Advent Meditation~By St. Alphonsus de Liguori (December 14)

[Dawn Marie]

THE MYSTERIES OF THE FAITH

THE INCARNATION

Discourse by Saint Alphonsus de Liguori

December 14, 2014

 

Discourse 15

 

 

One day Jesus Christ appeared to Sister Magdalene Orsini, who had been suffering a heavy affliction for a long time, under the form of a crucifix, to comfort her by the remembrance of His Passion, and to animate her to bear her cross with patience. She said to Him:  “But Thou, my Lord, wast only three hours on the Cross, while I have suffered this pain for many years.”  Then Our Lord from the Cross replied:  “Ignorant creature that thou art! From the first moment that I was in the womb of Mary I suffered all that I had afterwards to suffer in my death.”

 

“Christ,” says Novarinus, “even in the womb of His Mother, had the impression of the Cross on His mind; so that no sooner was He born than He might be said to have the principality on His shoulders.”  So, then, my Redeemer, throughout Thy whole life I shall find Thee nowhere but on the Cross:  “Lord, I find Thee nowhere but on the Cross,” said Dragone Ostiense.  Yes, for the Cross on which Jesus Christ died was ever in His mind to torment him. Even whilst sleeping, says Bellarmine, the sight of the Cross was present to the Heart of Jesus:  “Christ had His Cross always before His eyes. When He slept, His Heart watched; nor was it ever free from the sight of the Cross.”

 

But it was not so much the sorrows of His Passion which saddened and embittered the life of our Redeemer, as the sight of all the sins which men would commit after His death. These were the cruel executioners which made Him live in continual agony, oppressed by such an overwhelming grief, that pain alone would have been enough to make Him die of pure sorrow. Father Lessius says that the sight alone of the ingratitude of mankind would have been sufficient to make Jesus Christ die of grief a thousand times.

 

The scourges, the Cross, death itself, were not hateful objects to Him, but most dear, chosen and desired by Himself. He had offered Himself spontaneously to suffer them:  “He was offered because it was His own will.” He did not give His life against His will, but by His own election, as He tells us by St. John:  “I lay down My life for My sheep.”

This was indeed the chief desire of His whole life, that the time of His Passion should arrive, that the redemption of mankind might be completed; for this reason He said on the night preceding His death:  “With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you before I suffer.”  And before this time arrived He seemed to console Himself by saying, “I have a baptism, wherewith I am to be baptized; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished? I must be baptized with the baptism of My own blood; not indeed to wash my own soul, but those of My sheep, from the stains of their sin; and how ardently do I desire the arrival of the hour when I shall be bleeding and dead on the Cross!” 

St. Ambrose says that the Redeemer was not afflicted by the fear of death, but by the delay of our redemption:  “Not from the fear of His death, but from the delay of our redemption.” 

 

In a sermon on the Passion, St. Zeno describes Jesus Christ choosing for Himself the trade of a carpenter in this world; for as such was He known and called:  “Is not this the carpenter, and the son of a carpenter?”  Because carpenters are always handling wood and nails, it would seem that Jesus exercising this trade took pleasure in such things, seeing that they represented to Him better than anything else the nails and the Cross by which He willed to suffer:  “The Son of God took delight in this work, in which the wood and the nails continually reminded Him of the Cross that awaited Him.”

 

Thus, to return to the point, we see it was not so much the thought of His Passion that afflicted the Heart of our Redeemer, as the ingratitude with which mankind would repay His love. It was this ingratitude which made Him weep in the stable of Bethlehem; which caused  Him to sweat blood in His deadly agony in the garden of Gethsemane; which filled Him with such sorrow that He says even that it alone was sufficient to make Him die:  “My soul is sorrowful, even to death.”  And, finally, this ingratitude it was which caused Him to die in desolation and deprived of all consolation on the Cross; “for“, says F. Suarez, “Jesus Christ wished rather to satisfy for the pain of loss due to man than for the  pain of sense.”  Therefore the pains which our Lord suffered in His soul were much greater than all those He suffered in His body.

[bernadette szczepkowski]

We adore thee O Christ and we praise Thee, because by Thy Holy Cross, Thou has redeemed the world.