And Jesus wept

I once read in a commentary that Jesus’ perfect humanity resulted in Him experiencing the human condition most fully and perfectly. He would have experienced the totality of joy in a way of which we’ll never be fully capable until in Heaven when we join the saints and angels in their eternal hymns of praise to our Father. That is the totality of joy Jesus experienced in His earthly life. 

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. (John 11:32-35) 

This also means He experienced the totality of sorrow to a depth we will never be capable of imagining but, in God’s mercy, we also will never experience because our hearts are too broken to achieve that depth and in Heaven we will never sorrow again. But when Jesus wept, it encompassed the totality of sorrow a human nature is capable of. When He wept over Jerusalem, He wept the loss of all those souls who will reject Him and suffer damnation for eternity (both in His time period and throughout time, even today). When His Father sent Him to earth to redeem all of mankind, He knew most of mankind would render themselves unredeemable by their freewill choice to reject Him. And when He wept over Lazarus’ death, He experienced the deepest of sorrow capable in the personal love between brethren. 

Next, our Lord reveals his emotion with tears; the Evangelist says, and Jesus wept. Now his tears did not flow from necessity, but out of compassion and for a purpose. Christ was a well-spring of compassion, and he wept in order to show us that it is not blameworthy to weep out of compassion: my son, let your tears fall for the dead (Sir 38:16). He wept with a purpose, which was to teach us that we should weep because of sin: I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears (Ps 6:6). (St. Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Gospel of John)

Contrary to the error of Eastern religions, new age, and new thought, humans are not mere souls utilizing a body for convenient transport. The human person is an ensouled body/embodied soul. To be a human person is to be in this complete union of soul and body. Jesus was a Divine person, not a human person. However, His perfect human nature was in union with His Divine nature. And it is posited that His human soul in union with His physical body would have left Him experiencing the totality of pain. This Lent and especially in Holy Week, reconsider the depth and totality of the pain Jesus suffered for you in His Passion. It was very personal for Him; He foresaw all of your sin. So, His willingness to endure this for you is also very personal, very intimate between Him and you. 

I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you. I speak this in the world so that they may share my joy completely. I gave them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth. (John 17:9-19)

In these 40 days, allow Him to show you the intimacy of His suffering love for you. Then come Easter, you will be able to experience the joy of the resurrection as never before.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam 😊

(Image by Titian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)