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ASH WEDNESDAY ~ THE SPIRIT OF LENT

Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance. (Matt. iii, 8.)

CONSIDER FIRSTLY that God made man immortal in his soul, and as regards his body: God created man incorruptible. (Wisd. Ii, 23.) He enriched him with grace and original justice, in consequence of which he enjoyed full dominion over his passions and over all creatures, and so he would after a short time have passed from the earthly paradise to be eternally happy with God in that of heaven. When however Adam disobeyed the divine precept, he was deprived of all these gifts and condemned for nine hundred years to the most bitter penance for his sin, but even this would not have sufficed to efface his guilt without the infinite merits of our Blessed Redeemer.

APPLICATION:  As often as you have sinned so often have you repeated all the evil which Adam did himself and all his posterity. For all these sins what penance have you done up to now? As the merits of Christ sufficed not to expiate original sin without Adam’s penance, neither will they be sufficient to atone for your faults without your penance also. Begin at least now in these days of Lent, which is a time of penance.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: I have declared my life unto Thee; Thou hast set my tears in Thy sight. (Ps. lv, 9.)

CONSIDER SECONDLY that just as rebels are not only despoiled of their property and condemned to punishment, but that their very dwellings are overthrown, so in the same manner Adam’s earthly habitation, that is to say his body, was condemned to be destroyed by death and to return to dust. Remember man, dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. (Gen. Iii, 19.)

APPLICATION: You also as a child of Adam and an heir to his ills are condemned to die, and doubly condemned on account of your own sins. How is it possible then that you can think so seldom of death, and live as much attached to the earth as if you were never to leave it? Think about your last journey, and think of it often. In this way death, which has been imposed upon man as a chastisement for his faults, will by the remembrance of it during life keep you from falling into fresh faults.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: Remember what my substance is, for hast Thou man all the children of men in vain? Who is the man that shall live and shall not see death? (Ps. lxxxviii, 47-48.)

CONSIDER THIRDLY how Holy Church on this solemn day sprinkles ashes on your head, and this for two reasons. The first is to remind you more vividly that in a short time you will have to leave this world, and your body will be reduced to ashes and become the food for loathsome worms. The second is that you may learn to despise present and transitory things, and that you may provide for those that are future and eternal, by satisfying the divine justice and doing penance for your sins.

APPLICATION” Therefore, memento mori, remember death and that you have to die. Do not pass a single day without thinking seriously of the shortness of life, of the certainty of death which is ever hanging over you and of an eternity for ever either happy or miserable that awaits you after death. Remember thy last end. (Ecclus. Vii, 40.)

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: Turn then, O lord, and deliver my soul; O save me for Thy mercy’s sake, for in death there is no one that is mindful of Thee. (Ps. vi, 5-6.)

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THURSDAY AFTER QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY ~ TO GETHSEMANE

But that the world may know, that I love the Father: Arise, let us go hence. (John xvi, 31.)

CONSIDER FIRSTLY that when the hour had come for Jesus to go to the garden of Gethsemane to begin His sorrowful Passion, He spoke these words to His disciples: But that the world may know, that I love the Father: Arise, let us go hence. As if He would say, in order that it may be manifest that I love my Heavenly Father with my entire heart, let us go quickly to execute what He has commanded Me: Arise, let us go hence. Hereby our Lord would give us to understand that the love of God does not consist in tender emotions or in tears, but in the prompt and joyful acceptance of sufferings, ignominy, and crosses for His glory.

APPLICATION:   Would you also know whether you really love God? See if you are ready to do the most difficult things commended or given you to do. See too whether you seize opportunities of understanding some laborious work for the glory of God, of bearing some infirmity of body or some slight upon your reputation, encouraging yourself by saying: Cheerfully will I meet this suffering or do this work, that the world may know that I love the Father. In this way may you be assured that you love God.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS:    How have I loved thy law, O Lord, it is my meditation all the day long. (Ps. cxviii, 97.)

CONSIDER SECONDLY  how Christ before entering the garden of Gethsemane. foretold to the Apostles the scandal that they would receive from His passion: All you shall be scandalized in me this night. (Matt. xxvi, 31.)  Very specially did Jesus address those words to St. Peter, who being the most fervent of all declared himself ready to follow our Blessed Lord and to die with Him. Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. (Luke xxii, 33.) Although our Lord warned him that he would not only abandon Him, but also deny Him three times, the Apostle persisted in believing rather what his own fervour dictated than what his Divine Master foretold. Hence we must not trust too much our good resolutions, which sometimes are very fervent in prayer but weak in the hour of temptation.

APPLICATION:  As often as you feel during this holy time in your heart a lively desire to go with Jesus to Calvary, ask Him humbly and fervently to give you grace to be faithful, acknowledging that without His assistance you will abandon Him more basely even than Peter did.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS.   Arise, O Lord, and help us, and redeem us for thy name’s sake. (Psxliii,26.)

CONSIDER THIRDLY  what the Lord added when speaking to Pete and to those who were with him: Behold satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. (Luke xxii, 31.) This would Satan especially do in the hour of their Master’s passion, that so they should forsake Him. The devil acts in a similar manner with us. Never does he give himself so much trouble to draw us away from the good and tempt us to evil, than when he sees us most desirous and anxious to do great things and suffer much for God.

APPLICATION:  Therefore, instead of presuming on your good desires, you must be the more diligently have recourse to prayer. You must be more humble in recommending your soul to God, according to the advice which our Lord gave His apostles: Pray that ye enter not into temptation.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS:  He was mindful of us in our affliction, for his mercy endureth for ever. (Ps. cxxxv, 23)

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FRIDAY AFTER QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY ~ ARRIVAL AT GETHSEMANE

He began to grow sorrowful and to be sad. (Matt. xxvi, 37.)

CONSIDER FIRSTLY that our Blessed Lord showed Himself more desirous to drink the chalice of His Sacred Passion than of all else: I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptised: and how I am straightened until it be accomplished? (Luke xii, 50.) Nevertheless when the hour of His passion arrived, He was seized in the garden by a very storm of terror, of fear, of weariness and of sadness. And why all this? Jesus might have kept far from His sacred humanity such overwhelming emotions, and have met death more joyfully than those martyrs who rejoiced in the midst of their torments. But no! He willed to suffer this violent anguish for our instruction and profit, to teach us that, within, a man may suffer the most terrible onslaught of anguish, whilst at the same time he possesses his souls in great virtue and so in peace. 

APPLICATION:   You Desire, for instance, to perform some act of humility, of charity, or some other virtue, but being surprised by a feeling of great repugnance towards that act you get confused, disturbed , and think you have lost the merit of your holy desire. But it is not so. On the contrary, this is the time to practice real virtue. For virtue does not consist in the tranquillity of our passions but in the firm resolution of the will, and in the overcoming of the impulse of our corrupt nature. This is why Jesus encourages you with His example to overcome them. No one was ever attacked by such violent feelings as those which Jesus overcame, when he went forth to meet the death of the cross for you. Does this not then suffice to encourage you to overcome the repugnances of your rebellious nature? – all the more so because our Blessed Lord has so merited for you special helps for you to come forth victorious. When therefore when you feel yourself assailed by violent temptations, think at once of Jesus suffering in the garden. Learn by the example of your chieftain the way to fight so as to carry off the victory.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS:    Though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death. I fear no evils, for thou art with me (Ps, xxii, 4.)

CONSIDER SECONDLY  how Jesus, oppressed by suffering and prostrate on the ground besought His Divine Father for help and comfort. It was not because He was not unable of Himself to remove this internal anguish, but in order to teach you where you must have recourse for help against the attacks of your enemies. In those moments of depression and sadness, you will not be able to pray with fervour nor implore God devoutly, but that is not necessary. Jesus even during His three hours’ prayers to His Father made no other prayer than to repeat the words: let this chalice pass from me: Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

APPLICATION:  Did you but know what strength and merit there is, when in the midst of internal desolation, in having recourse to God in prayer with humility and resignation, you would desire rather to spend one half hour in prayer in time of spiritual dryness, than many hours in the midst of consolation of spirit.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS:    In my affliction I called upon the Lord, and I cried unto God, and he heard me from his holy temple. (Ps, xvii, 7.)

CONSIDER THIRDLY  how our Blessed Saviour at the very height of His interior sadness forgets not His disciples. Nor neglect to warn them of their danger, to reprove their slothfulness and to exhort them to pray.

APPLICATION:  When you are tried by temptation, you immediately leave off what would prove to be your best help. You give up prayer and works of charity, whereas that is the very time to act with ore merit and with greater virtue. When in the midst of consolation you act well you are then pleasing yourself. But when, notwithstanding the bitterness of soul which you endure, you act well, you please God and are then practicing great virtue.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS:    He saw when they were afflicted and he heard their prayer. (PS, cv, 44.)

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SATURDAY AFTER QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY ~ PRAYER IN THE GARDEN

My soul is sorrowful onto death. (Mark xvi, 34.)

CONSIDER FIRSTLY the three principal causes of the interior suffering of Jesus in the garden. The first was to see arrayed before Him at a glance all the tortures and intolerable pains, all the contumely and insults, which He was to endure during the time of His approaching passion and death of the cross. Thus, finding Him deprived of all consolation, His soul was seized with an unutterable horror at the ocean of anguish which assailed it.

APPLICATION: When you see Jesus plunged in such bitter grief for love of you, will you not compassionate Him with true and loving tenderness? Thank Him at least for the inward sadness and affliction which for your sake He suffers, and let not those interior trials which sometimes afflict you in His service seem to you too heavy to be borne.

AFFECTION AND RESOLUTIONS : Save me O God, for the waters have come in even unto my soul. (Ps. xviii, 2.)

CONSIDER SECONDLY that another cause of the interior anguish of Jesus, was the affliction He endured at seeing clearly the enormity of the offences committed by men against His divine Father. As His love for the divine Father was unbounded, so likewise was the grief He suffered at beholding Him offended by us, especially since He, Who had made Himself our surety, was afflicted and grieved at our sins as if they had been His own. It was His divine will that this interior agony and affliction should be in proportion to the number and gravity of the sins of every kind, by which God was so grievously offended by mankind, and that all should behold in Him One who would adequately atone and grieve for so much wickedness.

APPLICATION: Never can you sufficiently detest your own sins, because you can never know the depths of their malice. Learn from Jesus to sorrow and to grieve for them as you ought, and in expiation for them offer your imperfect sorrow in union with the grief of this your Redeemer.

AFFECTION AND RESOLUTIONS: Mine eyes have sent forth springs of water, because they have not kept thy law. (Ps. cxviii, 136.)

CONSIDER THIRDLY a further cause of this sadness of our Blessed Lord, namely the sight of the vast multitude of men for whom His passion and death would be useless by reason of their malice and wickedness. He also beheld a large number of those, for whom  it would be less efficacious and fruitful, because of their tepidity in corresponding to the helps and graces which He merited for us. This grief and affliction was all pure suffering for Him, because unattended by the consolation of some good either for the glory of His Heavenly Father or for our welfare.

APPLICATION: To what extent have you added to the agony of Jesus by your ingratitude and luke-warmness? Is it possible that, instead of sharing the grief of Jesus and the suffering He bore for you in the garden, you rather increase them by your sinful and careless way of life? As then you have added to the inward affliction of Jesus by your faults, even so you can give Him some relief by a fervent life and thus render the merits of His most sacred passion more fruitful to your own soul.

AFFECTION AND RESOLUTIONS: Thy words have I hidden within my heart, that I may not sin against thee. (Ps. cxviii, 11.)

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