My Favorite Lenten Meditation for Passiontide

 Hello dear friends,

A blessed Passion Week to you.  I think Lent is one of my favorite seasons of the year as far as liturgical music goes.  But where meditations are concerned, I absolutely love Christmas meditations.  Except, during Lent, I fall in love again with meditations on the passion, death, and resurrection of Our Lord especially close to Passiontide.  I reread this meditation before Confession the other day and boy was it moving in a whole new way!  So today I'd like to share with you my favorite meditation from Fr. Lasance's Catholic Girl's Guide that I read every Holy Thursday in front of the Altar of Repose.  

Sursum Corda! -- Lift up Your Hearts!

Shortly after the beginning of the last century, Napoleon the Great was sent as a captive to the lonely island of St. Helena.  On one occasion he is said to have endeavored to while away some of the weary hours of his exile  by passing in mental review the great men who accomplished the most heroic deeds in the world's history.  While he was considering Christ, he is said to have exclaimed: 

"Behold, He has drawn all mankind to Himself!"

And thus indeed it is.  The name of Jesus Christ sounds beside the cradle of the new-born infant and the grave of the aged man, in the hovel and the palace, among the powerful and the wak, in the depths and on the hights, on sea and on land, by day and by night.  Jesus alone is the hope and consolation of the unhappy, the pledge of pardon for the guilty.  For the love of Jesus how many have renounced, and still renounce, the pleasures of the world!

Thus have his own words been fulfilled:

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself." 

With the gentle cords of love He has drawn all things to Himself.  He has done all that it was possible to do, in order to win for Himself the love of the whole human race, and to hold it fast as long as time shall endure.  He has given to us, miserable mortals though we are, the most signal proofs of His divine and ever-abiding love.  Let these proofs encourage us; therefore

"Lift up your heart!"

Lift it up to the sacred mountains, up to the cross, up to heaven! 

To Mount Olivet, to Gethsemane!

There, amid the shades of night illumined by the Paschal moon, under the boughs of the olive-trees, you will see a Man prostrate on the ground, bowed down, crushed as it were by some heavy load, convulsively wringing His hands, His countenance pale as death.  He breathes heavily, deep sighs escape His tortured breast, a sweat of blood exudes from His pores and trickles down His pallid face.  And His dearest friends, the friends whom He loved as no friend ever loved his most beloved friend, no other her darling child,-- they leave Him alone in His agony; they have no word of comfort for Him; they are asleep; they could not watch with Him one hour, although only one brief hour had elapsed since they assured Him of their willingness to follow Him to prison and to death!

But all is not yet told!  His foes are approaching, like bloodthirsty wolves; one steps forward who was formerly a friend, a disciple, and imprints the hideous kiss of betrayal on the colorless lips of the Sufferer --- the patient Sufferer, whose pale face wears an expression of gentleness and of loving admonition, even while He gazes on this shameless man.

They lead the innocent Lamb, the incarnate Son of God, to Jerusalem; they treat Him, the sinless One, more barbarously than the vilest criminal; they mock Him and blaspheme Him; they courage Him, and place a crown of sharp thorns upon His head.

 

Now begins the ascent of Mont Golgotha.  Tottering and exhausted, His bleeding and lacerated shoulders laden with a heavy cross, the Man of sorrows climbs the steep and stony mountain!  Three times He sinks upon the ground and each time He is rudely lifted  up and dragged forward by His brutal executioners.  When the summit is reached, they strip the garments from His sacred body, and thus tear open His wounds afresh.  They stretch Him upon the cross, drive large nails through His hands and feet, in order to fasten Him to it, and elevate the infamous gibbet.

My dear child,

"Lift up your heart!" 

Lift it up to Mount Olivet, to Golgotha!  Behold the love of your God! 

But you must raise it higher still, you must raise it to the cross!  There you see the Lamb of God, hanging on the tree of shame, suspended between heaven and earth, His sole support being the large, rude nails of iron, which pierce His hands and feet, so that the slightest movement aggravates His unspeakable sufferings.  The blood is trickling down upon the cross from innumerable wounds, His tongue is parched by feverish thirst, and from His lips proceeds the piteous cry: 

"I thirst." 

Add to this the anguish which fills his soul at the sight of His beloved Mother, whom to behold thus standing at the foot of the cross causes His tender heart to well-nigh break with compassion.  To this add the mockery and blasphemy of the impious men by whom He was surrounded, wholse obduracy all His Passion, all His cruel sufferings, did not avail to subdue; yet on whose behalf He breathed forth the touching petition:

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

The chalice of His Passion was filled to overflowing; then deprived of all consolation, He utters the heart-rending cry: "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me!"  Sum up all this; raise your heart to the cross;

"attend and see if there be any sorrow like to His sorrow"

see if there be any love which can compare with His love!

But look higher still; lift your heart up to heaven itself!  Though no mortal eye is able to gaze upon the glories of that celestial abode which is the dwelling-place of the blessed, though you cannot approach the eternal God for He "inhabiteth light inaccessible," be not disheartened on this account; lift up your heart to heaven, for the gleam of light which God will shed upon your oul may perchance enable you to form some faint conception of its splendors.

There the Son of God, not as yet incarnate, sat from all eternity at the right hand of the Father who "when the fullness of time was come" sent Him down to earth, in order toat He might suffer, and die upon the cross.  But what was His object in doing this?  He called Him His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased.  Why then send Him to endure the death of the cross?

The crucified One Himself gives the solution of the problem in the words He addressed to Nicodemus: 

"For God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting."

Thus againdo we see that it was love--O sweetest, fairest, greatest and most heavenly word--yes, it was sove that moved our gracious God to perform an act which neither earth nor heaven could have deemed possible, an act which alone would  suffice to justify the exclamation of the Apostle of Charity: "God is charity!"

Therefore let not your heart, O Christian maiden, be enslaved by any mere earthly, still less by any sinful, affections.  Lift up your heart to heaven!  There alone is an object truly worth of your love.