230. Christ suffered everything
230. CHRIST SUFFERED EVERYTHING
What did Christ suffer, actually?
He did endure every human suffering. . . .
First of all, on the part of men: for He endured something from Gentiles and from Jews, from men and from women . . . from the rulers, from their servants, and from the mob. . . . He suffered from friends and acquaintances, as is manifest from Judas betraying and Peter denying Him.
Secondly, the same is evident on the part of the sufferings which a man can endure. For Christ suffered from friends abandoning Him, in His reputation from the blasphemies hurled at Him, in His honor and glory from the mockeries and the insults heaped upon Him; in things, because He was despoiled of His garments; in His soul, from sadness, weariness, and fear; in His body, from wounds and scourgings.
Thirdly, it may be considered with regard to His bodily members. In His head He suffered from the crown of piercing thorns; in His hands and feet from the fastening of the nails; on His face from the blows and spittle; and from the lashes over His entire body.
Moreover, He suffered in all His bodily senses: in touch, by being scourged and nailed; in taste, by being given vinegar and gall to drink; in smell, by being fastened to the gibbet in a place reeking with the stench of corpses, which is called Calvary; in hearing, by being tormented with the cries of blasphemers and scorners; in sight, by beholding the tears of His mother and of the disciple whom He loved. . . .
The very least one of Christ’s sufferings was sufficient of itself to redeem the human race from all sins; but as to fittingness, it sufficed that He should endure all classes of sufferings (III,46,5).
There is nothing subtle or hidden or difficult to understand here. What can we add?
First, that it is helpful to be very concrete and specific and detailed when meditating on Christ. (St. Ignatius Loyola emphasized this in his Spiritual Exercises.) For Christ was very concrete and specific and detailed—like you. We tend to etherealize Him, to keep Him at an unearthly distance, to worship a distant, deistic Savior, or (even worse) an abstraction, a set of “values”. Stay grounded. Smell the blood. Watch that painful movie again.
Second, that His love for us is infinite. When He spread His hands out on the Cross, He embraced everything He had created, and said to us: “See? This is how much I love you!” It is not measured, not “rational” (in the small, pragmatic sense of the word). His love is crazy! Its reason is nothing higher than itself.
Third, he did this so that when we suffer in any one of these many ways in which He suffered, He is there. He is very specific and concrete: He entered not just into injuries in general but into lacerations and head injuries and painful sights and sounds and even smells. He did not leave anything bereft of His presence. He did not will to be present only in beauty and peace and power and joy, but also in ugliness and horror and weakness and pain, so that we could find Him there too. He did not come only into some kinds of suffering and not others, but into every one, so that we could find him there. He fulfilled the prophecy in Psalm 139:12: “Even the darkness is not dark to you.”
His absence turns the most pleasant places in life into Hell. His presence turns the most painful places in life to Heaven. For where He is, is Heaven. Heaven does not define Him, He defines Heaven.