The first spasms shake the body already mercilessly torn by the scourging and by a night of torment; the victim has been raised roughly upon His gibbet; the blood flows in thin streams from His hands and feet, oozes from His forehead, and stripes His breast and members along the marks of the lashes. The cruelly strained position allows no movement but the soul is unfettered, and the great shudders that rack the body leave the mind in full possession of its powers.

There is still a little more of this great life to be lived, a life which in the narrow confines of Judea embraces all the world: a cry or two more, a few more words of sovereign power, and one more lament that asks compassion of earth and Heaven: of earth, to recompense it with mercy to us, of Heaven, to grant us its blessings. And through it all is that glance which sees beyond all things, that glance which we shall follow as far as our sight can reach. But it goes infinitely beyond our vision, for it passes through the visible and invisible worlds and penetrates to their source, to the very depths of God. –Father Antonin Sertillanges ‘What Jesus Saw From the Cross’