Chapter XLVI. Of Meditation

IF you wish to spend some time in prayer—half an hour, or an hour, or more—you will do well to make a meditation on the Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, and in it always apply His actions to the particular virtue which you are seeking to gain.

Thus, if you are seeking to obtain patience, you would select for your subject of meditation the Mystery of the Scourging.

Consider, first, how after the command was given by Pilate, our Lord was dragged with scoffs and cries, by wicked men, to the place appointed for His Scourging.

Secondly, think how He was stripped by them with impatient fury of His garments, so that His most Pure Flesh was left naked and exposed.

Thirdly, consider how His innocent Hands were tightly bound with hard cords, and fastened to the pillar.

Fourthly, consider how His whole Body was torn and gashed with blows, so that His Divine Blood in streams ran down to the ground.

Fifthly, see repeated lashes fall upon the same place, exasperating the wounds already made.

Whilst you dwell upon these, or similar points of consideration, in order to gain patience, first apply your senses to feel, in the highest degree possible, the intense agony and acute suffering which your dear Lord endured in every part of His most Sacred Body, and throughout all of it at once.

Then pass to His interior Sufferings, and strive to enter into the meekness and patience with which He bore so great agonies in His most Holy Soul, and consider how, unsatisfied with these, He hungered to suffer even more excruciating sufferings for the glory of His Father and for our good.

Then see Him inflamed with the fervent desire that you should willingly bear your affliction, and still turning to His Father, behold Him praying for you, that He would vouchsafe to give you grace patiently to bear your cross, both that which is now weighing heavily upon you, and all others which may be laid upon you hereafter.

Here bend your will again and again to will to suffer all with a patient spirit; and then, turning to the Eternal Father, thank Him for having, out of His pure Love, sent His Only-begotten Son into the world to endure such bitter pain, and to intercede for you; then ask Him through the merit of the Works and Prayers of His Beloved Son, to grant you the virtue of patience.