First, incontestably, he died: in a spiritual sense, during his entire life to all that is of the senses; and in the natural sense, at his death. He had in life, as he himself said, nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8:20). In death, he had even less. Second, at the moment of his death he was certainly annihilated in his soul, since the Father had left him without any consolation or relief, in utmost aridity. He was thereby compelled to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). This was the most extreme abandonment, sensitively, that he had suffered in his whole life. But precisely by this, he accomplished a greater work than any he wrought in his entire life with all its signs and wonders: … he brought about the reconciliation and union of the human race with God through grace.

This was achieved in the moment in which the Lord was most annihilated in all things… in his reputation before people, since as they watched him die they mocked him; in his human nature which was totally destroyed through death; in the help and consolation from the Father, for at that time he was left completely without help, so that, totally stripped and annihilated, as though dissolved in nothingness, he should purge all guilt and unite humanity to God… From this, truly spiritual souls may come to understand the mystery of Christ as the door and the way to union with God, and so realize that their union with God will be more intimate, and the work they accomplish the greater, the more they annihilate themselves in their sensory as well as their spiritual parts for the sake of God. When they are reduced to nothingness in the highest degree of humility, then the spiritual union of the soul with God takes place, the most noble and sublime state attainable in this life. It does not, therefore, consist in spiritual refreshment, delights, and feelings, but in the living death on the cross, in what is sensory as well as in what is spiritual, and exteriorly as well as interiorly.
Saint John of the Cross