1st Week after Epiphany: Monday

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

Before entering into the details of the actions of the Incarnate Word, we will meditate upon certain general features of His life of which each particular act is, as it were, the application. The first feature on which we will meditate tomorrow is His title of Redeemer. We shall see: 1st, how well Jesus merits this title; 2nd, what obligation this title imposes upon us. We will then make the resolution: 1st, often and lovingly to kiss the crucifix, to salute it with a heart full of gratitude wherever it presents itself to our eyes; 2nd, to place, above every other kind of interest, the interest of our own salvation. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of St. Paul: “Christ died for all, that they also who live may not now live to themselves, but unto Him, who died for them and rose again” (II. Cor. v. 15).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us kneel down in spirit before the crib, between Mary and Joseph; let us adore Jesus Christ under the amiable title of our Redeemer, suffering, as man, in our place, giving, as God, an infinite value to His sufferings. Oh, how well He merits through this title our thanksgivings, our praise, and our love!

FIRST POINT

Jesus our Redeemer.

Let us here admire the magnificence of our redemption. Three considerations show us the excellence of it: 1st, Jesus Christ has withdrawn us from the abyss of sin by meriting the pardon of it for us. The sin of Adam had closed heaven and opened hell. Jesus has given us back our rights to heaven, and those alone fall into hell who will not be saved. To the sin of Adam we have added our own personal faults, another much more serious abyss, for Adam sinned but once, while we have often sinned. Every day we still sin, and as long as we live we shall always be capable of sinning. Now, oh, how wonderful! although we sin, the blood of Jesus Christ is always there, ready to flow upon us to purify us; so that in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, we find more than we had lost in guilty Adam; grace brings us more blessings than sin had caused us evil (Rom. v. 20). And the Church has reason to exclaim, when speaking of the sin of Adam: Happy fault which gained us a Redeemer who obtains grace for all our faults; sin, in a certain sense necessary, consequent on which was given to us this Redeemer whom we required for our thousand personal prevarications (Bened. cer. pasch). 2nd, Jesus Christ, by His redemption, does not merit only the pardon of our faults, He merits also all the graces which make saints, all the sacraments, all the means of salvation which exist in the Church, all the instructions, all the good thoughts, all the holy desires. With the Lord there is mercy, and with Him plentiful redemption (Ps. cxxix. 7), and Thou art infinite in Thy largesses. 3rd, though our Redeemer might have redeemed us and procured for us all these blessings by one single sigh, He willed, in order to show us more love, and to take away all pretext from cowardice, to give the whole of His blood, and all His sufferings to die upon the cross and renew His sacrifice every day on all the altars throughout the world. O Divine Redeemer, how good Thou art! How much better dost Thou treat us than Thou didst the prophets, who desired to see what we see and did not see it, better than so many nations who have not yet received the Gospel! Alas! what would it have served us to be born, if we had not been redeemed?

SECOND POINT

Our Obligations towards Jesus our Redeemer.

They may be reduced to two: love and the zeal for salvation. 1st. Love. We ought to love Thee, O heavenly Father, who didst first so love the world as to give it Thy only Son (Bened. cer. pasch.). O wonderful condescension of Thy love for us; O ineffable charity! in order to purchase a slave, Thou dost deliver up Thy Son. Can I, after that, hesitate to sacrifice to Thee all I have, my body, my soul, my heart, the whole of my being! We ought to love Thee, O eternal Son of God, who wert well pleased to deliver Thyself up to death, and to such a death, in order to save us, Thy enemies, Thy ungrateful children! If we owe ourselves entirely to Thee, as being created by Thee, what do we not owe Thee as being redeemed by Thee, and redeemed in such a manner! (St. Bernard.) It cost Thee only one word to create the universe, but in order to redeem me, what labors, what fatigue, what torments and ignominy! In creating me Thou didst give me to myself; in redeeming me Thou didst give Thyself to me. What shall I render to Thee, O my God, in compensation for Thyself? (St. Bernard.) I ought to be entirely Thine, wholly Thine alone, always Thine! There is justice in living only for a God without whose death I should not live, and there is even profit in serving a God who promises me Paradise in return. 2nd. We owe it to Jesus, our Redeemer, to have, before all else, great zeal for the salvation of our soul, for it would be unworthy of us to neglect a soul for which a God has done so much, a soul for which a God has died, and to commit sin, the reparation of which cost Him so dear. To zeal for the salvation of our soul we ought to unite zeal for the salvation of our brethren. Jesus Christ asks us to help Him in this great work (I. Cor. iii. 19). His blood cries aloud to us: Be zealous, help Me to save the world, for it would be in vain for Me to have shed My blood for a soul over which you have an influence, if you did not help Me to save it. His wounds cry out to us: Be zealous, it would be in vain for us to have been opened for it, if you do not help us to withdraw it from its blindness. Who would shut his ears to these supplications of a God?

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.