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QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY ~ THE BLIND MAN OF JERICHO

(Read Luke xviii, 32-43.)

CONSIDER FIRSTLY how your soul is represented in the poor blind man of Jericho who sat by the public roadside, begging the passers by to give him something whereby to sustain his life. So also it is with you. You are blind to divine things and to the eternal truths, and are willfully so because you apply your mind but little to them, being altogether intent on those of this present life. You are weak in will and in virtue, since till now you have sat carelessly, not taking a single step towards a better life. You have been begging from creatures the satisfaction of all your desires.

APPLICATION: Acknowledge and deplore your own wretchedness. Humbly beg of God to give you grace to arouse yourself from so deplorable a state.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord is careful of me. (Ps. xxxix, 18.)

CONSIDER SECONDLY that the only hope that the blind man of Jericho could entertain was to have recourse to Jesus with confidence, courageously ignoring the reproaches that were uttered against him and the difficulties placed in his way. They rebuked him that he should hold his peace. But he, raising his voice, cried out much more: Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

APPLICATION: You also in order to be freed from your miseries must have recourse to the infinite goodness of God. But to do this you will have many difficulties to meet with, much opposition to overcome. You have to conquer the tumultuous passions within you, the numerous difficulties from without, made by your friends in their pretended love for you. You have to resist the inclinations of your senses, the attractions of the world, the temptations of the devil. Above all you have to cast off the evil habits you have contracted, like the blind man: who casting off his garment leaped up. (Mark x, 50.) Remain but firm against all these attacks and persevere in imploring God’s help. And your prayers also will certainly be heard.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: I am poor and needy, help me. thou art my helper and my deliverer, O Lord make no delay. (Ps. lxix, 6.)

CONSIDER THIRDLY what Christ said to the blind man: What wilt thou that I do to thee? Showing by these words His willingness to grant him any favour. Imagine that our Blessed Lord addresses the same question to you, wishing to give you more than you can desire. But He would have you also ask and merit the grace by your faith and by your persevering prayer, so that He may have occasion to say to you as He said to the blind man: thy faith has made thee whole.

APPLICATION:The blind man asked but for his sight as a sure remedy for all. You should above all implore Him to enlighten your mind, this being the surest way of correcting your faults and of following in the footsteps of Christ, even as did the blind man in to-day’s gospel who, as we read, followed Him, glorifying God.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: Open thou mine eyes, and I shall see the wondrous things of thy law. (Ps. cxviii, 18.)

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MONDAY AFTER QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY ~ ON NOT TAKING SCANDAL

You cannot serve God and Mammon. (Matt. vi, 24.)

CONSIDER FIRSTLY that a good and useful practice, for one who wishes to live a truly Christian, is the observance of that counsel which God gave His people when they were going into the captivity of Babylon. You, He said, on entering the city will see it full of false gods, borne in triumph through the public streets by a foolish people. Let not yourselves be seduced into even thinking of venerating them, but remember that I am the true God. Worship me therefore in the depths of your heart. (Baruch vi, 2-4.)

APPLICATION:  You too will encounter your difficulties in remaining faithful to the maxims of our holy faith, amidst so many who speak and act at variance with it, one in the pursuit of pleasure, another of money, another of honour. It is within yourself that you must correct the error by which these are deceived, and promise that it is Christ only you will adore, poor and hanging on the cross. Beware lest the evil example of others pervert your mind, so that you come to despise the good which is true and eternal.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: How good is God to Israel, unto them that are of an upright heart. (Ps. lxxii, 1.)

CONSIDER SECONDLY what a force for perversion from the better way is the example of the many powerful who worship present goods. It may not be difficult for you to despise the false judgments of utter worldliness, but oh, how difficult it may be to despise those of persons who are living with you, some of whom are your inferiors in age, and gifts, while others are your superiors. How often it will happen that the very persons who should help you to live a more perfect life lead you on to worship the vanities of the world.

APPLICATION: No matter then who they are who are inordinately attached to this world’s goods, you must set your face against all such vanity and fight courageously against the error of the many, even as Tobias did on seeing the people adore idols of Jeroboam, when all went to the golden calves, he alone fled the company of all, and went to Jerusalem, to the temple of the Lord and there adored the Lord God of Israel. (Tob. i, 5-6.)

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS. As for me I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy, in thy fear will I worship towards thy holy temple. (Ps. v, 8-9.)

CONSIDER THIRDLY how you should act, having before you the examples of persons so misguided. To oppose them openly might  be for you an enterprise too difficult, but in your heart at least you must remain firm against their maxims. Say you in your heart: thou oughtest to be adored, O Lord. (Bar. vi, 5.)

APPLICATION: This then you must do, not once only, but whensoever the bad example of behaviour or of conversation might draw you away to vanities. Thus act promptly as occasions may arise, and it will serve to keep you faithful in not abandoning the true God for an idol that is false.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: Blessed is the man who trusts in the name of the Lord, and who hath not had regard to vanities and lying follies. (Ps. xxxix, 5.)

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TUESDAY AFTER QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY ~ THE MISERY OF THE WICKED

The rich man also died, and he was buried in hell. (Luke xvi, 22.)

CONSIDER FIRSTLY how little the joy of the wicked in this world is to be envied. Who amongst them can boast of having tasted contentment even for a single year? And in a whole year they will hardly have enjoyed one single day. They have passed their days in feasting and in rioting; but meantime how much bitterness has been continually their portion in the pursuit of the satisfaction of their desires.

APPLICATION: This bitterness is far more galling than anything to be met with in a virtuous life. Were there nothing more than the torment of their conscience, this alone would render them miserable. Surely pity rather than envy them.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: Destruction and unhappiness are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. (Ps. xiii, 3.)

CONSIDER SECONDLY what holy Job said of such men: They pass their days in wealth, in a moment they go down to hell. (Job xxi, 13.) By a long sorrowful vigil they pay for the brief enjoyment they have senselessly given themselves on earth. How far more desirable were it to pass one’s days here in prayer, in penance, in poverty, so as to enjoy the eternal feast hereafter, rather than after having tasting a few days’ enjoyment in this world to pass to so terrible and endless a state of misery.

APPLICATION:  And so it will be with those who indulged their proud inclinations. They will become the eternal slaves of Satan bound down in fetters and chains. Those who yielded to avarice during life will find themselves in the most miserable poverty, deprived of every joy and comfort. They who here indulged gluttony will suffer an uninterrupted fast. Those who indulged their bodily senses will be tormented with fire, a prey to a thousand kinds of torture, and this for an endless term. Consider therefore well whether it be worth while to make festival, that must be followed by consequences so terrible and eternal.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: I thought upon the days of old and I had in my mind the eternal years. (Ps. lxxvi, 6.)

CONSIDER THIRDLY that to add to these awful evils we are told this sad change will be the work of a moment: in a moment they go down to hell. How much more fearful then will be made the sudden change from laughter to tears, from merriment to suffering, from self-indulgence to torment? It is also well said that: in a moment they go down to hell. Frequently in the very midst of these entertainments they are carried off by sudden death. Perhaps even under the very weight of their iniquities and in the midst of their diversions, they are cast down straight into hell, without even time  to look to themselves, and fall into that awful prison almost without knowing that they are falling into it.

APPLICATION:  Realise as best you can the misery of these worldly people, and thank God for the better life which in His mercy He has called you.

AFFECTIONS AND RESOLUTIONS: Is not their exultation cut down. And hath not fire destroyed the remnants of them? (Job xxii, 20.)

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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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