The Dereliction on the Cross

by Archbishop, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning

"From the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth until the ninth hour; and about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" — Matt. 27:45-46

It was about the third hour when Jesus set out on the way to Calvary; and it was towards the sixth hour that He reached the place of His Passion. They stripped Him of His garments, and left Him sitting in the cold, withering morning wind; and they began to prepare the crosses of the crucifixion. He sat patiently waiting, in His wounds, upon the top of that hill; and at last, when the cross was ready, He was nailed upon it. The cross was lifted up in the eyes of men; and the Son of God was seen stripped and stretched upon it, hanging by the weight of His whole body upon the nails driven through His hands and feet. They then began to crucify the thieves that were with Him; and some time passed, while He was all alone in His agony.

They were so busy, they were so intent upon this work of death — plying the hammer and the nails in the cruel work of crucifixion — and the people who stood by were so fixed upon the scene of horror, that no one perceived that the sky was growing sickly, that the morning became yellow, that a mist was covering the sun, and that shadows like the shadows of the evening were falling upon the earth. These things they did not perceive, till of a sudden the thick darkness became palpable; they became conscious of it as in a moment. They felt it to be a portent and a sign of the anger of God. Thick darkness covered the hill of Calvary; and the people, one by one, began to stream away from the top of the mountain and from that sight of horror — struck with fear but not with repentance — overwhelmed by horror of that supernatural darkness.

And if there was fear upon Calvary, what was there in Jerusalem? If the birds became silent, and the creatures of the field herded together, as in some unwonted terror, what was the fear that fell upon men? What was the terror that fell upon the multitude who had cried out, "His blood be upon us, and upon our children"? (Matt. 27:25). They already saw the witness of God's wrath coming to take them at their word. Along the streets of Jerusalem men could not find their way; they encountered one another in the darkness; they fell flat on the earth for fear or sat on the doorsteps, not knowing where to find their home.

If there was fear in the streets of Jerusalem, what was there in the houses of Annas and of Caiaphas and of Pilate? What was there in the homes and in the hearts of those who had consciously shed the innocent blood? The darkness was also upon the Temple, and in the Holy of Holies; and the priests could not see to accomplish the sacrifice. The sacrifice was interrupted, and they could not see each other's face. The Sanctuary was filled with the tokens of the wrath of God and of the departure of His Presence. Such was the darkness which covered all the earth; and in the midst of it, and in a darkness — if possible, deeper than that which was visible — Jesus cried with a loud voice: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

Now, brethren, this is the part of our Lord's Passion to which I wish to draw your thoughts, and I wish to connect it with the profound truth on which our minds have been set in all the past days — I mean the sorrow for sin, the conversion of the soul, contrition of heart, the grace of compunction, by which we obtain pardon through the Most Precious Blood. But here is a wonder and a mystery. That God should become incarnate is in itself a mystery of faith; and yet, to God's omnipotence all things are possible. That God, being made man, should be tempted, seems to follow from the nature of His humanity — that being made man He should die is only the law of man, and He accepted it for our sakes; but that He should be forsaken of His Father, that His sinless soul should be darkened, that He should taste this penalty which is attached to guilt — this is indeed a mystery, this is a wonder which surpasses all beside. Let us, then, try to understand what was this dereliction, this isolation, this darkness, this solitude of the divine soul of Jesus—let us trace, as far as it is possible for us, what was its nature, what were its reasons, what are its instructions to us.

1. It consisted in three things; and the first of those three things was the unutterable and unconsoled and unrelieved pain of the body. When He was in His temptation, after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, angels came and ministered unto Him. He was refreshed in the faintness and in the exhaustion of His temptation. In the Agony of the Garden, when He sweat great drops of Blood, there was seen an angel from Heaven strengthening Him. Holy angels were about Him in His temptation and in His Agony; but upon the Cross — not one. There was no ray of consolation, no ministering of relief; He hung upon the Cross with the whole weight of His Sacred Humanity, and with the unrelieved anguish of His frame. As He had said before: "Thinkest thou not that I cannot ask my Father, and he would send me twelve legions of angels?" (Matt. 26:53). If He had had the will to ask it, there would have been angelic ministries in myriads round about Him. He had not the will to ask it: He deprived Himself of their ministry and of their relief; and He seemed to plead with His Father, as much as to say, "Thou knowest My need, and yet I will not ask it. Thou knowest well My weakness and My pain, and Thou couldst relieve Me if Thou wouldst; and if in Thy wisdom Thou seest it good, I trust Myself in Thy hands — I will not ask Thee."

It is impossible, dear brethren, for any words of ours to draw out, or in the least to describe, the agony of the Crucifixion; and for myself, I always feel when attempts are made to picture or to paint the agonies of the Cross that they not only fall short of our thoughts, but they seem to deaden our feeling. How is it possible to understand the agony of those cold wounds from a whole night of scourging, the long hours in which His Sacred Flesh was furrowed to the bone? And now those wounds, grown cold in the chill of the night, were opened once more upon Calvary, when from His Sacred Body they rudely dragged His garments, all clotted with dried blood and cleaving to His wounds. Who can conceive this bodily anguish?

Who can imagine the crown of thorns with which He had been twice crowned — which had been beaten upon His head, and had been torn from His head in the stripping, and again forced upon His brows — that crown of thorns, which hindered all power of resting His head upon the Cross; for if it touched the Cross, the thorns pierced deeper? Or who can conceive the rending of those wounds when — the sharp nails driven through His hands and feet — the whole weight of His body stretched and tore them open till the very structure of the hands and feet was distorted? Or who can conceive the thirst — the parching, the drying thirst of that Sacred Body, which wrung from Him the cry, "I thirst" — that is, the dying of the whole frame when the vital spirits ebbed, the draining of blood, the chilling of the wind, the fulfillment to the letter of the words of the Psalmist in prophecy: "My tongue cleaveth to the roof of my mouth. Thou hast brought me into the dust of death"? (Ps. 21:16).

Dear brethren, I cannot attempt — and I feel you would rather I should not attempt, but that I should leave to your hearts — the conception of the bodily pains of our Divine Redeemer. And all this without relief. There was no ministry of so much as one angel to help Him; there was no diminution of one anguish of the body; but He suffered to the last all the agony of His Crucifixion; and in the midst of it His Heavenly Father left Him there, to drink of the chalice which He had chosen, even to the last drop, and all alone to die.

2. But next there was a desolation, if possible, deeper still. It was not only for the three hours that He hung upon the Cross, but for three-and-thirty years He had been the Man of Sorrows. There were two thieves, two malefactors, crucified with Him, one on the right and one on the left, and they suffered the same bodily agony; but He had another anguish of which they knew nothing — there was the unimaginable loneliness of the Son of God.

The sympathy of the Son of God is so large that He can feel with and for every son of man. There is not among the sons of men any so outcast, with whom the Son of God cannot sympathize in all the largeness of His Sacred Heart, and all the tenderness of His manhood. He knows all our sorrows, He knows all our sadness, He knows all the wounds of our hearts, He knows even the miseries we have brought upon ourselves by sin; and though sinless Himself, He is touched by the feeling of our infirmities, and has compassion on us. But for Him there was no commensurate sympathy. He was in this creation of His own making, and in the midst of His own creatures, without the sympathy of one who could adequately sympathize with Him.

At the most we are but creatures — even His Immaculate and Blessed Mother, she was but a creature; and the sympathy of that immaculate heart, though the largest of all, was not adequate to the great sorrow of the Son of God. All His friends, all His disciples, all His brethren, all that were round about Him, were incapable of meeting the demands for sympathy, such as the Sacred Heart of Jesus needed. This was the filling up of the divine loneliness of the Sacred Heart through all His earthly life — the completion of those three-and-thirty years of absolute and divine solitude. We think He was alone when He was in the desert in His temptation. He was indeed alone, but not more alone than when He was in the crowded streets of Jerusalem. The Sacred Heart of Jesus was too large, too divine, to find any companion, any fellow; and upon the Cross those mental sorrows were at their full. All the streams had run into the deep sea of that last sorrow, of which He said: "My soul is sorrowful even unto death."

"My soul!" The whole abyss of that human and deified soul of the Son of God, with a capacity of sorrow beyond our imagination, was filled with sorrow — and even "unto death." What were those sorrows? First of all, for three-and-thirty years He had been in a world of sin, and in contact with sin. The Sinless One had breathed an atmosphere which is laden with our sins. He had looked upon countenances, of which every one bore the marks, and most of them the distortion, of sin. His ears had been filled with voices which had the sharpness of sin. Sin had come and breathed upon Him. Sin conversed with Him. Sin came and looked in His face. Sin came to Him, not knowing who it was; and the Holy One was surrounded — crowded upon by sinners. For three-and-thirty years He endured this agony; and the Agony in the Garden, when He sweat drops of blood, was but the last expression of that mental anguish which He had endured throughout all the long years of His earthly life.

He had not only lived in the midst of this atmosphere of evil, but He had been tempted. The tempter had drawn near to Him — the tempter, with insolence, had come to suggest evil to that divine and sinless Heart — to suggest to Him mistrust of His Heavenly Father, to suggest to Him presumption, to put before Him visions of ambition, of self-love, of vainglory. The anguish of that temptation can be known only to those that are sinless.

Besides this, for three-and-thirty years He had looked upon the vision of death — He, the Creator of all things, who knew the perfection of His own work, who knew to what pattern He had formed it, for what use and for what end — He saw it ruined and a wreck — trampled down, disfigured, dying daily. Lazarus in the tomb was a holy and beautiful example of that law of dissolution, compared with the universal death which He saw devouring His creatures — the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain together.

Once more. He could not trust even His own friends. There was one whom He had called to be a disciple, chosen to be an Apostle, one whom He had taught with His divine words, whom He had impressed with the miracles of His power, whom He had commissioned to go out and preach His kingdom, whom He had fed at last with His Body and Blood, whose feet He washed in that last night of His sorrow; and even he, His own familiar friend — he sold Him; and having sold Him, he betrayed Him; and betraying Him, he betrayed Him with a kiss.

There was another sorrow — He was hated of men. Have you ever been hated by anybody? Do you know what it is to have the malice of someone who hates you pursuing you everywhere? Or have you ever known what it is to be hated by someone who never takes the pains or trouble to pursue you? Are you conscious that to be the object of hatred to anyone, justly or unjustly, is an exceeding bitterness, and a pain whenever we remember it? Now He was conscious at all times that He was an object of universal and preternatural hatred by the multitudes of Jerusalem. He knew that He had been condemned unjustly, accused falsely; that lying witness had been borne against Him, but that men believed Him to be guilty of the blasphemies of which He was accused. God knew His innocence, and a handful of His disciples, and the poor it may be, for they "heard him gladly" (Mark 12:37); but the rulers, and the rich, and the Pharisees, and the scribes, and the lawyers, and the chief priests, and those who were the leaders of the people, and the multitudes who were deceived by them, believed Him to be guilty. They hated Him for His guilt. And they hated Him for His holiness too; He was the object of hatred, not only because they had accused and condemned Him, but because His presence rebuked them; and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, full of pity and compassion and tenderness and of pardon, giving His own life-blood for the salvation of His enemies, praying for them on the Cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34), the consciousness of that hatred was an intensity of anguish.

But, perhaps He had friends still that were faithful. There were indeed, loving hearts — there was His Immaculate Mother, always near the Cross; there was the Beloved Disciple, who never forsook Him; there was poor Mary Magdalen, who stood with the spotless and sinless. Where were the rest? Where was Peter? He was somewhere with his head covered in his mantle, weeping bitterly. And where were the rest? Scattered afar off — not a friend near Him: even His own dearest friends had forsaken Him.

And then, lastly, there was the greatest sorrow of the Son of God — the consciousness that in that hour the great sin of the world had been accomplished: that man had laid hands upon God, that after thousands of years of sin and of rebellion, he had overtaken Him at last. The divine presence being out of the reach of man, God had become incarnate. At last God was made man — God came into the midst of men — God was within the reach of the arms of men; and they laid hands upon Him, they scourged Him, they blasphemed Him, and they put Him to death. The world murdered its own Maker, and sinners slew their own Redeemer. The world shed the Blood of God; it stained itself, and imprecated upon itself the Blood of the Divine Innocent.

He foresaw in that hour the multitude of souls that, notwithstanding the shedding of His Precious Blood, would never be saved — the redeemed souls, who shall go down alive into Hell — souls in multitudes who should never hear His name, and would yet sin against Him — souls in multitudes, still worse, who having heard His name would still sin against Him — souls on whom He had poured out the grace of His Holy Spirit, and who nevertheless would do despite to Him, and perish impenitent, and go down, like the leaves in autumn, countless in their multitude, into eternal death. All these sorrows, these mental sorrows, which in prophecy were before Him all His lifetime, rose at last to their fullness, and inundated the Sacred Heart in the hour of His Passion. But there is still one more part of this suffering. He might well say on the Cross, "My friends, My friends, why have you forsaken Me?" but His true desolation was this, that He had to cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Ps. 21:2). That men forsake Me is no wonder — I know what is in man; but that Thou shouldst forsake Me? Why is it?

Now, brethren, we come to what I said in the beginning is a divine depth of mystery — round about which, indeed, we may walk in adoration; into which we shall never be able to descend — still there is somewhat of this mystery that we can understand. First of all, let us understand what that sorrow was not. It was not a separation of the Son from the Father. The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are one God — consubstantial, the Untreated, the Infinite, the Ever-Blessed; therefore it was nothing whatsoever of separation of the Son from the Father, or of the Father from the Son. Again: the Godhead and the Humanity in the One Person of Jesus Christ, from the moment of the Incarnation, by hypostatic union — that is, by union in one person — are indissolubly united to all eternity; and therefore those words did not import or imply a shadow of separation between the Godhead and the Manhood of Jesus Christ.

What, then, do they signify? Just as, in the Agony in the Garden, the light and the sweetness and the consolation of His Godhead were voluntarily withdrawn from the suffering of His Manhood, because He had chosen for our sakes to let in the full tide and flood of sorrow to fill His Sacred Heart, so upon the Cross. We know what follows after our sins — what darkness and desolation come upon us; but this comes from our corruption, from our rebellion, from the sin that is in us. The Son of God, the Holy One, had our humanity; but in that humanity there was no disorder, no corruption, no spot of sin, for He had deified our humanity; and therefore all that He suffered was by a voluntary act of His own — willingly withdrawing for a time the sweetness and the light and the consolation of His Heavenly Father. From the first moment of the Incarnation, as you know, the human soul of Jesus was in the beatific vision: with His human soul Jesus saw God; He loved God with His whole heart, and He worshipped God with His whole soul; and while He was on earth a wayfarer, He was already in the possession and fruition of the beatific vision.

But in the Agony in the Garden and in the three hours upon the Cross He voluntarily withdrew, as it were, the light and the sweetness which He always had by right as God, and by merit as Man. He allowed a veil, a cloud — as the darkness covered the sun at that hour — to spread over His soul. He allowed a darkness to be drawn between the sweetness and the light of His Godhead and His human soul; and why was this? It was for our sakes. It was as voluntary as His Incarnation, as His Temptation, as His Agony, as His Death; He was offered up, because He willed it; He was troubled in the Garden, because He willed it; He was desolate upon the Cross, because He willed it. It was His own voluntary act, and that for our sakes.

It was not only voluntary; it was also vicarious — it was suffered in our stead. And why? Because the penalty of our sin is separation from God; because separation from God is eternal death. Because the loss of God is Hell; because the penalty of sin is the loss of God. Because, even after death, those who are saved, unless their sins be perfectly expiated, will be detained from the vision of God; because in this life every sin we commit is followed by a shadow; and that shadow is darkness, and that darkness is a part of desolation. And because we are under this law, holy, just, and good, by which every sin is followed by the penalty of desolation, He who, to expiate all our sins and pains, voluntarily and vicariously suffered all that His sinless and Divine Soul could suffer, permitted Himself, in that moment of His agony, to be deprived of the sweetness and consolation and light even of His own Godhead. The inferior part of His Humanity, which suffered like as ours, was in the dust of death, in the sorrows of this world, and in the desolation of the hiding of His Father's face.

And now, why was this? First, as I have said, to make expiation. It was to expiate our sin and our pains, to save us from that and from worse. He endured it for our sakes; and He endured it that He might reveal His love. He had revealed His love by every manifestation, by works of mercy, by healing lepers, by giving sight to the blind, by raising the dead, by absolving the penitent. He had spoken words of grace such as never came out of the lips of man — words which were more than the words of man; and if men had had hearts to understand, they would have known them to be words of a Divine Person; but these things were not enough: they did not even yet persuade us of the great mystery of His love. He had need of another language, of other words, of something more articulate, something more convincing, something more persuasive: and what could that be?

Sorrow unto death, penalty even to the extreme verge of what is possible for the Son of God to suffer; and therefore He chose, voluntarily and vicariously, to endure all things that His Divine Soul could endure for our sakes, to convince us, if possible, of His love &151; if possible, to make us believe how much He loves us — if possible, to prevail over the hardness of our hearts, that we at last may be convinced and persuaded of the exceeding love of our Divine Redeemer, and all this to make us trust His love, that by love He may win our love again. He knew that it is not by command that we can be made to love Him, it is not by reasoning that the love of God is awakened in the heart, it is not by any means whatsoever save only by the manifestation of love. As we know among ourselves, it is love that awakens love, it is friendship that kindles friendship, it is the sensible manifestation of kindness and of tenderness of heart, of disinterested and self-denying love — it is this that awakens us to love again; so is it towards Him. And He therefore endured all things first, to persuade us to trust in His love.

The great sin of the world is that it does not trust in the love of God. It is your great sin. It is the cause of all your sins. You never could sin against God if you had the feeling of His love to you; you never could venture, you could not endure to do it. If you felt the love of God to you personally, as you feel the warmth of the noonday sun, it would be impossible with the knowledge of your heart to sin against Him. It would be morally impossible. It would be the violation of your new nature. He said: "Greater love hath no man than this: if a man give his life for his friends." (John 15:13). He has given His life for you. What can He say to you, what could He do for you, if this will not persuade you? Is it in the power of the Word of God to convince you of the love of Jesus Christ, if His agony on the Cross is not enough? Therefore, He is all day long saying these words to you: "O My friends, it was for you I was crucified. O My Beloved, it is you I have loved even unto death. O My children, for you I shed My Precious Blood. What more could I have done for you than that which I have done? What more could I have given than that which I have given? What more could I suffer for you than that which I have already suffered? But you will not come unto Me that you may have life — you will not believe My love. How often would I have gathered you under the shadow of My Cross! How often would I have covered you with the hem of My garment! For I have sought after you, to try and bring you within My own Sacred Heart; but ye would not."

He has been burning with love to us, and we have stood at a distance, cold and unmoved. He says to us from the Cross: "What more could I do? What more could I give? What more could I suffer? If there were anything I could suffer, I would suffer it still. If it were necessary to die again for you to save you, I would die again. If it were possible to suffer more, it should be suffered." And what is your answer? I do not mean in words, I mean in deeds. He says to us: "I have loved you not in word, but in deed. I have loved you not in professions, but in Passion and Death. I have loved you not in such protestations as Peter made to Me, but by a reality which no man can deny, no man can fail to understand. I suffered death upon the Cross for you. I was forsaken even of My Father; and that for your sakes."

Here, then, dear brethren, we have the meaning in some little measure, the mere outline of this dereliction of our Divine Lord. It consisted in the unrevealed agonies of the body, in the unconsoled sorrows of His Sacred Heart; and lastly, in that mysterious taste of darkness and desolation, in the withdrawal of the light and the sweetness of the countenance of God, even in the hour of His death.

Now, why was this? When we are in sorrow and in trouble of mind; when pains of body, sharp sicknesses, unkindness, ingratitude, the forsaking of friends, the bitterness of life; when dryness of heart, darkness of soul — when these things come upon us, we have no need to say, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" We know why, or we might know, and we ought to know in one moment. It is no mystery why we should be forsaken. Look back on your mortal sins in childhood and boyhood, and youth and manhood, and the mortal sins that you remember, and the mortal sins you have forgotten, and the mortal sins that you have not repented as you ought even to this day. We have no reason to ask, "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" Look back upon the cloud of venial sins, which through long years you have been committing — sins of self-love, sins of vanity, sins of sloth, sins of ingratitude, sins of neglect of God, sins of hardness of heart with the crucifix before your eyes, sins of voluntary coldness even in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament — look at that cloud of venial sins which you commit, perhaps every day of your lives. We have no need to ask, "Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

Once more. The sins of omission that you commit, the duties that you so readily leave undone, the acts of love and fidelity to our Divine Master which with such lukewarmness you offer to Him, the great want of generosity in all your life, the want of love responding to His love, and tenderness to His tenderness — surely these things explain why our hearts should be cold and dark, and our prayers dry, and why we should be buffeted with temptation, and why we should find no solace. We have no difficulty in understanding this. Nay, more — look at our instabilities. What a life is ours! We serve God by fits and by starts; we have cold fits and hot fits, like men in an ague, like those that are struck by fever — sometimes we are in earnest, sometimes we give up; we are carried away by gusts of temptation; a frown of the world will kill off all our good resolutions. Such is our life, perpetually tossed to and fro, like waves of the sea. Where is our stability? And if we are unstable, why is it? Because we do not love. A friend that loves a friend does not vary in his friendship. The variations of friendship show how shallow and how reckless our love is.

And lastly, I say reckless; and by reckless I mean this — that we live all the day long as if Christ had never died for us. Dear brethren, ask yourselves what one thing is there that you left undone yesterday for the recollection of the Passion of Jesus Christ — for I hope you were then remembering the day of His Agony in the Garden. You remember that we were yesterday on the eve of the day of His Crucifixion. We are in Holy Week and in the midst of the thoughts of the Passion of Jesus Christ. Is it the chief thought in your hearts? What did all this do for you yesterday, or what one thing did you do or leave undone for the love of our Lord in His Passion? And if this be so, we have no reason to wonder that we have sorrows, pains, chastisements, rods, visitations, desolations. We lose the light of our Father's countenance. The sweetness and the consolation which we had once, it may be, are gone. We have them no longer; but the fault is our own.

Well, now let us learn for what end and purpose this is. If Jesus Christ did not love us, He would leave us to sin and to prosper, He would leave us to go on as we are, and to enjoy the world. These are the words of God: "Whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth; and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." (Prov. 3:12; Heb. 12:6). If you be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are you no true sons of God. The sign and the token of the love of our Divine Lord is when He takes the thorns of His Crown and puts them into our head, and the nails of His Crucifixion and runs them into our hands and feet; the feet which we have used to do evil and to walk in ways contrary to His will, them He crucifies; and the hands that have been busy in vanity and folly and worldliness, and worse — on them in His love He will imprint the marks of His own Crucifixion; and upon the heart that has been unfaithful to Him, that has been wandering, selfish, careless, self-indulgent, He impresses the tokens of His Passion.

By crosses, sicknesses, visitations, bereavements, afflictions, chatisements, and rods — by those sacred spiritual visitations of desolation and of dryness — by these He wakens us up to know Him; to see that we are offending against Him, and that the penal consequences of our sins and faults have found us out. He permits them to come upon us, and permits them in pity for our sanctification. He knows that without them we cannot be saved; He knows that without them we should sin and prosper, that we should go on in our worldly way, and should never see God; and therefore He uses these things with a manifold wisdom, with an exceeding tenderness. He uses them first to check us, and if need be, to strike us down.

A sinner in the guilt of his sin is struck down sometimes like Saul on the way to Damascus. A light from Heaven which no eye but his can see, and he alone can recognize, strikes him down with the consciousness of himself, so that when he rises up he is blind to the world, and his eyes are opened upon his own state, his own peril, and his own guilt. It is in times of affliction, sorrow, sickness, anxiety, and pain of heart and mind — and in these last above all — that this loving stroke of our Divine Saviour's hand is felt. He sends or permits these desolations and sorrows to chastise us, to make us recollect what it is we have done. I dare say you all know what it is to feel sad and cast down, and to say: "I do not know why it is — I know there is some cause; and I know I felt it, and knew it at the moment; but I cannot remember now what it is that has brought me this sadness." After a little pause of thought, we trace out the real reason — we remember what it was; we have found how justly He has dealt with us; and this chastisement gives us a self-knowledge, without which there is little contrition. Moreover, it is by these trials that He puts to test the love that we profess to Him.

It is a poor love which is warm only in the sunshine. It is a mean love of God which does not burn even under a cross. If we only serve God because it is sweet — if we only turn from sin because we are afraid of Hell — if our motives for doing right, are that we have a servile fear of doing wrong, we are mercenaries and hirelings, we are unworthy of the pure and generous love of Jesus Christ. He, the sinless Son of God, endured all things for us — not for His own sake, but solely and purely for ours; and we serve Him only for our own. It is by these penal consequences of our sins that He tests our love and purifies it, that He cleanses it of self-love, self-indulgence, and of all that dwelling upon self, of wounded self, of that pity for ourselves, springing from the self-love of our heart which towards God is — I will not say dead, but that it has little pulse and little warmth within it.

Lastly, whatever sorrows you have of the body, of the mind, or of the soul, these are intended to produce in you one thing above all — that is, compunction. Compunction means sorrow for sin, springing from the love of the Five Sacred Wounds which Jesus suffered in our behalf. Attrition, as you know, means the sorrow of the heart that is bruised; contrition, the sorrow of the heart that is broken; compunction, the sorrow of the heart that is pierced with Jesus Christ. Until we have come to the foot of the Cross, and have contemplated the Five Wounds of our Divine Saviour, and the love of the Sacred Heart through His side opened by the lance, and until we have entered into His love, and sorrowed because of that love, and because of our own want of love, and because of our own ingratitude, our sorrow is not worthy of the name of compunction.

He is perfecting in you this generous sorrow. If you are suffering pains of body, unite them with the sufferings of Jesus Christ upon His Cross. If you have mental pains, sorrows of mind, trials of your family, ingratitude of friends, disobedience of children, the loss of those dear to you, whatsoever it be, unite them with the mental sorrows of Jesus dying upon the Cross. If you are suffering spiritual dryness and darkness, and desolation and distance from God, as you think, unite them with His Dereliction. Do not say, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Say, "My God, my God, I know well how I deserve this desolation. I know well how all my life has merited that I should be forsaken; but my hope is in Thy love, which has never forsaken those that trust in Thee."

Therefore, dear brethren, sum up all I have said, and sum it up in these two ways: first of all, choose of your own will, gladly and willingly, a lot of sorrow and of the Cross in this world, rather than a lot that is bright and fair. If they were both before you, held out in the hands of our Divine Saviour, the one the lot of His Cross, the other the happiness of this world, remember what was set before Him in the mountain: "All these things will I give thee, if thou falling down wilt adore me." (Matt. 4:9). Put the world aside — we cannot serve two masters — it is better to choose the lot that He chose for Himself; to be made like to Him even in His Cross. It is safer for us, because it is more generous towards Him. Next, if we have not the heart and courage to choose this for His sake, let us bless Him, if, contrary to our will, He choose it for us. If He sends us this very lot from which we shrink, then let us bless the wise and loving Physician, who, seeing that we are cowardly — that we have neither nerve nor firmness to take the knife to lay the wound open, and that the wound if it fester will bring death — let us bless Him that He in His love and tenderness has chosen the lot of the Cross for us, has given it to us, and that we have no choice to make but to accept it, to press it to our heart, to love it for His sake, and to pray to Him to give us grace to bear it.

We have offended against Him by every member of the body, by every faculty of the mind, by every passion of the heart, by every affection of the soul; and upon the Cross in His bodily pain, and in His mental sorrow, and in His spiritual desolation, He made a perfect and complete expiation for all our sins. They are all expiated; and in His Precious Blood they will all be washed away on one condition — that we are made like to Him; and if we can be made like to Him only by being crucified, then let us be crucified.¹ A will at variance with His will is sin and eternal death; a will crucified with His will is holiness and eternal life.

Let us pray Him, then, to do His own work in us; let us say to Him, "Lord, Thou wast crucified for me, crucify me with Thyself. I cannot save myself; Thou only canst save me — save me, lest I perish eternally." Pray Him to crucify the living will which is within you, for "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and concupiscences." This is the token of a Christian. Pray Him to do it until you can say these three words: "God forbid I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." (Gal. 6:14). And again: "With Christ I am nailed to the Cross, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself to death for me." (Gal. 2:19-20). Let us say to Him every day: "Lord, whether I live let me live unto thee, and whether I die, let me die unto thee, that living and dying I may be thine." (Rom. 14:8).

Notes

1. Thus Our Lord's expiation of our sins is assimilated to our souls through contrition, Confession, amendment of life and the doing of penance — these acts being efficacious through the life-giving grace of Jesus Christ.

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