Meditations

Let us pray Him to bless what we venture for Him, that we may not only labour, but may receive our wages, and gather fruit unto life eternal. This world is a very little thing to give up for the next.

From the earliest times down to this day, these weeks before Easter have been set apart every year, for the particular remembrance and confession of our sins.

The Word was from the beginning, the Only-begotten Son of God. Before all worlds were created, while as yet time was not, He was in existence, in the bosom of the Eternal Father, God from God, and Light from Light,

By the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin is meant the great revealed truth that she was conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, without original sin.

Since the fall of Adam all mankind, his

My God, I adore you for taking on yourself the charge of sinners; of those, who not only cannot profit you, but who continually grieve and profane you. You have taken on yourself the office of a minister, and that for those who did not ask for it. I adore you for your incomprehensible condescension in ministering to me. I know and feel, O my God, that you might have left me, as I wished to be left, to go my own way, to go straight forward

I adore you, O my Lord, the third person of the all-blessed Trinity, that you have set up in this world of sin a great light upon a hill. You have founded the Church; you have established and maintained it. You fill it continually with your gifts, that men may see, and draw near, and take, and live.

(August 18, 1855)

1. After all His discourses were consummated (Matt. 26:1), fully finished and brought to an end, then He said, The Son of man will be betrayed to crucifixion. As an army puts itself in battle array, as sailors, before an action, clear the decks, as dying men make their will and then turn to God, so though our Lord could never cease to speak good words,

1. After all His discourses were consummated (Matt. 26:1), fully finished and brought to an end, then He said, The Son of man will be betrayed to crucifixion. As an army puts itself in battle array, as sailors, before an action, clear the decks, as dying men make their will and then turn to God, so though our Lord could never cease to speak good words, did He sum up and complete His teaching, and then commence His passion. Then He removed by His own act the prohibition which kept Satan from Him, and opened the door to the agitations of His human heart, as a soldier, who is to suffer death, may drop his handkerchief himself. At once Satan came on and seized upon his brief hour.

Our Lord’s sufferings were so great because his soul was in suffering. What shows this is that his soul began to suffer before his bodily passion, as we see in the agony in the garden.

The first anguish that came upon his body was not from without—it was not from the scourges, the thorns, or the nails, but from his soul. His soul was in such agony that he called it death: “My soul is sorrowful even unto death” (Mark 14:34). The anguish was such that it burst open his whole body, as it