Chapter 21
THE EIGHTH SHOWING
despised. For the highest point that can be reached in the Passion is to think and to know Who He is that suffered. Beyond this there are two other, lesser points to remember. One is what He suffered, and the other for whom He suffered.
And in this He brought to my mind, in part, the greatness and nobility of the glorious godhead, and with it the preciousness and tenderness of the most blessed body, which are together one.
He also brought to mind the loathness our nature has to suffer pain. For just as He was most tender and pure, so was
He most strong and mighty to suffer. He suffered for the sin of every man who shall be saved, and He saw the sorrow, desolation and anguish of every man and grieved, moved by kindness and love. For just as much as our Lady sorrowed for His pains, so much did He suffer sorrow for her sorrow, and more, inasmuch as His sweet manhood was more perfect in nature.
As long as He was able to suffer, He suffered for us and sorrowed for us. Now He has risen from the dead, and can no longer suffer. Yet He has suffered with us, as I shall explain later.
And I, beholding all this by His grace, saw that His love for our soul is so strong that He deliberately chose all this pain with great desire, and suffered patiently for the choice with great joy, paying well for it. For the soul that sees it thus, when it is touched by grace, shall in truth see that the pains of Christ's passion exceed all pains, that is to say the pains that shall be turned into everlasting exceeding joys by virtue of Christ's passion.
Chapter 21 Of three ways of beholding the passion of Christ; and how we are now dying on the cross with Christ but His countenance frees us from all pain.
It is God's will, as I understand it, that we have three ways of looking at the passion of Christ. The first is the harsh pain
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
He suffered, which we should behold with contrition and compassion. That our Lord showed me at this time and gave me strength and grace to see it.
With all my might I focused on His dying, and expected to see the body completely dead, but I did not see Him so.
And just at the moment that it seemed to me that life could last no longer, and the showing of the end must, of necessity, be near, suddenly, looking at the same cross, I saw Him transform His blessed face. The transformation of His blessed face transformed mine, and I was as glad and merry as it was possible to be.
Then our Lord brought joyfully to my mind the question "What do your pain and anguish matter now?" And I was completely happy. I understood that what our Lord means is that we are now on His cross with Him in our pains, and dying with Him in our sufferings. If we deliberately stay on the same cross, with His help and His grace, up to the final point, suddenly He shall transform His countenance for us and we shall be with Him in heaven. Between the one and the other no time shall elapse. Then all shall be brought to joy. That is what He meant by His question "What do your pain and anguish matter now?" We shall be full of bliss.
And here I saw in truth that if He showed us His blissful countenance now, there is no pain on earth or in any other place that could trouble us. All things would be joy and bliss to us. But because He shows us His face as it was in His passion, as He bore His cross in this life, we are disturbed and in sorrowful labor with Him, as our frail nature necessitates.
The reason He suffers is because He chooses, of His goodness, to make us the loftier with Him in His bliss. For this little pain that we suffer here, we shall have a lofty, endless knowing in God, which we could never have had without it. And the harsher our pains have been with Him on His cross, the greater shall our glory be with Him in His kingdom.