12. THE INFIRMITIES OF CHRIST.

I. “A man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity; and His look was, as it were, hidden and despised; whereupon we esteemed Him not” (Isa. liii. 3). Our Lord was all this, notwithstanding the perfection and power of the hypostatic union. It might have been expected that the Divine Nature in Him would have communicated all possible perfections and immunities to the human nature. In fact the Sacred Humanity was elevated and enriched by the communication of many extraordinary gifts, and it was also the most perfect and beautiful example of human nature. Christ is believed to have been perfect in manly vigour, and grace, and strength, and form; “beautiful above the sons of men” (Ps. xliv. 3). He was free from such infirmities as were inconsistent with divine purity and glory; from all internal derangements and maladies, which are generally the result of personal or ancestral excesses. Otherwise the action of the Divinity upon Our Lord’s body was suspended, and only for a moment did He permit it to be exercised, in His Transfiguration; its full effect came into operation only after the Ascension. Still there remained most of the afflictions of life; and Our Lord suffered most of our infirmities, in being subject to hunger and thirst, weariness and weakness, heat and cold and sleeplessness, violence and death. Suffer with willingness any infirmities that God sends you; be patient under ill-treatment or injustice; practise mortification, and surrender some of your comforts and rights in union with Our Lord.

II. Some persons might be inclined to think that the Divinity would have communicated to the human soul of Our Lord its own infinite knowledge, immutability, impassibility. But this could not be. Our Lord assumed human nature with all its limitations and liabilities, including mental suffering and certain other infirmities. The ignorance, darkness, propulsion to evil which belong to the actual state of sin, Jesus did not take on Himself. But He had all our susceptibility to influences from the senses and imagination. His soul was affected by the depression from bodily privations, by the loss of His friends, as Lazarus, for instance, by separation from His beloved Mother, by the sight of her afflictions, by the ingratitude of those He came to save, by repugnance to suffering and death, by the hatred of the priests and Pharisees, the unbelief and thoughtlessness of His Apostles. He suffered the emotions of love and sorrow, fear and aversion, pity, and even anger. But these were not like our passions: they did not tend to excess and sin, they were not rebellious against reason and law. Think how much Our Lord must have thus suffered beyond what has been recorded. When you suffer such things remember that He endured them too, and unite yourself with Him.

III. Thus Our Redeemer resigned for us as much as He could of the advantages which His Divinity might have conferred upon Him. He appears on the cross to have allowed His human nature to be deprived of the tranquility and happiness accruing from the Beatific Vision. So we may judge from the words, “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. xxvii. 46). All this He did: 

1. To compensate for our sins of pride, insatiable selfishness, excessive indulgence, insistence on our supposed rights. 

2. To complete the reality of His human nature in every detail, so that we may know Him to be with us in all our troubles. 

3. That He may “feel compassion on them that are ignorant and err, because He also is encompassed with infirmities” (Heb. v. 2). 

4. To give us an example of the practice of virtue in despite of suffering. Whatever you suffer, Jesus suffered infinitely more. Imitate Him in these details.