Of the Method to Be Followed in Meditating the Passion of Christ Our Redeemer, and of the Sentiment of Compassion Which We Should Draw from Thence

THE way to meditate the Passion of Christ our Redeemer is the same that the masters of spirit commonly teach for the practice of meditation. They advise us not to occupy ourselves entirely in meditation and discursive reasoning on the history, but mainly to move our will to sentiments and desires. These are formed first in the heart, that afterwards in due time they may issue in action. This is that on which we should stay and lay stress in meditation. As he who digs to find water or discover a treasure, uses his spade no more when he finds what he was seeking; so, when by meditation and consideration of the understanding you have discovered the gold and treasure of truth and affection that you sought, you must dig no more with the understanding, now that you have come to the living water that your soul desired and thirsted for, but rest on those affections and desires of the will until you have drunk your fill of that water, and quenched your thirst and are quite satisfied. This is the end aimed at in meditation and the fruit that we should draw from it, and to this all the meditations and considerations and reflections of the understanding should be ordered and directed. This, then, is the method that we should observe in meditating the Passion of Christ our Redeemer. We will proceed to name the sentiments which should follow from this meditation, noting at the same time certain considerations to awaken them in us.

Many are the sentiments in which we may occupy ourselves and spend our time most profitably, but authors generally reduce them to seven kinds or manners of affections. The first is compassion. To compassionate is to receive pain from another’s pain and grief from his grief, keeping company with him in his afflictions with feeling and inward tears, whereby one seems to share the affliction and grief. The suffering is alleviated, and the pain and affliction diminished, by my taking compassion on it, as, contrariwise, when another is in glee at our misfortune and trouble, and laughs and makes game of it, our trouble and grief is increased and we feel it more. Now it is true that we cannot in this way lessen the griefs and afflictions of Christ, because they are things of the past; nevertheless our compassion is very agreeable to Him because thereby in a certain way we make His griefs and afflictions ours. So says the Apostle Paul: If we are sons, we are heirs also, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, yet so that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him (Rom. viii. 17). If we take and transfuse into ourselves the pains of Christ by compassion with Him, we shall be heirs of His glory along with Him.

To awaken in ourselves this sentiment of compassion, it will be a help to consider the intensity of the griefs, pains, and torments that Christ our Redeemer bore. As theologians and saints say, they were greater than have been suffered or could be suffered in this life, according to that text of Jeremy (Lam. i. 12): O all ye that pass by the way, attend and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. First of all, in His body there was no part that did not suffer most grievous pains and torments. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there is no soundness in him, says Isaias (i. 6). His feet and hands were nailed, His head pierced with a crown of thorns, His face disfigured with spittle and wounded with blows, His whole body torn with scourges and racked by the torment of the Cross. They have numbered all my bones (Psalm xxi. 18).

Not only was there pain in His body, but also in His soul. For though the human nature was united with the divine Person, nevertheless He felt the bitterness of His Passion as though there were no such union. Moreover, for the increase of His pain He chose to go without any consolation. That is what He said on the Cross: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matt. xxvii. 46). The holy martyrs in their torments were refreshed by a heavenly and divine consolation, which made them suffer them not only with courage, but even with joy; but Christ our Redeemer, to suffer more for our love, shut the gates all round against all manner of alleviation and consolation, whether from heaven or from earth, as regards the lower portion of His nature. He was forsaken, not only by friends and disciples, but also by His own Father. He was made as a man without aid or helper, while all the time He alone among the dead was free from sin, and from any deserving of death or pain (Psalm Ixxxvii. 5-6). We may get a sufficient inkling of the greatness of Christ’s sufferings from the fact that the mere imagination and thought of them in the Garden made Him sweat a sweat of blood So copious and abundant that it ran down on to the earth. What, then, must the utmost suffering have been, when the mere thought of it caused in Him such pain and agony! In short, so great and so severe were His pains and sufferings that the saints say that no mortal man could live under them without his life’s being miraculously preserved, and so it was necessary for Christ to avail Himself of His divinity not to die under them. But this is what the divinity did there, not to prevent His feeling His sufferings, but to prevent the excessive pain that He felt from putting an end to His life, that so He might suffer more. Hence we may also consider and reflect upon the mercy and liberality of the Lord, that, while He wrought miracles for His holy martyrs that they might not feel their torments, in Himself He wrought them only that He might suffer and feel them more for our love.

Besides outward pains, which tormented His body and tormented His soul at the same time, as we have said, He had others, inward pains, which tormented immediately His most holy soul, and they were much greater than the former. From the instant of His conception to the moment of His death, He had ever present all the sins of men committed from the beginning of the world and all those that were to be committed until the end thereof. Now on the one hand He loved God extremely, and saw that these were injuries and offenses committed against God. On the other hand He loved souls extremely and saw how great would be the loss and perdition of them. While He offered His Passion and death for their salvation, He knew nevertheless that such a countless multitude of souls were not to profit thereby, but would seek death rather than life. This consideration wounded Him like a two-edged sword, on the one side for the offense of God, on the other for the loss and damnation of souls. The incomparable sorrows which His most holy soul felt at this are beyond utterance or thought. All this, added to the torments, pains, and affronts which He represented to Himself in the prayer in the Garden, made Him sweat blood in such abundance that it ran down upon the earth. And all other things which He suffered in His life, from the instant of His conception till he expired on the Cross, He had ever before His eyes, according to the saying of the prophet: And my grief is ever in my sight (Psalm xxxvii. 18). Hence we may conclude that all His life was like the day of His Passion. Sometimes the looking forward to adversity and affliction occasions greater pain and torment than the actual enduring of it. Hence we may conclude that His whole life was a sea of immense sufferings which incessantly night and day without measure tormented His most holy soul.

Thus whoever will consider and weigh these things in detail, considering moreover that He who suffers them is the very Son of God and that He suffers for us and for our love, must have a heart harder than stone if he is not moved to compassion. So says St. Bernard: “The earth trembles, the rocks are rent, the tombs are opened, the veil of the Temple is torn, the sun and moon are darkened—good reason surely why we should be struck with compassion at what the Lord has suffered for us.” It is not reasonable that we should be harder than the rocks and more insensible than irrational creatures. My son Absalom, Absalom my son, who will grant me to die for thee! (II Kings xviii. 33). So said King David, feeling the death of the son who died for rising up against him and driving him out of his kingdom. With how much better reason shall we use such language, feeling for the death of the Son of God, Who died to deliver us from the captivity of the devil and give us the kingdom of His eternal Father!