FOR SOULS THAT LOVE GOD AT THE SIGHT OF JESUS CRUCIFIED.

JESUS ON THE CROSS ! O stupendous sight for heaven and earth of mercy and of love ! To see the Son of God dying through pain upon a gibbet of infamy, condemned as a malefactor to so bitter and shameful a death in order to save sinful men from the penalty that was due to them ! This sight has ever been, and will always be, the subject of the contemplation of the Saints, and has led them willingly to renounce all the goods of the earth, and to embrace with great courage sufferings and death, that they might make themselves more pleasing to a God who died for love of them. The sight of Jesus despised between two thieves has made them love contempt far more than worldlings have loved the honours of the world. Beholding Jesus covered with wounds upon the Cross, they hold in abhorrence the pleasures of sense, and have endeavoured to afflict their flesh in order to unite their sufferings to the sufferings of the Crucified. Beholding the patience of our Saviour in His death, they have joyfully accepted the most painful sicknesses, and even the most cruel torments which tyrants can inflict. Lastly, from beholding the love of Jesus Christ in being willing to sacrifice His life for us in a sea of sorrows, they have sought to sacrifice to Him all that they had,—possessions, children, and even life itself.

St. Paul, in speaking of the love which the Eternal Father has borne towards us, in that, when He saw us dead by reason of sin, He willed to restore life to us by sending His Son to die for us, calls ittoo great a love. “ But God (who is rich in mercy), for Hisexceeding charity[niniam char-tatem] wherewith He loved us, hath quickened us together in Christ” (Ephes. ii. 4, 5). And in the same way ought we to call the love wherewith Jesus Christ has willed to die for ustoo great a love. Hence the same Apostle says : “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor. i. 23). St. Paul says that the death of Jesus Christ appeared to the Jews a stumbling-block, because they thought that He should have appeared on earth full of worldly majesty, and not indeed as one condemned to die like a criminal upon a cross ; on the other hand, to the Gentiles it seemed a folly that a God should be willing to die, and by su