Considerations on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ - 09

I. Isaias also called Jesus Christ the Man of sorrows. It is to Jesus crucified that the words of Jeremias are especially applicable: Great as the sea is thy destruction (Lam. ii. 13). As all the waters of the rivers meet in the ocean, so in Jesus Christ are united all the pains of the sick, the penitential sufferings of anchorites, and all the pangs and contempt endured by Martyrs. He was laden with sorrows both of soul and body. Thou hast brought all thy waves in upon me (Ps. lxxxvii. 8). "O my Father!" said our Redeemer by the mouth of David, "Thou has sent upon Me all the waves of Thy wrath"; and therefore, in the hour of death, He said that He died in a sea of sorrow and shame: I have come unto the depths of the sea, and a tempest hath overwhelmed me (Ps. lxviii. 3). The Apostle writes that Almighty God, in commanding His Son to pay for our sins with His Blood, desired thus to show how great was His justice: Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the showing forth of his justice (Rom. iii. 25).

To form a conception of what Jesus Christ suffered in His life, and still more in His death, we must consider what the same Apostle says in his letter to the Romans: God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh (viii. 3). Jesus Christ being sent by the Father to redeem man, clothed Himself with that flesh which was infected by sin; and though He had not contracted the pollution of sin, nevertheless He took upon Him the miseries contracted by human nature, as the punishment of sin; and He offered Himself to the Eternal Father, to satisfy the Divine justice for all the sins of men by His sufferings; He was offered because He Himself willed it (Is. liii. 7), and the Eternal Father laid upon him the iniquity of us all (Is. liii. 6). Behold Jesus, therefore, laden with all the blasphemies, all the sacrileges, trespasses, thefts, cruelties, and abominable deeds which men have committed and will commit. Behold Him, in a word, the object of all the Divine curses which men have deserved through their sins: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (Gal. iii. 13).

II. Therefore St. Thomas writes that both the inward and outward pains of Jesus Christ exceeded all the pains which can be endured in this life. As for the external pains of the body, it is enough to know that Jesus Christ received from the Father a body prepared on purpose for suffering; and on this account He Himself said: A body thou hast fitted to me (Heb. x. 5). St. Thomas remarks that our Lord suffered pains and torments in all His senses: He suffered in His sense of touch because all His flesh was torn; He suffered in His taste, with gall and vinegar; He suffered in His hearing through the blasphemies and mockeries that were offered to Him; He suffered in His sight at beholding His Mother, who was present at His death. He suffered also in all His members: His head was tortured with thorns; His hands and feet with nails, His face with buffeting and spitting, and all His body with scourging, in the way that was foretold by Isaias, who said that the Redeemer would appear in His Passion like a leper, who has no sound portion in his body, and strikes horror into every one who sees him, as a man who is all wounds from head to foot. It is enough to say that by the sight of Jesus scourged Pilate hoped to be allowed by the Jews to save Him from death, when he showed Him to the people from the balcony, saying: Behold the man (Jo. xix. 5).

St. Isodore says that other men, when their pains are great and last long, through the very severity of the pain, lose all power of feeling it. But in Jesus Christ it was not so; His last sufferings were as bitter as His first, and the first stripes of His scourging were as torturing as the last; for the Passion of our Redeemer was not the work of man, but of the justice of God, Who thought fit to chastise His Son with all the severity which the sins of all mankind deserved.

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou hast desired by Thy sufferings to take upon Thee the punishment due to my sins. Thus, if I had offended Thee less, Thou wouldst have suffered less in Thy death. And knowing this, can I live henceforward without loving Thee, and without mourning continually for the offences I have committed against Thee? O my Jesus, I grieve that I have despised Thee, and I love Thee above everything. Oh, despise me not; receive me, that I may love Thee, since now I love Thee, and desire to love nothing but Thee. Too ungrateful should I be, if after all the mercies Thou hast shown me, I should henceforth love anything but Thee.