What Christ Suffered - A Journey Through the Passion

[Music] Hello and welcome into the God of Be Saints podcast. I'm your host, Brendan Gata. Join me each week as I speak with future saints about being saints. [Music] Today's podcast is titled "What Christ Suffered, a Journey Through the Passion." Every day during Lent and especially on Good Friday, we hear the gospel accounts on Christ's suffering. We hear about the scourging, the crowding with thorns, the carrying of the cross and the crucifixion. But many of us have probably wondered what those events actually meant physically. What did the human body endure during the crucifixion? What exactly did Jesus experience during those final hours? Our guest today, Dr. Thomas McGovern, approaches the passion from a unique perspective. As a physician, he has studied the historical, archaeological, and medieval evidence surrounding the crucifixion and the suffering that Christ endured. His book "What Christ Suffered, a Doctor's Journey Through the Passion" takes readers step by step through the events of Good Friday, combining medical insights with deep spiritual reflection. This conversation is not about sensationalizing suffering. Instead, it's about helping us understand more deeply what Christ freely endured out of love for us and how to understand that and how it can help us draw closer to him. Dr. McGovern, welcome to the God of Be Saints. Hey, thanks, Brendan. Glad to be here. I think to start, I would love for you to just introduce yourself briefly to the God of Be Saints audience. Okay, I'm a 62-year-old man born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, lived in eight states, now in Indiana. Medical training at Mayo Clinic, the US Army, and Yale University. For a job, I operate on. I told my kids, I make holes all day and fill them in. I cut out skin cancers on people's faces and put them back together. I've been married to a wonderful woman, Sally, for 35 years. Long-suffering, wholly better than I deserve. I have seven children aged 20 to 33 who live all over the country. And this subject came to me providentially. In other words, it wasn't my idea during my first year of medical school. Since I didn't think I had enough to do, I was teaching six-grade religious ed, and wanted to teach my students something about what Christ suffered. And led me to a physician who wrote a famous article called the Journal of the American Medical Association. And he gave me a copy of it the week before it was published, which was definitely providential. It became one of the most famous articles ever published on the subject. And the rest is history. I love it. Well, I'm excited to talk to you and for the purposes of the conversation as we talked about before. I'll call you Tom for the rest of the conversation. So I'm excited to dive in, especially as we're here in this lent and season. Now, of course, the passion is applicable year-round. We should always be thinking about what Christ endured for us, that love that was outpoured. But you kind of already answered my first question, just talking about what inspired you to kind of take this on. But let's shift here just briefly and say, many people have heard general descriptions of the crucifixion. But most don't have any sense of the real details. I think for many of us, actually, what we look at is probably the movie, the Passion of Christ. And we say, okay, that's at least gives us an idea of what transpired over those couple days. And in that being said, there's, you know, comments that have been made by Mel Gibson that say, this is not fully what he endured. It's less than that because to show what truly happened fully would be traumatizing or difficult to see. So can you, to start, can we just talk through a little bit about the details? Are there misconceptions about Christ suffering that are most common today that maybe we need to address just out of the gate? Great question. In fact, several years ago for EWTN's website, I wrote an article on that. It was like 10, 12, 13, 9 over how many myths of the crucifixion? Because there have been many things through history stated just because they were in somebody's head, but with really no evidence that they happened. And so you actually bring up a favorite topic of mine. So just going through chronologically, what are some of the myths? And what I do in the book, because I love detective mysteries, both on TV and books. So I start out most of the chapters with some quotes from some famous writers on the crucifixion about different things. And then I ask the reader to say, okay, this is what most people seem to think. Let's now look at the evidence through this chapter. And at the end, we'll come back and see, you know, does it fit? So the first thing, the agony in the garden, the bloody sweat, which Luke talks about. Well, first of all, how the heck do we know that he was sweating blood? It was dark. The nearest apostles were what? A stone's throw, say 50 feet away. They couldn't know. So my patron saint, St. Thomas Moore writes, wrote this book when he was in the Tower of London called the Sadness of Christ. And in there, he said, the only way we could know that is that after the resurrection, Jesus told people because he wanted them to know. So I think that in itself is fascinating. So great drop, you know, great sweat like great drops of blood. So Pierre Barbe, who wrote a doctor at Calvary in 1950 in French, said, oh, sometimes the blood vessels under great stream and stress will burst into the sweat glands and then come out the skin. Well, every day when I'm cutting out skin cancer, I'm also the pathologist and I'm looking at slides of the skin. And I'm always noticing there's a whole lot of layers of tissue and cell between the blood vessels and the sweat glands. This makes no sense. So from 1964 to 2003, there are zero articles in the medical literature about this thing we call hematodrosis bloody sweat. But starting in 2004, there's over 60 cases reported worldwide. And in fact, my book through the generosity of a doctor in St. Louis, I have the first pictures of an American with hematodrosis. They have biopsy, the number of these patients. And most of them, all they see is a little swelling in the skin and no blood at all because they do it after it's happened. But they got at least one biopsy in one patient during it was a scalp of a 13 year old girl in Thailand. And what they found was just remarkable and still inexplicable. But what they saw was they took a little plug called a punch sample and they cut through it as thick as a red blood cell, put all those on a slide and looked through them all. And what they found was that there were red and white blood cells in the middle layer of the skin called the dermis in between collagen fibers. Collagen is what makes up leather makes up the strength of our skin. And as they step through it, somehow between those protein fibers, the blood finds its way to the edge of where a hair comes out. And the skin just kind of open. There's a tiny opening where the cells just separate. And the blood vessels go out and it closes back up. Because whenever they look at somebody during and after an event, nobody can see even with magnification holes in the skin. It's just bizarre. There's no bruises left in the skin. There's no particularly little tiny spots of blood in the skin. It all finds its way out and it doesn't come out through the sweat glands. Is there blood and sweat? Yes, but they mix on the skin not within the skin. Half of the cases of hematodrosis occur in patients where there's something incredibly stressful going on. I mean, there are examples of people witnessing beheadings, people being kidnapped, people undergoing horrible child abuse. But in half of the reported cases, the first evidence is that they feel something falling on their body that's wet. It's bloody. It's not quite as dense as blood, but it's got all the components of blood. So it's probably got some tissue fluid in with it too. The American patient was a 13-year-old boy who would get burning on his skin and chest when his father was telling him, "You have to go to church with us." Very interesting. And he'd get this burning and all of a sudden he would develop these almost feather-shaped areas on his chest and arms and blood just oozed out. Just so odd. So it seems to be an uncommon, a rare reaction to the fight or flight response when our body releases a lot of adrenaline. because all patients treated with things that were reduce the effect of adrenaline or epinephrine, help it to decrease in frequency and time until it goes away. So that's the first thing. Did Jesus literally sweat blood out of sweat glands? No. Nobody ever has that we know of. And one other piece of evidence for that is people who have this happen have the blood seep out of areas of the body where there are no sweat glands. The tear ducts, the tongue, under the fingernails, the belly button. So it's it's rare. It's often with something that's very stressful. And we know, you know, my soul is sorrowful to the point of death. Yes. Yes, it was. So that would be the first myth I like to try to debunk. We'll be right back. Have you ever been put on the spot about your Catholic faith and struggled to find the right words? Now be bold in those moments with truthly your daily Catholic AI sidekick. Get instant rock solid answers. So you're always ready to share the faith with confidence. Use code gotta be saints for a free trial. Download truthly today on the app store. The Catholic faith at your fingertips. Yeah. Well, well, if you don't mind, I don't I'm not saying we need to debunk each and every one for the purpose of this conversation. But is there one or two others that you think are worth hitting on here? Sure. So let me think if somebody wants to learn more, they can they can pick up the book and in the book. Thank you. So you're good at this. So the second one, and this is when I on both of these, I've changed my mind over the years. So my mentor in medical school is William Edwards who wrote that article, the physical death of Jesus Christ in the journal of the AMA in 1986 when I was a freshman in medical school. And you know, it takes a lot to start to realize, oh, maybe my mentor was wrong about something. It took decades. So one of the things, and there's been more evidence since he wrote that article, is how were the feet of fix to the cross? Okay. So crucifixes typically show one large nail through one foot on top of another foot. You know what the oldest crucifix is in existence that I could find that shows the crucifix in this way. It's in Germany in Cologne from the 11th century. No crucifix before that shows one foot on top of another. Now there are three skeletal remains that suggest that the nails went sideways through the heel bone. In other words, either each heel was placed against the side of the upright post and a nail put through it and know it doesn't break a bone. So it's consistent with scripture that not a bone of himself be broken. Two of these three have been found with the nail still in one of the right heel bone. One found in 1968, two miles north of Calvary and Jerusalem, a first century ashywery. That's a bone box of somebody named Yehohanin, probably a form of the name John, who was probably around 30 years old, and crucified sometime in the decades after Jesus. The second one in the Poe River Valley in northern Italy was just a skeleton unmarked grave found around Roman era remains. This one just had a whole sideways through the heel bone. But unlike the one found in 1968, the nail went through from inside the outside, meaning that the legs would have been in a frog-legged position on the cross, with the knees pointed out to the sides. And the third one, which was found after I wrote the first editions of my book, was found about 10 miles from Cambridge University in England. They'd still brought the year 200. Nail still intact through the heel bone from outside the inside. And that fits with the most ancient images made of crucified victims in the first three centuries. The other myth that I like to debunk is that Jesus suffocated to death. In fact, I wrote a 10,000 word academic research article on this very thing with colleagues who are a pulmonologist, a lung expert, and a cardiologist, a heart expert. And I go through all the evidence ever made that suffocation had anything to do with crucifixion and point out reason after reason why it is truly impossible. In the gospels, what does Jesus do at the moment of death? He cries out in a loud voice. You can't do that if you're suffocating. And that's one of seven or eight lines of evidence. So no way the crucified victims suffocate to death. And also nobody, I guess a fourth one, nobody ever carried an entire two-part cross. Only the cross beam was ever carried. And there's ample evidence in ancient literature in Greek and Roman Latin writings. I love it. I think this is, this just adds a new layer for anyone who's listening to what they're going to experience or get out of the gospel passages as they read through them, especially here in the coming weeks. I want to briefly take a moment to talk about something that I know you're right to answer from a medical perspective. And that's this moment where blood and water flows from our Lord's side. When he appears by the spear, can you from a medical perspective tell us what these details kind of indicate and what we can learn from them? Sure. There are a couple theories. I'll tell you the one that makes the most sense to me and to the pulmonary experts I've talked to because as a dermatologist, that's not my expertise. So when the scourging happened and the scourge unlike the movie The Passion of the Christ would have had no sharp objects on it. The only scourges in Rome at the time of Jesus that had sharp objects like pieces of glass or sharp bone pieces, when it had been followers of this Greek religion of Sybil and Atis where self-flagulation was common. The Roman scourge had small lead balls at the end and that is all that would have struck Jesus. Well, with the scourging, he may have also been whipped a different way the night before because most people forget about well, what was happening from midnight to six? Well, he was in this pit and I'd been there three times in Jerusalem. That's another story. But anyway, with the scourge, when you're hit with those lead balls and he looks like he was hit at least 120 times with two or four lead balls at a time, that chest trauma will cause a lot of fluid to do what's called third spacing. It goes out of blood vessels and well, some of it leaves the body, some of it stays in the body but not in blood vessels. It goes in tissue fluid or there is a space between the lungs and the chest wall. That's called the plural space, PLEU-RAL. And so with that kind of trauma, you get fluid which would be a mixture of a clear tissue fluid and a blood. Or even if it was just blood, which is called a hemothorax, it would settle out after death. So that after death, blood would settle lower on top of the diaphragm, the breathing muscle and the clear fluid or serum would be on top of it. So if we take the shroud of Turin as an example and I believe the best explanation for the existence of the shroud is that it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, underneath the fifth rib was where the the lance, the spear would have gone through from the right side. So if we see what happens there at that level, the blood would probably have been below that but the serum would have been above it. But the right side of the heart is really right under the breastbone. It's not way over your, you know, under your left breast, it's under the breastbone, the right side of the heart. And it's a thinner wall. And it's a thinner wall because it only has to pump blood to the lungs. The left side of the heart is much thicker because it pumps blood to the rest of the body. So the best explanation I've heard is that as the lance goes through, it first goes through the serum, which looks watery, but then it pierces the thin right wall of the heart, which is going to be full of blood and it will be blood from there. I have also read from a medical examiner who's work I trust, Fredrick Zugaby, who's now deceased, but did some good research with crucifixion, that the amount of blood and water would not have been great. Because immediately after some of it starts to come out, air will rush in from outside into that space so that you would not see gobs of blood and water flow, but you would see some. I think Dr. it's hard to pinpoint a place to go next. I think that we've covered a lot of ground already in our short conversation, but I think I want to remove us just briefly from the medical realities of the passion and talk a little bit about the humanity piece of this all. When we look at the passion, Jesus carries the cross to Calvary. He is then of course crucified and this is one of the most brutal moments, but we then need to just look at it from maybe the overall standpoint or the overall look of this. Your work highlights the human suffering of Jesus, the human piece. I want to emphasize that. Why is it so important for us Christians to understand that Christ experienced suffering fully in his human body? That is a great question. So only the act of an infinite being can have infinite consequences. But God as an infinite being cannot suffer. It's impossible. He could only suffer in his human nature, thus the incarnation. So by suffering as God with a human nature, as fully man and fully God, he could then redeem suffering itself. John Paul II's document on the Christian meaning of human suffering called the Latin Selva Fichi Dolores says that all of our suffering now can have meaning because Christ suffered. And my favorite quote that I learned during the pandemic is about suffering and relates to this. It's attributed to French author Paul Claudel, although I can't track it down, but it's so beautiful. It's that Christ did not come to take away suffering. Christ did not even come to explain suffering. Christ came to suffer with us. And then unite this with that very mysterious verse of Saint Paul in Colossians 124, where he says, I rejoice in my sufferings and make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the church. What's lacking in the sufferings of Christ? The church says two things are lacking. And this is what Christ does for us. Number one, the passion has to be applied to the merits of the passion have to be applied to each and every one of us. And how does he do it? Number two, while he was on earth, he suffered in one human body, the one born of the Virgin Mary. He wants to complete what is lacking by suffering with us and in each one of us. One of the most profound things I learned is that a good answer to the really hard question is like, okay, where was Christ during the Holocaust? Where was he? He was in those gas chambers, living in suffering with and in each one of those people. I mean, that gave a whole new meaning to human suffering. And he then gives us a superpower greater than any Marvel DC comic superpower there is. What is it? We with our suffering can influence eternity. Because John Paul II says in his document, we become shares in the redemption. In other words, our suffering can be offered for the redemption of other people because we are united to Christ in his suffering. We can influence eternity. I mean, my gosh, what's greater than that? Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about that, Tom? I'd love to just kind of dive a little bit more into redemptive suffering. I think so many people struggle with this concept. They struggle with suffering at all. They look at their lives and they say, why does it have to be so hard? And I'm not here to tell them that it's not hard and it doesn't suck. But can we talk a little bit about their ademptive piece of that, which makes this at least doable? So the basis for suffering, I think, is intellectually simple, experientially almost impossible. And here's the intellectual part that's very simple. What does God ask of us? Love. What does love require? Free will. Free will means we choose the good of another. But if we have free will, we can choose against that. So therefore, the possibility of love implies for certain the possibility of suffering. In fact, CS Lewis says, if you remove free will, you will find that you will remove both the possibility for love and suffering. So that's a basic reason why suffering has to exist if love is going to exist. Secondly, St. John Paul to your primary question, that the document, Salafichi Dolores, literally translate as saving suffering. The purpose of suffering is salvation. It is redemption because God suffered. Now in the absence of that, if we are living in a totally materialistic universe, suffering literally has no meaning. It can't have meaning apart from the suffering of Jesus Christ. But because it does, I can take anything I go through. And every day, it's like, I'm going through something hard. I'm going to offer this up for, oh, and there's that great phrase, offer it up. That is one of the best Catholic phrases there is. Favorite phrase growing up, every time anything happened, offer it up, Brendan, offer it up. Thank you. And the truth is, that's our superpower. We can. And every time we turn down the opportunity to do that, we turn down the opportunity to help somebody else. And there's so many people who need grace. And I know, I guess what comes to mind, so I guess I'm meant to say it. Oh, I'll take this off my wall and show you. I've had a crucifix made by Wood Carver's and Ober Ambergau. And this ties into the answer to your question. That's in German. I think that's correct. That they do the passion narrative every ten years. That's the passion play. Yeah. Okay. This was made based on all the research I found. The feet, falling with the knees, may or may not have had a loincloth. They would always fall away from the cross if there was no ropes. And there's evidence that ropes were tied to their arms to keep the crossbar on as they carried it through the streets. And you'll notice a cap of thorns, not a crown of thorns, and a capital T-shaped cross. The reason I bring it up is this crucifix in my den. When I went through a couple summers ago, two months of absolute spiritual desolation. And when you're in desolation, nothing spiritual feels good. It was like almost an absence of feeling. But yet, in the midst of that suffering, I think I did the greatest acts of offering up of my life because not I thought of it, Father Michael Gaetley's book on what is it? I can't remember the title of it right now. But anyway, it says, "When you're suffering, if you can't do anything else, do this." Every time you see a crucifix, say, "Jesus, I believe you. Jesus, I trust you. Jesus, I love you." And for two months, I felt nothing when I said it. But I said it anyway with my will. Because that's what love is all about, the will. Looking back, it's like, "Wow, I don't have the opportunity to do that." It's deeply now because I often have consolations. But when you're in desolation and can do that, but as my spiritual director would say, that is when Jesus is using his surgical scalpel to do exactly what needs to be done for the good of our souls, to make us holy, to make us saints. Because sanctity is not based on feelings. And when we can even act against our feelings to do what is right with our wills, we are growing in holiness. Oh, this line I just read on this wonderful book about St. John of the Cross interpreting it in a very practical way. The author said, "Anybody who is trying to muzzle their tongue is growing in love of God and man." Which is another thing I've learned through this. In other words, complaining about suffering. I mean, we want to complain. I mean, think about the line if you've seen Fiddler on the roof, Yentha, we suffer. We suffer in silence. Oh, how we suffer in silence that she goes on and on. She's not suffering in silence. But suffer and not complain about it too. I mean, those are powerful ways to grow in holiness. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you for that. I think it's is so important to talk through, redemptive suffering, to think about it, to understand honestly, when we're given those different things to suffer through, it's a gift. Demontfort, one of my all-time favorite saints, talks about this. He said, "You don't need to go looking, and I'm paraphrasing. You don't need to go looking for the cross. The cross will come to you." - Yeah. - So you don't need to go ask for it. - No, the Lord will give you a cross. And cross is throughout your whole life. But what you do when it's given to you is you thank him for it. You praise him for the gift of that suffering. And if we can have that perspective, it goes so much further. I mean, he has a great book called Friends of the Cross. So if you're wanting to, if you're listening to this and you want to actually hear from the horse's mouth, I say, pick up the Friends of the Cross. Great book talks through suffering, especially during the Lent and season. But we need to embrace it. But that being said, you don't need to go looking for it. It will come. Brendan, you just nailed the punchline to the book. So often we think we have to either endure suffering or next accept suffering. And then we talk about, and it's in my book, be thankful for suffering. But the final step to having joy and suffering is actually there's one picture that says it all. It's a picture I end the book with. And I remember seeing it live. It's a picture at the end of chapter 13 before the appendix. On Good Friday, in the year 2005, there was a livestream. And they were doing the stations of the cross in Rome at the Colosseum. And John Paul II couldn't be there. This is eight days before he died. And it brings, I'm sorry, it brings tears to me every time I think of it. He's in his little chapel. He can't talk, can barely move. But he's hugging this crucifix and kissing it. And that is embracing your suffering. And that's where you find joy. That you're right. You have to be willing to embrace the suffering because who's there? As Mother Teresa says, you're never so close to Jesus as when you suffer with him. Amen. Well, thank you. I pulled it up in the book and I'm looking at the picture. It's absolutely beautiful. What a wonderful example. John Paul II was for all of us. Dr. where can you and I could talk? I've got more questions. We'll stop there. I think this is a great ending point to convince the listener to go pick up the book. But where can they get this book? Our Sunday visitor is the publisher, but they ask people to go to Amazon.com to get it and purchase it there. But they can purchase it either place. And remember, there's an initial version. This is the revised and expanded version. So you want the one with a yellow cover, not the one with the red cover. This is 100 pages longer. There's 30 more figures. There's much more information. My favorite chapter, my personal chapter is chapter 11. On seven practical ways I learned to suffer from seven Jesus, Jesus seven last words from the cross. The book has an impromptu, so it's not just my theological ideas. They fit with the church. It's heavily referenced with a saintlier people than me. Well, thank you so much. Dr. I really, I'll make sure to share the link in the podcast notes so that people can access it. I ask every guest three quick questions. So if you'll indulge me here, my first one is, who is on your Mount Rushmore of Saints? Well, right now, the ones I pray to every day, St. Thomas Moore, my patron saint, layman, homeschooled as kids, oldest daughter named Margaret, wrote books. Second would be St. John of the Cross and in third Saint Teresa of Avila, because I've learned to come to love the depths of the Carmelite style of prayer. I guess those would be the main three. And then, oh, I'll say Michael the Archangel and our Lady of Grace. This is the big one. Mary under her Tyler lady of grace. I love it. I love it. All right, my next question for you is God willing one day, you are going to be a saint yourself. What are you going to be the patron saint of? [LAUGHS] Burnt out physicians who try to prove they have worth by achieving everything they can possibly do. In other words, I had burnout three years ago and quit all the extracurricular stuff I was doing. In other words, the patrons say of those who think they need to achieve to be loved. I think there's a lot of us who can relate to that and would benefit from having a saint to ask for their intercession for that. So I like it. All right, my last question. I don't get many great questions. That was great. Well, you're free to use it with your family and friends if you ever want them to think about that as well. Yes. I do think it also just provides so much context or maybe direction as to where God's leading you. And if you can't answer that question well, that's OK. But if it's not a humility fine, but if it's just out of not understanding or not knowing, it's a great opportunity to say, Lord, where do you need me? And being able to ask for that direction in prayer. That question is the best moment of my day so far. I mean, I love that question. I mean, I wrote questions and ran a podcast in radio show weekly for five years. So when someone comes up with a good question, that's really impressive to me. Good. Good. Well, I'm glad. My last question is, how can I and how can the God of be saints audience, those who listen to this podcast, pray for you? Oh, wow. That's really kind. I'm still going through a lot of struggles with not feeling worthy of love. I have a fairly good relationship with Jesus and Mary, but still internally, quite fearful of God the Father and the Holy Spirit. And to have those freed up would be enormous helps in my life and for everyone around me. That's beautiful. I appreciate so much your honesty there. And please rest assured of my prayers for you and hopefully those who listen to this as well. So Dr. McGovern, this has been wonderful. I appreciate so much you taking the time to speak with me today. One of the most powerful things about reflecting on what Jesus suffered is that it reminds us that faith is not abstract. The love of God was revealed through real wounds, real suffering and real sacrifice of Christ on the cross. If you'd like to dive deeper into this topic of our Lord's suffering, I encourage you to check out Dr. McGovern's book, What Christ suffered, a doctor's journey through the Passion. Thank you for listening to God of be saints. Remember that you are so loved by God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And you're called to be a saint. So accept the graces of the moment and it's possible. God bless you and have a great day. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe and check out GoodCatholic.com for more details. (upbeat music)