Twenty-first meditation. The love of Our Saviour in the midst of His labors

First point.

Reflect that the eternal Father so loved the world that He gave to it His only Son; and the Son so loved the will of His Father that, knowing He wished to save human nature, and considering not the abjection and misery thereby entailed, He voluntarily offered an enormous price for its ransom; namely, His own blood, His sweat, and His life.

Second point.

Our Saviour, urged by His love, bows to the will of His Father, and offers Himself for the redemption of the world. In each mystery of His Passion, He exclaims: " O My Father! human nature would be sufficiently redeemed by one of My tears; but that would not suffice for the reverence I bear Thy holy will, that would not satisfy My love. I long to undergo My agony in the garden, I long to be struck, to be crowned with thorns, to be reduced to so pitiable a state as to become like unto a leper without shape or comeliness."

Third point.

Our meek Jesus was scourged, crowned with thorns, condemned, mocked, and ignored, because He was destined and consecrated to bear opprobrium and ignominy as punishments consequent on our sins. He became a holocaust for sin, being, as it were, accursed, exiled from His eternal Father, and abandoned by Him.

'Affections.

My soul, dwell for the future amid the thorns and the scourges of the Saviour. There, like a nightingale, humbly sigh: live Jesus, who wishes to die that my soul may live! O eternal Father, what return can the world maketoTheeforthegiftThou hast bestowed upon it in Thy only-begotten Son? To redeem man, a thing as vile as I am, He delivered Himself; and, ingrate that I am, I play the miser, giving not even my nothingness to Him who has given me His all!

Ah! if I am the spouse of J esus crucified and suffering, I must throughout my whole life consider it an immense favor to clothe myself with His livery; namely, the nails, the thorns, and the lance. Remember, my soul, that the feast of His nuptials is gall And vinegar. O King of glory! it is too great an honor to drink with Thee the chalice of suffering. Never let it happen that I refuse this beverage; for, as David says: " It is, 0 God, the drink of Thy well-beloved."

O Religious, who have undertaken to follow Jesus crucified, know that you should be stripped of your own affections, as He was of His sacred garment. O my God! I deceive myself if I wish to gather the myrrh of Thy mortifications with one hand and the miserable gratifications of the earth with the other. Guard me from this misfortune, my beloved Jesus > and make me walk with Thee to glory by the road of sorrow.