By Jacqueline Kelly –
There is a reference in the Annuals of Clairaux that Saint Bernard asked Our Lord which was His greatest unrecorded suffering and Our Lord answered: “I had on MY SHOULDER, while I bore My Cross, a grievous wound, which was more painful than the others, and which is not recorded by men.”
Jesus said to Sr. Josefa, “I need suffering to heal the wounds of sin.”
Sister Mary Magdalen of the Sancta Clara Order of Poor Clares, ardently desired to know something about the secret tortures which Christ endured the night before His death and Jesus fulfilled the wish of this Franciscan Sister who lived, died and was beatified in Rome.
“The Jews considered Me as the most wretched man living on earth, so, that is why:
- They fastened My feet with a rope and dragged Me down the stairs into a filthy nauseating cellar.
- They tore off My clothes and proceeded to pierce My Body with sharp pieces of metal.
- They tied a rope around My Body and dragged Me back and forth across the floor of the cave.
- They hanged Me from a beam and left Me there until I slipped from it and fell to the ground. This caused a searing pain that brought tears of Blood to run down My face from My eyes.
- They fastened Me to a large tree trunk, then tortured Me with all sorts of armaments, piercing My Body.
- They stoned Me and burned Me with blazing embers and torches.
- They pierced Me with pins and needles, ripped away the skin, flesh and arteries out of My Body.
- They tied Me to a pillar and made Me stand, barefoot, on an incandescent metal sheet.
- They crowned Me with an iron crown and wrapped My eyes with the dirtiest possible rags.
- They made Me sit on a chair covered with sharp pointed nails, causing deep wounds in My Body.
- They poured on My wounds liquid lead and resin and after this torture, they pressed Me on the nailed chair, so the nails went deeper and deeper into My flesh.
- For shame and affliction, they drove needles into the holes of My uprooted beard. They then tied My hands behind My back and led Me out of prison with strikes and blows.
- They threw Me upon a Cross and tied Me so tightly that I could barely breathe.
- They trampled on My head as I lay on the earth and then one of them placing his foot on My chest, caused one of the points of a thorn from the crown to pierce My tongue.
- They poured into My mouth, the most immodest excretions and continued to hurl a flood of vile insults at Me; they tied My hands behind My back and as they led Me, they continued to beat and whip Me.”
Then Jesus added: “My daughter, I desire that you let everyone know these FIFTEEN SECRET TORTURES in order that every one of them be honoured”.
“In His own Body” explains Saint Peter, “He brought your sins to the Cross, so that all of us, dead in sin, could live in accord with God’s Will. By His wounds you were healed.”. [1 Peter 2:24]
The death of Jesus takes on personal meaning for us only when we recognize our desperate need of salvation. Calvary signifies that in our desperate need God came to our rescue. The crucifixion is, in the phrase of Saint Alphonsus, “a visible sign of God’s passionate love for us”.
Though we are human, and easily governed by our basic drives and swayed by our emotions, we must not forget that Jesus has given us supernatural powers to rise above our human tendencies and to control our natural emotions.
Christ’s agony is best understood by those who have experienced unbearable pains and overwhelming exhaustion of body, those who have been weighted down by mental depression, sadness and discouragement, those who have tasted the bitterness of rejected love, loneliness and a sense of abandonment by God and men, those who yearn for the relief of sleep and feel a repulsion to facing another day. Those who have suffered can best appreciate the sufferings of Christ crucified.
Though Good Friday was a sad and dark day for the disciples of Jesus, it is for us a good day: For we have been redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ.