The Sufferings of Christ's Soul – SSPX Sermons

And the Father, Son of Ligostin, then, well, today I would like to speak about the Passion

of Christ, but perhaps not in the way we normally think of it.

So I'm going to bypass today all the physical sufferings of our Lord, and what I want

to look at instead is some of the sufferings of His soul, but especially the sufferings

that were caused by the words of others.

Because yes, many people made our Lord suffer greatly by what they said, and dear friends,

we can also make Christ suffer by the sins of our tongue.

Who is Venerable Louis Grenada, who once said, a person can harm another just as seriously

by sins of the tongue as if he had committed murder, adultery, or theft.

What kind of harm do we do with our hurtful words?

Obviously, we don't harm the person physically, but we really do harm them in their soul,

and often in their reputation.

So we wound others in their soul with our unshirtable words, our angry words,

our rash judgments, and those wounds, they're faithful.

The wounds of the soul, they can take much longer to heal than the wounds of the body.

Hard feelings towards those who have wounded us by their speech, those things do not go away easily.

Now, there are various types of sins that we think they can come out of our mouth,

and that hurt others, like rash judgments, destructive criticisms,

denials, derision, which is the same thing as ridicule or making fun of others in a mean way.

Detractions, that's when we tell true but generally unknown faults or sins of others.

And slander or columny, which is telling untruths or lies about others.

And any of these sins can be serious, depending on the extent of a harm that we do to the other person.

But it is very often hard for us to judge now.

Now, let's consider what our Lord suffered from the words of others.

Let's start with rash judgment.

We have an example of rash judgment in the words of the Jews to Christ in today's gospel.

Are we not right in saying that you are Samaritan and have a devil?

That insinuation accusation was a great insult to our Lord, and he tells him so.

I have not a devil, but I honor my father, and you dishonor me.

Rash judgments, dear faithful, are made on totally insufficient knowledge and evidence.

What evidence did they have in suspecting Jesus was a Samaritan and had a devil?

Well, they had no true evidence, of course.

But dear friends, when the heart is not well disposed towards another person,

it easily comes up with all kinds of evidence to suspect them of wrongdoing.

We read bad will into the words of others, because we ourselves have bad will towards them.

That's the source of rash judgments.

So many of the scribes and Pharisees, they were ill disposed towards Jesus,

because he did not fit their expectations of the Messiah, and he was preaching a spiritual

kingdom and even corrupted them. And they envied his influence over the people.

So it was this bad will towards Christ that caused all those sins of the tongue that they were

guilty of, but the same can be true of us. Not towards Christ, of course, but towards his members,

towards our neighbors. Now, what I do, I want you to think of the opposite case.

Now, when our good friends say things that could be taken in various ways,

our good friends, do we read into their words a bad light? Do we take their words as insults?

No, of course not. Because there are friends, and we always give our friends a benefit of the doubt,

and we always give them good will. See, our friends can insult us to the face,

and we take it as a joke, we take it well, and we might even like it, because we know them,

there are friends, so everything they do and everything they say is well received.

But the same is not true for those that we hold something against. We take everything they say

in a bad sense, and we tend to read bad will into it. Now, here's another example of rash judgment

they made against our Lord. This man cannot be from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.

As a false judgment that was made, according to their standards and expectations of what a

faithful Jew should not do on the Sabbath, you see, the Pharisees made up lots plenty of more

additional rules which went well beyond the rules of God. Jesus did not keep the Sabbath the way

they thought he should, so they condemned him, and they said he did not keep the Sabbath.

It was false in a rash judgment. Our Lord replied to those accusations by saying things like,

the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath.

Remember, works of charity are never forbidden on Sunday, even if they involve physical

labor. Well, we also, dear friends, we have to be careful about these kinds of rash judgments.

What kind of I'm talking about? Well, the kind where we expect others to keep to our standards,

which might go beyond the standards of the Catholic Church at times. I've spoken about this before.

We say this or that person does something to which isn't Catholic. We may even say they're not

a good Catholic because they don't hold to our standards. Let's just make sure our standards are

in line with those of the Church. Otherwise, we risk making lots of rash judgments.

They also slandered our Lord. Here are a few of the slanderestanes, the leaders of the Jews

set against Christ. Now, remember, slander is when something false or untrue is set about a person.

Of course, it's always something bad. So when they brought Jesus as their prisoner to pilot,

to have him condemn the death, pilots said to them, but what charge do you bring against this man?

And they answered, well, if he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.

So they called Jesus a criminal, even before they say what he is supposedly guilty of.

They're tried to tilt pilots' judgment in their favor from the very beginning.

And they continue with their slander of Christ. We find this man perverting our nation,

prohibiting the payment of taxes to Caesar, and asserting that he himself is the king the Christ.

Now, the first two of those accusations are just outright lies. Jesus was not under minus a nation.

He was bringing people back to God, and that's the first thing needed for a healthy nation.

Jesus did not forbid paying taxes to Caesar, and they showed him a coin with Caesar's image,

and he said, we'll give to Caesar the things are the Caesars and give to God the things that are gods.

Now, the third accusation is true, but they twist it in a bad way to make it seem like our Lord

is trying to take the kingship from Caesar. He asserts that he himself is the king the Christ.

Jesus clarified that with pilot when he told him my kingdom is out of this world.

And then lastly, the Jewish leaders say, according to our law, he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.

That's the worst lie of all. Jesus did not make himself the Son of God. He was the Son of God from all eternity.

Dear friends, slander is not the difficult sin to fall into as we might think.

You know, we say I would never make up lies of all people, but if we hold serious dislikes for certain people,

it's very easy to justify our false judgments about them and to read into their statements.

And that can result in our slandery, though, thinking of course the whole time that we're speaking the truth.

And slander does serious damage to a person's reputation, and that's something we're responsible for.

Now, another sin of the tongue is derision or ridicule, making fun of someone in a mean way.

Here's a few examples of how they ridicule Jesus. You're not even 50 years old and you've seen Abraham?

Or in his passion when they slapped him in the face and said, prophesied to us, oh Christ, who is it that struck thee?

Or when Jesus was hanging on the cross, and they said, you who can destroy the temple or rebuild it in three days, save yourself.

You hear the Son of God come down from the cross.

He saved others. He cannot save himself. He's a can of Israel. Let him come down from the cross and we'll believe him.

Now, that's ridicule as well as slander.

They admit he could save others. He cured others. He saved others. He cannot save himself.

Not that he cannot save himself. Rather, he would not save himself.

Remember, our Lord himself said, what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?

But for this cause I came. The Son of man came to get his life.

So we see here, dear friends, just a bit of what Christ suffered from sinful tongues.

You know, the one sin his enemies could not be guilty of towards him was detraction,

because Jesus had no hidden faults or sins to speak about.

There was no detraction, which meant he was all slander.

So to give us a hatred for these sins and these vices of the tongue,

consider some of the evils and damage that come from such sins.

Well, firstly, obviously we heard our own soul when we speak against our neighbor.

When criticism of others can easily become a mortal sin,

when we slip from speaking about the known faults of a person,

and end up revealing some unknown fault or sin of theirs.

Also remember how difficult it is to stop the tongue that starts to talk.

Thenerva Lui said, it is as difficult to restrain it as it is to put out flames that are

fanned by the wind or to stop a runaway horse.

Aspire spreads damage and destruction, so does a sinful tongue.

The suspicions, dear friends, that we voice about others,

those suspicions, those questions that we insinuate into others,

it's like dropping lighted matches on purpose on dry grass and walking away.

And when people pass on our comments, they become facts and slander results which spreads everywhere.

We've lit a fire by our imprudence and our lack of charity, but we claim it wasn't our fault.

But we're the source of hurting that person's reputation.

Your friends, we also give bad example to others by our rash judgments,

our detractions, our murmuriant about others and criticizing them,

and that leads others to do the same thing.

The sins of the Tom DeFrens are extremely contagious.

They spread like the common cold, but note,

that damage is far, far worse.

There are three things that underlie these sins. The first is pride and envy towards others.

The second is a disregard for our neighbor's reputation.

And the third is a disregard and a lapped for love of the truth.

What they're faithful is we reflect on Jesus's passion and hopefully we do that

within the next couple weeks. This is a time to take extra time to think about what he suffered.

Don't forget to consider everything he suffered from the hatred, the envy, and the cowardice of

others, especially by their words. This was a large part of our Lord's suffer.

Of course, also don't forget the great love that Jesus showed in accepting of all of this.

Now, if you've been guilty of some of these sins in the past, and let's admit it, who hasn't?

Offer to the Father, the fact that our Lord willingly accepted all of these outrageous

slanders and colonies and insults and mockeries, that He took it all upon Himself willingly to make

up for our sins. Offer that to the Father, you'll find a great source of consolation and

making up for where He dumped in the pouls. The Father and the Son of the Dostin.