Jesus Speaks of His Passion

This morning, we had that way of the Cross in the meditations, or the account of the mystic Maria Valtorta. And so this evening, I wanted to share another part of those meditations. This is actually the introduction to that whole section.  If you want to you can close your eyes.

“Come, so that I may lead you to my sufferings.  Long is the way that we shall have the cover together, because I was not spared any sorrow, neither the pain of the flesh, nor the grief of the mind of the heart of the Spirit. I tasted all of them, I fed on all of them. I quench my thirst with all of them, to the extent that I died of them.  If you could see my human nature and its appearance, which is now radiant, you would see that the radiant emanates from the countless wounds, that like a garment of living purple, covering my limbs, lacerated, exsanguination, beaten, pierced for your sake.  My human nature is now glorious.  But one day it was like that of a leper, so fiercely had it been struck and humiliated.  The man God who had in himself the perfection of physical handsomeness being the son of God, and the Immaculate woman, to those who cast loving, curious, or scornful or evil glances at him seemed a worm, as David says, The scorn of mankind, the mockery of people.  My love for my father and for my father’s children, led me to abandon my body, to those who struck me, to offer my face to those who slap me and spat at me. Those who thought they were doing a good deed, by tearing my hair and my beard, piercing my head with thorns, making the earth and its fruit accomplices of the tortures inflicted on their Savior.  Dislocating my limbs, laying bare my bones, tearing off my garments, thus offending my purity, in the most cruel manner, nailing me to a piece of wood, and lifting me up like a slaughtered lamb on the hooks of a butcher and barking around me while I was in agony, like a pack of ravenous wolves, made even wilder by the smell of blood.  I was accused, condemned, killed, betrayed, disowned, sold.  I was abandoned, it seemed even by God, because I was burned with the crimes I had taken upon myself. They made me poorer than a beggar robbed by bandits, because they did not even leave me my tunic to cover my livid  nakedness of a martyr. Even after my death, I was not spared the insult of a wound, and the slander of enemies. I was overwhelmed by all the dirt of your sins. I was held down as far as the bottom of the darkness of sorrow, deprived of the light of heaven, that might reply to my dying eyes, and of the Divine voice that might answer my last invocation.”

Isaiah explains the reason for so much grief. He has really taken our evils upon himself, and ours are the sorrows he has carried. That was the passage we heard tonight from Isaiah.

“Our sorrows? Yes, I carry them on your behalf, to relieve yours, to mitigate yours, to cancel yours. Had you been faithful to me?  But you did not want to be so?  What did I gain from it?  You looked at me as if I were a leper, one struck by God. Yes, the leprosy of your infinite sins was upon me. It was on me like a garment of penance.  But how did you not see God shine forth in his infinite love, from that garment worn on His Holiness on your behalf?”

He was wounded to our wickedness and pierced through our crimes, says Isaiah, here with his prophetic guise saw that the Son of man had become one huge sore to heal those of men.

“If they had bruised only my body, but what you most wounded was my heart and spirit. You made a laughingstock and the but of both, and you struck me in the friendship that I’d given you, through Judas, and the loyalty that I’d hoped to receive from you through Peter who disowned me, and the gratitude for my favors through those who shouted at me, death to him, after I cured them from so many diseases.

Through love because of the torture inflicted on my mother, through religion, calling me a blasphemer of God, whereas out of zeal for the cause of God, I had put myself in the hands of man by becoming incarnate, suffering throughout my life, and surrendering to human ferocity without uttering a word of complaint.  One glance of mine would have been sufficient to incinerate accusers, judges and executioner’s.  But I come to accomplish the sacrifice and like a lamb, because I was the Lamb of God, and I shall be so forever. I allowed men to take me to be stripped and killed, so that I may make a life for you of my flesh.  Well, when I was lifted up, I was already consumed by sufferings, with no name. With all the names. I began to die at Bethlehem, seeing the light of the earth, so disturbingly different for me, who was the living being in heaven.  I continue to die in poverty, and exile and flight and work and incomprehension and fatigue, and betrayal and torn affections, in torture, and falsehood and blasphemy.  I have come to reunite man to God, and this is what man gave me.  Look at your Savior. He is not dressed in white, and his hair is not fair. His garment is stained with blood. It is worn out and covered with dirt and spit.  His face is bruised and twisted. His eyes are veiled with blood and tears. And He looks at you through the crust formed by them and by the dust that makes his eyelids heavy.

My hands are one big sore and are waiting the last wounds.  Look at me as your brother John looked at me. My footprints are stained with blood. Perspiration washes away the blood that draws from the wounds made by the scourges and that is still left after the agony in the garden.  Words come out of my parched bruised lips, and the painful panting of my heart that has already died through all kinds of torture.  I am the king of sorrows.”

And I’ll just end by the prayers that our Lord gave us for the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.  Eternal Father, I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of your Dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.  For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.