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The Bodily Sufferings of Our Lord Our Lord’s bodily pains were greater than those of any martyr because he willed them to be greater. All pain pain of body depends — as to be felt at all all, so to be felt felt in this this or that degree — on the nature of the living mind that dwells in that body. Vegetables have no feeling because they have no living mind or spirit within them. Brute animals feel more or less according to the intelligence within them. Man feels more than any brute, because he has a soul. Christ’s soul felt more than that of any other man, because his soul was exalted by personal union with the Word of God. Christ felt bodily pain more keenly than any other man, as much as man feels pain more keenly than any other animal. It is a relief to pain to have the thoughts drawn another way. Thus, soldiers in battle often do not know when they are wounded. Again, persons in raging fevers seem to suffer a great deal; then afterward they can but recollect general discomfort and restlessness. And so excitement and enthusiasm are great alleviations of bodily pain; thus savages die at the stake amid torments singing songs; it is a sort of mental drunkenness. And so again, an instantaneous pain is comparatively bearable; it is the continuance o pain pain which which is so heavy, heavy, and if we had no memory of the pain pain we suffered last minute, minute, and also suffer in the present, we would find pain easy to bear; but what makes the second pang grievous is that there has been a first pang; and what makes the third more grievous is that there has been a first and a second; the pain seems to grow because it is prolong prolonged. ed. Now Christ Christ suffered, not as in a deli delirium rium or in excitement, excitement, or in inadvertency, nadvertency, but he looked pain in the face! He offered his whole mind to it and received it, as it were, directly into his bosom and suffered all he suffered with a full consciousness of suffering. Christ would not drink the drugged cup that was offered to him to cloud his mind (cf. Matt. 27:34). He willed to have the full sense of pain. His soul was so intently fixed on his suffering as not to be distracted from it; and it was so active, and recollected the past and anticipated the future, and the whole Passion was, as it were, concentrated on each moment of it, and all that he had suffered and all that he was to suffer lent its aid to increase what he was suffering. Yet withal his soul was so calm and sober and unexcited as to be passive and thus to receive the full burden of the pain on it, without the power of throwing it off him. Moreover, the sense of conscious innocence, and the knowledge that his sufferings would come to an end, might have supported him; but he repressed the comfort and turned away his thoughts from these alleviations so that he might suffer absolutely and perfectly. O my God and Savior, who went through such sufferings for me with such lively consciousness, such precision, such recollection, and such fortitude, enable me, by your help, if I am brought into the power of this terrible trial, bodily pain, enable me to bear it with some portion of your calmness. Obtain for me this grace, O Virgin Mother, who saw your Son suffer and suffered with him; that I, when I suffer, may associate my sufferings with his and with yours, and that through his Passion, and your merits, and those of all saints, they may be a satisfaction for my sins and procure for me eternal life. 23
