On the Other Considerations to Excite in the Soul the Love of the Suffering Jesus

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On the Other Considerations to Excite in the Soul the Love of the Suffering Jesus
by Richard Challoner, 1807



"He was wounded for our iniquities, and bruised for our sins." --Isaias 53: 5

Consider first, how affectionate is the love that Christ bears us in His passion. It is stronger than deaths; He loves us more than His own life, since He parts with His life for the love of us. It is more tender than the love of the tenderest mother, since He voluntarily embraces the pangs of death to give us life; He sheds His blood to cleanse our souls from sin; He offers His own body in sacrifice to be our victim, our ransom, and our food. At the very time He is suffering amid dying for us, He has every one of us in His heart; He embraces each with an incomparable affection; weeps over each one, prays for each one, and pours out His blood for each one, no less than if he had suffered for that one alone. O my soul, had we then a place in the heart of our Jesus, when He was hanging upon the cross? and shall we ever refuse Him a place in our heart? No, dear Saviour, my heart is thine; it desires nothing better than to be for ever a servant of thy love.

Consider 2ndly, how effectual is the love that Christ shows us in His passion; it contents not itself with words or professions of affection, nor with such passing sentiments of tenderness as we imagine we have for Him in certain fits of devotion, at times when nothing occurs for us to suffer for His sake; but it shows itself by its effects, by His taking upon Himself all our evils, to procure effectually all good for us. His love has made Him divest Himself of all His beauty and comeliness, and hide all His glory and majesty, that He might become for us, 'despised and the most abject of men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with infirmity.' Isaia iii. 'He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows' out of pure love. He has made Himself for the love of us, 'as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. He was wounded for our iniquities, and bruised for our sins. For we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was offered because it was His own will.' And it was His own will, because He loved us, and desired to transfer to Himself the punishment due to us, that he might deliver us from the wrath to come, and open to us the fountains of mercy, grace, and life. This was an effectual love indeed. Does our love for Him show itself by the like effects? Are we willing to renounce our own will, to mortify our inclinations and passions, to suffer and to bear our crosses for Him? A generous lover is as willing to be with Him on mount Calvary, as on mount Thabor. Is this our disposition?

Consider 3rdly, how disinterested is the love that Christ shows us in His passion. He loves us without any merit on our side; we deserved nothing from Him but hell. He loves us without any prospect of gain to Himself from us, or any return that we can make to Him; we can give Him nothing but what He must first give us; we can offer Him no good thing but what His love has purchased for us; we can have nothing but what is His. He stands in no need at all of us, or our goods. O how truly generous is this love of our Redeemer in His passion! How bountiful is He to us! He makes over to us the infinite treasures of His merits; He wants them not for Himself, but bequeaths them all to us. His love for us knows no bounds. It hath possessed His heart from the first instant of His conception: it burned there for every moment of His life; it carried Him through all His sufferings, even to death. It is without beginning or end; it endures from eternity to eternity. O bright fire, mayest thou take possession of my soul, for time and eternity!

Conclude, since thou canst make no better return, to offer at least daily thy heart with all its affections to thy loving Saviour. But that it may be worthy of His acceptance, beg that He would cleanse it by His precious blood, and inflame it with His love.



On the Sufferings of Our Saviour, Before His Passion

Consider first, how truly did the devout author of the 'Following of Christ,' say: 'The whole life of Christ was a Cross and a Martyrdom. He came into this world to be a victim for our sins; and from the first instant of His conception in His mother�s womb, He offered Himself for all the sufferings He was to undergo in life and death.' Hear how He then addresses Himself to His Father, Ps. xxxiv. 7, 'sacrifice and oblation Thou didst not desire, but Thou hast pierced ears for me. Burnt-offering and sin-offering Thou didst not require: then said I, behold I come. In the head of the book it is written of me, that I should do Thy will. O my God, I have desired it, and Thy name is in the midst of my heart.' And what was this will and this law, which from His first conception He embraced in the midst of His heart; but that instead of all other sacrifices he should become Himself both our priest and victim, and through His sufferings should mediate our peace, and reconcile us to His Father? Thus He accepted beforehand all that He was afterwards to endure; and by the clear and distinct foresight, which He had all along of His whole passion, suffered in some measure all His lifetime, what afterwards He endured at His death. O how early did my Jesus embrace His cross for the love of me! O how early did I prefer my pleasures before His love!

Consider 2ndly, divers other sufferings which our Lord went through in the course of His mortal life. His nine months confinement in His mother�s womb, most sensible to Him, who from His first conception had the perfect use of reason, and who by a violence which He offered to His zeal and love, was kept so long from action. The hardships He endured at His birth, from the rigour of the season and the poverty of His accommodations; His circumcision; His flight into Egypt; the sense that He had of the murder of the Innocents; the austerity of His life; His frequent hunger, thirst, and want of necessaries; His labours and fatigues. But all this was nothing to what his boundless charity and His zeal for the honour of His Father and the salvation of souls, made Him continually suffer, from the sight and knowledge of the sins of men. He had all the sins of the world always before His eyes, for the whole time of His life, with all their enormity and opposition to the infinite majesty and sanctity of God, and His divine honour and glory, and the dreadful havoc they did, and would make in the souls of men, with all the dismal consequences of them both in time and eternity; and this sight which was always present to Him, was infinitely more grievous to His soul than the very pangs of death. For if St. Paul had such a sense of the evil of sin, as to be quite on fire when He saw any one fall into sin, 2 Cor. xi. 29, how much more did this fire devour our Saviour?

Consider 3rdly, how much our Lord suffered from being obliged to live and converse amongst men, whose manners were so widely different from and so infinitely opposite to His; how sensibly He was touched with the crying disorders of the people of the Jews, amongst whom He lived; with their malice, their violences, their injustices, their deceits, their blasphemies, and the licentiousness of their lives; the pride, ambition, covetousness, and hypocrisy of their priests, scribes, and Pharisees; their oppressions of the poor; their contempt of virtue and of truth; and their general forgetfulness of God and their salvation. Add to this, how sensibly He must have been afflicted with the hardness of their hearts, with which they resisted His graces; their obstinacy in their evil ways; their ingratitude; the opposition they made to His heavenly Gospel; their blasphemous judgments of His person and miracles; their slanders and murmurings against Him; and their continually laying snares for Him, and persecuting Him even unto death. O, who can sufficiently apprehend how much our Saviour's soul was affected by all these evils; with this reception and treatment He met with from his chosen people, and with those dreadful judgments they were thereby drawing down upon their own heads, instead of that mercy, which He came to purchase for them by His blood! Death itself was not so sensible to Him.

Conclude, if thou wouldst be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, to conform thyself to a life of crosses and sufferings: thus shalt thou wear His livery, and shalt be entitled to a share in His heavenly kingdom.