Meditations on the Mysteries of Our Holy Faith, Volume 4

C—MEDITATIONS UPON THE MYSTEEIES OF THE PASSION OF JESUS CHEIST OUE LORD.

1. Notwithstanding that the meditations of the mysteries of the Passion of Jesus Christ our Lord belong, as has been declared in the introduction of this book, to the illuminative way, especially to its highest degree, which approaches nearest to the unitive way, nevertheless thei/ are exceedingly profitable for all sorts of persons by whatever way they walk, and in whatever degree of perfection they live: forasmuch as sinners will find in them most effectual motives to purify themselves from all their sins; beginners, to mortify their passions; proficients, to increase in all kinds of virtue; and the perfect, to obtain union with Almighty God by fervent love.

2. For this cause, St. Bernard says, that the Passion of Jesus Christ, even to this present day, makes the earth to tremble, rends the stones, opens the sepulchres, and rends *’the veil of the Temple,” dividing it “in two, from the top even to the bottom:” for, as those who meditate the same seriously,— if they be earth, through their faults and affections to earthly things, tremble with the holy fear of Almighty God, and at the seyere justice which He executed upon His own Son, moving themselves herewith, to forsake their earthliness; — if they be stones by the hardness of their hearts, they become soft and tender, and rend themselves, as it were with the greatness of sorrow, as well for their own sins, as for the pains which Christ endured for them. — If they be sealed “sepulchres,” by the shame which they have to discover their sins, they are “opened” by confession, to drive death from them, and to raise themselves again to newness of life. — And finally, that “ijeiZ” which made the division between God and us, is torn for all, that we may, as St. Paul says, contemplate more manifestly the glory of our Lord, and the bottomless depth of His celestial secrets.