May 21 Wed
In his Passion, was Jesus sad or in distress?
Sadness is a response to loss, a pain of the soul, which, like physical pain, serves as an alarm bell, redirecting our attention to prevent a possible danger. A bad kind of human sadness, if not managed, can lead to discouragement, depression, and a sense of being weighed down by sorrow.
Jesus fully embraced human nature, including the capacity to experience emotions. As man, He is distressed; as man, He weeps; as man, He is crucified. During his Passion, Jesus experienced a particular kind of profound sadness and distress. Saint Mark renders this, in the original text of the Gospel, as ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι (he was greatly awe-struck) καὶ ἀδημονεῖν (and deeply distressed).
By experiencing human emotions, Jesus demonstrates his solidarity with humanity. He understands our pain and suffering because He has experienced them himself.
In the agony in the garden, the Lord, moved by a natural human resistance, wished to put aside suffering, but He fully accepted the will of the Father. Moved by his free human will, Christ felt “the anguish of death” before his Passion; at the same time, He freely submitted his human will to his divine will and accepted death on the cross.
The agony (or combat) was the struggle between the sensitive appetite in our Lord, which naturally shrank from suffering and death, and their superior will, which voluntarily accepted the divine decree.
Unlike ours, Jesus’ anguish was always perfectly controlled by reason and directed toward the good.
Perhaps the most profound suffering was Jesus' sense of abandonment, by which He cried on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Many were the sufferings of Jesus, and whenever we listen to the account of the Passion, they pierce our hearts. There were sufferings of the body: let us think of the slaps and beatings, the flogging and the crowning with thorns, and in the end, the cruelty of the crucifixion.
There were also sufferings of the soul: the betrayal of Judas, the denials of Peter, the condemnation of the religious and civil authorities, the mockery of the guards, the jeering at the foot of the cross, the rejection of the crowd, utter failure, and the flight of the disciples. Yet, amid all these sorrows, Jesus remained certain of one thing: the closeness of God the Father.
Jesus' cry on the Cross was not the cry of anguish of a sad man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offered his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when He takes on the burden of our sins, "abandoned" by the Father, He "abandons" himself into the hands of the Father. His eyes remain fixed on the Father.
We can ask ourselves, how could Jesus experience at the same time his profound unity with the Father, by its very nature a source of joy and happiness, and an agony that goes all the way to his final cry of abandonment? The simultaneous presence of these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects is rooted in the fathomless depths of the union of his divine and human nature.
His unwavering love for the Father and his humanity shone through his suffering.
When affected by the bad type of sadness, we must try to accept the trial and offer to God the suffering we experience. Prayer, faith, and seeking God's consolation are key to navigating sadness in a healthy and constructive way, identifying ourselves with the will of God.
“Sadness, which is a vice, is caused by a disordered self-love, and this self-love is not a special vice, but the general root of the vices.” This statement by St. Thomas could surprise us if we think, for example, of someone suffering because of the death of a loved one. In reality, such a situation would not necessarily bring sadness in that sense, but rather sorrow, which is not the same thing.
It is a common experience that not all sorrow or all renunciation causes sadness, especially when they are accepted with love and for love. Thus, a mother’s sacrifices for her children, at times very great, can produce pain and sorrow, but without causing sadness.” Msgr. Ocáriz