Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Sacrae Theologiae Summa on the Sadness of Christ and the Soul of Jesus Always Beholding the Beatific Vision

  

365. Scholium 4. An explanation of Christ’s sadness. There is a big difficulty from the beatific vision of the soul of Christ . . . Since it seems that joy necessarily follows from this vision, but it is not apparent how such joy can be together with sadness, there have not been lacking theologians who, because of Christ’s sadness, denied is blessed joy during the time of the passion. But if you make an exception for these few authors, the common opinion of theologians refuses to admit such a limitation of joy in Christ.

 

From the treatise on the last things it is certain that the impassibility of a glorified body is derived from the blessed soul, and in such a way that it is something intrinsic to the body, as the almost common opinion holds against Scotus and some others. Likewise, most theologians holds that the impassibility overflows into the body not physically and effectively from the beatific vision, but only morally or by a certain fitting ordination of God that in its own way is connatural to the beatific state.

 

366. The sensible sadness of Christ is explained more easily. For on the part of the object, the beatifying joy of the soul and the sensible sadness do not exclude each other, because they are not related to the same object; for the object of joy is the possession of the divine goodness, while the object of sadness is some injury, both one’s own and that of someone else. And there is no repugnance on the part of the overflowing: “That the glory of His soul did not overflow into His body from the first moment of Christ’s conception was due to a certain Divine dispensation, that He might fulfill the mysteries of our redemption in a passible body.”

 

367. Spiritual sadness or sadness in the will itself is more difficult to understand, if indeed it is the will itself that is affected by beatifying joy. But it is possible to understand it from the difference of the formal object. For the same material object, v.gr., the partial frustration of his passion and death with the consequent damnation of many men, which Christ saw in God by his knowledge of vision, as permitted by God and therefore lovable, by his infused and acquired knowledge he could apprehend the same thing as something evil in itself.

 

368. The possibility of spiritual sadness is not excluded on the part of the subject or from the opposite way in which joy and sadness affect the subject, especially when the greatest joy affects some subject. Namely, it would seem that there is no place in a soul that is already totally beatified for a contrary affection, that is, sadness. A solution may be found in the fact that joy and sadness do not have their own contrariness, unless in a particular cause they are concerned with absolutely the same thing both materially and formally. However although they do not have a strict contrariety, still there is great diversity between them and a certain repugnance, so that without a miracle they could not coexist in the same subject. (Iesu Solano and J. A. de Aldama, Sacrae Theologiae Summa, 4 vols. [trans. Kenneth Baker; Keep the Faith, Inc., 2014], 3-A: 166-68)

 

Further Reading:


"Jesus Wept": Obvious and Needs no Interpretation to Understand?