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because they do not die at once like those slain by the sword. The
cause of the interior pain was, first of all, all the sins of the
human race, for which He made satisfaction by suffering; hence He
ascribes them, so to speak, to Himself, saying (Ps. 21:2): "The words
of my sins." Secondly, especially the fall of the Jews and of the
others who sinned in His death chiefly of the apostles, who were
scandalized at His Passion. Thirdly, the loss of His bodily life,
which is naturally horrible to human nature.

The magnitude of His suffering may be considered, secondly, from the
susceptibility of the sufferer as to both soul and body. For His body
was endowed with a most perfect constitution, since it was fashioned
miraculously by the operation of the Holy Ghost; just as some other
things made by miracles are better than others, as Chrysostom says
(Hom. xxii in Joan.) respecting the wine into which Christ changed
the water at the wedding-feast. And, consequently, Christ's sense of
touch, the sensitiveness of which is the reason for our feeling pain,
was most acute. His soul likewise, from its interior powers,
apprehended most vehemently all the causes of sadness.

Thirdly, the magnitude of Christ's suffering can be estimated from
the singleness of His pain and sadness. In other sufferers the
interior sadness is mitigated, and even the exterior suffering, from
some consideration of reason, by some derivation or redundance from
the higher powers into the lower; but it was not so with the
suffering Christ, because "He permitted each one of His powers to
exercise its proper function," as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii).

Fourthly, the magnitude of the pain of Christ's suffering can be
reckoned by this, that the pain and sorrow were accepted voluntarily,
to the end of men's deliverance from sin; and consequently He
embraced the amount of pain proportionate to the magnitude of the
fruit which resulted therefrom.

From all these causes weighed together, it follows that Christ's pain
was the very greatest.

Reply Obj. 1: This argument follows from only one of the
considerations adduced--namely, from the bodily injury, which is the
cause of sensitive pain; but the torment of the suffering Christ is
much more intensified from other causes, as above stated.

Reply Obj. 2: Moral virtue lessens interior sadness in one way, and
outward sensitive pain in quite another; for it lessens interior
sadness directly by fixing the mea