"How might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life,
and all my bliss, and all my joy suffer?"
And in this dying was brought to my mind the words of Christ: _I
thirst_.
For I saw in Christ a double thirst: one bodily; another spiritual, the
which I shall speak of in the Thirty-first Chapter.
For this word was shewed for the bodily thirst: the which I understood
was caused by failing of moisture. For the blessed flesh and bones
was left all alone without blood and moisture. The blessed body dried
alone long time with wringing of the nails and weight of the body. For
I understood that for tenderness of the sweet hands and of the sweet
feet, by the greatness, hardness, and grievousness of the nails the
wounds waxed wide and the body sagged, for weight by long time hanging.
And [therewith was] piercing and pressing of the head, and binding
of the Crown all baked with dry blood, with the sweet hair clinging,
and the dry flesh, to the thorns, and the thorns to the flesh drying;
and in the beginning while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the
continual sitting of the thorns made the wounds wide. And furthermore
I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh, with the hair and
the blood, was all raised and loosed about from the bone, with the
thorns where-through it were rent in many pieces, as a cloth that were
sagging, as if it would hastily have fallen off, for heaviness and
looseness, while it had natural moisture. And that was great sorrow and
dread to me: for methought I would not for my life have seen it fall.
How it was done I saw not; but understood it was with the sharp thorns
and the violent and grievous setting on of the Garland of Thorns,
unsparingly and without pity. This continued awhile, and soon it began
to change, and I beheld and marvelled how it might be. And then I saw
it was because it began to dry, and stint a part of the weight, and set
about the Garland. And thus it encircled all about, as it were garland
upon garland. The Garland of the Thorns was dyed with the blood, and
that other garland [of Blood] and the head, all was one colour, as
clotted blood when it is dry. The skin of the flesh that shewed (of the
face and of the body), was small-rimpled[1] with a tanned colour, like
a dry board when it is aged; and the face more brown than the body.
I saw four manner of dryings: the first was bloodlessness; the second
was pain following after; the third, hanging up in the air, as men hang
a cloth to dry; the fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and there
was no manner of comfort ministered to Him in all His woe and distress.
Ah! hard and grievous was his pain, but much more hard and grievous it
was when the moisture failed and began to dry thus, shrivelling.
These were the pains that shewed in the blessed head: the first wrought
to the dying, while it had moisture; and that other, slow, with
shrinking drying, [and] with blowing of the wind from without, that
dried and pained Him with cold more than mine heart can think.
And other pains--for which pains I saw that all is too little that I
can say: for it may not be told.
The which Shewing of Christ's pains filled me full of pain. For I wist
well He suffered but once, but [this was as if] He would shew it me
and fill me with mind as I had afore desired. And in all this time of
Christ's pains I felt no pain but for Christ's pains. Then thought-me:
_I knew but little what pain it was that I asked_; and, as a wretch,
repented me, thinking: _If I had wist what it had been, loth me had
been to have prayed it_. For methought it passed bodily death, my pains.
I thought: _Is any pain like this?_ And I was answered in my reason:
_Hell is another pain: for there is despair. But of all pains that
lead to salvation this is the most pain, to see thy Love suffer. How
might any pain be more to me than to see Him that is all my life, all
my bliss, and all my joy, suffer?_ Here felt I soothfastly[2] that I
loved Christ so much above myself that there was no pain that might be
suffered like to that sorrow that I had to [see] Him in pain.
[1] or _shrivelled_.
[2] in sure verity.