"He Suffered Every Death"

"Various things I read, St. Theresa, perhaps, and a book on the Sacred Heart and the life of Margaret Mary by Bougaud, gradually forced upon me the comprehension of Christ as a man.  I felt and realized His humanity, and realized suddenly that He was suffering not only His own tortures, but the tortures of the entire world which He took upon himself.  His agony in the garden was not only the agony of one night, but the agony of all the countless nights spent by miserable and agonized souls.  He shed all tears which have ever been or ever will be shed and His despair was the despair felt by the entire world."

And Christ, "true man," had asked "that His cup of sorrow be taken from Him, if it were possible, even though He knew His end and had always known it and suffered it...His scourging was not only His own but the scourging of...the...colored victim of the Ku Klux Klan. His crown of thorns was the weight of humility and indignity which the world always has [pressed] and always will press down upon the foreheads of its martyrs. And in His end He suffered every death. No man has ever died, nor ever will die whose end has not already been endured by him."--William D. Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography, pg. 204.