Is the hiding of Your Face the just punishment of wilful deafness to Your voice and resistance to Your leading? Are You waiting for some act of mine as the price of Your turning to me? Is it pride or any other passion that interposes as a cloud between us? What is it, my God? Take it away at any cost. I am sorry for my insincerity; for all meanness in my dealings with You; for all wilful blindness and deafness; for the cowardice that fears to see what will call for effort and for sacrifice.

If conscience does not reproach me, I am not hereby justified, because Your all-seeing eye may note, does note what escapes mine. I own to whatever You see that is amiss. I am perfectly conscious that there is more--oh, a thousand times more than enough to make You turn away Your Face and forsake me utterly. Show me what You will have me see, that I may amend it, and bear with what You dare not show me, lest I should be utterly cast down and despair.

_My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!_ You have taught me by Your own meek complaint that I too may complain lovingly. I look up through the darkness of Calvary. I hear above me that cry from Your own lips, and I am instructed and comforted. If the well-beloved Son for bearing the appearance of sin was thus shut out from the Father’s Face, how shall a sinner complain? If this was done in the green wood, what shall be done in the dry?

And if all through the blackness of that desolation He remained still the well-beloved Son, so may the weakest of His brethren, so may I remain--dear to the Father’s Heart through all the discipline of chastisement, through all the needful purification of my imperfect love.

In the very midnight of His dereliction He called on the Father, clung to the Father, threw Himself on the Father with absolute trust. So may I, so _must_ I, in the darkness that is but the faintest shadow of His.

_Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit_--for this trial, for every trial, for the last trial, when the shadow of death will close round me, and it will be hard to find Your Face. Into the hands that created me, that redeemed me, into which I shall pass at the moment of death, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.

“My God, My God!”--into the night went forth That lonely cry, Piteous as never plaint from burdened breast Its misery.

Went forth _for me_ into the night, that wail Of woe divine; His bitter dereliction bared, to draw The sting from mine.

And yet another cry ere shades of death Around Him stole, Revealed the sanctuary dark and lone Of Jesu’s soul:

“Father, into Thy hands”--a Son’s bequest, That we might know The filial, all unshaken trust, beneath That depth of woe.

“Father, into Thy hands”--that we might learn Since Jesus died Theirs first the right to claim the Father’s love, His crucified.