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Let me call attention to the blessing [on the bread]. I am going
to read it humbly so we’ll understand what’s in it:
“O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son,
Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who
partake of it, that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and
witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take
upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his
commandments which he has given them; that they may always have his Spirit to
be with them. Amen.” [D&C 20:77.] …
To eat in remembrance of him. Does that mean that I would just
remember that nearly 2,000 years ago wicked men took him, hung him on the
cross, drove nails in his hands and feet and left him there to die? To me it
has a far deeper meaning than that. To remember him—why was he on the cross?
What benefit comes to [me] because he was on the cross? What suffering did he
go through on the cross that I might be redeemed or relieved of my sins?
Well, naturally a person would think: He had nails driven in his
hands and his feet and he hung there until he died. … What else did he suffer?
This is a thing I think that most of us overlook. I am convinced that his
greatest suffering was not the driving of nails in
There isn’t one of us I take it that hasn’t done something wrong
and then been sorry and wished we hadn’t. Then our consciences strike us and we
have been very, very miserable. Have you gone through that experience? I have.
… But here we have the Son of God carrying the burden of my transgressions and
your transgressions. … His greatest torment was not the nails in his hands or
in his feet, as bad as they were, but the torment of mind in some way that is
not clear to me. But he carried the burden—our burden. I added something to it;
so did you. So did everybody else. He took it upon himself to pay the price
that I might escape—that you might escape—the punishment on the conditions that
we will receive his gospel and be true and faithful in it.
Now that’s what I’m trying to think about. That’s what I’m
remembering—the excruciating agony when he was crying in his prayer to his
Father to let the cup pass. He’s not pleading just for relief from driving
nails in his hand[s] or in his feet, he had a more severe torment than all of
that, in some way that I do not understand.6
It is impossible for weak mortals, and we are all weak, to fully
comprehend the extent of the suffering of the Son of God. We cannot realize the
price He had to pay. To the Prophet Joseph Smith He said:
“For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that
they might not suffer if they would repent; but if they would not repent, they
must suffer even as I; which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of
all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both
body and spirit; and would that I might not drink the bitter cup and
shrink—nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my
preparations unto the children of men.” [D&C 19:16–19.]
It is, however, within our grasp to know and realize that this
excruciating agony of His sacrifice has brought to us the greatest blessing
that could possibly be given. Moreover, we are able to
… If we fully appreciated the many blessings which are ours
through the redemption made for us, there is nothing that the Lord could ask of
us that we would not anxiously and willingly do.7
I am sure if we could picture before us—as I have tried many
times to do—the solemn occasion when the Savior met with his apostles; if we
could see them there assembled, the Lord in his sadness, sorrowing for the sins
of the world, sorrowing for one of his apostles who was to betray him, yet
teaching these eleven men who loved him and making covenant with them, I am
sure we would feel in our hearts that we would never forsake him. If we
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