Monday of the First Week in Lent

The Passion of Our Lord in General.

I.

Jesus is the true Son of God. He is the holiest of men, the greatest of kings, the faithfulest of friends. He never injures any, but does good to all. And all the world has conspired against him, all the world has persecuted him. As he suffered for all men, so all men have made him suffer. Men and women of all ranks have contributed to his passion. Jews, Gentiles, priests, kings, soldiers, and people, men and women, and his own disciples even, have all put a hand to his cross, and added to his miseries. Are you not of the number? Are you not the most cruel of his persecutors?

II.

Jesus suffered every description of evil in his soul and body, mind and heart, memory and imagination, his senses and in all his limbs! He was a man of sorrows, and I wish to be devoted to sensual pleasures! He suffered from all the world, and I wish to suffer from none! He suffered all imaginable evils, and I wish to suffer none! He suffered the worst of evils, and I wish for those only which are light! He suffered voluntarily, I suffer only what I cannot avoid!

Resolution: I will accept whatever suffering comes my way today with patience and resignation.

Prayer: Oh, my sweet Jesus! thy holy passion fills me with grief and confusion. It is a great source of grief to me to behold thee suffering for me! It is a source of great confusion to me not to be able to suffer for thee! Give me grace, at least, to suffer ordinary evils with patience, and, by thy divine aid, render me capable of supporting, from day to day, those more weighty and grievous afflictions which may visit me, and through which, as a fiery ordeal, I must pass.

By a Member of the Society of Jesus, edited and amended by J. Scott Bailey, C.Ss.R.
© ASG