June 18, 2026
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
We will to-morrow consider that the Mass is not only a sacrifice of latria and Eucharistic, but also an expiatory sacrifice; and that through this title it is: 1st, a complete reparation for the offence which sin has committed against God; 2d, a superabundant satisfaction for the debts of the Church suffering and militant. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to renew in ourselves the spirit of penitence, and cheerfully to accept, with this object in view, all the trials of life; 2d, to be very keenly sensible of offences committed against God, to make reparation by acts of love and of honorable amends, and to do all that in us lies for the conversion of sinners. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the prayer of Joel: “Spare, O Lord! spare Thy people!” (Joel ii. 17).
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore Jesus Christ as our Mediator and Pontiff, interposing between the anger of Heaven and guilty earth; turning away the thunder from above our heads and changing the lightning of divine anger into a rain of graces (Ps. xxxiv. 7). Let us thank Him for this charitable mediation to which the world owes its existence.
FIRST POINT
The Holy Sacrifice is a Complete Reparation of Offences Committed against God
The Christian who, illuminated by faith, is able to appreciate how great an evil it is to offend God, is inconsolable for it. He sighs over it, he weeps over it, like the holy king David; his soul is overwhelmed by it, as was the soul of the holy prophet Jeremias; and when he considers how common this great evil is, when he looks at all the sins of the world collected together, he exclaims: “O heavenly Father! Father so worthy of all honor and all love, how afflicted I am to see that ungrateful men, instead of loving Thee, offend Thee! Oh, that I could offer to Thy offended honor a reparation equal to the offence.” Then, out of the depth of his grief, his thoughts turn to the Holy Sacrifice; he there sees a God offering Himself in person as an expiatory host for all the sins of the world. “O God!” he resumes, filled with immense consolation, “behold what I was seeking for, behold a reparation for the sins of the whole world, not only equal, but superior to the offence. For, a God making satisfaction to Thee in person by means of His infinite abasement, honors Thee incomparably more than all the sins of devils and men put together can offend Thee. With all my heart I unite myself to this superabundant reparation; I unite myself to it by the horror and detestation I have for sin, by zeal for Thy glory and all the good works capable either of honoring Thee or of converting sinners and saving souls.” Are these our dispositions?
SECOND POINT
The Holy Sacrifice is a Superabundant Satisfaction for the Debts of the Church Suffering and Militant
Jesus Christ, in the Holy Sacrifice, is the great Penitent of the universal Church; and in offering Himself as an expiatory Victim, He shortens the sufferings of the suffering souls in purgatory; He solicits the gift of penitence for sinners, and He obtains the conversions which sometimes astonish the world. He cries aloud for mercy; He turns away the scourges with which God, in former days, visited the earth, and that is the reason of the patience of God in the midst of innumerable crimes and amidst all kinds of disorder. If His thunder does not burst forth, or if it stops after a few claps destined to serve as warnings to us, it is because in the same manner as Moses and Aaron once stood before the ancient Propitiatory, or rather in a much better manner than that of the leaders of the people of Israel, Jesus Christ, our High-Priest, pleads at the altar the cause of a guilty world, and appeases the anger of Heaven. Let us unite ourselves to the ardent zeal of Jesus Christ to solace the souls in purgatory and to make expiation for the sins of the world. God, in His admirable clemency, desires nothing so much as to see us resist His anger in union with Jesus Christ, to perform penance for sinners, to immolate ourselves for them as expiatory hosts, and to call down upon ourselves the thunder with which He is about to strike His people. He complains by His prophet of not having found enough of such souls to parry His blows. “I sought,” He says in Ezechiel, “for a man who might set up a hedge and stand in the gap before Me in favor of the land, that I might not destroy it; and I found none” (Ezech. xxii. 30). You are not come back, He says by the same prophet, to place yourselves in front of My justice like a wall for the house of Israel. Now, if God thus complained under the Old Law, with how much more justice will He reproach us under the New Law, if we do not profit by the advantage of being able to offer Him, through our prayers, an expiatory host of infinite value? Have we, up to the present time, thoroughly understood this double duty of expiation for the souls in purgatory and for sinners upon earth?
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.