Category: 06.viii.23 X Post Pentecost

Therefore, we ought continually with tears of tenderness, to thank the Eternal Father for having given His innocent Son to death, to deliver us from eternal death: He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; and how hath he not also with him given us all things? (Rom. viii. 32). Thus wrote St. Paul; and thus Jesus Himself spoke in the Gospel of St. John: God so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son (Jo. iii. 16).

He who resolves to suffer for God, suffers no more pain. St. Gertrude used to say that so great was her enjoyment in suffering that no time was more painful to her than that in which she was free from pain. Ah yes, souls who understand the language of love, know well how to find all their happiness in suffering.

When once his Congregation was approved, Alphonsus gave himself up with greater ardour than ever to the impulses of his burning zeal. From this time we see him extending so widely the sphere of his labours, that his boundless activity has won for him the admiration of all successive ages. In addition to the cares, which now weighed upon him more heavily than ever owing to the increase and extension of his Institute; in addition to the anxieties and fatigues occasioned by his persevering assiduity in the work of the missions, Alphonsus now began to publish that long series of works, both theological and ascetical, by which he merited the glorious title of Doctor of the Church.

How is it possible for him who looks at the Crucifix, and beholds a God dying in a sea of sorrows and insults –how is it possible for him, if he loves that God, not to suffer with cheerfulness? Yea, how is it even possible not to desire to suffer every pain for Jesus’ sake? Love makes all things easy.

Hitherto we have spoken only of the outward bodily pains of Jesus Christ. And who can ever explain and comprehend the inward pains of His soul, which a thousand times exceeded His outward pains? This inward torment was such that in the Garden of Gethsemane it caused a sweat of Blood to pour forth from all His body, and compelled Him to say that this was enough to cause His death: My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matt. xxvi. 38).

When Alphonsus found himself once more in the bosom of his Congregation at Nocera, his chief aim was to return with new ardour to all the practices of his religious life. That beloved poverty, which had been the chief ornament of his episcopal palace, was also the sole decoration of the two little rooms which were to be his final dwelling-place. Loving God alone he cared for nothing else; whatever savoured of the world was hateful to him.

Speaking of the Saints, Salvian says: “If they are humbled, they wish their humiliation; if they are poor, they delight in their poverty; hence in every misfortune that befalls they are content, and so they begin even in this life to enjoy beatitude.”

Therefore, we ought continually with tears of tenderness, to thank the Eternal Father for having given His innocent Son to death, to deliver us from eternal death: He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; and how hath he not also with him given us all things? (Rom. viii. 32). Thus wrote St. Paul; and thus Jesus Himself spoke in the Gospel of St. John: God so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son (Jo. iii. 16).

Therefore, we ought continually with tears of tenderness, to thank the Eternal Father for having given His innocent Son to death, to deliver us from eternal death: He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; and how hath he not also with him given us all things? (Rom. viii. 32). Thus wrote St. Paul; and thus Jesus Himself spoke in the Gospel of St. John: God so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son (Jo. iii. 16).