I'm going to add something that I have on a tee shirt. The shirt features the Crucifixion and states:
If I'm OK, and you're OK, explain this!
Let the words of St. Augustine touch your heart, when he places the crucified Redeemer before our mind in the following words: "Behold the wounds of Jesus who is hanging on the cross, the blood of the dying, the price of our redemption! His head is bowed to give the kiss of peace; His side is open to love; His arms are extended to embrace us; His whole body sacrificed for our redemption. Let these words be the subject of your meditation that He may be wholly in your heart who is nailed to the cross for you."
I would also like to add a prayer from last night, Maunday Thursday. On this day, Jesus gave a mandate, or 'mandatum', in which Jesus gave the Apostles these instructions:
To offer the Body and Blood of Him in the Most August Sacrament of the Eucharist, and to wash the feet of others, thus humbling themselves.
Here is the prayer, in which we pray for those who are not within the fold of the Divine Shepherd, Jesus. This is an indulgenced prayer (200 days each time said), from Pope Pius VII in 1815:
Jesus, my God, my Saviour, true God and true man, in that lowly homage with which the Faith itself inspires me, with my whole heart I adore and love Thee in the most august Sacrament of the Altar, in reparation for all the acts of irreverence, profanation, and sacrilege, which I myself may ever have committed, as well as for all such like acts that ever have been done and in ages yet to come. I adore Thee, my God, not indeed as Thou deservest, not as much as I am bound to adore, but as far as I am able; and I would that I could adore Thee with all the perfection of which a reasonable creature is capable. Meantime I purpose now and ever to adore Thee, not only for those Catholics who adore and love Thee not, but also for the conversion of all bad Christians, and for all heretics, schismatics, Mohammedans, Jews, and idolators. Jesus, my God, mayest Thou be ever known, adored, loved, and praised every moment, in the most Holy and Divine Sacrament. Amen.
May we all be true to our promises we have made to God throughout our lives. Jesus, have mercy.
MANNER OF CONTEMPLATING CHRIST'S BITTER PASSION
Christ also suffered for us: leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. (I Peter II. 21.)
"Whence does it come," writes St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "that so many of the faithful look with so much indifference at Christ on the cross? They generally assist during Holy Week at the commemoration of His death without any feeling of gratitude or compassion, as if it were a fable or an event in which they had no interest. Know they not, or believe they not what the gospel relates of Christ's passion? Indeed they know it, and believe it, but do not think of it. It is impossible that he who believes and meditates, should fail, to become burning with love for God who suffers and dies for love of him." "But why, we may ask here, are there so many who draw so little benefit even from the contemplation of the passion and death of Jesus? Because they fail to consider and imitate the example which Christ gives in His sufferings."
"The cross of Christ," says St. Augustine, "is not only a bed of death, but a pulpit of instruction." It is not only a bed upon which Christ dies, but the pulpit from which He teaches us what we must do. It should now be our special aim to meditate upon the passion of Christ, and to imitate those virtues which shone forth so preeminently in His passion and death. But many neglect to do this: They usually content themselves with compassion when they see Christ enduring such great pains, but they see not with what love, humility, and meekness He bears them; and so do not endeavor to imitate His example. That you, O Christian soul, may avoid this mistake, and that you may draw the greatest possible benefit for your soul, from the contemplation of the passion, and death of Christ, attend to that which is said of it by that pious servant of God Alphonse Rodriguez:
'We must endeavor to derive from the meditation on the mysteries of the passion and death of Christ this effect, that we may imitate His virtues, and this by slowly and attentively considering each virtue by itself, exercising ourselves in forming a very great desire for it in our hearts, making a firm resolution to practice it in words and works, and also to conceive a holy aversion and horror of the opposite vice; for instance, when contemplating Christ's condemnation to the death of the cross by Pilate, consider the humility of Jesus Christ, who being God, as humble as He was innocent, voluntarily submitted and silently accepted the unjust sentence and the ignominious death. Here you see from the example given by Jesus, how you should despise yourself, patiently bear all evil, unjust judgment; and detraction, and even seek them with joy as giving you occasion to resemble Him. To produce these necessary effects and resolutions, you should at each mystery contemplate the following particulars:
First: Who is it that suffers? The most innocent, the holiest, the most loving; the only-begotten Son of the Almighty Father, the Lord of heaven and earth.
Secondly: What pains and torments, exterior and interior, does He suffer?
Thirdly: In what manner does He suffer, with what patience, humility, meekness and love, does He bear all ignominy and outrage?
Fourthly: For whom does He suffer? For all men, for His enemies and His executioners.
Fifthly: By whom does He suffer? By Jews and heathens, by soldiers and tyrants, by the devil and all impious children of the world to the end of time, and all who were then united in spirit with His enemies.
Sixthly: Why does He suffer? To make reparation for all the sins of the whole world, to satisfy the justice of God, to reconcile the Heavenly Father, to open heaven, to give us His infinite 'merits that we may from them have strength to follow the way to heaven.
At the consideration of each of these points, and indeed at each mystery of the passion of Christ, the imitation of the example of His virtues is the main object, because the true life of the Christian consists in the imitation of Jesus. In considering each stage of the passion of Christ place vividly before your mind the virtue which thee practiced therein; contemplate it and ask yourself whether you possess this virtue, or whether you still cherish the opposite vice. If you find the latter to be the case make an act of contrition, with the firm resolution to extirpate this vice, and excite in yourself a sincere desire for the opposite virtue. In this way you will draw the greatest advantage from the contemplation of Christ's passion, and resemble Christ; and, as the pious Louis of Granada says, "...there can be no greater honor and adornment for a Christian than to resemble his divine Master, not in the way that Lucifer desired, but in that which He pointed out, when He said: "I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so do you also."
We find at the cross on Golgotha the different classes of people of our day represented; namely, the pure and innocent; the repenting sinners, firm adherents of Jesus and His teachings; but also the lukewarm (the 'not so hot' whom He will spit out); the wavering, nominal Christians; obdurate heretics, professed infidels and apostates, and for all those pathetic souls who are clueless. So today, mankind is divided into parties such as these.
To which party do you belong, O Christian soul? To which do you wish to belong? Choose! The time of the division is near. The Lord already holds in His hand the winnowing shovel to clear His floor. If you are not a firm adherent of Jesus and His Church, in the storm that is gathering you will be blown like chaff. If you remain with the small group at the cross, in persevering courage, you will stand firm, and on the day when the cross shall appear in the clouds of heaven, you, with Mary, the Mother of the Faithful, with John and with Magdalen, will triumph forever, as a victorious knight of the cross. DECIDE!
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