The Sorrowful Passion (Eighth Day of The Agonising Heart)

THE SORROWFUL PASSION.

Spiritual Reading.

THE foresight of His Death and Passion, with all their attending circumstances of humiliation and pain, was another cause of our Saviour’s Agony. The dignity of the life which he was about to give up, and the bitterness of the torments which he was soon to undergo, were fully present to His mind. He suffered by anticipation, and the extent of His foreknowledge enlarged the sphere of His sufferings, for He saw that His death would have the effect of increasing the damnation of many souls, whom He would fain have redeemed by His Blood. The name of Passion has often been given by ancient writers to the martyr’s death; it also belongs to that slow and hidden martyrdom, that persecution, which is the portion of all who will live godly in Jesus Christ (2 Tim. iii. 12). Whoever wishes to be a martyr or witness to our Lord by the holiness of his life, must prepare for a sorrowful passion.

Meditation.

I. Jesus saw all His future sufferings, even down to their most minute details. But He kept within the limits of reality, and was not that reality most fearful? But we, on the contrary, exaggerate everything; we exaggerate the wrong our neighbours have done us, we exaggerate the dangers we have to go through, we exaggerate the evils which beset or threaten us. Instead of making things smooth by the use of good common sense, we make mountains out of mole-hills; we imagine a thousand snares and devices for our ruin, when, all the while, our own irritable and suspicious temper is our greatest enemy. If we have no causes of sorrow we invent them; we torment ourselves ingeniously; we turn away our minds from the sins and failings for which we ought to mourn, and we fancy ourselves forsaken by God, ill-treated by man, and left a prey to the caprice of fortune. This habit of being guided by feeling rather than by reason makes our progress in virtue small and our merits inconsiderable. O Divine Truth, Incarnate Word, Agonising Saviour, heal us, give us the spirit of understanding and fortitude, make us calm, give us the patience which we need with ourselves even more than with others.

II. The sufferings of His Body were a cause of affliction to Jesus, but in all things He preserved the divine order. His Soul loved His Body merely as a servant and instrument united to It for time and eternity. Do we submit to the divine order of things? Have we not an inordinate affection for the body? Does not the flesh tyrannise over us? Do not we flatter it? Are not the fears which trouble us almost always fears of bodily ills? Our bodily sufferings, in comparison with those which Jesus knew to be coming on Him, are next to nothing, yet they are enough to overwhelm us with sadness, and to give rise to murmuring and impatience. The least trouble is a reason for neglecting the duties of our position, for omitting our religious exercises, and falling into sin. God sends sorrow to us as He sent it to His only Son, to be the means of expiating sin and gaining merit; we reject the benefits, and it becomes to us a cause of new imperfections. When illness comes upon us we ought to accept it willingly, considering that we are like the lightning-conductor, which preserves the home of those dearest to us from storms. But if our suffering is at once the result of our own folly or vice, and the cause of fresh sins, how can we then draw down the blessing of God upon others? How can we resemble Jesus in His Agony? One only way is left—immediate penitence and complete resignation. Do we take this way?

III. The foreknowledge of His cruel and shameful death was another special cause of suffering to our Lord. He knew its time, its place, its manner, its every circumstance; how it would profit some, how it would prove useless to others. He prepared for it by repeated acts of the most meritorious resignation. The thought of death alarms and saddens us also, but while our Lord was sorrowful in view of the sufferings of the Body before being forsaken by the Soul, we are sorrowful because the soul must forsake the pleasures and honours of this world, must leave those it has loved too well. We do not shrink from death, as Jesus did, merely because soul and body must then part company; we shrink from it because our past life has been bad, our present is unsatisfactory, our future doubtful. We know not the circumstances of our death, and yet on them depends our eternal condition. Shall we die in a state of sin or a state of grace? Shall we be able to receive the sacrament of reconciliation? Our very ignorance ought to keep us in fear, so that we should avoid sin and the occasions of sin. In the Litany of the Saints, the Church teaches us to pray — “From sudden and unprovided death, O Lord deliver us.” Deliverance from “sudden death” is a great favour, which we are quite unable to gain for ourselves, but it will be our own fault if we die an “unprovided death.” Jesus Christ has taught us, both by word and example, how to prepare and to keep ourselves always ready for death. Is my whole life, like that of my Divine Example, a preparation to die well? Do I spend some days every year, or some hours every month, in getting ready? Do I pray every day for a good death? Is my conduct in affliction, in sickness, in all the pains of this life, such as will lead to a holy end?

Practice.

Invoke the Agonising Heart of Jesus and the compassionate Heart of Mary for yourself. Pray especially for those who have a sad future before them, or who are afflicted beyond measure at the death of those dear to them. For the intention of those in their agony to-day, bear with patience any physical sufferings, any unkindness, injuries, or persecutions, that may come upon you. Prepare some sick person for death, by reminding him of that fearful passage, if he forgets it; by promoting his conversion, if he is a sinner; by leading him to perfect resignation, if he is already in a state of grace. Every night say to yourself—“If God were to call me this night, where should I go?” Make an act of contrition, recommend your death to our Lady, and then lie down in your bed as if it were your coffin.

Example.

The remembrance of our Saviour’s sufferings has often caused Saints an agony like that which He underwent from the anticipation.

The Blessed Mary Victoria Fornari, of whom we have already spoken, was in the habit of meditating on those sufferings. “She was so touched by our Saviour’s Passion, that though not by nature easily moved to tears, she could not hear of it without weeping. When these sorrowful mysteries were the subject of the reading in the refectory, she was unable to taste food, and it became necessary to change the subject. Nevertheless, she thought herself too insensible, and used to say—“If we could feel the sorrows of Jesus Christ as we ought, we should die at once of grief and love.” ¹

On Holy Thursday, 1585, Saint Mary Magdalen de Pazzi longed earnestly to feel the weariness which our Lord suffered in bearing the Cross to Mount Calvary. Her desire was granted; all through the following day and night her sufferings of mind and body were extraordinary. Her lips became livid, her countenance death-like, her whole body so weak that she could hardly stand, and she often wept. For three hours her agony was so intense that those who saw her feared for her life. Her face was covered with great drops of sweat, tears flowed from her eyes, her breast heaved, and she breathed with difficulty. ² During twenty-six hours Magdalen felt a certain proportion of those sufferings which Jesus endured in the mysteries of His Passion. In the course of this long trance she fell heavily on the ground, as our Saviour did beneath the Cross; she stretched out her arms, as He did when He was about to be crucified; they became stiff and hard as wood. All at once she rose, and with her arms still extended in the form of a cross, pronounced the Seven Words of our Lord on the Cross with such devotion that the other Nuns were full of wonder. At last her head fell on one side and her whole body sank down, so that they thought she was dead. ³

The Passion of Jesus and the sorrows of Mary had such power over the heart of Saint Margaret of Cortona that all bitter and hard things became sweet and easy to her. One night she prayed most earnestly with many tears that our Lord would grant her the privilege of feeling, as far as her strength would permit, the sorrows of our Lady at the foot of the Cross. The next morning, after Mass, in the church of the Franciscans, she tasted the bitterness of the Passion. In a trance she saw Judas come forward; she saw the Jews rush upon our Lord; she was present at their councils, she heard their clamours, she saw the Disciples forsake Him, she heard St. Peter deny Him, she witnessed His scourging, His crowning with thorns, and all the other sorrowful mysteries. At the words of Pilate and the cries of the crowd her grief was such that she fainted, and appeared to be dead. She saw the Virgin Mother follow her Divine Son through the crowd of blasphemers; she described, with groans, all that passed before her eyes, even to the Wound made by the lance in our Saviour’s Side. All the inhabitants of Cortona were deeply moved. Men and women left their work; even the children and the sick thronged to the church of St. Francis, sighing and weeping. Margaret seemed as if fastened to the Cross, and her torments were so intense that they thought she could not live. She ground her teeth, she writhed like a worm; her face was ashy pale, her pulse and speech were gone, and she was as cold as ice. She was so completely unconscious that she did not notice the crowd, nor recognise the women who supported her in their arms. At the hour of our Lord’s death: her head fell on her breast, and she remained motionless and insensible, so that those who were present thought life was extinct. But in the evening, as if her Divine Master had called her to share in His resurrection, Margaret awoke to life and joy. ⁴

“In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin” (Eccles. vii. 40). O Christian, remember also the Passion of thy Saviour, of which the Eucharist is the memorial, and thou shalt heap merit upon merit.

1. Collet, La Vie de la V. M. Victoire Fornari, liv. iv., cap. vii.
2. Vita e Ratti di Santa Maria-Maddalena de Pazzi, p. II, cap. xv.
3. Ibid., cap. xix.
4. Acta Sanctorum, die xxii. Febr., Vita, auctore Juncta Bevagnati, cap. v., nn. 83, 84.