Morning Meditation: THE TENDER COMPASSION OF MARY, AND HER READINESS TO ASSIST US IN ALL OUR WANTS
They have no wine. — (Gospel of Sunday. John ii., 1-11)
Mary showed, even when living in this world, the great compassion she would afterwards exercise towards us in our necessities. Without being asked, and listening only to the dictates of her compassionate heart, she lays before her Son the distress of the bride and bridegroom. They have no wine. If Mary unasked is so prompt to succour the needy, how much more so is she to succour those who invoke her aid and ask for her help?
Meditation I:
The tenderness of Mary’s Mercy may be inferred from the fact related in today’s Gospel. The wine fails, the spouses are troubled, no one speaks to Mary to ask her Son to console them in their necessity. But the tenderness of Mary’s heart which, according to St. Bernardine of Sienna, cannot but pity the afflicted, moved her to take the office of advocate, and without being asked, to entreat her Son to work a miracle. “Unasked, she assumed the office of an advocate and a compassionate helper.” Hence, add the same Saint, if, unasked, this good Lady has done so much, what will she not do for those who invoke her intercession?
From what is related in the Gospel St. Bonaventure draws another argument to show the great graces we may hope to obtain through Mary now that she reigns in Heaven. If she was so compassionate on earth, how much greater must be her mercy now that she is in Paradise? Great was the mercy of Mary while in exile on earth, but it is much greater now that she is a Queen in Heaven, because she now sees the misery of men. Mary in Heaven enjoys the vision of God, and therefore she sees our wants far more clearly than when she was on earth; hence, as her pity for us is increased, so also is her desire to assist us more ardent. Truly, then, has Richard of St. Victor spoken, addressing the Blessed Virgin: “So tender is thy heart thou canst not see misery without succouring it.”
St. Peter Damien says that the Virgin “loves us with an invincible love.” How ardently soever the Saints may have loved this amiable Queen, their affection fell far short of the love which Mary bore to them. It is this love that makes her so solicitous for our welfare. The Saints in Heaven, says St. Augustine, have great power to obtain grace from God for those who recommend themselves to their prayers; but as Mary is of all the Saints the most powerful, she is of all the most desirous to procure for us the divine Mercy.
O Mary, behold at thy feet a miserable slave of hell, who implores thy Mercy. I, indeed, deserve no favour, but thou art the Mother of Mercy, and Mercy is exercised in favour of those who are unworthy. the whole world calls thee the refuge and the hope of sinners; thou art, then, my refuge and my hope. I am a lost sheep, but it was to save the lost sheep the Eternal Word came down from Heaven and became thy Son. He wishes me to have recourse to thee and that thou assist me by thy prayers.
Meditation II:
Spiritual Reading: THE GREATNESS OF MARY’S POWER TO OBTAIN FOR US FROM GOD ALL THE GRACES OF WHICH WE STAND IN NEED
Evening Meditation: “PATIENT IN TRIBULATION”
Meditation I:
Meditation II:
Morning Meditation: THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE HOUR OF DEATH
Be you, then also ready; for at what hour you think not, the Son of man will come. — (Luke xii., 40)
All know that they must die, but the misfortune is that many consider death at such a distance away that they lose sight of it. Even the old, the most decrepit and the most sickly flatter themselves that they will live three or four years longer. At what hour you think not, the Son of man will come.
Meditation I:
It is certain that we shall die, but the hour of death is uncertain. “Nothing,” says the author who styles himself Idiota, “is more certain that death; but nothing is more uncertain than the hour of death.” God has already fixed the year, the month, the day, the hour, and the moment, when I and you are to leave this earth and go into eternity; but the time is unknown to us. To exhort us to be always prepared, Jesus Christ tells us that death will come unawares, and like a thief in the night. The day of the Lord shall so come as a thief in the night. — (1 Thess. v., 2). He tells us to be, then, always vigilant; because, when we least expect Him, He will come to judge us. At what hour you think not, the Son of man will come. St. Gregory says that for our good, God conceals from us the hour of death, that we may always be prepared to die. “Since, then,” says St. Bernard, “death may take away life at any time and in any place, we ought, if we wish to die well and save our souls, to live always in expectation of death.”
All know that they must die: but the misfortune is, that many consider death such a distance off, that they lose sight of it. Even the old, the most decrepit, and the most sickly, flatter themselves that they will live three or four years longer. But how many, I ask, have we known, even in our own times, to die suddenly – some sitting, some walking, some sleeping? It is certain that not one of these imagined that he should die so suddenly, and on the day he died. I say, moreover, that of all who have gone to the other world during the present year, no one imagined that he should die and end his days this year. Few are the deaths which do not happen unexpectedly.
Lord, the place in which I ought to be at this moment is not that in which I find myself, but hell, which I have so often merited by my sins! “Infernus domus mea est” — Hell is my house! St. Peter says: The Lord waiteth patiently for your sake, not willing that any one should perish, but that all should return to penance. — (2 Peter iii., 9). Then Thou hast had so much patience with me, and hast waited for me, because Thou didst wish me not to be lost, but return to Thee by repentance. My God, I return to Thee. I cast myself at Thy feet, and supplicate for mercy. Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. Lord, to pardon me requires a great and extraordinary act of mercy, because I offended Thee, after I had been favoured with special light. Other sinners also have offended Thee, but they have not received the light Thou gavest me. But in spite of all my sinfulness and ingratitude, Thou commandest me to repent of my sins, and to hope for pardon. Yes, my Redeemer, I am sorry with my whole heart for having offended Thee, and I hope for pardon through the merits of Thy Passion.
Meditation II:
Spiritual Reading: MARTYRS OF THE FAITH
VIRTUES PRACTICED BY THE HOLY MARTYRS IN THE COMBATS THAT THEY HAD TO SUSTAIN AGAINST THEIR PERSECUTORS
Evening Meditation: THE LOSS OF ALL THINGS IN DEATH
Meditation I:
Meditation II:
Morning Meditation: WE SHOULD SETTLE OUR ACCOUNTS AT ONCE
The Lord wishes that we be not lost but saved, and therefore by threats of chastisement He unceasingly exhorts us to a change of life. He Who wishes you to take care does not wish to destroy.
Meditation I:
Except you will be converted, he will brandish his sword. — (Ps. vii., 13). Behold, God says in another place, how many, because they would not cease to offend Me, have met with a sudden death, when they least expected it, and were living in peace, secure of a life of many years. For when they shall say: Peace and security, then shall sudden destruction come upon them. — (1 Thess. v., 3). Again God says: Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish. — (Luke xiii., 3). Why so many threats of chastisement before the execution of vengeance? It is because He wishes us to amend our lives, and thus avoid an unhappy death. He, says St. Augustine, who tells you to beware, does not wish to take away your life. It is necessary, then, to prepare our accounts before the day of accounting arrives. Dearly beloved Christian, were you to die, and were your lot for eternity to be decided before night, would your accounts be ready? Oh, how much would you give to obtain from God another year or month, or even another day, to prepare for Judgment? Why then do you not, now that God gives you this time, settle your account? Perhaps it may not happen – that this shall be the last day for you? Delay not to be converted to the Lord and defer it not from day to day; for his wrath shall come on a sudden, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy thee. — (Ecclus. v., 8, 9). To save your soul you must give up sin. If, then, you must renounce it at some time, why do you not abandon it this very moment? Perhaps you are waiting till death arrives? But, for obstinate sinners, the hour of death is the time, not of pardon but of vengeance. In the time of vengeance he will destroy thee.
Ah, my dear Redeemer, Thou hast spent all Thy Blood, and hast given Thy life in order to save my soul, and I have often lost it by presuming on Thy mercy. I have, then, so often abused Thy goodness to offend Thee! By doing so, I have deserved to be suddenly struck dead, and to be cast into hell. In a word, I have been engaged in a contest with Thee. Thou didst treat me with mercy, and I offended Thee; Thou gavest me time to repair the evil I had done, and I employed that time in adding insults to insults. Lord, make me understand the injustice I have done Thee, and the obligation under which I am to love Thee. Ah, my Jesus, how could I be so dear to Thee Whom I chased away as often as Thou didst seek me. How hast Thou been able to bestow so many graces on one who has given Thee so much displeasure? From this I see the ardour of Thy desire to save me from perdition.
Meditation II:
Spiritual Reading: MARTYRS OF THE FAITH
THEIR VIRTUES
Evening Meditation: THE ABUSE OF GOD’S MERCY
Meditation I:
Meditation II:
Morning Meditation: “Be Ye Ready”
The Lord does not tell us to prepare ourselves for death, but to be prepared, when death arrives. Be ye ready! The time of death will not be the time to prepare ourselves to die well. To die well and happily we must prepare ourselves beforehand.
Meditation I:
Be ye ready. The Lord does not tell us to prepare ourselves but to be prepared, when death arrives. When death comes it will be almost impossible, in that tempest and confusion, to tranquilise a troubled conscience. This, reason tells us: this, God threatens, saying that then He will come, not to pardon, but to avenge, the contempt of His graces. Revenge is mine, I will repay. — (Rom. xii., 19). It is, says St. Augustine, a just punishment, that he who was unwilling, when he was able, to save his soul, will not be able when he is willing. But you will say: Perhaps I may still be converted and saved. Would you throw yourself into a deep well, saying, Perhaps I may not be drowned? O God! how sin blinds the understanding, and deprives the soul of reason. When there is question of the body, men speak rationally; but when the soul is concerned, they speak like fools.
Who knows, dear Christian, but this point which you read is the last warning that God may send you? Let us immediately prepare for death, that it may not come upon us without giving us time to prepare for judgment. St. Augustine says that God conceals from us the last day of life, that we may be always prepared to die. St. Paul tells us that we must work out our salvation, not only with fear, but also with trembling. St. Antoninus relates that a certain king of Sicily, to make one of his subjects understand the fear with which he sat on the throne, commanded him to sit at table with a sword suspended over him by a slender thread. The apprehension that the thread might give way filled him with so much terror that he could scarcely taste food. We are all in like danger; for the sword of death, on which our eternal salvation depends, may at any moment fall upon us.
Ah my God! who has ever loved me more than Thou hast? And whom have I despised and insulted more than I have insulted Thee? O Blood! O Wounds of Jesus, you are my hope. Eternal Father, look not upon my sins, but look at the Wounds of Jesus; behold Thy Son dying through pain for my sake, and asking Thee to pardon me. I repent, O my Creator, of having offended Thee. I am sorry for it above all things. Thou didst create me that I might love Thee; and I have lived as if Thou hadst created me to offend Thee.
Meditation II:
Spiritual Reading: “The Blood of Martyrs the Seed of Christians”
Evening Meditation: The Emptiness and Shortness of Human Life
Meditation I:
Meditation II:
Morning Meditation: The Life of Sorrow Jesus Led Even From His Birth
(Meditation for the Twenty-Fifth of January)
The Prophet Isaias calls Jesus Christ the man of sorrows, because His life was to be full of sorrow. His Passion did not begin at the time of His death. It commenced with His life – a life of internal and external sorrows from beginning to end.
Meditation I:
Jesus Christ could have saved man without suffering and without dying; but no, He chose a life full of tribulations in order to make us know how much He loved us. Therefore the Prophet Isaias called Him the Man of sorrows — (Is. liii., 3), because the life of Jesus Christ was to be a life full of sorrows. His Passion did not begin at the time of His death, but from the commencement of His life.
Behold Him, as soon as He is born, laid in a stable where for Jesus everything is a torment. His sight is tormented by seeing nothing in the cave but black, rough walls. His sense of smell is tormented by the stench of the dung of beasts lying there. His sense of touch is tormented by the pricking of the straw that serves Him as a bed. Soon after His birth He is obliged to fly into Egypt where He passed several years of His childhood poor and despised. The life which He afterwards led in Nazareth was not less poor and lowly. Behold Him at length terminating His life in Jerusalem, dying on a Cross by dint of torments.
O my sweet Love, have I, then, by my sins kept Thee in a state of affliction all Thy life long? Oh, tell me, then, what I can do that Thou mayest forgive me, for I will leave nothing undone. I repent, O sovereign Good, of all the offences I have committed against Thee; I repent, and I love thee more than myself. I feel a great desire to love Thee. It is Thou that givest me this desire; give me, therefore, strength to love Thee ardently.
Meditation II:
Spiritual Reading: “The Hand of the Lord Is Not Shortened”
Evening Meditation: The Contempt with which the Sinner Treats God
Meditation I:
Meditation II:
Morning Meditation: Anguish of the Dying Sinner
The poor dying sinner will be assailed, not by one, but by many causes of distress and anguish. Devils will tempt him, and his sins like so many satellites will say to him: We are thy works; we shall not desert thee.
Meditation I:
The poor dying sinner will be assailed, not by one, but by many causes of distress and anguish. On the one hand the devils will torment him. At death these horrid enemies exert all their strength to secure the perdition of the soul that is about to leave this world. They know that they have but little time to gain it, and that if they lose it at death, they lose it forever. The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time. — (Apoc. xii., 12). The dying man will be tempted, not by one, but by innumerable devils who will labour for his damnation. Their houses shall be filled with serpents. — (Is. xiii., 21). One tempter will say: Fear not; you will recover. Another: You have been deaf to the inspirations of God for so many years, and do you now expect that He will have mercy on you? Another will ask: How can you make satisfaction for all the injuries you have done to the property and character of you neighbours? Another: Do you not see that your Confessions have been useless; that they have been made without sorrow or purpose of amendment? How will you be able to repair them now?
On the other hand, the dying man will see himself surrounded by his sins. Evils, says David, shall catch the unjust man unto destruction. — (Ps. cxxxix., 12). These sins, says St. Bernard, shall, like so many satellites, keep him in chains, saying unto him: We are you works; we shall not desert you. We are your fruits, and we will not leave you; we will accompany you into the other world and will present ourselves with you to the Eternal Judge. The dying man will then wish to shake off such enemies; but, to get rid of them, he must detest them and return sincerely to God. His mind is darkened and his heart hardened. A hard heart shall fare evil at the last; and he that loveth danger shall perish in it. — (Ecclus. iii., 27). St. Bernard says that the man who has been obstinate in sin during life, will make efforts, but without success, to get out of the state of damnation; and that, overwhelmed by his own malice, he will end his life in the same unhappy state.
My dear Saviour, assist me; do not abandon me. I see my whole soul covered with the wounds of sin; my passions attack me violently; my bad habits weigh me down. I cast myself at Thy feet; have pity on me and deliver me from so many evils. In thee, O Lord, I have hoped; may I not be confounded forever. — (Ps. xxx., 6). Do not suffer a soul that trusts in Thee to be lost. Deliver not up to beasts the souls that confess to thee. — (Ps. lxxiii., 19).
Meditation II:
Spiritual Reading: The Martyrs Teach Us to Despise the World and to Love the Faith
Evening Meditation: He Hath Loved Us and Washed Us from Our Sins in His Own Blood
Meditation I:
Meditation II:
Morning Meditation: The Imitation of Mary
Now, therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways . . . Blessed is the man that watcheth daily at my gates. — (Prov. viii., 32, 34).
Blessed is he who, like the poor who stand before the gates of the rich, is careful to seek for the alms of graces before the doors of the mercy of Mary! And thrice blessed is he who moreover seeks to imitate the virtues which he remarks in Mary, and more especially her purity and humility.
Meditation I:
St. Augustine says that to obtain with more certainty and in greater abundance the favour of the Saints, we must imitate them; for when they see us practising their virtues, they are moved all the more to pray for us. The Queen of Saints and our principal Advocate, Mary, has no sooner delivered a soul from Lucifer’s grasp and united it to God, than she desires that it should begin to imitate her virtues, otherwise she cannot enrich it with the graces that she would wish, seeing it so opposed to her in conduct. Therefore Mary calls those blessed who with diligence imitate her life: Now, therefore, ye children, hear me; blessed are they that keep my ways.
Whosoever loves, resembles the person loved, or endeavours to become like that person, according to the well-know proverb: Love either finds or makes it like. Hence St. Sophronius exhorts us, if we love Mary, to endeavour to imitate her, because this is the greatest act of homage we can offer her. “Let the child, then,” says St. Bernard, “endeavour to imitate his Mother, if he desires her favour; for Mary seeing herself treated as a Mother will treat him as her child.”
O my Mother, I love thee, but I fear I do not love thee as I ought. I know that love makes lovers like to the person loved. If, then, I see myself so unlike thee, it is a mark that I do not love thee. Thou art so pure, and I, defiled with many sins! Thou so humble, and I so proud! Thou so holy and I so wicked. This, then, is what thou hast to do, O Mary, since thou lovest me! Make me like thyself. Thou hast all power to change hearts; take mine and change it. Show the world thou canst do it for those that love thee. Make me thy worthy child.
Meditation II:
Spiritual Reading: The Martyrs Teach Us Patience, the Importance of Prayer and the Love of God
Evening Meditation: “Why Will You Die, O House of Israel?”
Meditation I:
Meditation II:
