Humiliations and sufferings of Jesus Christ

Stabat Mater dolorosa. JJ Tissot. Brooklyn Museum.

Our Lenten meditations continue with posts taken from Considerations on the Passion of Jesus Christ* by Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori.

"You may use this little book* in your prayers when you meditate on the Passion. I am using it myself every day. I desire that you should not allow a day to pass without recalling to your mind, with the aid of this or another book, something of the Passion. The Passion was for the saints a continual subject of meditation." (St Alphonsus, 1773)

This grace I ask of thee to-day: obtain for me a continual remembrance of the passion of Jesus, and of thine also, and a tender devotion to them.

Humiliations and sufferings of Jesus Christ

[ ] References in the text to numbered footnotes are not hyperlinked but may be found at the end of the relevant paragraph.

Isaias also called Jesus Christ the man of sorrows. It is to Jesus crucified that the words of Jeremias are especially applicable: Thy grief is great as the sea. [1] As all the waters of the rivers meet in the ocean, so in Jesus Christ are united all the pains of the sick, the penitential sufferings of anchorites,[2]  and all the pangs and contempts endured by martyrs. He was laden with sorrows both of soul and body. Thou hast brought all Thy waves over me. [3] “O my Father!” said our Redeemer by the mouth of David, “Thou hast sent upon me all the waves of Thy wrath;” and therefore, in the hour of death, he said, that he died sunk in a sea of sorrow and shame: I have come unto the depths of the sea, and the storm hath sunk me.[4] The Apostle writes that Almighty God, in commanding his Son to pay for our sins with his blood, desired thus to show how great was his justice: Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in His blood, to the showing forth of His justice. [5]

[1] [13] Mem. To what shall I compare thee? or to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? to what shall I equal thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Sion? for great as the sea is thy destruction: who shall heal thee?
MEM. Cui comparabo te, vel cui assimilabo te, filia Jerusalem? cui exaequabo te, et consolabor te, virgo, filia Sion? magna est enim velut mare contritio tua : quis medebitur tui? [Lam 2]
[2] anchoriteA person who has withdrawn or secluded himself from the world; usually one who has done so for religious reasons, a recluse, a hermit. (Appl. to both sexes, though the special fem. is anchoress n.) French anachorète and Latin anachōrēta , medieval Latin anachōrīta , < Greek ἀναχωρητής , n. of agent < ἀναχωρεῖν to retire, retreat, < ἀνά back + χωρεῖν to give place, withdraw.
[3] [8] Thy wrath is strong over me: and all thy waves thou hast brought in upon me.
Super me confirmatus est furor tuus, et omnes fluctus tuos induxisti super me. [Ps 87]
[4] [3] I stick fast in the mire of the deep: and there is no sure standing. I am come into the depth of the sea: and a tempest hath overwhelmed me.
Infixus sum in limo profundi et non est substantia. Veni in altitudinem maris; et tempestas demersit me. [Ps 68]
[5] [25] Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the shewing of his justice, for the remission of former sins,
quem proposuit Deus propitiationem per fidem in sanguine ipsius, ad ostensionem justitiae suae propter remissionem praecedentium delictorum [Rom 3]

Humiliated, suffering Christ. JJ Tissot. Brooklyn Museum

To form a conception of what Jesus Christ suffered in his life, and still more in his death, we must consider what the same Apostle says in his letter to the Romans: God sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and by sin condemned sin in the flesh. [5] Jesus Christ being sent by the Father to redeem man, clothed himself with that flesh which was infected with sin; and though he had not contracted the pollution of sin, nevertheless he took upon him the miseries contracted by human nature, as the punishment of sin; and he offered himself to the Eternal Father, to satisfy the divine justice for all the sins of men by his sufferings; he was offered because he himself willed it; [6] and the Eternal Father, as Isaias writes, laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. [7] Behold Jesus, therefore, laden with all the blasphemies, all the sacrileges, trespasses, thefts, cruelties, and abominable deeds which men have committed and will commit.

Behold him, in a word the object of all the divine curses which men have deserved through their sins: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.[8]


[5] [3] For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh; God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh;
Nam quod impossibile erat legi, in quo infirmabatur per carnem : Deus Filium suum mittens in similitudinem carnis peccati et de peccato, damnavit peccatum in carne, [Rom 8]
[6] [7] He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth.
Oblatus est quia ipse voluit, et non aperuit os suum; sicut ovis ad occisionem ducetur, et quasi agnus coram tondente se obmutescet, et non aperiet os suum. [Isa 53]
[7] [6] All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Omnes nos quasi oves erravimus, unusquisque in viam suam declinavit; et posuit Dominus in eo iniquitatem omnium nostrum.  [Isa 53]
[8] [13] Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written: Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
Christus nos redemit de maledicto legis, factus pro nobis maledictum : quia scriptum est : Maledictus omnis qui pendet in ligno : [Gal 3]

Ecce Homo. JJ Tissot. Brooklyn Museum.

Therefore St. Thomas writes that both the internal and outward pains of Jesus Christ exceeded all the pains which can be endured in this life. As for the external pains of the body, it is enough to know that Jesus Christ received from the Father a body prepared on purpose for suffering; and on this account he himself said, A body hast Thou prepared for Me. [8] St. Thomas remarks that our Lord suffered pains and torments in all his senses: he suffered in his sense of touch, because all his flesh was torn; he suffered in his taste, with gall and vinegar; he suffered in his hearing, through the blasphemies and mockeries that were offered to him; he suffered in his sight, at beholding his mother, who was present at his death. He suffered also in all his members: his head was tortured with thorns, his hands and feet with nails, his face with buffeting and spitting, and all his body with scourging, in the way that was foretold by lsaias, who said that the Redeemer would appear in his Passion like a leper, who has no sound portion in his body, and strikes horror into every one who sees him, as a man who is all wounds from head to foot.

It is enough to say, that by such a sight of Jesus scourged, Pilate hoped to be allowed by the Jews to exempt him from death, when he showed him to the people from the balcony, saying, Behold the Man.[9]

[8] [5] Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not: but a body thou hast fitted to me:
Ideo ingrediens mundum dicit : Hostiam et oblationem noluisti : corpus autem aptasti mihi :  [Heb 10]
[9] [5] (Jesus therefore came forth, bearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment.) And he saith to them: Behold the Man.
( Exivit ergo Jesus portans coronam spineam, et purpureum vestimentum.) Et dicit eis : Ecce homo. [John 19]

St. Isidore says that other men, when their pains are great and last long, through the very severity of the pain, lose all power of feeling it. 4967 But in Jesus Christ it was not so; his last sufferings were as bitter as his first, and the first stripes in his scourging were as torturing as the last; for the Passion of our Redeemer was not the work of man, but of the justice of God, who thought fit to chastise his Son with all the severity which the sins of all mankind deserved.

[10] St Isidore of Seville: 560  -636; The Eighth Council of Toledo (653) recorded its admiration of his character in these glowing terms: "The extraordinary doctor, the latest ornament of the Catholic Church, the most learned man of the latter ages, always to be named with reverence, Isidore". This tribute was endorsed by the Fifteenth Council of Toledo, held in 688. He was the first Christian writer to essay the task of compiling a summa of universal knowledge. Isidore's De fide catholica contra Iudaeos furthers Augustine of Hippo's ideas on the Jewish presence in Christian society. Like Augustine, Isidore accepted the necessity of the Jewish presence because of their expected role in the anticipated Second Coming of Christ. He contributed two decisions to the Fourth Council of Toledo: Canon 60 calling for the forced removal of children from parents practising Crypto-Judaism and their education by Christians and Canon 65 forbidding Jews and Christians of Jewish origin from holding public office.

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou hast desired by Thy sufferings to take upon Thee the punishment due to my sins. Thus, if I had less offended Thee, Thou wouldst have suffered less in Thy death. And knowing this, can I live henceforward without loving Thee, and without mourning continually for the offences that I have committed against Thee? O my Jesus, I grieve that I have despised Thee, and I love Thee above everything. Oh, despise me not; receive me, that I may love Thee, since now I love Thee, and desire to love nothing but Thee. Too ungrateful should I be, if, after all the mercies Thou hast shown me, I should henceforth love anything but Thee.

Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. 

Tecum tutus semper sum.
Ad Jesum per Mariam.