Category: 30.vii.23 IX Post Pentecost

When the Divine Word offered Himself to redeem mankind, there were before Him two ways of redeeming the world, the one of joy and glory, the other of pains and insults. But as it was His will, not only by His coming to deliver man from eternal death, but also to call forth the love of all the hearts of men, He rejected the way of joy and glory, and chose that of pains and insults: Having joy set before him, he endured the cross (Heb. xii. 2).

To begin with the holy missions: it would be difficult to express the ardent zeal with which Alphonsus laboured in this holy work. The charity of Christ so pressed this apostolic man, that in the whole kingdom of Naples but few provinces could be found which had not experienced the effects of his burning zeal. We should have to write many volumes if we wished to enumerate all the conversions that took place in the various regions he visited. A more perfect missionary than Alphonsus cannot be imagined.

The Blessed Virgin revealed to St. Bridget that there was no sinner in the world, however much he might be at enmity with God, who will not return to Him if he would only have recourse to her, and ask her assistance. Noe’s Ark was a true figure of Mary, for as in it all kinds of beasts were saved, so under Mary’s mantle all sinners find refuge.

How pleasing it is to Jesus Christ that we should often remember His Passion, and the shameful death He suffered for us, can be well undersood from His having instituted the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar for this very end, that there might ever dwell in us the lively memory of the love He bore to us in sacrificing Himself on the Cross for our salvation.