Mental Sufferings of Our Lord in His Passion (Part 2 of 2)

“...They are with Him instead of that ineffable peace which has inhabited His soul since the moment of His conception. They are upon Him, they are all but His own; He cries to His Father, as if He were the criminal, not the victim; His agony takes the form of guilt and compunction. He is doing penance, He is making confession, He is exercising contrition with a reality and a virtue infinitely greater than that of all Saints and penitents together; for He is the One Victim for us all, the sole Satisfaction, the real Penitent, all but the real sinner.

He rises languidly from earth, and turns around to meet the traitor and his band, now quickly nearing the deep shade. He turns, and lo! there is blood upon His garment and in His footprints. Whence come these first-fruits of the passion of the Lamb? no soldier’s scourge has touched His shoulders, nor the hangman’s nails His hands and feet. My brethren, He has bled before His time; He has shed blood, and it is His agonizing soul which has broken up His bodily frame and sent it forth.—His passion has begun from within. That tormented Heart, the seat of tenderness and love, began at length to labour and to beat with vehemence beyond its nature; ‘the fountains of the great deep were broken up;’ the red streams poured forth so copious and fierce as to overflow the veins, and, bursting through the pores, they stood in a thick dew over His whole skin; then, forming into drops, they rolled down full and heavy, and drenched the ground.

‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death,’ He said. It has been said of that dreadful pestilence which now is upon us, that it begins in death; by which is meant that it has no stages or crisis, that hope is over when it comes, and that what looks like its course is but the death agony and the process of dissolution. And thus our Atoning Sacrifice, in a much higher sense, began with this passion of woe, and only did not die, because at His omnipotent will His Heart did not break, nor Soul separate from Body, till He had suffered on the Cross.

No, He has not yet exhausted that full chalice, from which at first His natural infirmity shrank. The seizure, and the arraignment, and the buffeting, and the prison, and the trial, and the mocking, and the passing to and fro, and the scourging, and the crown of thorns, and the slow march to Calvary, and the crucifixion, these are all to come. A night and a day, hour after hour, is slowly to run out, before the end comes, and the Satisfaction is completed.

And then, when the appointed moment arrived, and He gave the word, as His passion had begun with His soul, with the soul did it end. He did not die of bodily exhaustion, or of bodily pain; His tormented Heart broke, and He commended His Spirit to the Father.

‘O Heart of Jesus, all Love, I offer Thee these humble prayers for myself and for all those, who unite themselves with me in spirit to adore Thee. O holiest Heart of Jesus most lovely, I intend to renew and to offer to Thee these acts of adoration and these prayers, for me a wretched sinner, and for all those who are associated in Thy adoration, through all moments while I breathe even to the end of my life...’”

~St. John Henry Newman (from “Discourse XVI – Mental Sufferings of Our Lord in His Passion”)