St. Robert Bellarmine: The Seven Words on the Cross

[Stone]

CHAPTER IX. The first fruit to be drawn from the consideration of the third Word spoken by Christ upon the Cross.

If we examine attentively all the circumstances under which this third word was spoken, we may gather many fruits from its consideration First of all, we have brought before us the intense desire which Christ felt of suffering for our salvation in order that our redemption might be copious and plentiful For in order not to increase the pain and sorrow they feel, some men take measures to prevent their relatives being present at their death, particularly if their death is to be a violent one, accompanied by disgrace and infamy But Christ was not satiated with His own most bitter Passion, so full of grief and shame, but wished also that His Mother and the disciple whom He loved, should be present, and should even stand near the Cross in order that the sight of the sufferings of those most dear to Him might augment His own grief. Four streams of Blood were pouring from the mangled Body of Christ on the Cross, and He wished that four streams of tears should flow from the eyes of His Mother, of His disciple, of Mary His Mother’s sister, and of Magdalene, the most cherished of the holy women, in order that the cause of His sufferings might be due less to the shedding of His own Blood, than to the copious flood of tears which the sight of His agony wrung from the hearts of those who were standing near. I imagine that I hear Christ saying to me “The sorrows of death surround Me,”[1] for the sword of Simeon rends and mangles My Heart, as cruelly as it passes through the soul of My most innocent Mother It is thus that a bitter death should separate not only the soul from the body, but a mother from a son, and such a Mother from such a Son! For this reason He said, “Woman, behold thy son,” for His love for Mary would not permit Him at such a moment to address her by the endearing name of Mother. God has so loved the world as to give His Only-Begotten Son for its redemption, and the Only-Begotten Son has so loved the Father as to shed profusely His very Blood for His honour, and not satisfied with the pangs of His Passion, has endured the agonies of compassion, so that there might be a plentiful redemption for our sins. And that we may not perish but may enjoy life everlasting, the Father and the Son exhort us to the imitation of Their charity by pourtraying it in its most exquisite beauty; and yet the heart of man still resists this so great charity, and consequently deserves rather to feel the wrath of God, than to taste the sweetness of His mercy, and fall into the arms of Divine love We should be indeed ungrateful, and should deserve everlasting torments, if we would not for His love endure the little purging which is necessary for our salvation, when we behold our Redeemer loving us to that extent, as to suffer for our sakes more than was necessary, to endure countless torments, and to shed every drop of His Blood, when one single drop would have been amply sufficient for our redemption The only reason that can be assigned for our sloth and folly is, that we neither meditate on the Passion of Christ, nor consider His immense love for us with that earnestness and attention we ought to do We content ourselves with reading the Passion hastily, or hearing it read, instead of securing fitting opportunities to penetrate ourselves with the thought of it. On that account the holy Prophet admonishes us: “Attend and see if there be sorrow like unto my sorrow.”[2] And the Apostle says: “Consider Him that endureth such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.”[3] But the time will come when our ingratitude towards God and listlessness in the affair of our own salvation will be a subject of sincere sorrow to us. For there are many who at the Last Day “will groan for anguish of spirit,” and will say: “Therefore we have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice hath not shined upon us.”[4] And they will not feel this fruitless sorrow for the first time in hell, but before the Day of Judgment, when their mortal eyes shall be shut in death, and the eyes of their soul shall be opened, will they behold the truth of those things to which during their life they were wilfully blind.


ENDNOTES

1. Psalm xvii.
2. Lament. i. 10.
3. Heb. xii. 3.
4. Wisdom v. 6.