The Sufferings of Jesus and our duty of reparation relieving those Sorrows.

[Xavier]

AwkwardCustomer, see how Jesus explains that His Sacred Heart, which you believe in, suffers from outrages in His Sacrament of Love. ""Behold this Heart," Jesus said sorrowfully, as He held His pierced Heart out to St. Margaret Mary. "Behold this Heart which has so loved men, that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself in order to testify to its love. In return, I have received from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and their sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this sacrament of Love."

https://heartsofjesusandmary.com/behold-this-heart-3/

I do agree with the others that Jesus is persecuted when Christians are persecuted, as the Lord's response to St. Paul regarding St. Stephen shows; Jesus was in St. Stephen, therefore Jesus with and in His martyr, amd likewise with all His martyrs and Saints, inmumerable times, suffers what they suffer, and prays for the forgiveness of us all in them. In Zec 2:7 we read, "he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of my eye". God is certainly in His Saints by Grace, and in His Eucharist substantially. Indeed, Jesus goes further and says whatever is done to the least is done to Him, on account of which Saints have ever seen the face of Christ crucified in all the poor, the sick, the suffering and the least fortunate, knowing they relieve Christ's suffering by aiding them.

Fr. Peter Arnoudt's beautiful work, Imitation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, also assures us of Our Lord's sorrows and of His joys. http://www.catholictradition.org/Classics/sacred-heart21.htm

3. Where is the heart, that loves as My Heart? No man has a greater love, than that he lay down his life for his friends; but I, the Son of God, have a greater one than this, for I laid down My life for My enemies.

Who ever loved Me first? Or who ever bestowed his affections upon Me, who did not first experience the effects of My love?

4. Since many lose their innocence, before they understand clearly what innocence is, or how great its price, it is a great glory of My Heart, to triumph also over their hearts; and of sinners to make
them Saints.

O didst thou but know the charity of My Heart, thou mightst then be able to understand, how dearly It loves faithful souls, and how sweetly It invites sinners.

Who is suffering, and My Heart is not suffering with him? Who sins, and My Heart is not thereby affected? Who is ill, and My Heart does not afford a remedy? Who is unhappy, and My Heart does not feel it? Who, in fine, is there in the world, to whom My Heart does no good?

5. I am a good Father; and My children, begotten on the Cross, I embrace with the love of My Heart-----which remains open for them, that, at all times, they may have a place of refuge, nor this a common one, but the very centre of My affections.

Whilst they sleep, My Heart is awake to watch over them; whilst they are watching, It is occupied with their preservation.

So great is the love wherewith My Heart is inflamed for them, that I love and cherish each, as if he were My only one.

And if some one, misled by the enemy, wanders away, My Heart wails over him, as over the death of an only-born. I pursue him with My love, I invite, I press, I promise. But if he be unwilling to hearken to Me, I have patience, I stand at the door of his heart, and knock again and again.

If, at last, he resolves to return to Me; I fly to meet him, I press him to My bosom, whilst My Heart leaps for joy; because I see the child, whom I had bewailed as dead, alive and safely restored to Me.

In My joy, I call together all Heaven, that they may congratulate Me, and exult with Me.

6. If, therefore, thou desirest to delight My Heart, to gladden Heaven, and to refresh thy soul, be converted to Me with thy whole heart.

[Miriam_M]

There's a difference between objective offenses and subjective effects of those offenses.  As I said recently on another thread (not on my own authority but on that of my priest), whenever we sin, we commit an offense with infinite effect upon God, an infinite Being.  There is no way to adequately "account for" (retrieve, recoup, reverse) the actual "value" of that offense.  This is why we sinners depend on the magnanimity of God (His infinite mercy) to "settle accounts," as it were.  (By the way, some of the Gospel parables illustrate this principle.)

Let us not sentimentalize the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  Sentimentality as a movement arose alongside of and in connection with the beautiful devotion to the Sacred Heart, which is a fantastic devotion in itself.  But there's a tendency to reduce Him to a weak and weeping man sometimes, reduced to tears, as it were, and seemingly "overwhelmed" by all of the offenses against Him.  That, of course, is heresy, because God cannot be reduced by man and will not be reduced by man.  He is also not reduced by the devil.  God is in control of the devil and the devil's minions; Satan is allowed to operate in human history because of God. 

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is objectively wounded; the Immaculate Heart of His Mother is objectively wounded.  But as a divine being, He is not "sad" in an anthropomorphic way.  I don't see how anything else squares with Catholic theology.  I think some of these figures of speech were designed to literally "move" the sinner to sorrow, compunction, by providing analogies.  We are immensely sad when a loved one wounds our heart; the pain can seem unbearable.  We are the loved ones of Jesus Christ.  And during His public ministry -- His earthly life -- He felt great emotional pain from being wounded by many others because that is the experience of the human condition, so He felt all of that in His human nature.  However, just as we will one day not suffer (if we make it to Heaven!), His human nature is now glorified and not susceptible to suffering.  The holy souls in Heaven do not experience sadness and agony when they see the terrible and wounding events on earth; their response is to pray vigorously.  (Obviously, I don't "know" that!  It's what we are taught, however.)

[awkwardcustomer]

.... there's a tendency to reduce Him to a weak and weeping man sometimes, reduced to tears, as it were, and seemingly "overwhelmed" by all of the offenses against Him.  That, of course, is heresy, because God cannot be reduced by man and will not be reduced by man.   

Exactly.  The visions of the Victim Souls do just this, at least those that I am familiar with, and that's a fair number.  In many of these apparitions, Christ appears as the kind of wimp that most posters on this forum would tell to 'man up'.   

I think some of these figures of speech were designed to literally "move" the sinner to sorrow, compunction, by providing analogies.

That's fair enough, as long as they are recognised as analogies, and as long as they are not obligatory.  Because this image of Christ as presented by the young Padre Pio (see OP link) doesn't move me to anything.

"On Friday morning (28 March 1913) while I was still in bed, Jesus appeared to me. He was in a sorry state and quite disfigured ....

The sight of Jesus in distress was very painful to me, so I asked him why he was suffering so much.....

Then he raised his eyes and looked at me and to my great horror I observed two tears coursing down his cheeks. He drew back from that crowd of priests with an expression of great disgust on his face and cried out: 'Butchers!' .......

Then turning to me he said: 'My son, do not think that my agony lasted three hours. No, on account of the souls who have received most from me, I shall be in agony until the end of the world. During my agony, my son, nobody should sleep. My soul goes in search of a drop of human compassion but alas, I am left alone beneath the weight of indifference. The ingratitude and the sleep of my ministers makes my agony all the more grievous.

"Alas, how little they correspond to my love! What afflicts me most is that they add contempt and unbelief to their indifference. Many times I have been on the point of annihilating them, had I not been held back by the Angels and by souls who are filled with love for me. Write to your (spiritual) father and tell him what you have seen and heard from me this morning. Tell him to show your letter to Father Provincial..."

I actually find this to be quite horrible. And it is quite typical of a number of the apparitions and visions of the Victim Souls, at least the modern ones. 

[awkwardcustomer]

No, Christ is not in heaven right now physically suffering; but He is mystically suffering ...

Christ is suffering now because His members are suffering, and He and His members are mystically one.

So Christ does suffer now, then.  Mystical suffering is still suffering.

When you accuse a vision like that of Padre Pio's referred to earlier of being false, you need to be careful not to give a mystical vision a too literal interpretation. Padre Pio wasn't seeing Our Lord as He was in heaven right at that time (in the 1900s), but rather He saw what Our Lord was suffering ~30AD because of the sins of 20th century priests. Also, Padre Pio saw how Christ's Mystical Body (the Church) was suffering in the 20th century because of the sins of priests.

I understand your point about Christ suffering in His Passion because of the sins of the present.

In summary, from the moment He ascended into heaven, Christ's soul has been in a physical state of total bliss in heaven, and remains that way now & forever. However, because Christ united Himself to all just souls throughout history, He suffers mystically alongside them even today; and because Christ suffered for the sins of all mankind, any sin committed today is a cause of His suffering at the time of His physical passion.

Christ is in heaven in a state of total bliss.  But He continues to suffer, although mystically.

I get it.  He doesn't suffer.  And yet He does.

[Michael Wilson]

Christ doesn't suffer now; His sufferings ceased at His death. The sufferings that we see in the apparitions are those of Christ and His Mother during their lives, caused by the sins of men through the ages. Those united to Christ in His Mistical Body, continue and co-operate with Christ's mission of redemption by uniting their sufferings with those of Our Lord during His life; as St. Paul stated:
Colossians 1:24

[24] Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church:

Challoner commentary:

[24] "Wanting": There is no want in the sufferings of Christ in himself as head: but many sufferings are still wanting, or are still to come, in his body the church, and his members the faithful.

St. Thomas Aquinas' commentary: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/SSColossians.htm#16

61. – And along with the above there is the fruit that in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. At first glance these words can be misunderstood to mean that the passion of Christ was not sufficient for our redemption, and that the sufferings of the saints were added to complete it. But this is heretical, because the blood of Christ is sufficient to redeem many worlds: "He is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 Jn 2:2). Rather, we should understand that Christ and the Church are one mystical person, whose head is Christ, and whose body is all the just, for every just person is a member of this head: "individually members" (1 Cor. 12:27). Now God in his predestination has arranged how much merit will exist throughout the entire Church, both in the head and in the members, just as he has predestined the number of the elect. And among these merits, the sufferings of the holy martyrs occupy a prominent place. For while the merits of Christ, the head, are infinite, each saint displays some merits in a limited degree. This is why he says, I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions, that is, what is lacking in the afflictions of the whole Church, of which Christ is the head. I complete, that is, I add my own amount; and I do this in my flesh, that is, it is I myself who am suffering. Or, we could say that Paul was completing the sufferings that were lacking in his own flesh. for what was lacking was that, just as Christ had suffered in his own body, so he should also suffer in Paul, his member, and in similar ways in others. And Paul does this for the sake of his body, which is the Church that was to be redeemed by Christ: "That he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle" (Eph 5:27). In the same way all the saints suffer for the Church, which receives strength from their example. The Gloss says that "afflictions are still lacking, because the treasure house of the Church's merits is not full, and it will not be full until the end of the world."