3-5 April 2025
Passiontide is just around the corner, the suffering Christ beckons to us to lift up our eyes to Him and, as much as we can, share in His passion. Our monthly triduum is an excellent opportunity to get ourselves in gear f0r this most recollected time of the year.
When we meditate on the Passion, the first thing we need to be attentive to is what Our Blessed Lord is actually suffering, in detail. In other words, it’s not just that He suffers, but what exactly He is suffering. This demands of us that we pause and consider what the evangelists tell us of those last hours of His life. St Thomas points out that Jesus suffered in every possible way and from all kinds of people. So in the particular point of the Passion I am meditating, I need to ask myself what kind of pain it is causing Our Blessed Lord. Does it consist in physical pain? If so, what kind of pain? Is it sweating blood, being slapped in the face, being flogged with a pronged whip, having thorns forced into the brow, nails being hammered into the hands and feet, the bitter taste of gall on a parched tongue, etc… If it is a psychological pain, is it the betrayal of a close friend, the abandonment of all the apostles, the denial of the first pope, the scorn of the populace, etc….? Each pain is unique and each one was suffered for love of me.
Furthermore, the Lord does not have to undergo this suffering. A word from Him would have stopped it all. A simple act of the will could have pulverised all His enemies. He had many other ways of saving us. He chose to die and to die the most cruel death so that no one could ever doubt His love, or think that there is too much to suffer in this world. No one has ever suffered like Christ and no one deserved it less. The One who suffers all this is not only perfectly innocent, He is actually the only Son of God, God Himself. He is the One who created us out of nothing and without whom we would not exist.
From all this, we can draw several lessons. Foremost among them is to love Him back with all our heart. If we are young, we should be open to giving our life for His love, even if He calls to leave everything and walk in His footsteps in the religious life. And if we have already chosen a way of life, it means being generous and working to become perfect in whatever walk of life we find ourselves. It is about loving Him to bursting and, for love of Him, loving those we live with and those we serve. The Passion also teaches us to embrace patience in all our trials. The Lord had every reason to abridge His suffering, but He wanted to drink the chalice to the dregs. Are we able to bear the little cross we have today and unite it with the Saviour?
Finally, the most fruitful way to meditate the Passion is to do so through the eyes of Our Lady, the Mother of Sorrows. No one knows better than She how much Our Lord suffered. Wherever the Cross is, there is Mary. And wherever Mary is, there is the cross, but as St Louis de Montfort teaches, she, like a good mother, knows how to make the most bitter crosses sweet. Only a mother can do that.
