Jesus’ Human Suffering Existence

Did you ever think what reaction Jesus had as a human being when he was caught suddenly in very human situation? In the carpenter shop, when he hit his thumb with a hammer, did you ever stop to wonder what he might have said to himself? Or when he bit his tongue or banged his head against something, did he momentarily, at least, feel like swearing? 

    As a teenager, at the supper table, when his mother set a dish before him he didn’t like, did he say, “Yuk!” like a present day teenager?

    Did He sneak a fingertip into the icing on her cake when she wasn’t looking? After all, he was human and had to grow in wisdom and knowledge and virtue, and he had to learn patience (Some of us are still on the negative side of patience).

    By the time of the crucifixion he had grown in age and wisdom and had reached a majestic state of maturity so that he was able to forgive His torturers, even as he suffered the fearful pressure that made his blood burst forth from His pores at Gethsemane and the agony he felt on the cross listening to his tormentors, jeering and hooting at him below.

    On the cross when Jesus said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,”[1] even though the Father had promised Him He would raise Him up, nevertheless it was an act of trust on His part, in the darkness of that hour. I think it should be an act of trust on our part to remember this. We too have our Father’s promise that he will raise us up; but nevertheless, for us, it is a darkness that is ahead of us because we have to go from this known world into an unknown situation.

    Francis, after his vision of Christ hanging on the cross, was never the same; he had a sudden heartrending insight into the completeness of Christ’s sufferings.

    Christ’s head to toe pain-wracked body, was witnessed by Francis; his head was crowned with thorns; the flesh on his back hung in strips from the lashes of the whip, and stung with the barbs of the thongs; the flesh on his shoulders were rubbed raw right down to the bone by the friction of the wood of the cross; his hands and his feet were gashed by the nails and the weight of his body and his lungs constricted as he hung there as he slowly suffocated to death. Christ took upon Himself all these superhuman sufferings in order to take upon Himself all the sins of all mankind.

    Truly, it should be an act of trust on our part to remember this.