But if thou hast no mind either to laugh or to cry,thou oughtest to meditate on it in the dryness of thy heart,to My honour and praise,by doing which thou wilt have done no less than if thou hadst been dissolved in tears or steeped in sweetness;for then thou actest from love of virtue,without regard to thyself.And that thou mayest take it all the more to heart,listen to what follows.Such is My severe justice that it permits no wrong deed in all nature,be it great or small,to pass without atonement and without being made good.Now,how should a great sinner,who has perhaps committed more than a hundred mortal sins,and for every mortal sin subjected himself,by the law of My Church,to do penance seven years long,or else to complete his upperformed penance in the furnace of grim purgatory--how should such a miserable soul fulfill her penance?When would there be an end to her sighs and tears?Oh,how long,how much too long,would it not appear to her!Behold,she has speedily made all good by means of My innocent,meritorious Passion!with reason,then,let her grasp the treasure of My acquired merits,and apply it to herself,in virtue of which,even if she ought to burn a thousand years in Purgatory,she will be able,in a short time,to discharge her guilt and penance,so as to attain heaven without any purgatory at all.
The Servant.--O tender and Eternal Wisdom,teach me this in Thy goodness;how glad should I be to make such a grasp!
Eternal Wisdom.--The way to make such a grasp is this.Let a man often and seriously weigh with a penitent heart the greatness and multitude of his evil deeds,by which he has so wantonly incensed the eyes of his Heavenly Father;in the next place,let him account as nothing the works of his own satisfaction,since,reckoned against his sins,they are but as a little drop in the deep ocean;and then,let him confidently weigh the immeasurable greatness of My satisfaction;for the least drop of My precious Blood,which everywhere flowed without measure out of My body,would alone suffice to atone for the sins of a thousand worlds.Every man,therefore,appropriates so much of My satisfaction to himself,in proportion as he assimilates himself to Me by sympathetic participation in My sufferings.Moreover let a man humbly and modestly merge the smallness of his works in the greatness of My satisfaction or atonement.And to tell it thee in a few words,know then,that all the masters of numbers and measures would be unable to calculate the immeasurable benefit which lies hidden in the zealous meditation of My Passion.
CHAPTER XV.From The Fond Caresses Which The Soul Has Has With God Beneath The Cross,She Returns Again To His Passion The Servant.
--Thou hast revealed to me the measureless sufferings which Thou didst suffer in Thy exterior Man on the gibbet of the cross,how cruelly tormented Thou wast,and encompassed about with the bands of miserable death.Alas!Lord,how was it beneath the cross?Or was there not one at its foot whose heart was pierced by Thy woeful death?Or how didst Thou bear Thyself in Thy sufferings towards Thy sorrowing Mother?
Eternal Wisdom.--Oh,listen now to a woeful thing,and let it sink into thy heart.When,as thou hast heard,I hung suspended in mortal anguish before them,behold,they stood over against Me,and,with their voices,called out scoffingly to Me,wagging their heads contemptuously,and scorning Me utterly in their hearts,as though I had been a loathsome worm.
But I was firm amidst it all,and prayed fervently for them to My heavenly Father;behold,I,the innocent Lamb,was likened to the guilty thieves;by one of these was I reviled,but by the other invoked.I listened to his prayer and forgave him all his evil deeds.I opened to him the celestial paradise.Hearken to a lamentable thing.I gazed around Me and found Myself utterly abandoned by all mankind,and those very friends who had followed Me,stood now afar off;yea,My beloved disciples had all fled from Me.Thus was I left naked,and stripped of all My clothes.I had lost all power Andes without victory.They treated Me without pity,but I bore Myself like a meek and silent lamb.On whichever side I turned I was encompassed by bitter distress of heart.Below Me stood My sorrowful Mother,who suffered in the bottom of her motherly heart all that I suffered in My body.My tender heart was,in consequence,deeply touched,because I alone knew the depth of her great sorrow,and beheld her distressful gestures and heard her lamentable words.I consoled her very tenderly at My mortal departure,and commended her to the filial care of My beloved disciple,and gave the disciple in charge to her maternal fidelity.
The Servant.--Ah,gentle Lord,who can here refrain from sighing inwardly,and weeping bitterly?Yes,Thou beautiful Wisdom,how could they,the fierce lions,the raging wolves,be so ungentle to Thee,Thou sweet Lamb,as to treat Thee thus?Tender God,oh,that Thy servant had but been there to represent all mankind!Oh,that I had stood up there for my Lord,or else had gone to bitter death with my only Love;or,had they not chosen to kill me with my only Love,that I yet might have embraced,with the arms of my heart,in sorrow and desolation,the hard stone socket of the cross,and,when it burst asunder for very pity,that my wretched heart,too,might have burst with the desire to follow my Beloved.
Eternal Wisdom.--It was by Me from all eternity ordained,that when My hour was come,I alone should drink the cup of My bitter Passion for all mankind.But thou,and all those who desire to imitate Me,deny yourselves,and take up,each of you,your own cross,and follow Me.For this dying to yourselves is as agreeable to Me as though you had actually gone with Me to bitter death itself.
The Servant.--Gentle Lord,teach me then,how I should die with Thee,and what my own cross is.For,truly,Lord,since Thou hast died for me,I ought not to live any more for myself.
