Meditations on the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary: First Series, Jesus in the Rosary: X. The Crucifixion—The Death of Jesus
WEAKENED almost to death by wounds, exhausted by a most painful journey, crushed and bruised under the weight of His cross, Jesus reaches the summit of Calvary. Let us concentrate our thoughts upon this last and most awful scene of His Passion.
The executioners seize upon our dear Saviour and roughly drag off His garments, now adhering to the wounds made in His scourging. They stretch Him upon the cross and violently lay hold of His bruised and torn members, driving rough nails into His hands and feet. The breaking and disjointing of His bones is distinctly heard. Oh! how horrible. Finally the cross is set upright and the Victim is exposed to the view of a degraded and immoral crowd, gathered from all parts to Jerusalem to feast on the spectacle of His agony and to insult Him in His expiring pains at a time when the suffering of the most infamous criminal would command pity and make of him an object sacred to respect and compassion.
But the sweet Lamb of God forgets all injuries and all cruelties. He pardons His murderers, promises paradise to the repentant thief, gives His Mother to us to be our Mother for evermore, thirsts for souls and invites them to Him. He submits to the divine will, and fulfils the prophetic oracles until all is consummated. He lovingly complains that He is abandoned by the Father, commends His soul to Him, utters a loud cry, and expires.
Jesus is dead! But He has not yet poured out upon us all the treasures of His love. His Sacred Heart is pierced by a lance, which brings with it blood and water to give living virtue to the sacraments and to regenerate sinful souls.
Jesus is dead! Let us contemplate His body, all livid and covered with blood. To our carnal eyes it is without beauty or glory; but His Father joyfully turns to Him: He clasps the Victim of sin in a loving embrace, and gathers into His merciful bosom all the merits and sufferings of that divine Victim. He is the well-beloved of whom Solomon sang; He is the well-beloved, clothed in the white robe of innocence and in the purple of sacrifice: “My beloved is white and ruddy, chosen out of thousands” (Cant. v. 10).
Jesus is dead! Let us unite ourselves with the invisible angels who surround the cross and adore in silence His lifeless flesh. The soul of which it was the unspotted tabernacle has left it to visit the sombre prison in which the just souls of the old law awaited His coming; but His divinity is still there, preparing in those dead members the triumph of the resurrection.
Jesus is dead! Let us weep with His Most Holy Mother, and beg of Her to obtain for us a portion, at least, of Her tender and profound compassion. All the dolors of Her Son are felt in Her maternal Heart. Her tears are a reproach to our guilty hearts, yet She desires nothing so anxiously as our pardon. O Queen of Martyrs! O Mother of God and of men! we will cling for ever to the memory of Thy great mercy. That we may continually bring it to mind, imprint deeply in our souls the wounds of Thy crucified Love:
Sancta Mater, istud agas, Crucifixi fige plagas Cordi meo valide.
Holy Mother, pierce me through, In my heart each wound renew Of my Saviour crucified.
Jesus is dead! Let us lament with Magdalen, and with the centurion strike our breasts; our sins indeed have crucified our Saviour. Come forward now, all ye impieties, blasphemies, ingratitudes, sacrileges, proud thoughts, tumultuous ambitions, egotism, injustices, lies, deceit, pleasures of sense, shameful indulgences—come to the mangled body of your Saviour and be confounded. “Of a truth you have murdered the Author of life.” O my Jesus! I am ashamed to appear before Thee; I fear the fate of Thy executioners; I would fly far away from Calvary, the scene of my infamy, if I were not kept there by Thy merciful words and by Thy promises of pardon.
Jesus is dead! Let us forget all else, and give our hearts without reserve to the contemplation of the holy Cross, as if we were alone in the world with it. It is for us, for each one of us, He was crucified. For us, in this sense: that He is our substitute on that frightful gibbet on which, but for Him, we would have received the strokes of God’s justice. For us, in the sense that He has expiated our faults and accomplished the work of our salvation. To Jesus crucified be ever given the homage, too long withheld, of our heartfelt repentance! To Jesus crucified be ever given the homage of our deepest gratitude for the greatest of all benefits—that of our redemption!