DE PASSIONE DOMINI

• 1425A

If you wish to enter into life through Jesus, who is the way and the door; if you wish to eat of the tree of life and to taste the hidden manna, let it not frighten you off, nor grow cheap in your eyes, that on every side you find the approach hard and mean. He has thorns on his head, nails in his hands and feet, a lance in his side, scourgings on his arms; and he is wholly torn in body, and like a leper foul to look upon and hard to follow. But beware of throwing away the nut because of the bitter shell: for the more bitter it seems on the outside, the sweeter a kernel you will one day find within. Therefore, that you may in some measure be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length, the breadth, the height, and the depth of the mystery of the holy cross and of the Lord's passion — 1425Bwhich God hides from the wise and prudent of the world and reveals to little ones — understand the weight of the words that are spoken: because, with God working together with them, they prepare the soul to have devotion in prayer, and consolation in tribulation, and revelation in contemplation; and so you may know not only the things that have been given to us by God, but also him himself who has been given to us.

In this meditation a fire will blaze up, if you meditate on these things even simply according to the letter. Here, therefore, diligently recognize the face of your Creator and Redeemer, and look upon the face of your Christ; and with the whole gaze of heart and body, with the whole understanding and affection, and with a spirit brought very low, so attend to this image as though Christ were dying on the cross in your very presence; and think in your heart whose image and inscription this is: 1425Cbecause he is God and man.

Consider first, if you can, and as much as you can, how great is the inward length of brightness in the Godhead, which so lay hidden in him for so many years, reaching from end to end, having neither beginning nor end, in which God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Consider also how great is the outward length of the same in the humanity, in which for so long he endured so many and such great things, in the whole body and for so long a time, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, from the incarnation to the resurrection. Consider not only the length, but also the breadth of charity: because he loved us not only with a perpetual, but even with an excessive charity — so that, 1425DGod needing nothing, who made all things for himself, and subjected all things to man, after man had by sinning lost them all, God did not wish to lose him, 1426Abut appointed a lawgiver over him, and instructing him diligently through the prophets, and at last coming in person himself — nay, mercifully showing himself to us, and humbly putting on the meanness of our flesh — after examples of most perfect holiness, after words of saving knowledge, after miracles of singular power, doing good to all, suffering evils for all, that we might not die the eternal death.

So he willed to die with hands spread wide, embracing all; he calls all to himself, he rejects none; with head bowed he offers the kiss of peace to his enemies, altogether taking no notice of the wrong done him — nay, making satisfaction for it; his body pierced through on every side, and his side opened, he bestowed his body and blood, his heart and soul — nay, the whole God and man, and with him life and inspiration 1426Band all things — most bountifully upon us and upon each one, and repaid so many goods for evils and bore so many evils.

Attend and see how great was that love, how astounding a love, that for man God willed to become man, and that, in order to exalt men, the Most High even humbled himself. And so, just as man abhors and flees shame, labor, and pain, so God for man's sake chose these things and held to them, when, having set joy aside, he endured the cross, the confusion, and the reproach.

See therefore and consider how lofty is the depth of charity, which the Wisdom of God so united to itself that the charity in him was not only long and broad, but also high and deep — such as it befitted God to display and man 1426Cneeded to find. See how great is that sublimity and glorious majesty from which he came, and how deep and mean the humility to which he came down. From highest heaven into the lower parts of the earth; from the throne of glory into the place of misery; from the delights of the angels to all the troubles of men; from the bosom of the Father into the womb of a poor little mother; from the narrowness of the virginal womb into the mean stable of the ass and the ox, and afterward into Egypt for fear of Herod; from there remaining in his own country without honor, humbly bearing so many blasphemies, so many insults, so many wrongs, so many plots. In the midst of his disciples he served like the servant of servants, even to the purging of sins and the washing of feet — even of Judas the betrayer, who could not be appeased by such service, nor by the sweet banquet, nor by the pleasant converse, nor by the kiss of peace, but sold him for a mean 1426Dprice to his enemies for death — and the death of the cross. There he so emptied himself that he came down from the gibbet of robbers, his body into the tomb and his spirit 1427Ainto hell; at once, in one, rich and poor, living and dead, exalted and humbled, sublime above the heads of the angels, lowly beneath the feet of sinners, reckoned a mean and feeble sinner, a madman, and the last of men.

Think how great was the labor of his body, in which he had been so poor from his birth — fasting, keeping watch, going about, preaching, and at the end, from the anguish of impending death, in the agony of long-drawn prayer even to a bloody sweat. Treacherously seized, so unbecomingly bound, and through the night so foully cudgeled from house to house, smeared with spittle and struck with blows before the high priests and the great men, led in the morning to Pilate's house, exposed to worldly justice 1427Bas though guilty of death; then presented to Herod, and by him and his army accounted a fool, and again mocked by Pilate as though a king of fools, and treated like a criminal with [harsh] words and with lashes, so basely accused before so many Jews and gentiles, so grievously scourged, condemned without cause, forced to carry the cross like a robber and a murderer — the just one for the unjust and the wicked, and with the wicked condemned not to exile, not to prison, not to the loss of a foot or a hand, but to death, and the foulest death; and lifted up before friends and enemies, on a high feast day, in a conspicuous place, between the arms of a most mean cross, with hands and feet thus stretched out, to be pierced with iron nails, and so hanging to be mocked by all. There his ears were hearing the blasphemies of his enemies, 1427Chis eyes were seeing men laughing and insulting, his nostrils could smell the stench, and to his thirsting mouth they offered a deadly drink — men who (as Jerome says on Isaiah) had already torn out the hairs of his beard.

Look upon the letters of the crown, that is, the punctures which the crown pressed into him round about his head, and his whole face hidden and despised, disfigured with spittle and with buffets, and made bloody with the points of the thorns; his whole body full of black and red letters, as many as the blows with which it was scourged; livid and sprinkled with drops of blood: him, in short, the very glory of the angels, and beautiful in form above the sons of men, handled more foully than a leper, more cruelly than any criminal.

Amid these things consider what shame it was to him that the world, 1427Dthat so many nations, should be scandalized in him: what shame for so great and such a Lord, the King of kings, to be abandoned by so few servants at so great a moment — a Lord whom all had fled for fear, and were hiding for dread, and were mourning for grief: on so great a solemnity, in his own city, where a little before he had been so magnificently honored; when others were more decently clothed, to be so foully and so often stripped before them all, to be driven about with so many reproaches and mockeries. With how small a garment is the shame of nature covered in him who is the Lord of heaven and earth and the splendor of glory, whose beauty and brightness the sun and moon marvel at — and lest anyone should see so great a disgrace, by a wonderful fellow-suffering the earth is darkened, with shadows scattered everywhere.

1428ABut to crown the shame, look at the multitude of letters on the surface of the page, as it were the numberless people of Jews and gentiles standing about the cross at such a spectacle: where the centurion with his soldiers and armor-bearers, the high priests and the Pharisees, the elders with the clerks of the law and their ministers, were, as it were in power and authority, beneath the arms of the cross; and the whole people, not only of so great a city but gathered from many regions, stood without compassion before the face of the dying Lord. And the soldiers, making sport, divided his garment among themselves. And the high priests and Pharisees, who ought to have taught others, jesting with one another and with the scribes, mocked as much as they could the excellent miracles he had done and the sweetest words he used to speak; and the robbers hung blaspheming before him. 1428B

All his acquaintances too were standing at a distance, and beside the cross his mother, and many other women: and the more his enemies were and the fewer his friends, the more they put him to confusion. But how great was the grief of his heart, to bear in himself so long so great a bitterness of death, when the grief of the friends standing by, and most of all of his mother, pressed him no less? How could such a mother of such a Son stand, seeing him die thus? Did not a mother's heart have bowels of tenderness? What was the mother of mercy thinking, who felt all the things she saw her Son endure? How could she bear the weight of that death, when many, after so many years, cannot bear even 1428Cthe memory of the passion? Where is the mother who could see and endure her son hanging on a gibbet, even if the son had deserved it? Do not mothers so love their sons that they cannot bear to hear even a hard word against them? How then did the mother of the Lord stand, and not rather fall down a hundred times stricken or dead? What was she doing? how could she stand, and be silent, where she heard them all speaking to one another, and her Son himself speaking so many times? How did she not run to the cross crying and wailing, and tearing her Son away from them, or at least demanding with tears that he be given back to her? How did she not, by her outcry and her tears, drive her sisters, and Mary Magdalene, and the others to weeping and lamentation?

If Mary Magdalene, on the third day after, stood outside at 1428Dthe tomb weeping for one so long dead, so that she could not be consoled even by angels, how would she not have wept to see him die thus — him who had so kindly forgiven her her sins, who a little before had raised her brother Lazarus, and for love of whom she had left all things? Far more strongly and more bitterly ought the sisters of the Lord's mother to have wept and lamented, both for the passion of their nephew and out of compassion for their sister. Who then doubts that the mother grieved infinitely more for her Son?

But whatever was to her a cause of grief and sorrow, by the power of God she held it all most tightly within herself, and inwardly she was tormented in body: and the less 1429Ashe dared to cry out — lest she lose her patience and, dying with him, burden her dying Son the more — the sharper were the rendings of her inward parts that she felt in her heart.

But when she saw that he, so ill treated, [was praying] to God the Father for them, and even excused them because they did not know what they were doing, how did she not say to him: Most beloved and most sweet Son, why dost thou say this? They crucify thee, mock thee, and curse thee, and thou on the contrary blessest them? How do they not know what they do, to whom thou hast done no evil? And what could she say, when, dying, he entrusted her to a boy to be kept? What consolation was this for a most sorrowing mother at the death of a most beloved son: Receive the son of Zebedee in place of the Son of God? What could a mother say to her son, and a son to his mother, if they could then have spoken long with one another? And how 1429Bat last could she see the sword coming, which for so many years, from Simeon's prophecy, she had awaited day by day, and which then, through her Son's side, pierced a mother's inward parts? How could John then hold her up, that she should not fall, when he himself was not without the greatest grief?

The Lord also saw, to the increase of his own grief, such blood poured out so cheaply and so uselessly, since he labored thus in vain, that he then scarcely gained one robber, and lost one apostle. He saw again, then, in those present and those to come, the general ingratitude — that even by Christians he was to be given over to forgetfulness like a dead man: because very few are they who give him thanks for so great a benefit, even while they behold him crucified, saying: Glory, praise, and honor be to thee, Christ the King, Redeemer. The Lord saw 1429Calso the most wicked recompense of those present and to come, from those who hate him without cause and repay evil for good: because, if he could suffer, he would suffer even worse things from bad Christians than he did then from the Jews: for adding transgression upon the pain of his wounds, they daily renew his blows, and crucify him again, and hold him up to scorn.

He could grieve much, foreseeing the men of our own day, whom the Apostle also wept over — enemies of the cross of Christ, ungrateful for such benefits, taken up with the delights of the flesh, glorying in vain things, gaping after worldly things: for whom it is not enough that they go to destruction, but by persecuting the good they mock, revile, and despise them — nay, they even plunder 1429Dand kill them, as the king's soldiers did to the Lord, and the clerks of the law, and the people consenting with them; of whom it is said in Malachi: You crucify me, O nation, all the day long.

Nor do the many wicked displease less, who have done many evils, and inflict evils, and blaspheme God, and 1430Amurmur in adversities, like the robber hanging on the left. But few bear evils patiently for their sins and are saved, like the robber hanging on the right. And fewest of all truly suffer with the passion of Christ after the manner of the holy women.

And yet the impious were not so satisfied with his punishments, but raging with unheard-of madness against the dead man they pierced his side with a lance. And when darkness came on, and the veil of the temple fell, when the rocks were split and the earth trembled, when the tombs lay open, and the robber confessed, and the centurion glorified the just Son of God, the faithless Jews were willing neither to believe nor to suffer with him, but called him a deceiver, and guarded him buried, to blot out his name and memory, and declared that he had been carried off by theft by his disciples.

• 1430B

O soul, weigh and think over these things: how narrow and rough is the way that leads to life, and how much it behooved him to suffer that he might enter into his glory. If he bought his own glory thus, who shall have it altogether for nothing? Finally, if these things do not move you, consider that he is your heavenly Father, and your brother too according to the flesh, and a faithful friend, beneficent and helpful — so much so that even for you, condemned as you were, before he died thus, he is thus punished in all his members for your great and manifold guilt, that he might be merciful to all your iniquities: thus he endures many blows, that he may heal all your infirmities: thus he redeemed from destruction your life — mean, useless, abominable, damnable — by a redemption 1430Cso precious, so abundant, so gracious, by a Godhead so glorious. Thus he destroys the guilt of sin and of hell through such a destruction of his own body. Thus he crowned his head with thorns, that he might crown you in mercy and compassions: so was his soul filled with evils, and he had no good of the world, that he might fill your desire with good things. Thus his flesh dies on the cross, that your youth may be renewed like the eagle's.

And you, in all these things unfeeling, hardened, and ungrateful, see these things and laugh, you worthless and degenerate servant, who without shame and without grief see before you the gibbet, and your Father hanging upon it. Nor do you consider, wretched and pitiable man, of what judgment and punishment you deserve to be condemned, who have pierced the body of him thus hanging on the gibbet with arrow or lance as many times 1430Das you have sinned mortally: nor was it enough for you not to render your own soul to your Redeemer, but you have taken others from him besides. Pray therefore that God may be merciful and favorable to you, and turn to him with your whole heart: who lives forever and ever