Christ Overcame All Our Evils

There are three kinds of evils in the world: physical, mental, and moral.  Physical evil includes sicknesses and illnesses.  Mental evil includes retardation, agnosticism, doubt, and skepticism. Moral evil includes sin.  Our Lord transferred to himself all of these evils, first of all physical ills.  St. Matthew, quoting Isaiah, says: 'He took upon himself our sicknesses and our illnesses.' We have no record that our Lord was ever sick, and I'm sure that he never was because no one could touch him physically until he said now the night of the Last Supper when Judas went out of the door.  His enemies attempted to throw him over the brow of the hill, and three times they tried to arrest him.  But even stonings went amiss.       

If then, our Lord suffered no physical ills, how could he take upon himself our sicknesses and our illnesses?  By empathy. Jesus had such a deep sympathy and unity with the sufferings of mankind that he felt them as his own.  A mother feels the evil of her delinquent daughter much more than her daughter does.  The father of the prodigal son who waited on the road suffered more than the prodigal son.  And our Lord, therefore, took on himself all physical illnesses to such a degree that when he worked miracles by healing the deaf and blind, as Mark tell us, he signed. He groaned.  He wept.  Three times he wept --over a decadent civilization, over death, and over sin, as the epistle to the Hebrews says.  I'm sure that our blessed Lord felt the blindness of a Milton and the deafness of a Beethoven and the isolation of a leper.