Considerations on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ - 51

I. All our hopes, then, we must build upon the merits of Jesus Christ, and from Him we must hope for all aid to live holily, and save ourselves; and we cannot doubt that it is His desire to see us holy: This is the will of God, your sanctification (1 Thess. iv. 3). But true as this is, we must not neglect to do our part to satisfy God for the injuries we have done Him, and to attain by our good works to eternal life. This the Apostle expressed when he said: I fill up that which is wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh (Col. i. 24). Was the Passion of Christ, then, not complete and not enough in itself to save us? It was most complete in its value, and more than sufficient to save all men; nevertheless, in order that the merits of the Passion may be applied to us, says St. Teresa, we must do our part, and suffer with patience the crosses God sends us that we may be like our Head, Jesus Christ, according to what the Apostle writes to the Romans: Whom he foreknew, them he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren (Rom. viii. 29).

II. Still we must ever remember, as the Angelic Doctor warns us, that all the virtue of our good works, satisfactions, and penances, is communicated to them by the satisfaction of Jesus Christ: "The satisfaction of man has its efficacy from the satisfaction of Christ." And thus we reply to the heretics, who call our penances injurious to the Passion of Jesus Christ, as if it were not sufficient to satisfy for our sins.

But what we hold and say is, that in order to be partakers in the merits of Jesus Christ, it is necessary that we labour to fulfil the Divine precepts, even by doing violence to ourselves, so that we may not yield to the temptations of hell. And this is what our Lord meant when He said: The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away (Matt. xi. 12.) It is necessary, when occasions occur, that we do violence to ourselves by continence, by the mortification of our senses, that we may not be conquered by our enemies. And when we find ourselves guilty before God through the sins we have committed, we must do violence to God with our tears, says St. Ambrose, in order to obtain pardon. And then, to console us, the Saint adds: "O blessed violence which is not punished with the wrath of God, but is welcomed and rewarded with mercy!" The more violent a man is with Christ, the more religious is he accounted by Christ. For we must first rule over ourselves by conquering our passions, that we may one day seize upon Heaven, which our Saviour has merited for us. And therefore we must do violence to ourselves by suffering contradictions and persecutions, and by conquering the temptations and passions which, without violence, are never conquered.