Meditation for February 23, The Fool's Robe

Is this not the height of indignity? He who is Wisdom Itself clothed with folly! He who is the Word of the Father treated as a fool by a base scoundrel, an infamous debauchee!

This Herod, O Jesus, who has taken You for an entertainer and who is annoyed by Your silence, thinks himself very clever in send­ing You to Pilate clothed in the garment of a madman.

Where is the madness, where is the folly? In You, my Good Master, or in this stupid governor of Galilee, who is blind and deaf to the truth and who struts upon his throne like a peacock, pleasure-mad and carnal.

But what does Herod matter? Are You, O my Jesus, treated as a madman? You, treated as one who has lost his reason, as one who does not know what he is doing?

But now I begin to wonder. Was Herod really so wrong? Did You not deign to do a very foolish thing for us? Knowing us as we are, and how little humanity would profit through the cen­turies, from the shedding of Your Blood, do You still find it possible to annihilate Yourself for us? Is that not pure folly?

It is not folly as the wretched tetrarch of Galilee conceived it, but as St. Paul understood it. The folly of love! To deign to offer Yourself from eternity to the Father in order to save us! To come to earth at the appointed time to a poor manger To con­sent to an ignoble Passion climaxed by death on the cross! Is it not true that folly, a divine folly, has taken hold of You? There is no one who loves to such an extent.

Yes, my child, that is the extent of My love, the love of your God for you.
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)