by Matthew Gaetano

I’m continuing the series on Contenson’s seventeenth-century Thomist meditations on Christ’s Passion. Part 1 is here.

Speculation 1: The Fourfold Excess in the Passion of Christ: Of Sadness, Dejection, Pain, and Love

The human race labors in a threefold disease: the lust (concupiscentia) of the eyes, that is, vain pleasure; the pride of life, for vainglory is the first to live in the heart of man and the last to die; and the lust of the flesh, that is, the appetite for sensible delights for which which the animal man incessantly burns. Indeed, the poisonous root of this threefold sickness is love of self, inseparably rooted in the inward parts of everyone. This love of self always is pressing upon us, is always inciting us to be delighted with vanities … and to indulge the pleasures of the body. And it does so with such strength that it almost always defeats us. It does so with such sweetness and cleverness that it is more often unnoticed. To cure this riotous pestilence, the Redeemer willed to be saddened, to be put to shame (confundere – cf. Heb. 12:2), and to be given pain. To put the root to the ax, He willed to languish and die by love (amor) rather than by pain (dolor).

Contenson uses 1 John’s language of the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and the lust of the flesh to characterize the sinful condition of the human race. The root of all of these sinful desires is corrupt self-love. Christ conquered the lust of the eyes with sadness, the pride of life with shame, and the lust of the flesh with pain. But He died by love to defeat our self-love.

After going through all of these elements at some length, he comes to the reflection.

After these “excesses,” Christ truly said, “It is finished.” The prophecies were already fulfilled; His labors were finished; the work of redemption was crowned. What more could He do that He had not already done? What more could He suffer that He had not endured? The supreme excess of love went to the very end, nor can we desire anything more unless we ask for something beyond everything.

Only one thing was lacking: that, as the Redeemer loved us by “an exceeding charity” [Eph. 2:4], so should we exceedingly desire to keep His commandments. Christ preaches from the Cross the finished work of salvation, and Paul, the preacher of truth, asserts, “I am filling up what is lacking in the Passion of Christ in my flesh” [Col. 1:24]. If the work is finished, what is lacking? Or if something is lacking, how is it finished? May it never be that the disciple of truth is dissonant with the truth! May it never be that Paul thinks in a defective way about the Passion of Christ, for he was pierced through with Christ to the Cross [Gal. 2:20].

On the side of Christ, everything is complete, His redemption is copious, full, superabundant, infinite. The work of salvation is finished, the founts of salvation are opened, the sacraments are instituted, death is defeated, and the prince of this world is conquered. Nevertheless, this whole work, though rich with immense value, will be entirely vain (prorsus inane) unless we share in the suffering of the Passion (compatiamur Passioni), unless our humility responds to the excess of His dejection, unless our mortification provides a reply to the excess of His sadness.

Do not deceive yourself any longer, Christian reader. Do not wander voluntarily. If you act like this in the verdant times, what will you happen when you are in the dry land.

After drawing upon this passage from Augustine (#55 here), which you can also read as the lyrics of a Passion motet by Melchior Franck, Contenson concludes:

If you do not hear Christ from the teaching-chair (cathedra) of the Cross speaking through His sounds, I am wrong to spend any time exhorting you; I have lost both the oil and the labor [cf. Erasmus’s Adages, citing Cicero]. The whole body of Christ was the language of the dying Christ–there was as much speech as there were wounds. But as long as His blood cries out more clearly than that of Abel [Gen. 4:10], if today you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts [Psalm 95:7-8; Hebrews 3:7-8].

It is perhaps worth noting that Contenson had a very strong doctrine of predestination and the efficacy of grace, but this did not at all detract from his capacity for spiritual and moral exhortation. Christ’s work is superabundant, but a response from the sinner is still required. Christ’s whole body on the Cross is His “language” of love, crying out for sinners not to harden their hearts.