XII. Jesus dies upon the Cross

“And Jesus crying with a loud voice said: Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit. And saying this, He gave up the ghost.” After three hours of indescribable sufferings, Jesus dies. The only oblation worthy of God, the one sacrifice that redeems the world, and sanctifies souls, is consummated: Una enim oblatione consummavit in sempiternum sanctificatos.

Christ Jesus had promised that when He should be lifted up from the earth, He would draw all things to Himself : Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad metpsum. We belong to Him by a double title: as creatures drawn out of nothing by Him, for Him: as souls redeemed by His Precious Blood: Redemisti nos, Domine, in sanguine tuo. A single drop of the Blood of Jesus, the Man-God, would have sufficed to save us, for everything in Him is of infinite value ; but, besides many other reasons, He willed to’ shed His Blood to the last drop in causing

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His Sacred Heart to be pierced so as to manifest to us the extent of His love. And it was for all of us that He shed it; each one can repeat in all truth the burning words of St Paul: ‘“‘He loved me, and delivered Himself for me.”’

Let us implore Him to draw us to His Sacred Heart by the virtue of His death upon the Cross; to grant that we may die to our self-love and our self-will, the sources of so many infidelities and sins, and that we may live for Him Who died for us. Since it is to His death that we owe the life of our souls, is it not just that we should live only for Him? Ut et qui vivunt, jam non sibi vivant, sed et que pro tpsts mortuus est.

O Father, glorify Thy Son hanging upon the gibbet. Since He humbled Himself even to the death of the Cross, exalt Him: may the name that Thou hast given Him be glorified ; may every knee bow before Him, and every tongue confess that Thy Son Jesus lives henceforward in Thy Eternal glory !