Christ's suffering the greatest?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kronk
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
K

Kronk

Guest
Hey all, so I’ve heard the term floating around “Christ suffered the most for us” and I can accept that, but to say I understand it is difficult to say. To say “No he didn’t” feels just wrong in the heart, so I am trying to figure out exactly what people mean by this? Do they mean just the physical suffering? I feel like that’s at least not entirely it on the surface, because (and I feel uneasy saying this because it just feels… Almost wrong to ask?) if we did what the people did to Jesus to just a regular human like you or me, it is horrific and awful, but wouldnt there be some form of suffering, torture or death that would be more physically painful than that?

So I think there must be something beyond that that is meant, surely the pain of the creator watching the creation sin and fall, and eventually having to suffer torture and death, humiliation, all of that combined, we would have no way of understanding that level of sadness and pain.

So I wanted to ask, what is the proper church teaching on it?

Many thanks and God Bless!
 
All the sins in the history of the universe were placed on His shoulders. If we don’t call that the greatest suffering possible then I don’t know what is
 
All the sins in the history of the universe were placed on His shoulders. If we don’t call that the greatest suffering possible then I don’t know what is.
Exactly. Even if we as individuals suffered the physical punishments that Jesus suffered, whipstroke for whipstroke, thorn for thorn, the very same falls, weight of the cross, and nailing, suffering, and death on the cross, we carry only the weight of our own personal sins.

Plus, we are fully and solely human beings.

Jesus took every single sin from every single person who ever was, is, or will be, of His own will, upon His shoulders when He suffered. . .and while fully Man, He is also fully God. That doesn’t mean He was somehow ‘impervious to pain" as mockers often like to say, or that, "Well unlike a regular human, He KNEW He would only be dead 3 days and then be back to ‘God’ forever, so it wasn’t as HARD for Him to go through this as it would be for us, who don’t have God-like knowledge’. . .etc.

B as in B, S as in. . .

If anything, for God to become Man was a humiliation, slavery, and sacrifice for that ALONE, even had He lived a perfectly ‘normal’ life and just ‘chose’ to exit it at some point. Try to imagine freely choosing to spend time as something so far ‘below’ you that you could only love it because you chose to create it; it, as a creature, has no way to understand “You” as a god except in the tiniest, faintest, most elementary ways, even more ‘faint’ than a newborn child’s understanding of the world at birth. . . to take your omniscient, omnipotent, glorious spirit and submerge it in a mystic union with the actual flesh and blood of something like a slug or a liver fluke. . .and to BE one of those creatures, and then to suffer on behalf of those creatures untold billions and billions of crimes against YOU which these creatures had committed. . .

Doesn’t sound like a day in the park to me.
 
I think Aquinas said the Christ’s greatest sufferings were interior.
 
Last edited:
One of the mysteries of the Rosary is the Agony in the Garden. Here is one mediation on that mystery: Jesus was God, and knew what was going to happen to him. His knowledge was perfect – in other words, when thinking about what he was to endure he suffered in the garden what he was to suffer physically later.

Can you imagine any greater suffering than that – to actually FEEL what will happen before it happens?
 
Yes,when he saw before him the way man would reject his sacrifice of love through our continued sinful habits and behaviors.
 
Last edited:
Meditating on Christ’s Passion and Death daily is a good practice .Lest we ever forget how Our Lord suffered for us:pray::cry:
 
Good post

I recall reading in Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich’s revelations were she said that Jesus in Gethsemene let the strength of his divinity return in some sort to the Holy trinity , so that his sacred humanity would experience the full height of mental suffering .

We see that on the cross as well during his abandonment. And by enduring this mental suffering Our Blessed Lord merited for us.
 
Last edited:
Jesus on a crucifix means everything , because it gives meaning to our sufferings.

When we unite our sufferings with His , we participate in his suffering on the cross. That is why the cross is so powerful and meaningful and why suffering has so much value.
 
Last edited:
I think Jesus provides his own teaching on it in scripture, though its not obvious. For me, one of the saddest passages in the bible was when Jesus quotes Psalm 21 (22 NAB) in Mt 27:46 and Mk 15:34 from the cross. If you meditate on that psalm it is incredibly moving, and you will get a glimpse of our Lords thoughts, anguish and suffering on the cross.
 
Last edited:
We are all going to die. Jesus didn’t have to die. If we didn’t kill Him He wouldn’t have died.Only Jesus had a life to give. I think that in it’self would make His suffering greater.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top