Ave Maria Meditations
Jesus, Man of Sorrows, at last the dearest wish of Your life is granted: You are crucified.
You have been the Victim of the envy of the high priests, of the mockery of Herod, of the weakness of Pilate, of the ingratitude of the people; but You will to die unavenged. Patiently You hang there on the open wounds of Your hands and feet, exhausted almost to death by the long stretch of the physical and mental suffering You have undergone. Your Sacred Body, which suffers so much because It has so great a Soul, is now turned into a crucible of pain where all the sufferings of the world burn together.
My Savior, I am surprised at the cruelty of Your enemies and the greatness of Your torments, but what have I done to case or lessen Your suffering? On the contrary, how much I have done to increase it!
Never before did You appear more lovable in Your prayer than now, as You hang between heaven and earth, an intermediary between an infinite God and His sinful creatures. With extended arms, and hands dug with nails, in an upright penitential posture of prayer, as our elder Brother, You plead the cause of wayward children before Your offended Father and offer Yourself to Him as a Victim for the sins of the world. Your bleeding wounds are proofs of a love unto death. I see Your head bent down to reach me in my sinfulness; Your arms extended to embrace me, though it was I who nailed them there; Your Body hanging to redeem me, though I sometimes hardly seemed to care. You love me with a Heart I myself have broken, and offer Your death, the most painful and most disgraceful known to the human race, to save me from eternal death; yet too often You have found me so slow to appreciate all You have done.
Jesus, hatred lifted You up on a cross; hut once on it You said You would lift all lovers up to Your Heart, which is Love, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself” (John 12: 32) . You are now fulfilling that promise, for You are drawing heaven to Yourself, as You hang on the Cross, to give me the possession of it and God, to make me His child and friend again. Oh, draw also my poor heart, so cold and ungrateful, to Yourself to inflame it with Your own love and generosity; my sinful soul as well, to cleanse and save it. You are true to me till death. Then draw me, Lord, and make me true to You forever, both in my innermost soul by faith in Your doctrine, hope in Your Divine promises and love of Your holy Person, and in my outward behavior by daily imitation of Your crucified life and by an unceasing union of my life with Your Sacrifice on the Cross. Dear Savior, draw all the world to Your crucified Self, as You promised, that all men may find in Your broken Heart, peace, consolation, and joy here, and eternal life and bliss hereafter.
Rev. Lawrence Lovasik: Heart Talks with the Man of Sorrows
