MARY, OUR MOTHER

Meditations for the Novena for Christmas

MEDITATION V.

December 20.

Jesus offered Himself for our Salvation from the Beginning.

Oblatus est, quia ipse voluit.
"He was offered because it was His own will." (Isa. liii. 7)

The divine Word, from the first instant that He was made man and an Infant in Mary's womb, offered Himself of His own accord to suffer and to die for the ransom of the world: He was offered because it was His own will. He knew that all the sacrifices of goats and bulls offered to God in times past had not been able to satisfy for the sins of men, but that it required a divine Person to pay the price of their redemption; wherefore He said, as the Apostle tells us, When He cometh into the world He saith: Sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldst not, but a body Thou hast fitted to me. . . . Then said I, Behold, I come (Heb. x.5). "My Father," said Jesus, "all the victims hitherto offered to Thee have not sufficed, nor could they suffice, to satisfy Thy justice; Thou hast given Me this passable body, in order that by shedding My Blood I might appease Thee and save men: "Behold, I come; here I am ready, I accept everything, and I submit Myself in everything to thy will."

The inferior part felt repugnance, for it naturally was averse to this life and death, so full of sufferings and shame; but the rational part, which was entirely subordinate to the will of His Father, conquered and accepted everything; and Jesus began from that moment to suffer all the anguish and sorrows that He would have to suffer during all the years of His life. Thus did our Redeemer act from the very first moment of His entrance into the world.

But, O God! How have we conducted ourselves towards Jesus since we began, as adults, to know by the light of faith the sacred Mysteries of Redemption? What thoughts, what designs, what goods have we loved? Pleasures, amusements, vengeance, sensuality; these are the goods that we have engrossed the affections of our hearts. But if we have faith, we must at last change our life and our affections. Let us love a God who has suffered so much for us. Let us represent to ourselves the sufferings which the Heart of Jesus endured for us, even from His infancy; for then we shall not be able to love anything else but that Heart which hath loved us so much.
[St. Alphonsus de Liguori]