17 — WITH JESUS CRUCIFIED

Presence of God. — O Jesus, I place myself at the foot of Thy Cross, that Thou mayest make me understand how necessary it is to suffer in order to become like Thee.

Meditation

1 — For the soul that aspires to union with God, penance is not merely a means of subjecting the flesh to the spirit; it is also a means of assimilating oneself to Christ crucified, of reproducing and prolonging His Passion in one’s own body. “Love produces equality and likeness” (I.C. I, 4, 4): he who truly loves spontaneously desires to share in the sufferings of the beloved; and so it is with those who truly love the Crucified. St. Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi would exclaim: “Beneath a Head crowned with thorns and crucified, a delicate member does not befit; and beside a suffering Spouse, a unmortified bride does not become.” For a bride it is an honor to be able to share in every way the life of her spouse; for a soul consecrated to God it is an honor to be able to share, at least in small part, the Passion of Christ, and she glories in it: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6, 14).

While the mortification of the spirit is certainly more important than that of the body, we must not forget that Jesus, in order to save the world, willed to embrace both, and in the most complete manner. His entire life was cross and martyrdom, and it ended with the sacrifice of Calvary, where the immolation, both spiritual and physical, reached its utmost. “As for the mortification of the sensory part,” says St. John of the Cross, “it is certain that He died with respect to the sensitive part, spiritually throughout all His life, and naturally at the hour of His death; for during His life... He had nowhere to rest His head, and much less so in death... Therefore,” the Saint concludes, “any spirit that would travel the way of sweetnesses and ease, and flee from the imitation of Christ, I would not regard as good” (A. II, 7, 10 and 18).

2 — St. Teresa Margaret of the Heart of Jesus wrote: “Remember that in entering religion, you undertook to express in yourself the life of the Crucified” (Sp. p. 127). To express the life of the Crucified means to live His Passion, to associate oneself with His sufferings with His own intentions: the glory of the Father, the salvation of souls. “I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church” (Col. 1, 24). Here is another motive that has moved the Saints toward generous bodily mortification. Nothing is lacking to the Passion of Christ: all “is finished” (Jn. 19, 30), He Himself said on the Cross; all is accomplished in Him, our Head, but must still be accomplished in us, His members. Jesus desires to continue His Passion in us, so as to associate us with His redemptive work, to make us collaborators in the most sublime of His works: the salvation of souls. Jesus, who could have done all things by Himself alone, willed to have need of us, in order to apply the infinite merits of His Passion to so many souls.

Mortification, even physical suffering, is therefore a requirement of the life of union with Christ; and the more generous it is, the more the soul will participate intimately in the interior life and apostolic work of Jesus. One cannot be intimate with Christ without suffering with Him, without ascending with Him upon the Cross. “Let Christ crucified be enough for thee, and with Him suffer and repose” (I.C. AM. II, 13).

Suffering has a supernatural value only when one suffers with Christ and for Christ: it is Jesus who sanctifies sorrow; apart from Him, sorrow is worth nothing, serves no purpose. But when embraced for love of Him, it becomes precious coin, capable of redeeming and sanctifying souls; it becomes the prolongation of His Passion.

Colloquy

“O desired Passion! And who is he that desires thee, and loves thee, and glories in thee? O Eternal Truth, Thou sayest to me that she is not desired, nor loved by one who loves himself, but by one who has stripped himself of self and has clothed himself with Thee, Christ crucified, and by Thy light perceives in the cross the height of Thy charity. O pleasant and tranquil Passion, that with tranquility of peace makest the soul to run over the waves of the tempestuous sea. O delightful and most sweet Passion! O riches of the soul, O true gladness, O our glory and blessedness — the soul that glories in thee acquires thy fruit. O Word, the soul that has taken refuge in Thy Passion is dead as to sensuality, and therefore savors the affection of Thy charity.

“O my God, my love, one thing I ask of Thee: when the world lay as if sick, Thou didst send Thy only-begotten Son to it as physician... and now what means wilt Thou use to raise up another world that lies again in death?... Behold, I see that Thou callest Thy servants Christs, and through them Thou desirest to take away death and restore life to the world. And in what manner? It is needful that they walk manfully in the way of the Word, with diligence and burning desire, laboring for Thine honor and the salvation of souls; and for this they must patiently sustain pains, torments, reproaches, rebukes... O most excellent Physician, give us then some of these Christs, who shall live continually in vigils, in tears, in prayer for the salvation of the world” (St. Catherine of Siena).

Thou knowest, O Lord, the deep desire of my heart: to assimilate myself to Thee, to be united with Thee, so as to live only Thy life. If the sublime states of prayer and the flights of the spirit are not for me, the cross is for me: Thou offerest it to me and I desire to embrace it with all my heart. I sense it — what I may most readily find within my reach, what I encounter every day, what is most fitting and possible to my misery — is precisely suffering, since there is no human life without pain. Well then, O Lord, grant that in every physical or moral suffering I may know how to recognize and embrace Thy cross, so that I may intimately associate myself with Thy Passion for the salvation of souls. Thou now, glorious at the right hand of the Father, canst no longer suffer in Thy glorified Humanity: deign then to make use of me, to make use of my poor flesh to continue Thy redemptive work.