Chapter XIII — A Summary of the Inexplicable Sufferings that Incarnate Wisdom Chose to Endure for Love of Us

1. The Most Powerful Reason for Loving Wisdom

154. Among all the reasons that can move us to love Jesus Christ, Incarnate Wisdom, the most powerful, in my opinion, is the suffering he chose to endure to show us his love.

"There is," says St. Bernard, "one motive that surpasses all others, that touches me most keenly and presses me to love Jesus Christ: it is, O good Jesus, the chalice of bitterness that you drank for us, and the work of our redemption that makes you lovable to our hearts; for this supreme gift and this incomparable testimony of your love easily wins our own: it attracts us more sweetly, it demands of us more justly, it presses us more closely, and it touches us more powerfully: Hoc est quod nostram devotionem et blandius allicit et justius exigit et arctius stringit et afficit vehementius." And the reason he gives in a few words: "Multum quippe laboravit sustinens: because this dear Savior labored much and suffered much to accomplish our redemption. Oh, how many trials and anguish he endured!"

2. The Circumstances of the Passion of Wisdom

155. But what will show us clearly this infinite love of Wisdom for us are the circumstances found in his sufferings. [a] The first is the excellence of his person which, being infinite, infinitely elevates all that he suffered in his passion. If God had sent a seraph or an angel of the lowest order to become man and die for us, it would undoubtedly have been a most admirable thing, worthy of our eternal gratitude; but the Creator of heaven and earth, the only-begotten Son of God, Eternal Wisdom, having come herself to give her life — compared to which the lives of all the angels and all men and all creatures together are infinitely less considerable than the life of a single gnat compared to that of all the monarchs of the world — what excess of charity does he show us in this mystery, and what should be our astonishment and our gratitude!

156. [b] The second circumstance is the quality of the persons for whom he suffers. They are men, vile creatures and his enemies, from whom he had nothing to fear and nothing to hope. Friends have sometimes been found who died for their friends; but will anyone ever be found, other than the Son of God, who died for his enemy?

Commendat charitatem suam Deus in nobis; quoniam cum adhuc peccatores essemus secundum tempus Christus pro nobis mortuus est. [Rom 5:8-9]. Jesus Christ showed the love he bears us by dying for us while we were still sinners and therefore his enemies.

157. [c] The third circumstance is the multitude, the severity, and the duration of his sufferings. The multitude of his pains is so great that he is called: vir dolorum, the man of all sorrows, in whom, from the sole of the feet to the crown of the head, there is no part without a wound: a planta pedis usque ad verticem, non est in eo sanitas. [Isa 1:6]

This dear friend of our souls suffered in all things: in what is outward and in what is inward, in body and in soul.

158. He suffered in his possessions, for — without speaking of the poverty of his birth, of his flight and his stay in Egypt, and of his entire life — he was in his passion stripped of his garments by the soldiers, who divided them among themselves, and was then fastened naked to the gibbet, without being left even a poor rag to cover him.

159. In his honor and reputation, for having been heaped with insults and called a blasphemer, a seditious man, a drunkard, a glutton, and one possessed by the devil.

In his wisdom, because he was held to be a drunkard and an impostor and treated as a fool and a madman.

In his power, reputed as a sorcerer and a magician who worked false miracles through his dealings with the devil.

In his disciples, of whom one sold and betrayed him, the first among them denied him, and the rest abandoned him.

160. He suffered from every kind of person: from kings, governors, judges, courtiers, soldiers, high priests, priests, clerics and laypeople, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, and generally from all. Even his holy Mother was a terrible addition to his afflictions, as he saw her present at his death, drowned in an ocean of sorrows at the foot of the cross.

161. Our dear Savior moreover endured suffering in all the members of his body: his head was crowned with thorns; his hair and beard were torn out; his cheeks were struck; his face was covered with spittle; his neck and arms were bound with ropes; his shoulders were weighed down and flayed by the weight of the cross; his feet and hands were pierced with nails; his side and heart were opened by a lance; and his whole body was mercilessly torn by more than five thousand strokes of the lash, so that his bones could be seen half laid bare.

All his senses were also drowned in this sea of suffering: his eyes, by seeing the grimaces and mockery of his enemies and the tears of desolation of his friends; his ears, by hearing the insults, the false testimonies, the calumnies, and the horrible blasphemies that those accursed mouths vomited against him; his sense of smell, by the stench of the spittle that was spat in his face; his taste, by a burning thirst in which he was given only gall and vinegar; and his sense of touch, by the excessive pain caused by the scourges, the thorns, and the nails.

162. His most holy soul was most grievously tormented by the sins of all men, each one being an outrage against his Father whom he loved infinitely, and being the source of the damnation of so many souls who, despite his death and Passion, would be damned; and he had compassion not only on all men in general, but on each one in particular, whom he knew distinctly.

What increased all his torments was their duration, which began from the first instant of his conception and lasted until his death; because, by the infinite light of his wisdom, he saw distinctly and had always before him all the evils he was to endure.

Let us add to all his torments the most cruel and terrifying of all, which was his abandonment on the cross, when he cried out: "Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid dereliquisti me: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, why have you abandoned me?"

3. The Extreme Love of Wisdom in Her Sufferings

163. From all this we must conclude, with St. Thomas and the holy Fathers, that our good Jesus suffered more than all the martyrs put together, both those who have been and those who will be until the end of the world. If therefore the least pain of the Son of God is more estimable and should touch us more deeply than if all the angels and all men had died and been annihilated for us, what should be our sorrow, our gratitude, and our love for him, since he suffered for us all that can be suffered, and with an extreme love, without being obliged to do so! Proposito sibi gaudio sustinuit crucem. Heb 12. Having joy set before him, he bore the cross. That is to say, according to the holy Fathers, Jesus Christ, Eternal Wisdom, being able to remain in heaven, in his glory, infinitely far from our miseries, preferred, for our sake, to come down to earth, to become man, and to be crucified. After becoming man, he could have communicated to his body the same joy, the same immortality, and the same beatitude that he now enjoys; but he refused to do so, in order to be able to suffer.

164. Rupert adds that the Eternal Father proposed to his Son, at the moment of his incarnation, the choice of saving the world by pleasures or by afflictions, by honors or by contempt, by riches or by poverty, by life or by death; so that he could have, if he had wished, with joy, delights, pleasures, honors, and riches, glorious and triumphant, redeemed men and led them with him to paradise. But he chose rather sufferings and the cross, to render to God his Father more glory and to give men a testimony of greater love.

165. More than that, he loved us so much that, instead of shortening his sufferings, he desired to prolong them and to endure a thousand times more; that is why, on the cross, when he was overwhelmed with insults and plunged in suffering, as if he did not suffer enough, he cried out: "Sitio: I thirst." And for what did he thirst? "Sitis haec," says St. Lawrence Justinian, "de ardore dilectionis, de amoris fonte, de latitudine nascitur et charitatis: sitiebat nos et dare se nobis desiderabat: This thirst arose from the ardor of his love, from the fountain and abundance of his charity. He thirsted for us, and to give himself to us and to suffer for us."

4. Conclusion

166. After this, have we not reason to cry out with St. Francis of Paola: "O charity! O God of charity! Oh, how excessive is the charity you have shown us by suffering and dying!" or, with St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi embracing a crucifix: "O love! O love! how little you are known!" or, with St. Francis of Assisi dragging himself through the mud in the middle of the streets: "Oh! Jesus, my crucified love, is not known! Jesus, my love, is not loved!"

Indeed, the holy Church rightly says every day: "Mundus eum non cognovit: The world did not know Jesus Christ, Incarnate Wisdom"; and, to speak truly, to know what Our Lord endured for us and not love him ardently, as the world does, is a morally impossible thing.