The Sorrowful
Mysteries
Meditating on the
Passion ~ St. Alphonsus de Liguori
It was the sweet study of the crucifix which made St
Francis become a great seraph. He wept so continually in meditating on the
sufferings of Jesus Christ, that he had almost entirely lost his sight. On one
occasion, being found crying out loud and weeping, his companions asked him
what was wrong. “What ails me?” replied the saint, “I weep over the sorrows and
insults inflicted on my Lord, and my sorrow is increased when I think on those
ungrateful men who do not love Him, but live without any thought of Him.” Every
time that he heard the bleating of a lamb, he felt himself touched with
compassion at the thought of the death of Jesus, the Immaculate Lamb drained of
every drop of blood upon the Cross for the sins of the world. And therefore
this loving saint could find no subject on which he exhorted his brethren with
greater eagerness than the constant remembrance of the Passion of Jesus.
This then is the Book: Jesus crucified – which if we constantly
read it will teach us, on the one hand to have a lively fear of sin, and on the
other hand will inflame us with love for a God, Who is so full of love for us. We read in His Wounds the great malice of sin
which reduced a God to suffer such a bitter death in order to satisfy the
Divine justice, and the love which our Saviour has shown us in choosing to
suffer so much in order to prove to us how much He loved us.
Let us beseech the Divine Mother Mary to obtain for us
from her Son the grace that we also may enter into these furnaces of love, in
which so many loving hearts are consumed in order that our earthly affections
being there burnt away, we also may burn with those blessed flames which render
souls holy on earth and blessed in heaven. Amen.
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