MARY, OUR MOTHER

Meditations for the Novena for Christmas

MEDITATION VII.

December 22.

The Sorrow that the Ingratitude of Men has caused Jesus.

In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt.
"He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." (St. John, i. II)

In these days of the holy Nativity St. Francis of Assisi went about the highways and woods with sighs and tears and inconsolable lamentations. When asked the reason, he answered: "How should I not weep when I see that love is not loved! I see a God become, as it were foolish, for the love of man, and man so ungrateful to this God!" Now, if this ingratitude of man caused so great a sorrow to the heart of St. Francis, let us consider how much more it must have inflicted the Heart of Jesus Christ.

He was hardly conceived in the womb of Mary when He saw the cruel return He was to receive from man. He had descended from heaven to enkindle the fire of divine love, and this desire alone had brought Him down to this earth, to suffer there an abyss of sorrows and ignominies: "I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I but that it be kindled?" (Luke xii. 49). And then He beheld an abyss of sins which men would commit after having seen so many proofs of His love. It was this, says St. Bernadine of Sienna, which made Him feel an infinite sorrow: "And therefore He sorrowed infinitely."

Even among us it is an insufferable sorrow for one man to see himself treated with ingratitude by another; for the blessed Simon of Cassia observes that ingratitude often afflicts the soul more than any other pain afflicts the body: "Ingratitude often causes more bitter sorrow in the soul than pain causes in the body." What sorrow, then, must our ingratitude have caused to Jesus, who was our God, when He saw that His benefits and His love would be repaid Him by offenses and injuries! And they repaid Me evil for good, and hatred for My love (Ps. cviii. 5). But even at the present day it seems as if Jesus Christ was going about complaining: I am become a stranger to My brethren (Ps. lxviii. 9). For He sees that many neither love nor know Him, as if He had not done them any good, nor had suffered anything for love of them. O God, what value do the majority of Christians even now set upon the love of Jesus Christ? Our blessed Redeemer once appeared to the blessed Henry Suso in the form of a pilgrim who went begging from door to door for a lodging, but everyone drove Him away with insults and injuries. How many, alas! are like those of whom Job speaks: Who said to God, "Depart from us." Whereas He had filled their houses with good things (Job xxii. 17).

We have hitherto united ourselves to these ungrateful wretches; but shall we always be like them? No; for that loving Infant does not deserve it, who came from heaven to suffer and die for us, in order that we might love Him.
[St. Alphonsus de Liguori]