When does He not?

But it is easy to lose the proportion of truth, if we spiritualize
everything, and pass over, as if unworthy of consideration, His bodily
pain. For this Thirst of the Crucified is the final sum of all the pains
of crucifixion: the physical agony, the fever produced by it, the
torrential sweat, the burning of the sun--all these culminated in the
torment of which this Cry is His expression.

Bodily pain, then, since Jesus not only deigned to suffer it, but to
speak of it, is as much a part of the Divine process as the most
spiritual of derelictions: it is an intense and a vital reality in life.
It is the fashion, at present, to pose as if we were superior to such
things; as if either it were too coarse for our high natures or even
actually in itself evil. The truth is that we are terrified of its
reality and its sting, and seek, therefore, to evade it by every means
in our power. We affect to smile at the old penances of the saints and
ascetics as if we ourselves had risen into a higher state of development
and needed no longer such elementary aids to piety!

Let this Word, then, bring us back to our senses and to the due
proportions of truth. We are body as well as soul; we are incomplete
without the body. The soul is insufficient to itself, the body has as
real a part to play in Redemption as the soul which is its inmate and
should be its mistress. We look for the _redemption of our body_ and the
_Resurrection of the Flesh_, we merit or demerit before God in our soul
for the deeds done in our body.

So was it too with our Lord of His infinite compassion. The _Word was
made Flesh_, dwelt in the Flesh, has assumed that Flesh into heaven.
Further, He suffered in the Flesh and deigned to tell us so; and that He
found that suffering all but intolerable.

II. In a well-known book a Catholic poet[1] describes with a great deal
of power the development of men's nervous systems in these later days,
and warns his readers against a scrupulous terror lest they, who no
longer scourge themselves with briers, should be neglecting a means of
sanctification. He points out, with perfect justice, that men, in these
days, suffer instead in more subtle manners than did those of the Middle
Ages, yet none the less physical; and puts us on our guard lest we
should afflict ourselves too much. Yet we must take care, also, that we
do not fall into the opposite extreme and come to regard bodily pain,
(as has been said) as i