TWENTY FIRST MEDITATION FOR LENT
"He that eateth bread with me shall lift up his heel against me." . . . When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit; and said: "Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you shall betray me." (John 13:18-21)
It required a great cause of sorrow to trouble a Heart so intrepid as that of Jesus Christ. But the contempt which He receives from men in the Blessed Sacrament is for Him a cause of the keenest sorrow, and a sorrow which He cannot hide. The Divine Savior is going to institute the Blessed Sacrament; His love urges Him to do so, but His mind represents to Him distinctly the outrages to which this Mystery is going to expose Him. This sad consideration throws His Sacred Heart into an abyss of affliction. He sees those heretics who refusing to believe that He has loved us to this excess will take advantage of this very excess of love to offer Him cruel outrages, and these impious people who while making professions of belief in Him will commit horrid sacrileges against Him. If this Divine Savior had done for the demons the hundredth part of what He had done for men, would they treat Him with such indignity? O. my Divine Savior, these indignities and outrages have cut Thee to the quick, and shall I remain unmoved by them?
[From 'The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus' by Fr. John Croiset, SJ]
It required a great cause of sorrow to trouble a Heart so intrepid as that of Jesus Christ. But the contempt which He receives from men in the Blessed Sacrament is for Him a cause of the keenest sorrow, and a sorrow which He cannot hide. The Divine Savior is going to institute the Blessed Sacrament; His love urges Him to do so, but His mind represents to Him distinctly the outrages to which this Mystery is going to expose Him. This sad consideration throws His Sacred Heart into an abyss of affliction. He sees those heretics who refusing to believe that He has loved us to this excess will take advantage of this very excess of love to offer Him cruel outrages, and these impious people who while making professions of belief in Him will commit horrid sacrileges against Him. If this Divine Savior had done for the demons the hundredth part of what He had done for men, would they treat Him with such indignity? O. my Divine Savior, these indignities and outrages have cut Thee to the quick, and shall I remain unmoved by them?
[From 'The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus' by Fr. John Croiset, SJ]
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