60 — THE MAN OF SORROWS

Wednesday of Holy Week

Presence of God. — O passionate Jesus, cause that in Your Passion I may read Your love for me.

Meditation

1 — Today’s Mass brings two lessons of Isaiah (62, 11; 63, 1-7; 53, 1-12) that sketch in an impressive manner the figure of Jesus, the Man of Sorrows. It is the suffering Christ that presents itself to our gazes covered with the living purple of His Blood, wounded from head to foot. “Why then is your raiment red and your garment like that of those who tread in the winepress? — I alone have trodden the winepress and of the peoples not one is with me”. Alone Jesus has trodden the winepress of His Passion. Let us think of the agony in the garden when the vehemence of sorrow made all His members sweat blood. Let us think of the moment when Pilate, after having had Him scourged, presented Him to the crowd saying: “Behold the man”; Jesus appears then with His head crowned with thorns, His flesh lacerated by the scourges, while the vivid red of His Blood mingled with the vermilion of the robe of purple, with which the soldiers had vested Him to make of Him a mock king. And while Christ gave Himself for men, shedding His Blood for their salvation, men abandoned Him: “I looked about and there was none to help, I sought and there was none to give aid”. Where are the sick healed by Him, the blind who at the touch of His hands recovered their sight, the dead resuscitated, the thousands of persons by Him fed with the bread of miracle, all the innumerable ones who in so many ways experienced His goodness? Before Jesus there is only an infuriated crowd that yells: “Crucify, crucify!”. Even the Apostles, even the most intimate have gone away and precisely one of them has betrayed Him: “If an enemy had insulted me, I would have borne it... but it was you, you who were one soul with me, my equal, my friend and familiar, you who were already bound with me in sweet intimacy” (Ps. 54, 13-15). To this text that today, as on all Wednesdays of the year, we read in the psalms of Terce and that expresses so well the bitterness of Jesus in face of betrayal and abandonment, corresponds this Matins responsory: “In return for my love they oppose me without reason. And they return to me evil for good and hatred in exchange for my love” (BR.).

Contemplating Jesus in His Passion each one of us can say: “dilexit me, et tradidit semetipsum pro me”, He loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2, 20), and it is well that we then ask: how have I requited His love?

2 — No one more than Jesus would have had right to the gratitude and fidelity of men, because no one more than Him has benefited them, and yet no one more than Him has tasted the bitterness of ingratitude and betrayal.

Let us approach for an instant the prologue of the Gospel of St. John, in which Jesus is presented to us in His divine majesty, in His eternal splendor of Word, of “true light, come to illuminate the world”, with the lesson of Isaiah (2nd lesson of the Mass) that depicts the state of obloquy and ignominy to which His Passion has reduced Him and we shall intuit more deeply two great truths: the excessive charity with which Jesus has loved us and the enormous gravity of sin.

Precisely of Him, Son of God, it is said: “He has no beauty nor comeliness; we have seen Him and He had no appearance that attracted our gazes. Abject, the lowest of men, the Man of Sorrows, who... almost seeks to hide His face”. He has no splendor, He who is the splendor of the Father’s face; He seeks to hide His countenance, He whose countenance forms the beatitude of angels and saints; and He is so disfigured as to seem a leper, so abject that no one “has made any account of Him”. To such a state have our sins reduced Him: “Truly He has taken upon Himself our infirmities and has borne our sorrows [infirmities and sorrows consequences of sin] ...He was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our crimes... The Lord made to fall upon Him the iniquities of us all”. But to such a state has His love also reduced Him, a love that made Him freely embrace the Passion; and having embraced it “because He willed it”, He did not withdraw from His enemies, but spontaneously gave Himself into their hands. Let us remember the moment when Jesus, after having overthrown with His divine power the soldiers come to capture Him and having declared that, if He willed it, He could have in His defense legions of angels, lets Himself be taken and bound without the least resistance; let us remember when, already prisoner and condemned He does not hesitate to say to the Roman governor: “You would have no power over Me, if it were not given you from above” (Jn. 19, 11). Jesus is the victim that goes spontaneously to sacrifice, is the victim that immolates Himself for love and with full liberty. Supreme love and supreme liberty, because they are the love and liberty of God.

Colloquy

“In what state do I intuit You, sweet Jesus! O sweetest and most loving good Jesus! They have martyred You with the multiple wounds of scourges and nails, they have crowned You with thorns! How many, good Jesus, are those who strike You! Your Father strikes You, since He did not spare You, but delivered You up as victim for us all. And You strike Yourself, offering Your soul to death, that soul which no one can take from You, without You. And the disciple strikes You too, who betrays You with a kiss. And the Jew strikes You with kicks and slaps; and the gentiles strike You with scourges and with nails. Behold, how many persons, how many humiliations, how many executioners!

“And how many, Your traitors! The celestial Father betrayed You for us all; and You betrayed Yourself, as St. Paul joyously sang: He loved me and betrayed Himself, for me.

“That exchange is in reality marvelous! The Master betrayed Himself for the servant, God for man, the Creator for the creature, the Innocent for the sinner. And You delivered Yourself into the hands of that traitor, of the false disciple. The traitor delivered You to the Jews. The most wicked Jews delivered You to the gentiles for the mockeries, the spittings, the flagellation, the crucifixion. You had said these things, You had predicted them: they came to pass. And, all things consumed, behold, You are crucified and placed among the wicked. They moved also that You be wounded! They added other wickednesses upon the sorrow of Your wounds, and to You — burning with thirst — they gave the potion of myrrhed wine mixed with gall.

“I weep over You, my King, Lord and Master, Father and Brother of mine, most loving Jesus” (St. Bonaventure).