An Easy Way to Become a Saint - August 18

Continued from yesterday...

Chapter 5. The Passion

We now come to a subject that even the pen of a Saint cannot sufficiently describe, viz., the sufferings and death of our Sweet Lord.

Who could have imagined the possibility of God suffering, despised, crucified?

He could have saved us by one word, as He had created us. Why then did He subject Himself to such awful humiliations, such agonies of pain, to that most ignominious of deaths, meted out to only the greatest malefactors, crucified between two thieves, mocked and blasphemed by His enemies!

One drop of His Precious Blood would have saved a thousand worlds.

Why then did Our Sweet Lord suffer such pain and degradation?

Simply to prove the infinite sincerity of His love for us. And we careless, insensible, thoughtless, blind remain unmoved at the sight of all He did for us.

We look on our crucifix and feel no pity for our Crucified Lord. We look on the Stations of the Cross and feel no answering sorrow stir our hearts.

He did all that God could do to constrain our love, but our coldness, our incredible blindness nullifies all that His Divine Love did to gain our affection.

Worse still: "By our sins," the Apostle tells us, "we crucify again the Son of God and make a mockery of Him."

The Jews had been waiting and praying for the coming of Our Lord for 4,000 years. The Prophets, one after another, foretold the principal facts of His life. He Himself then came and worked astounding miracles to prove that He was God.

But at the sight of His sufferings, the Jews were scandalized; they could not believe that God could suffer.

The Gentiles, although they saw the wonders He wrought, were no less incredulous. They called it madness to say that God would submit to such outrages.

We know and believe that He is God, that He suffered and died for each one of us, yet we are more guilty than the Jews and the Gentiles, for we remain hard and ungrateful at the sight of all that Jesus has done for us.

Why do not our hearts burn with love of Him? Because we do not trouble to think on the Passion, we do not ponder on it, we do not love it....

[Continued tomorrow]
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From An Easy Way to Become a Saint
by E. D. M. (1949)
The Catholic Printing Press
Lisbon, Portugal
With Ecclesiastical Approbation
13th June 1949