Chapter XVI
"A Part of His Passion"
AFTER this Christ shewed a part of His Passion near His dying.
I saw His sweet face as it were dry and bloodless with pale dying. And later, more pale, dead, languoring; and then turned more dead to blue; and then more brown-blue, as the flesh turned more deeply dead. For His Passion shewed to me most specially in His blessed face (and chiefly in His lips): there I saw these four colours, though it were
before fresh, ruddy, and pleasing, to my sight. This was a pitiful change to see, this deep dying. And also the inward moisture clotted and dried, to my sight, and the sweet body was brown and black, all turned out of fair, life-like colour of itself, to dry dying. For that same time that our Lord and blessed Saviour died on the Rood, it was a dry, hard wind, and wondrous cold, as to my sight, and when all the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefrom, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ, as it was shewed.
Bloodlessness and pain dried within; and blowing of wind and cold coming from without met together in the sweet body of Christ. And these four, - twain without, and twain within - dried the flesh of Christ by process of time. And though this pain was bitter and sharp, it was long lasting, as to my sight, and painfully dried up all the lively spirits of Christ's flesh. Thus I saw the sweet flesh dry in seeming by part after part, with marvellous pains. And as long as any spirit had life in Christ's flesh, so long suffered He pain.
This long pining seemed to me as if He had been seven nights dead, dying, at the point of outpassing away, suffering the last pain. And when I said it seemed to me as if He had been seven night dead, it means that the sweet body was so discoloured, so dry, so shrunken, so deathly, and so piteous, as if He had been seven night dead, continually dying. And I thought the drying of Christ's flesh was the most pain, and the last, of His Passion.
CHAPTER XVII
"How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, and all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer?"
AND in this dying was brought to my mind the words of Christ: I thirst.
For I saw in Christ a double thirst: one bodily; another spiritual, the which I shall speak of in the Thirty-first Chapter.
For this word was shewed for the bodily thirst: the which I understood was caused by lacking moisture. For the blessed flesh and bones was left all alone without blood and moisture. The blessed body dried alone long time with wringing of the nails and weight of the body. For I understood that for tenderness of the sweet hands and of the sweet feet, by the greatness, hardness, and grievousness of the nails the wounds waxed wide and the body sagged, for weight by long time hanging. And with it was piercing and pressing of the head, and binding of the Crown all baked with dry blood, with the sweet hair clinging, and the dry flesh, to the thorns, and the thorns to the flesh drying; and in the beginning while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continual sitting of the thorns made the wounds wide. And furthermore I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh, with the hair and the blood, was all raised and loosed about from the bone, rent in many pieces where the thorns through it, as a cloth that were sagging, as if it would hastily have fallen off, for heaviness and looseness, while it had natural moisture. And that was great sorrow and fear to me: for I thought I would not for my life have seen it fall. How it was done I saw not; but understood it was with the sharp thorns and the violent and grievous setting on of the Garland of Thorns, unsparingly and without pity. This continued awhile, and soon it began to change, and I saw and marvelled how it might be. And then I saw it was because it began to dry, and stint a part of the weight, and set about the Garland. And thus it encircled all about, as it were garland on garland. The Garland of the Thorns was dyed with the blood, and that other garland of Blood and the head, all was one colour, as clotted blood when it is dry. The skin of the flesh that shewed (of the face and of the body), was shrivelled with a tanned colour, like a dry board when it is aged; and the face more brown than the body. I saw four manner of dryings: the first was bloodlessness; the second was pain following after; the third, hanging up in the air, as men hang a cloth to dry; the fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and there was no manner of comfort ministered to Him in all His woe and distress. Ah! hard and grievous was his pain, but much more hard and grievous it was when the moisture failed and began to dry thus, shrivelling.
These were the pains that shewed in the blessed head: the first wrought to the dying, while it had moisture; and that other, slow, with shrinking drying, and with blowing of the wind from without, that dried and pained Him with cold more than my heart can think. And other pains - for which pains I saw that all is too little that I can say: for it may not be told.
The which Shewing of Christ's pains filled me of pain. For I known well He suffered but once, but this was as if He would shew it me and fill me with mind as I had before desired. And in all this time of Christ's pains I felt no pain but for Christ's pains. Then thought-me: I knew but little what pain it was that I asked; and, as a wretch, repented me, thinking: If I had known what it had been, I would have been reluctant to have prayed it. For I thought it passed bodily death, my pains.
I thought: Is any pain like this? And I was answered in my reason: Hell is another pain: for there is despair. But of all pains that lead to salvation this is the most pain, to see your Love suffer. How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer? Here felt I truly that I loved Christ so much above myself that there was no pain that might be suffered like to that sorrow that I had to see Him in pain.