Volume II, Treatise VII, Chapter II

How Profitable and How Pleasing to God It Ts, to Meditate Upon the

passion of our Saviour.

“THere is nothing,” says St. Austin, “‘ conduces more to salvation, than always to think what the God-man has suffered for us.”— (Serm. lii. ad frat. in Eremo.) And St. Bernard says, “that nothing is more efficacious, for the curing the wounds of our conscience, and purifying our souls, than continually to meditate on the sufferings of Jesus Christ.”—(Serm. Ixii. sup. Cant.) It is also, as the saints affirm, a great help against all sorts of temptations, and particularly against those of impurity, to have recourse to the meditation of the passion of Jesus Christ, and to hide ourselves in his wounds. Lastly, it is an universal remedy against all sorts of evils, to think of Jesus Christ crucified. And St. Austin assures us of this, from his own experience, when he says, “I found not in all my necessities a more efficacious remedy than the wounds of Christ.”—-(In Manual, c. 22.). St. Bonaventure also tells us, “that he who devoutly applies himself to meditate upon the life and death of Jesus Christ, finds there very abundantly all things he stands in need of, and needs to seek for nothing out of Jesus Christ.”—(Coll. 7.) So that we see, this practice was very familiar to the saints, and it was by this means they attained so high a degree of sanctity and perfection.

Though this exercise should produce nothing else, but to make us think of God, and cause us to call to mind the benefits we have received from him, yet it would be sufficient, and always of great merit in his sight. It is one of the properties of love to make us feel delight when’we are thought of by the person beloved; and when we know that the person often thinks of the services we have done him, and that he is pleased to entertain himself therein, these marks of tenderness afford greater joy than the most magnificent gifts in the world could do. It is thus, a lady of rank having a son travelling amongst strangers in a distant country, being told that he speaks of nothing but of the favours and benefits he has received from her, and of the obligations he has to her, is a thousand times more touched and pleased, than if he presented her with all the rarities of the countries he is travelling through. God does the same; because in this, as in other things, he observes the law of love; and remains in the same condition those are in, who truly and tenderly love; and, therefore, he is very well pleased we should think of him, and of those favours he has bestowed upon us, and of the wonders he has wrought for us; nay, we ought to entertain ourselves so much the more in this exercise, because we cannot practise it for any long time, but the consideration of so great benefits will excite us to love and serve him with all our strength.

Blosius relates, that one day God revealed to St. Gertrude, that as often as any one looked devoutly upon an image of Jesus crucified, so often he would draw upon himself the eyes of the divine mercy. Let us profit by this instruction, and since he has _ not disdained to suffer for us, let us not disdain, at least, to think of what he has suffered. It is related of St. Francis, that as he one day passed full of tears and sighs by our lady of Portiuncula, he was met by a servant of God, who, knowing him, and seeing in him such marks of affliction, and believing that some great misfortune had happened unto him, asked him what it was? I weep and sigh, says the saint, that my Saviour has suffered so much, and that men who were the cause of his sufferings, think so little of the greatness of the obligation they have to him.

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