Friends at Court.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 13, 28 March 1901, Page 7

Friends at Court.

GLEANINGS FOR NEXT WEEK'S CALENDAR. March 31, Sunday.— Palm Sunday. April 1, Monday. — Feria. St. Francis de Paul. „ 2, Tuesday. — Feria. „ a, Wednesday. — Feria. „ 4, Thursday — The Last Supper, „ 5, Friday.— Good Friday. „ t>, Saturday.— Holy Saturday. GOOD FRIDAT. No aspect of our Blessed Lord's life is made so much of by the Saints as Ilia sufferings ; and at the same time nothing is so neglected, or indeed contemned, by unbelievers and by worldly Christians. ' All the saints,' says St. Alphonsus, ' cherished a tender devotion towards Jesus Christ in His passion ; this is the only means by which they sanctified themselves.' 'He who desires,' says St. Bonaventure, ' to go on advancing from virtue to virtue, from grace to grace, should meditate continually on the passion of Jesus. 1 Indeed, the sufferings of the God-Man are the most mysterious part of the mystery of the Incarnation. He would have redeemed us without them. Even His Divine wish to satisfy for us to the utmost rigor of justice would have been fulfilled by the shedding of a single tear, the sacrifice of only one drop of His blood — either of these acts would have sufficed to atone to the full for the sins of ten thousand worlds. On the other hand, it were blasphemy to say that God rejoices in human suffering, as such ; to hold, as heretics have done, that God imputed human sin to Him, and delighted in the agonies which that Bin brought upon Him. Why, then, did He choose to suffer 1 and to Buffer so terribly that as Hiß interior suffering and sadness were greater than any other earthly anguish could be, so His bodily suffering was more intense than mortal man has ever endured I ' The first cause of the Passion,' says St. Thomas of Aquin, ' was that he wished it to be known how much God loved man.' It ia not difficult to understand the connection. An act of the will, or, as we say, of the heart, may be strong and intense ; but, unless it is done under stress of pain, it ia wanting in a certain species of intensity. You may test this in your own experience. There ia a moment when, let us say, you kneel before the altar of God, happy, contented, peaceful and full of joy ; your heart lifts itself up to God in sweet and earnest prayer, and your whole being experiences the feeling that to love God and to belong to Him is indeed the only delight that existence could offer. Then, let us suppose, you are suddenly pierced by some sharp arrow of suffering ; by some loss, grief, scorn, or physical pain, which in an instant diffuses the fire of throbbing anguish through your mental and physical being. Observe what happens. Up to that moment you were unconscious of self. Things ran so smoothly, so peacefully, so pleasantly, that you seemed to have merged your weak nature in God and God'a love ; and, as far as it went, your adhesion to God was genuine. Now there instantly starts up into sight your eelf — with all its susceptibility and selfishness ; your self, which comes and stands importunate ;beside you, protesting, crying, wailing, resisting. Thereupon one of two things happens : either your adhesion to God is broken, your recollection scattered, and your loving activity stopped dead, by your attention to that hurt and smarting self ; or else you refuse to be turned from God even by the excess of pain, you seize the pain itself and offer it, turning it into fuel to feed the flame of your heart, and so you intensify indefinitely the act of your union and your love. We cannot make too much of the stupendous fact that Christ suffered all his life— in every variety of pain and anguish beyond what it was possible for mere mortal men to suffer. Suffering in the exercise of her divine and austere mission, was waiting for Him when He set His foot upon the earth. She stood beside the crib at Bethlehem, and accompanied Him in the wanderings of His infancy. She dwelt within the walls of the holy house, cherished by Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. When He went forth upon His Father's business she trod the ways of Judea and Galilee by Hia side, and led Him by hand to toil, to contempt, to ingratitude, to cold, to hunger, and watching. She caused Him to feel the Borrows of His mother. She let Him taste the bitterness of being disowned by the high and by the lowly, rejected by His own people, distrusted by the little children. She wrung from Him in the garden that cry of anguish prophesied long before: 'Save me, O God, for the waters have broken in even upon my soul ! ' She beckoned Him to the pretorium, and to the mockery and horror of the crowning with thorns. She laid the cross upon His bleeding shoulders and went before Him on the road to Calvary. Then she stood still on the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense, where bitterness was to be supreme and sacrifice was to go up to the heavens ; she stood still and pointed to the cross and the nails ; and He said : ' Behold I come ! ' And when the cross had been lifted up, suffering, for yet three hours — and then her mibsion was at an end ; and as when a dark cloud breaks and the rains stream upon the earth, suffering since that day has fallen on men and women in every age and over all the world, and every drop has been full of the fragrance of the Cross (Bishop Hedley).