Of the Sentiments of Admiration and Hope

THE fifth sentiment that we can exercise in prayer and meditation on the Passion is admiration, dwelling with admiration on the fact that God, Who is impassible and immortal, should have suffered and died—wondering that He should have suffered and died for those very persons who were putting Him to death and were so unworthy of any good—wondering how He suffered grief and torments so many and so great as no mortal man ever suffered—wondering at the immense charity and tender love of God, at His infinite wisdom and most high counsel, shown in His choosing a remedy so appropriate for the salvation of man, fulfilling at once His justice and His mercy. For a man to dwell on these considerations and others like them which are resplendent here, very leisurely, pondering and admiring them, and the infinite goodness of the Lord, Who wrought such works for such vile, unworthy, and ungrateful creatures, is an excellent meditation. And they even take this for a very high contemplation, when a man is wholly taken up and absorbed in considering and reflecting on the wonderful works of God. The greater light and knowledge one has of these mysteries and the more he reflects on them, the more he will wonder at them, and in this admiration there is included a great love of God, great recognition of and gratitude for His benefits, and deep shame of ourselves. So we should frequently endeavor to arouse in ourselves this holy sentiment, for we shall draw great profit from it. In many places in the Psalms Holy Scripture puts at the end of the verse the Hebrew word Selah, which means Stop, in reflection and admiration on the mystery, to teach us that we should dwell on this sentiment in the mysteries that we meditate.

The sixth sentiment that we may draw from meditation on the Passion is a great hope and confidence in God. The soul, considering how much God has done for her without any desert on her part, or rather, very ill desert, and considering the earnest will that Christ our Redeemer has shown for her salvation, since that is the thirst which He Said He felt on the Cross, is thereby raised to hope of such bounty and mercy that He will give all things necessary and proper for her salvation. He who hath not spared His own Son, but hath given him over to death for us, how can it be that with him he hath not given us all things? says the Apostle St. Paul (Rom. viii. 32). And if God did this for us when we were enemies, what will He do when we are striving to be His friends? Let this argument be well marked; it is that of St. Paul (Rom. v. 10), and very consoling. If, when we were enemies and went on offending God, He regarded us with eyes of mercy and reconciled us at so much cost to Himself, with what eyes will He regard us now that we are His friends and need not cost Him His lifeblood any more, as we did then, but all the cost has been already paid! How much will He love us now that He has cleansed and washed us in His Precious Blood, seeing that He did us such a good turn when we were defiled with our sins! If, when we fled from Him and resisted His inspirations, He nevertheless sought us out and invited us and would not leave us until He had drawn us into His house, how can He leave us and forget us after He has so drawn us?

It will also help us greatly in eliciting this sentiment of confidence to dig and delve down deep in the greatness of God’s mercy; for this the Church sings that it is proper to God always to show mercy and to spare. Deus, cui proprium est misereri semper et parcere (Collect for the Dead). It is true that God is a judge likewise, and His justice is as great as His mercy, for they are all one in God; but the work most proper to God, the work that He does of His own accord and most fully of His own will, is mercy, as the Royal Prophet sings: The Lord is good and gentle to all, but his mercies are above all his works (Psalm cxliv. 9). It is that in which He excels and shines most; that is the work that more than any other He calls His own, the work that is called eminently and most excellently the work of God. So the Apostle St. Paul calls God rich in mercy (Eph. ii. 4). Though He is rich in all things, He is said particularly to be rich in mercy. Such a phrase brings out excellence on some particular point. As we say here: “Jonathan is rich in flocks and herds,”’ so that in which God is most rich, and His riches rise to an eminent and surpassing height, isin mercy. “O God, Who dost manifest Thine almighty power most of all in sparing and showing mercy” —Deus qui omnipotentiam tuam parcendo maxime et miseranda manifestas, so sings the Church.- In this it is that the omnipotence and greatness of God most manifestly appears, in pardoning and showing mercy, and on this He prides Himself most. As we see on earth a knight who has many good points priding himself more particularly on one, this man on being just, that other on being liberal, so God prides Himself most on being merciful.

To show mercy, says St. Bernard, is the proper work of God, and the work that He does of His own accord. Of His own nature He is running over with mercies and benefits; and He needs no merit of ours, nor does He depend on that, to deal mercifully with us. But to punish is, as it were, foreign to God’s nature; for that it is necessary that we should provoke Him and compel Him thereto by our sins. It is the nature and property of the bee to make honey, but to sting is a thing that she does not except when molested and provoked thereto—it is as it were perforce and under wrongful provocation that she comes to do that; so, when God comes to chastise and condemn, it is, as it were, perforce, under what we may call the provocation and compul-’ sion of our sins. And even then, when being greatly provoked and, as we may say, compelled, He comes to punish, He clearly shows His mercy in the grief and regret that He displays, as we see in many passages of Scripture. When the wickedness of men grew, and God was minded to send the deluge, the Sacred Text says: Touched with grief of heart within, he said, I will destroy man whom I have created, and blot him out from the face of the earth (Gen. vi. 6-7). It went to His heart to have to lay waste the earth. And the holy Gospel says that Christ our Redeemer wept when He prophesied the ruin of Jerusalem. Seeing the city, he wept over it (Luke xix. 41). And by Isaias He says: Alas, I shall take satisfaction from mine enemies, and wreak my vengeance on my foes (Isaias i. 24) ; as the judge who can do no otherwise than pronounce the sentence of death, pronounces it nevertheless with tears.

And not only in this, but in the very chastisement and judgment that God threatens us and seeks to terrify us therewith, His infinite love and mercy is clearly seen, and the great desire that He has of our salvation. St. Chrysostom remarks this well in that saying of the prophet: If ye are not converted, he will brandish his sword: he hath bent his bow and made it ready; and in it he hath prepared instruments of death, fiery arrows (Psalm vii. 13-14). Great is the clemency and loving-kindness of the Lord, says the saint, to threaten us with a bow and frighten us, and put forward the punishment in forcible words, that we may not come to fall under it. God deals with us in the way that earthly fathers are wont to deal with their children whom they dearly love. They show their displeasure in severe terms, and say what they will do and what is going to happen, that the boy may be frightened and thereupon mend his ways, so that there may be no need to resort to punishment. Again, a stroke with a sword is given at close quarters, but the bow and catapult strike from afar. To wound with the sword, all that is needed is to draw it and give the stroke; but to wound with the bow it is necessary to string it first, then to draw the arrows out of the quiver and set them on the string. All this stringing and unstringing makes a noise; and therefore the Lord threatens us with a bow, that we may have time to fly from the punishment and escape it, according to the text of the prophet: Thou hast given a sign to them that fear thee, that they may fly from before the bow, that thy beloved ones may escape (Psalm lix. 6). And, being about to destroy the world by the deluge, He gave notice a hundred years before, that men might recollect themselves, as one does who purposes to let out the bull. AIl this shows love and desire not to punish if it could be avoided. In his seventeenth homily on Genesis, speaking of how God punished the serpent that had deceived Eve, the same saint says: See the great mercy of God, how as an earthly father, who greatly loves his son, is not content with punishing his murderer, but takes the sword or lance with which the murder was committed and breaks it into a thousand pieces; so God our Lord dealt with the serpent, who had acted as the sword and instrument of the devil’s malice, and condemned it to perpetual punishment. For God willeth not the death of the sinner, nor rejoices in the perdition of men. Had it been otherwise, you have given Him occasion enough; for if you had died at the time you know, you would have been by this time many years in hell; but infinite Goodness and Mercy would not give leave to death and the devil for that. Do I perchance will the death of the sinner, and not rather that he be converted from his ways and live? says God by the Prophet Ezechiel (xviii. 23). He would not condemn you, because you have cost Him very dear. You have cost Him His lifeblood; so He would not willingly lose what He has bought at so great a price, but would have all men converted and saved, as the Apostle St. Paul says: Who wisheth all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth (I Tim. ii. 4). From these and other considerations, of which Holy Scripture and the writings of the saints are full, we should be helped to trust greatly in the mercy of God, and especially that of which we now treat, to betake ourselves to the Passion and merits of Jesus Christ.