Sorrowful redemption

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

My Lord and my God, under the loving eyes of our Mother,
we are making ready to accompany you along this path of sorrow
which was the price paid for our redemption.

We wish to suffer all that you suffered,
to offer you our poor, contrite hearts,
because you are innocent; and, yet, you are going to die for us
who are the only really guilty ones.

My mother, Virgin of Sorrows,
help us to relive those bitter hours which your Son wished to spend on earth
so that we who were made from a handful of clay may finally live…
in the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you
because, by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.

           

           

           

           

Sonnet to our Lord on the cross

I am not moved to love you, O my God,
that I might hope in promised heaven to dwell;
nor am I moved by fear of pain in hell
to turn from sin and follow where you trod.
You move me, Lord, broken beneath the rod
or stretched out on the cross as nails compel
your hand to twitch.  It moves me that we sell
to mockery and death your precious blood.
It is, O Christ, your love which moves me so
that my love rests not on a promised prize;
nor holy fear on threat of endless woe;
it is not milk and honey, but the flow
of blood from blessed wounds before my eyes
that waters my buried soul and makes it grow.

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Both the sonnet and the prayers are from the Daily Roman Missal (Rev. James Socias for Midwest Theological Forum, 1993-2011, pp. 2385 and 2369, respectively).

Prayers

O holy banquet in which Christ is received, the memory of his passion is recalled, the soul is filled with grace, and the promise of the future glory is given to us.  Alleluia.

V.  You have given them bread from heaven.  Alleluia.
R.  Containing in itself all delight.  Alleluia.

God, who in this wonderful sacrament left us a memorial of your passion, we implore you that we may so venerate the sacred mysteries of your body and blood as always to be conscious of the effects of your redemption.  You live and reign forever and ever (Companions of St. Anthony).

Blessed be the holy and immaculate conception of the blessed virgin, Mary, mother of God.  We adore you, Christ, and we praise you because, by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.  Most sacred heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

June 2, 2016

We meditate before, during, and after everything we do.  The prophet says, “I will pray, and then I will understand.”  This is the way we can easily overcome the countless difficulties we have to face day after day, which, after all, are part of our work.  In meditation we find the strength to bring Christ to birth in ourselves and in others (St. Charles Borromeo).

June 5, 2016

Let us trust in him who has placed this burden upon us.  What we ourselves cannot bear let us bear with the help of Christ.  For he is all-powerful; and he tells us, “My yoke is easy, and my burden light” (St. Boniface).

June 9, 2016

The good God toils painfully, as it were; for, while he does not wish to coerce our liberty, yet neither does he permit us to be negligent.  For, were he to use coercion, he would be taking away our power of choice; were he to leave us to our negligence, he would be depriving our souls of his help.  The Lord, then, [knows] that, if he coerces us he robs us, if he withdraws his help he loses us, but if he teaches us he gains us.  [He] neither coerces nor withdraws his help as does the evil one but teaches, instructs, and so gains us since he is the Good One (St. Ephrem on free will).

June 21, 2016

“He who wishes to love God does not truly love him if he has not an ardent and constant desire to suffer for his sake” (St. Aloysius Gonzaga).

July 29, 2016

“Those who are simply upright men and women walk in the way of the Lord, but the devout run along it; and, when they are very devout, they fly” (St. Francis de Sales on Roses Among Thorns).

August 22, 2016

Christ did not promise an easy life.  Those who desire comforts have dialed the wrong number.  Rather, he shows us the way to great things; the good, toward an authentic human life (Pope Benedict XVI).

October 5, 2016

Suffering is a great grace.  Through suffering the soul becomes like the Savior; in suffering love becomes crystallized.  The greater the suffering, the purer the love (St. Faustina Kowalska).

November 10, 2016

No one, however weak, is denied a share in the victory of the cross.  No one is beyond the help of the prayer of Christ (St. Leo the Great).

November 20, 2016

“The throne of this King whom we worship… is the cross; and his triumph is the victory of love, an almighty love that, from the cross, pours out his gifts upon humanity of all times and all places” (Pope Benedict XVI).

January 6, 2017

“The love which our Lord had during his passion puts into full light God’s love for us” (St. André Bessette).

March 2, 2017

If Jesus Christ is our way, let us not walk in the ways of the world.  Let us enter into the narrow gate through which he walked (Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet in Meditations for Lent).

April 10, 2017

Our thoughts turn to the passion and death of our Lord, and we long to share his pain with him.  What is the pain of Jesus?  It is the pain of loving and not being loved in return.  He has loved us with an everlasting love, and what do we give him in return?  We allow our minds to be preoccupied with little things and so spend many hours without thinking of Jesus.  And yet our hearts and minds, bodies and souls, belong only to him.  Let us meditate on the sufferings of Christ each day (Heidi Hess Saxton in Lent with St. Teresa of Calcutta).

May 2, 2017

For man is by nature afraid of death and of the dissolution of the body; but there is this most startling fact, that he who has put on the faith of the cross despises even what is naturally fearful, and for Christ’s sake is not afraid of death (St. Athanasius).

The care of a mother embraces her child totally. Mary’s motherhood has its beginning in her motherly care for Christ.  In Christ, at the foot of the cross, she accepted John, and in John she accepted all of us totally.  Mary embraces us all with special solicitude in the Holy Spirit.  For as we profess in our Creed, he is “the giver of life.”  It is he who gives the fullness of life, open towards eternity (St. John Paul II in Our Lady of Fatima: 100 Years of Stories, Prayers, and Devotions).

August 16, 2017

The cross to me is certain salvation.  The cross is that which I ever adore.  The cross of the Lord is with me.  The cross is my refuge (St. Thomas Aquinas).

November 22, 2017

In our suffering, we collaborate with Christ for the salvation of the world.  Our suffering is therefore anything but random and meaningless.  It is cosmically restorative, even though it may be a horrible burden to the sufferer.  John Paul didn’t intend to whitewash suffering.  Doing so would have been both insensitive and false.  But he did want to show that God can use even suffering for the betterment of humankind.  It, like everything else, has a place in the economy of salvation (Kerry Walters in John Paul II: A Short Biography).

April 25, 2019

The devout do not hate life because life hates them or because they have drunk of its dregs and found them bitter but because they love God more; and, in loving God more, they dislike anything that would tear him away (Ven. Fulton J. Sheen in God’s World and Our Place in It).

Notre Dame Church – Kerrville, TX

Links of interest…  At the feet of Jesus…  Christ, loneliness, & redemptive suffering…  Cross of Jesus: God’s awful work of love…  Expect the unexpected…  Inside the ancient church of the Holy Sepulchre…  It’s time to stop fleeing from the cross…  Jesus prayer…  Mercy with every breath…  Notre Dame Church: facebook / website…  Seven words of Jesus on the cross…  Trusting God in uncertain times…  Way of Holy Week…  We are all marked men & women…  What is redemptive suffering…  What Jesus saw from the cross…  Why are the stations of the cross in (almost) every Catholic church…

WP posts…  Faith and prayer…  Lady of sorrows…  Lenten reflections…  Notre Dame revisited