Chapter 17
THE EIGHTH SHOWING
clogged and dried as I watched, and the sweet body was brown and black, changed entirely from His own fair, lifelike color to dry dying. For, as I saw it, at the same time our
Lord and blessed Savior died upon the cross, a dry, sharp, extremely cold wind arose. When all the precious blood that would come from it was bled out of the sweet body, moisture still remained in the sweet flesh of Christ, as was shown.
Bloodlessness and pain, drying from within and the blowing of wind and cold coming from without, met together in the sweet body of Christ. And these four — two without and two within — dried the flesh of Christ by the process of time.
And though this pain was bitter and sharp, yet it lasted for a very long time, as I saw it, and painfully dried up all the vital forces in Christ's flesh. Thus I saw the sweet flesh dry, as it seemed, piece by piece, drying with incredible pain. And as long as any part of Christ's flesh retained its vital force, so long He suffered pain.
This drawn-out pining seemed to me as if Christ had spent seven nights of death, dying, always at the point of passing away, suffering the great last pain. And when I said it seemed to me as if He had spent seven nights of death, I meant that the sweet body was so discolored, so dry, so clogged, so deadlooking and so piteous that it looked as if He had spent seven nights of death, continually dying. And it seemed to me the dying of Christ's flesh was His greatest pain and the last of His passion.
Chapter 17 Of the grievous bodily thirst of Christ, caused four ways; of His piteous crowning; and of the greatest pain to a natural lover.
And in this dying there was brought to my mind the word of Christ,"I thirst." For I saw in Christ a double thirst, one bodily, another spiritual, which I shall speak of in the thirtyfirst chapter. For this word was shown for the bodily thirst.
I understood that the bodily thirst was caused by the absence of moisture, for the blessed flesh and bones were left all
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
alone without blood and moisture. The blessed body dried all alone for a long time with the wringing of the nails and the weight of the body. I understood that because of the tenderness of the sweet hands and feet and the large size, hardness and painfulness of the nails, the wounds would widen and the body sag — both because of its weight and because of the length of time it had hung.
Another cause of the bodily thirst was the piercing and wringing of the head and the binding on of the crown, all baked on with dried blood, with the sweet hair and the dry flesh clinging to the thorns, and the thorns to the drying flesh.
And in the beginning, while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continuous gripping of the thorns made the wounds wide.
And furthermore I saw that the sweet skin, with the tender flesh, hair and blood, was all raised above and loosened from the bone by the thorns. These cut it in many pieces, like a cloth, and it sagged as if it were on the verge of falling off, it was so heavy and loose while it had natural moisture. This was a great sorrow and dread to me, for it seemed to me I would not, for my life, have seen it fall. I did not see how it was done, but I understood it was by the sharp thorns and the rough and painful, unsparing seating of the garland, done without pity.
This continued for a while, and before it began to change, I looked at it [the loosened, ragged flesh] and wondered how it could be. Then I saw it was because it had begun to dry and its weight had lessened somewhat. It set around the garland, and surrounded the whole head, as if it were a garland upon a garland: the garland of the thorns was dyed with the blood and the other garland. The head was all one color, like dotted blood when it is dry. The skin of the flesh that seemed to belong to the face and the body was finely wrinkled with a tanned color, like a dry board when it is stripped. The face was browner than the body.
I saw four kinds of drying. The first was bloodlessness.
The second was the pain following after. The third was the hanging up in the air, as men hang a cloth to dry. The fourth