NOTES for Mar 15:16-47
Today's reading may help us, to some degree, make sense of the sharpest question facing a person: how does almighty God allow the existence of suffering and evil, especially when it is always the purest and most innocent people who suffer? Today we are given a glimpse of how God relates to evil in the world. We read how the Lord Himself passes through the very thick of human suffering. He descends from heaven in order to share with humanity all the darkness, all the horror of its loneliness and pain. Jesus is abandoned by His disciples; He passes through the soldiers' mockery, the shameful procession to the place of execution, and the agonizing crucifixion on the cross. In order to drink to the end all the bitterness of human torment, He refuses to drink the wine with myrrh that would dull the pain.
The King of all the earth, the Son of God, is "numbered with the transgressors." He does not come down from the cross, so that He may pass through the most terrible thing: "My God! Why have You forsaken Me?" He passes through the darkness of God-forsakenness belonging to fallen humanity. After this He, like each of us, sinks into the cold of death. The veil in the temple, which separated God from people, was torn: the Son of God had walked the human path to the end. The few disciples who remained buried Him like any mortal man.
Such is God's answer to the existence of suffering on earth. He does not merely sympathize; He suffers with us completely, with us and for us.
Here is also our answer: Christians, each in his own measure, take part in the sufferings of Christ, suffer with the world, and in this way take part in Christ's redeeming sacrifice, and through this also in His Resurrection.