Did Jesus cry during the passion?

[atassina]

Do you think Jesus cried tears during the passion? Is there a valid scriptural way to substantiate that Jesus cried tears during the passion?

 

[Mintaka]

I’m pretty sure that the pain of being crucified would have been such, that you probably would have been letting loose with pretty much every possible reaction to pain. I mean, Jesus was bleeding, He was exhausted… if he didn’t have tears come to His eyes from the pain, it’d only be because He was so dehydrated from all the abuse and weariness He’d suffered before He got nailed up on Calvary. I’m just impressed that the Gospels don’t say that He screamed and whimpered the whole time, because I sure would have.

 

[JamestheOlder]

I’m pretty sure that the pain of being crucified would have been such, that you probably would have been letting loose with pretty much every possible reaction to pain. I mean, Jesus was bleeding, He was exhausted… if he didn’t have tears come to His eyes from the pain, it’d only be because He was so dehydrated from all the abuse and weariness He’d suffered before He got nailed up on Calvary. I’m just impressed that the Gospels don’t say that He screamed and whimpered the whole time, because I sure would have.

I think you are right on the money. Did you ever hit your finger with a hammer, or get a finger in a closing drawer or door? Cry? How about getting a nail driven through your hand/wrist? How about having a crown of thorns pushed down on your head…hard? Cry? Darn right!

Remember Jesus was fully human. He felt every blow, every stab, every strike of the whip. We don’t need the words of the evangelists to tell us He cried. We just need to look at “Passion of the Christ” one more time.

 

[valentino]

No.I’ve never heard or read that.

 

[Trishie]

He certainly did in the Garden of Olives just before He was arrested. And He cried when His fiend Lazarez was dead, as He did over unconverted Jerusalem…I guess he wmight have cried, over His desertion by His disciples, in remembrance of those who didn’t accept the redemption He was obtaining at such extreme cost…and simply, from human pain and exhaustion.

What I think about it all I guess would be included in a prayer I wrote one Good Friday:

Jesus’ dying prayer

Father God, the sky is darkening with the culmination of my human destiny. I can no longer see Your Face! I humbly cry out to You from the depths of my being. I AM Your beloved Son who has accomplished all that You desired of me. I AM only begotten Son of Your divine Essence. You created all things through me. Yet I hang defenceless upon searing metal stakes that bite into my flesh and bone each time that I force upwards to gasp the very air that You created through me.

My torment is scarcely bearable and my mind faints and jolts in horrific awareness with the weakness of my battered, abused body. My body, ruined in its youthful strength, is exposed in degraded despoil. Fevered with dehydration, my eyesight fades, my ears ring, my head throbs, and my tongue swells. My muscles tremble uncontrollably, deeply bruised by the Roman scourgers who smashed metal and jagged bone into every part. My face is swollen and raw; my eyelid split, heavy with pain and blood. Sweat screams saltily in my torn nerves. My joints are dislocated with violent distension. My head can find no ease as the thorns gouge into my scalp with inescapable ache within my brain.

Yet nothing wounds deeper than the torture of love within my being. My heart thunders and rips with the anguish of love. Love is the shuddering gasp of my breath. Love is the dry, harsh voice of thirst that cries out my forgiveness. Love is the blood and life-fluids that drain from me. Love is my strength, my weakness, my hope, my faith and my generosity.

Love has been my life and now it is my death. Let love flow from me upon all my brothers and sisters of humankind, to cleanse them from evil and discord. Let love draw them to me, in communion on their cross of redemption.

My Father how I love them, these foolish blind ones who watch me die, and taunt with indifference, lukewarmness and unbelief throughout the centuries. They have not seen and heard although I have fought the powers of evil for them, with persistent prayer and penance, with teaching and example, with humility and powerful truth, and now with my death. I am, for them, a bleeding, suffering testimony of love.

I love them, Father. Forgive them. They cannot understand what they do and fail to do. For my love of them even in my extremity, forgive them. Save them from the pitiless powers of darkness that rule the earth and oppress their lives.

They are my kin. I emptied myself of all glory and lived, witnessed and die—as man—for them. Pity them, for sake of my pity for them. I hold them up to You. My whole being bears the emptiness, darkness, and guilt of humankind’s deepest struggle. I would strive to enlighten them as I have these past years, but now is only time to suffer, to expiate, and to plead for them.

I have been patient with them, Father. With careful repetition and example, I taught them what they must take into their darkened minds for their soul’s redemption and for the nations to which I will send them in Your name. I frequently transcended the natural sequence of events to offer them miracles, so that they would recognise Your power in me, thus be encouraged to believe and to follow Your truth. Yet many only marvelled at spectacle, seeking more.

Father, my throat is bruised and constricted, for grief of the souls for whom I die. They cannot know how terribly wounded I am by their sin, infidelity, hypocrisy, mental blindness and hardness of heart. I am God and I am sinless man—so these things have heinousness and poignancy far beyond their dulled understanding. Nor can they imagine the depth of my love and yearning for each precious one’s everlasting happiness and fulfilment in You.

Father, look upon these Your chosen people from whom You drew my human form. They join with the gentiles to destroy me, for evil howled for my death, and they succumbed. Now it seems that my mission is lost to evil spirits who believe that they have triumphed over the only Person who could restore Creation and redeem humankind. Yet I shall rise again, because I am eternal Lord of Creation. I am undefeated, for my faith and love is Your reality and victory, You who are divine origin of all that exists. With my rising so shall humankind be raised to You.

Father, I offer You my whole Self, all that I am and have done, with all that You are, to plead for salvation and conversion of souls. I might have refused to become their redemption, yet I accept total immolation. Within it, Father, I hold each person to myself.

In the wounds, the blood, in the tender swelling of broken tissue, in the shuddering of shattered muscle, in the sweat that burns across the clammy dust of earth upon me—within these is written the name of each human soul! Laden with humankind and with the sins and guilt of each, I offer myself to You, Father. As Your divine Son, I implore that You accept this prayer across the length and breadth of time.

Continued next post:

 

[Trishie]

…continued

Father, my Father, I am crushed! My humanity yearns for release and peace as grief and longing rasps at every fibre of soul, mind, heart and body. Speak in me, Father, out of Your own Being. Pray in me, and accept all suffering love at my torn, bleeding hands.

I am Your own, Your very Self—and these for whom I am living Sacrifice are my sisters and brothers, my kin, flesh of my flesh. Accept all my prayer for them—all ever prayed and suffered by any person in union with me throughout time, all love, atonement and praise from each individual, held up to You in my ruined hands. Everything You have given to me and to each soul, I return to You, with all that I am, which is of Your nature yet also of my human frailty. So Father, grant the coming of Your Kingdom in the souls of Your people, my own, out of Your great love for Me.

Father God, behold His grief at souls lost to divine life. Mercifully grant the wishes of His heart for each of us whom He calls brother and sister. Behold the infant, the child, the young man who bore the unfolding knowledge of humankind’s redemption! You knew His love, joy, and pain as He lived in ordinary humanity for thirty years. In His goodness He prayed and did penance for strength to live out the Father’s will and our redemption—so now as His little one I pray for Him and His desires.

 

[Trishie]

I don’t think we realize what Jesus did for us and what should be our response unless, while acknowledging His divinity, we are acutely aware of His humanity, and the personal human cost of what He has done for us. Some further thoughts from my journal:

To Jesus: gratitude

Jesus, Lord and Brother I owe you my forever
What can I say or do, what offer You for thanks?
You carried upon Your shoulders each soul’s forever.
You lived and died and rose for each one’s sake!

For long years You lived in excruciating isolate-union–
Your beloved Father and Your Spirit of Love veiled from Your sight–
for You dwelt amongst Your creatures,
hidden in their flesh, incarnate subject to the weakness of our kind.

Perhaps troubled dreams touched even the babe in the manger…
as infant, child and youth You played and studied,
as You laboured, and grew–in quietness, obedience,
in cheerfulness, gentleness and strength.

While You grew, behind Your eyes
lay growing knowledge of Your true origin.
Knowledge of realities of God and man, creation and life–
of love, wondrous, powerful, merciful, and eternal.

These truths are for others distorted and concealed
by the wounds of worldliness and sin.
That blight failed ever to touch Your soul, to dim divine life in You
although evil forces sought to seduce You from the harsh true path.

As man, You taught, healed, shared Your life with other men,
slipping away to strive in prayer to the Father of all being.
Sinless, You held out Your arms to bear the weight
of all the darkness of our human race.

In the Garden, rebelling flesh sweated like drops of blood
as Your humanity cried out to Love Himself for kind release.
The hideous tide of human sin that oozed across Your soul
ravaged Your heart more dreadfully than fear of mortal anguish.

But You! You humbly, praying, grasped the will,
with silent shrieking grief and pain,
to save each person from eternal discord, sorrow and death–
though few will choose to wholly welcome Your gift.

Your heart is crushed with this bitter truth–
yet still Your love prevails in total sacrifice.
O forgive us for our awful ingratitude—our Eden sin,
no less our sin today–heal our blind, selfish ingratitude.

Forever, through Your mercy, we owe You our eternity–
of fulfilment, happiness and peace,of kinship with the almighty Father,
in loving communion with all persons through the ages
who accept Your redemptive Sacrifice,
and through the divine Spirit, make Your life their own.

My God incarnate, what is Your will for me?
How can I but willingly obey! I owe You all.
Thus, my everything, I freely choose, is Yours.
I am by You redeemed and come in all my burdened brokenness.

Thus, my Lord, I give You all that I am and have and do–
being, gifts, virtue, my good intentions
and even, in deep humility, I entrust to You my faults and sins–
pleading in suffering separation
for Your pity, healing, and communion.

As man You lived and died for me,
as God can make me whole, and make me wholly Yours.
This I also seek for each soul in my care,
for am I not, as You have proved to be–
for his sake and for Your glory–my brother’s keeper!

 

[ANNE_2]

“My soul is very sorrowful, even to death”. Mt 26:38 Mk14:34
And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground. Lk 22:44

RSV-CE

 

[gatewood1988]

I would honestly have to say yes he cried. I think a lot of people make our Lord out to be like a robot with no emotion whatsoever. I am sure Jesus cried as any one of us would have if we were to go through the same agony. I know I cried like a two year old from having a huge boil cut off of my arm in the hospital with virtually no help for the pain, I could never imagine nails driven through my hands and feet, crown of thorns on my head, or being scourged and having my flesh have chunks torn out from a Roman whip with iron barbs on the end. Just because Jesus was led like a lamb to the slaughter doesn’t mean he was completely silent with no show of emotion.

 

[patrick457]

Do you think Jesus cried tears during the passion? Is there a valid scriptural way to substantiate that Jesus cried tears during the passion?

Well, if Jesus could weep at Lazarus’ grave and began to experience severe emotional distress in Gethsemane, I’d say yes, it’s possible. Jesus is both true God and true man. This is why I kind of find those old Jesus films where He doesn’t even seem to flinch or feel any pain (or for that matter, any human emotion) rather unbelievable - the filmmakers may have been trying to be emphasizing Jesus’ divinity by making Him a dour, pouting man who is far too ethereal - He even recites His words in slow, solemn Elizabethan English! - but I feel their approach kinda robs Jesus of His humanity.

Something just struck me. We confess in our Creed that Jesus Christ is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God…who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” With our mouths we teach that Jesus is human and divine, and became like us in all respects except for sin. Yet I can’t shake off the feeling that there are Christians who would find the portrayal of a human Jesus, who would feel everything a normal human would feel, to be offensive.

 

[atassina]

Jesus did not cry. He had resolve, a determined purposefulness that he was fulfilling his destiny: dying for our sins. He knew that he was fulfilling his Father’s will and accepted the consequences of his free will choice. No tears were needed to complete his Father’s will.

Jesus did cry: He did not cry out of pain or self-pity, rather he cried as remorse for all our sins.

How can either position be justified from scripture.

 

[patrick457]

Jesus did not cry. He had resolve, a determined purposefulness that he was fulfilling his destiny: dying for our sins. He knew that he was fulfilling his Father’s will and accepted the consequences of his free will choice. No tears were needed to complete his Father’s will.

Jesus did cry: He did not cry out of pain or self-pity, rather he cried as remorse for all our sins.

How can either position be justified from scripture.

**So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him:

“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.”

As He also says in another place:

“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek”;

who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, called by God as High Priest “according to the order of Melchizedek,” of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.**

 

[Evan]

I’ve never cried (as long as I can remember) due to physical pain. I think the worst physical pain I have had to endure is a kidney stone that would not exit.

I regularly cry over emotional pain. And I think that is the kind Jesus wept over.