Of Another Motive That Will Help Us, and Render the Practice of Mortification Easy, Which Is the Example of Christ Our Redeemer

| Pees fourth motive that will greatly encourage and help us in this practice of mortification is the example of Christ our Redeemer and Master. So the Apostle St. Paul puts it before our eyes to encourage us thereto. Armed with patience, let us run to the conflict that awaits us, looking at Jesus Christ, Author and Fulfiller of faith, who, putting before His eyes the joy of our redemption, endured the Cross, and made no account of the shame and humiliation of the world. Think once and again of Him Who suffered so much contradiction of sinners against Himself, that ye be not worn out, your hearts failing you: for ye have not resisted and struggled against sin even to the shedding of blood (Heb. xii. 1-4), as He shed His for you. Holy Scripture relates that, when the children of Israel were passing through the desert and came upon those waters of Mara that were so bitter that they could not drink them (Exod. xv. 23), Moses made prayer to God, and He showed him a kind of wood which, cast upon the waters, rendered them sweet and palatable. The saints say that by this wood is signified the wood of the Cross. When the labor of mortification becomes bitter and grievous to you, cast upon it this sacred wood; think of the Cross and Passion of Christ, His scourges and thorns, the gall and vinegar that they gave Him for His refreshment; and at once it will become sweet and palatable to you. In the chronicles of the Order of St. Francis we read how a very rich man, reared in honor and comforts, entered the order; and as soon as the tempter saw his change of life, he assailed him with representations of the austerity of the order; how instead of the delicacies, good clothes, and soft bed that he was used to, he found beans, a coarse tunic, straw for bedding, strict poverty instead of riches. He felt it much; and as the devil put before him the hardness of these things, he pressed him sore with instigations how he should leave them and return to the world. The temptation came to be so unbearable that the man determined to leave his order. In this resolve he passed through the chapter room, and falling on his knees before the figure of our crucified Lord he commended himself to His mercy. So being transported out of himself, he was caught up in spirit and there appeared to him our Lord and His glorious Mother, and they asked him why he was going. With great reverence he replied: “Lord, I was reared in the world in much comfort, and I cannot stand the austerity of this religious order, especially in food and dress.” The Lord raised His right arm and showed him the wound in His side, running with blood, and said to him: “Stretch out your arm, and put your hand here, and bathe it in the blood of My side; and when there comes into your mind any rigor or austerity, moisten it with this blood, and everything, difficult though it be, will become easy and sweet.” The novice did what the Lord told him, and for every temptation that occurred to him he called to mind the Passion of Christ, and at once everything was changed into great sweetness and delight. What hardship can appear hard to a vile man and wretched worm, seeing a God crowned with thorns and nailed to a Cross for his love! What will he not suffer and endure for his sins when he sees the Lord of Majesty suffering so much for the sins of others!

The saints made much use of this motive of the example of Christ our Redeemer and the desire to imitate Him because, besides being a very efficacious motive to animate us to mortification and suffering, it is likewise a motive of high perfection, making our actions many degrees more excellent, as springing from the love of God. And so we read of our blessed Father Ignatius that at the beginning of his conversion he practised great mortifications and penances, having regard to his sins, and to make satisfaction for them; but afterwards, as he grew more advanced, he afflicted his body with austerities and chastisements, not so much in regard of his sins as of the example of Christ and His saints. The saints saw that Christ our Lord had gone that way and had embraced afflictions and the Cross with such love and desire, longing already to see the hour in which He was to give His lifeblood for us (Luke xii. 50). And as elephants put forth their strength in battle at the sight of blood, so they came hereby to have a great thirst of suffering martyrdom and shedding their blood for Him Who had first shed His for them. And as this desire met not with its accomplishment, they practised cruelties upon themselves and made themselves their own executioners, and martyred their bodies, afflicting them with penances and labors, and mortified and curbed their wills and appetites; and in this way they found some little relief was made as their desire was in some sort fulfilled of imitating as far as they could Christ our Redeemer. This is what the Apostle St. Paul says: “Let us go on ever mortifying and maltreating, bearing ever stamped upon ourselves the mortification of Jesus Christ, that the life of Jesus Christ may be shown forth in our bodies (II Cor. iv. 10). The treatment and mortification of our body should be such as to represent the life of Jesus Christ and resemble it. St. Bernard says: Non decet sub capite spinoso membrum esse delicatum—“It is not fitting, nor looks well, that, the head being full of thorns, the members should be dainty and comfortable, but be mortified and crucified in the flesh to be in conformity with their head.”

Many are the other motives that we might bring for this, since all that the saints give and all the reasons they allege to exhort us to do penance may serve to animate us to this practice of mortification.

On those words of the Apostle: The sufferings of this world are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that shall be revealed in us (Rom. viii. 18), the glorious St. Bernard says: “The sufferings and tribulations of this world do not equal, and are as nothing in comparison with, the glory that we hope for, with the punishment that we fear, with the sins that we have committed, or with the benefits that we have received of God.” Any of these points, well considered, is enough to animate us to this practice.