1. To make our redemption complete. For, although
any suffering of Christ had an infinite value, because of its union with His
divinity, it was not by no matter which of His sufferings that the redemption
of mankind was made complete, but only by His death. So the Holy Spirit
declared speaking through the mouth of Caiaphas, It is expedient for you that
one man shall die for the people (John xi. 50). Whence St. Augustine says, “Let
us stand in wonder, rejoice, be glad, love, praise, and adore since it is by the
death of our Redeemer, that we have been called from death to life, from exile
to our own land, from mourning to joy.”
2. To increase our faith, our hope and our
charity. With regard to faith the Psalm says (Ps. cxl. 10), I am alone until I
pass from this world, that is, to the Father. When I shall have passed to the
Father, then shall I be multiplied. Unless the grain of wheat falling into the
ground die, itself remaineth alone (John xii. 24). As to the increase of hope
St. Paul writes, He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all, how hath he not also, with him, given us all things? (Rom. viii. 32).
God cannot deny us this, for to give us all things is less than to give His own
Son to death for us. St. Bernard says, “Who is not carried away to hope and
confidence in prayer, when he looks on the crucifix and sees how Our Lord hangs
there, the head bent as though to kiss, the arms outstretched in an embrace,
the hands pierced to give, the side opened to love, the feet nailed to remain
with us.” Come, my dove, in the clefts of the rock (Cant. ii. 14). It is in the
wounds of Christ, the Church builds its nest and waits, for it is in the
Passion of Our Lord that she places her hope of salvation, and thereby trusts
to be protected from the craft of the falcon, that is, of the devil. With
regard to the increase of charity, Holy Scripture says, At noon he burneth the
earth (Ecclus. xliii. 3), that is to say, in the fervour of His Passion He
burns up all mankind with His love. So St. Bernard says, “The chalice thou
didst drink, O good Jesus, maketh thee lovable above all things.” The work of
our redemption easily, brushing aside all hindrances, calls out in return the
whole of our love. This it is which more gently draws out our devotion, builds
it up more straightly, guards it more closely, and fires it with greater
ardour.
3. Because our salvation is wrought in the manner
of a sacrament, we dying to this world in a likeness to His death, So that my
soul chooseth hanging, and my bones death (Job vii. 15). St. Gregory says, “The
soul is the mind’s aspiration, the bones are the strength of the body’s
desires. Things hanged are raised thereby from the depths. The soul, then, is
hanged to things eternal that the bones may die, for it is with the love of
eternal life that the soul slays the strong attraction earthly things possess
for it.”
It is a sign that a soul is dead to the world when
a soul is despised by the world. Again, to quote St. Gregory, “The sea keeps
the bodies that are alive in it. Once they are dead it quickly casts them up.”
(De Humanitate Christi, cap. 47.)
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