On the Patience of Christ, Even Unto Death
The third point is to suffer in patience. We will examine this seriously, for it is this which adorned Christ, our Bridegroom, during all His life. He suffered when He was newly born, from poverty and cold. He was circumcised and shed his blood. He was obliged to fly into a foreign country. He served Joseph and His mother, He suffered from hunger and thirst, from shame and contempt and from the wicked words and deeds of the Jews. He fasted, He watched, and was tempted by the enemy. He was subject to all men, He went from district to district, from town to town, to preach the gospel painfully and zealously. Finally, He was taken by the Jews, who were His enemies and whom He loved. He was betrayed, mocked, insulted, scourged, struck, and condemned on false testimony. He carried His cross with great pain to the mount of Calvary. He was stripped naked as at His birth, and never was seen a body so beautiful, nor a mother so unhappy. He endured shame, pain, and cold before all the world, for He was naked, and it was cold, and He was exhausted by His wounds. He was nailed with large nails to the wood of the cross, and was so strained that His veins were burst. He was lifted up and shaken upon the cross, so as to make His wounds bleed, His head was crowned with thorns, and His ears heard the fierce Jews crying out, “Crucify Him! crucify Him!” and many other shameful words. His eyes saw the obstinacy and wickedness of the Jews, and the distress of His mother, and His eyes were extinguished under the bitterness of pain and death. His mouth and palate were hurt by the vinegar and gall, and all the sensitive parts of His body wounded by the scourge.
Behold then Christ, our Bridegroom, wounded to death, abandoned by God and the creatures, dying on the cross, hanging from a post, with no one to care much for Him except Mary, His unhappy mother, who nevertheless could not aid Him. And Christ suffered moreover spiritually, in His soul, from the hardness of the Jews’ hearts and those who made Him die, for in spite of the prodigies and miracles which they saw, they remained in their wickedness; and He suffered by reason of their corruption and the vengeance which God was about to inflict upon them, in body and soul, for His death. He suffered moreover for the grief and misery of His mother and disciples, who were in great sadness. And He suffered because His death would be wasted for many men, and for the ingratitude of many, and for the blasphemies of those who would curse Him who died for love of us. And His nature and interior reason suffered because God withdrew from them the inflow of His gifts and consolations, and abandoned them to themselves in such distress. Therefore Christ complained and said, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
Behold then the interior virtues of Christ; humility, charity, and suffering in patience. These three virtues Jesus, our Bridegroom, practised throughout His life, and He died in them, and He paid our debt by satisfying justice, and opened His side in His bounty. And thence flow rivers of delight, and sacraments of blessedness. And He was exalted to His power, and sat at the right hand of the Father, and reigns eternally. This is the first coming of our Bridegroom, and it is completely past.