Kindle Notes & Highlights
“put on Jesus Christ,”
The feet of Christ are sometimes represented as resting upon a sloping footrest. This is a pious invention for which there is no authority. Jesus must have been nailed with His legs drawn up high enough for His feet to rest flat against the beam: a frightful position, but for that very reason the more probable.
The Cross is necessary for the salvation of the world: happy the land, happy the soul willing to pay the price of it!
His final glance saluted the Temple, His Father’s house, and the rising sun.
the Cross sets the world’s history into the course of God’s.
Israel foresees and foretells; her religious genius has a spirit that is unshackled by the bonds of time, and her Yahweh speaks close to her ear.
Jesus accepted the whole religious organization of His people, before rejecting it because of their impenitence. “The scribes and Pharisees,” He said, “have sat on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not.”59 And of their government, He said, “Do not think that I am come to destroy the Law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”60
An institution is fulfilled when it is developed, even though development may carry it beyond itself. In the state in which it was, Judaism could not endure, precisely because it was a way of approach. Its duty, when once Christ had come, was to abdicate in favor of Christ, to renew itself according to His words and His spirit, and thus to enter into a new way, but a way which should be in continuity with the old, as the larva or chrysalis is continuous with the insect into which it is transformed.
Such a transformation means death, if you will, but a glorious death, a death which is in reality a survival, in which all those souls that freely submit, all the authorities that accept the metamorphosis, are...
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The Tree planted on this humble mound will have driven its roots deep into the center of the earth. Its branches will reach the heavens, and that greatness of Israel which is so soon to pass away, that material greatness which is full of deceit and treachery, will be replaced by a spiritual greatness that will bring blessings to the universe. Jesus is the cornerstone of a new Temple “not made with hands.”94 “The stone which the builders rejected will become the cornerstone,”95 and also “no man can lay any other foundation save that which hath been laid, which is Christ Jesus.”96
The flesh and blood of Christ give life only by giving us His Spirit
“The flesh profiteth nothing”100 — and the Spirit gives life to those who unite themselves with the body of Jesus according to His will, in that mystical unity which is the fruit of His Passover.
Jesus washes the feet of the Twelve to prepare them for their journeys across the earth. Purity and humility are the condition of love; and love is the soul of the apostolate.
The true bread had to be steeped in blood, broken with the gesture of loving sacrifice, distributed in the communion of a banquet for the whole world, and this upon a hill which foreshadowed Calvary, and like Calvary was destined to endure forever.
Since the Last Supper the hand of Jesus has been stretched forth to us all so that we may recognize Him thus.
The outpourings of the Last Supper are only an omen of the apparently greater and public outpourings which will later on win the world for His work.
If God in His wrath seems to burn and chastise without regard to merit, if He suffers the innocent to be slain, what will He do to the guilty? I die of my own free will in the fulfillment of my task. The end of that task will be a glorious one, and there is no need to weep over a hero who in three days will taste the fruits of His victory. But weep, by all means weep, for yourselves, you who are mothers of deicides; weep for your children who are sneering on the brink of doom.
He Himself, more a mother than all the mothers that ever were — even His own — gathers them all to His loving heart, because they are the nucleus of His Church.
Women have an important place in the constitution of the infant Church. As early as the Galilean ministry, St. Luke describes the group which accompanies the Master: St. Peter in the first rank, with eleven other Apostles aiding Jesus in His ministry. In addition, some women, several of whom had been healed of various diseases or of evil spirits, assist the apostolic band with their labors and their goods.
What she had not suffered in giving Him birth, says one of the Fathers, she suffers now as He dies. Once she had felt Him live within her; now it is within her that He dies. The infancy, the hidden life, His life of preaching — all these were hers. How much more does the end call for the presence of His mother!
Her present grief is measured by what this Son was for Mary. He was her God, and He was flesh of her flesh. He was part of her, and He was one of the three divine persons. She has fed Him in the name of earth and Heaven; she has lived for Him, who willed to have life from her, and for whom she herself was born. She has watched His earliest tears, smiled at His first words; she has guided His first steps, faltering like our own. She has lifted in her hands the treasure of this soul which gave radiance to our flesh which once was darkness, and in which God manifested Himself.
All that happens on Calvary happens in obedience to God’s will. This disorder is God’s design; this hate is God’s love. In the course of centuries during which the effects of the Passion are worked out, the conflict of minds and the clash of wills are but the reflection of an immutable order.
Bad faith always acts in this way. Nothing is ever enough; the more you do to satisfy it the more it demands, warding off the inevitable submission by constant postponement.
Jesus is a revolutionary;
His holy revolution is one which must be accepted. But to accept it costs some men so dearly that the reaction of opposed interests and contradicted prejudice may offer some semblance of excuse. Jesus, who knows “what is in man,”349 who weighs all things in an accurate balance, does not despair of finding even in them something with which He may win His Father’s mercy, something upon which He may found His own forgiveness.
When a man offers himself, God accepts him. God does not say, “You will not persevere; it is useless for me to receive you.” The freedom that makes our decisions binds also a Divine Providence which respects and permits that freedom; freedom is a mystery which seems to tie the hands of God.
Under God’s government the soul is as independent as though it were alone, but yet as dependent as every other being in regard to its Creator.
Jesus distrusts money; He certainly does not allow it to be hoarded,
one fears only when one loves,
suffering is the appointed means of redemption. It is for the Almighty to reconcile the two.
