Love of Jesus Christ for us, and on our obligations to love him
“And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”—Luke 3:6
The Savior of the world, whom—according to the prophecy of Isaiah—men were one day to see upon this Earth, “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God,” has already come. We have seen him not only conversing among men, but also suffering and dying for love of us. Let us, then, this morning consider the love we owe to Jesus Christ, at least in gratitude for the love he bears us. In the first point we shall consider how great is the love which Jesus Christ has shown to us; and in the second, how great are our obligations to love him.
First Point.—On the great love which Jesus Christ has shown to us.
1. “Christ,” says St. Augustine, “came on Earth that men might know how much God loves them.” He has come, then; and to show us the immense love which this God bears us, he has given himself entirely to us, abandoning himself to all the pains of this life, and afterward to the scourges, the thorns, and all the sorrows and insults he suffered in his passion, until he died, abandoned by all, upon the infamous wood of the cross. “Who loved me, and delivered himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
2. Jesus Christ could have saved us without dying on the cross and without suffering. A single drop of his blood would have sufficed for our redemption; a single prayer offered to his Eternal Father would have sufficed, for being of infinite value on account of his divinity, it would have sufficed to save the world, and a thousand worlds. “But,” says St. Chrysostom, or some other ancient author, “what sufficed for redemption did not suffice for love.” To show us how much he loved us, he chose to shed not merely a part of his blood, but the whole of it, by dint of torments.
This is the meaning of the words he spoke on the night before his death: “This is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many” (Matt. 26:28). The word “shall be shed” shows that in his passion the blood of Jesus Christ was poured out to the very last drop. And so, when after death his side was opened with a spear, blood and water came forth, a sign that these were the last drops of blood remaining to him. Thus Jesus Christ, though he could have saved us without suffering, chose to embrace a life wholly filled with pain, and then to die the bitter and ignominious death of the cross. “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8).
3. “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). To show his love for us, what more could the Son of God do than die for us? What more can one man do for another than give his life for him? “Greater love than this no man hath.” Tell me, my brother: if one of your servants—if the vilest man on this Earth—had done for you what Jesus Christ has done in dying in agony upon a cross, could you remember his love for you and not love him in return?
4. St. Francis of Assisi seemed unable to think of anything but the passion of Jesus Christ; and in thinking of it he wept continually, so that by his constant weeping he became nearly blind. Found one day weeping at the foot of the crucifix and sighing aloud, he was asked why he wept and lamented so. He replied: “I weep over the sorrows and ignominies of my Lord. And what makes me weep still more is that the men for whom he has suffered so much live in forgetfulness of him.”
5. O Christian, should a doubt ever enter your mind whether or not Jesus Christ loves you, raise your eyes and look at him hanging upon that cross. Ah, says St. Thomas of Villanova, the cross to which he is nailed, the inward and outward sorrows which he endures, and the bitter death which he suffers for you are all too sure a witness of the love he keeps for you: Testis crux, testes dolores, testis amara mors quam pro te sustinuit—“The cross is witness, the pains are witness, the bitter death which he sustained for you is witness” (Conc. 3). Do you not hear, says St. Bernard, the voice of that cross and of those wounds, crying out to make you understand that he has truly loved you? Clamat crux, clamat vulnus, quod vere dilexit—“The cross cries out, the wound cries out, that he truly loved you.”
6. St. Paul says that the love which Jesus Christ has shown in willing to suffer so much for our salvation should move us to love him even more than should the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the sorrowful journey to Calvary, the agony of three hours upon the cross, the blows, the spitting in his face, and all the other injuries which the Savior endured. This love, says the Apostle, not only obliges us, but in a certain manner forces and constrains us to love a God who has loved us so much. “For the charity of Christ presseth us” (2 Cor. 5:14). On this text St. Francis de Sales writes: “Knowing that Jesus, the true God, has loved us so far as to suffer death for us, and even the death of the cross, is not this to have our hearts as it were under a press, and to feel them squeezed so as to force out love by a violence that is the stronger as it is the more lovely?”
7. So great was the love that inflamed the enamored heart of Jesus that he not only willed to die for our redemption, but throughout his whole life sighed ardently for the day on which he should suffer death for love of us. And so, while he lived, Jesus would say: “I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). In my passion I am to be baptized with the baptism of my own blood, to wash away the sins of men. “And how am I straitened!” How, says St. Ambrose, explaining the passage, am I straitened by the desire that the day of my death may come quickly! Hence, on the night before his passion, he said: “With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15).
8. “We have,” says St. Lawrence Justinian, “seen wisdom made foolish through an excess of love.” We have seen, he says, the Son of God, who is the divine wisdom, become as it were a fool through the excessive love he bore to men. This is just what the Gentiles said when the death of Jesus Christ, suffered by him for love of men, was preached to them: they reckoned it a folly past all belief. So the Apostle testifies: “But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, unto the Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:23). And who, they would say, can ever believe that a God most happy in himself, who has need of no one, should will to take human flesh and die for love of men, his own creatures? To believe this would be to believe that a God had become a fool for love of men.
“It seems folly,” wrote St. Gregory, “that the author of Life should die for men” (Hom. 6). But whatever the infidels may say or think, it is of faith that the Son of God willed to shed all his blood for love of us, to make of it a bath to wash our souls from all their sins. “Who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Rev. 1:5). And so the saints, considering the love of Jesus Christ, were struck dumb with astonishment. At the sight of the crucifix, St. Francis of Paola could do nothing but exclaim, O love! O love! O love!
9. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). This loving Lord was not content to show us his love by dying for us on the cross; but, having come to the end of his life, he willed besides to leave us his own very flesh for the food of our souls, and thus to unite himself wholly to us, saying: “Take ye and eat, this is my body” (Matt. 26:26). But of this other gift and excess of love we shall speak at length another time, when we treat of the most holy sacrament of the altar. Let us now pass to the second point.
Second Point.—On the greatness of our obligations to love Jesus Christ.
10. He who loves wishes to be loved. “When God loves,” says St. Bernard, “he wishes nothing else than to be loved” (Sermon 83 on the Canticles). And the Redeemer himself said it first: “I am come to cast fire upon the Earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?” (Luke 12:49). I, says Jesus Christ, am come on Earth to kindle in the hearts of men the holy fire of divine love; and what will I but that it be kindled? God wishes nothing else from us than to be loved.
And so the holy Church bids us pray: “We beseech thee, O Lord, that thy Spirit may inflame us with that fire which the Lord Jesus Christ cast upon the Earth, and vehemently willed to be kindled.” Ah, what have the saints not done, once kindled by this fire! They have abandoned all things—delights, honors, the purple and the scepter—to aim at nothing but to burn with this blessed fire. But you will ask: how can I too come to burn with love for Jesus Christ? Do as David did: “In my meditation a fire shall flame out” (Ps. 39:3). Meditation is the blessed furnace in which the holy fire of divine love is kindled. Make mental prayer every day, meditating on the passion of Jesus Christ, and doubt not but you too shall burn with this blessed flame.
11. To this end, says St. Paul, Jesus Christ willed to die for us: to make himself the master of every heart. “To this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom. 14:9). He willed, writes the same Apostle, to give his life for all men without excluding a single one, that none of them might live any longer to himself, but live only to that God who willed to die for him. “And Christ died for all, that they also who live may not now live to themselves, but unto him who died for them” (2 Cor. 5:15).
12. Ah, to make a fitting return for the love of this God, it would be necessary that another God should die for him, as Jesus Christ died for us! But we must cry out: O ingratitude of men! A God has willed to give his life for the salvation of men, and men will not even think of it! Ah, if each of us thought often on the passion of the Redeemer, and on the love he has shown us in it, how could we not love him with our whole heart? To one who looks with a lively faith upon Jesus suspended by three nails on an infamous gibbet, every wound of Jesus speaks and says: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” Love, O man, your Lord and your God, who has loved you so much. And who can ever resist such tender pleadings? St. Bonaventure says that the wounds of Jesus Christ are “wounds that wound the hardest hearts, and inflame the coldest souls.”
13. “Oh, if you knew the mystery of the cross!” said St. Andrew the Apostle to the tyrant, while the latter was tempting him to deny Jesus Christ. O tyrant, he meant to say, if you understood the love your Savior has borne you in willing to die upon a cross to save you, you would not labor to tempt me, but would abandon all the goods of this Earth to give yourself wholly to the love of Jesus Christ.
14. I conclude, my most beloved hearers, by recommending you from this day forward to meditate every day on the passion of Jesus Christ. I shall be content if you devote a quarter of an hour to it. Let each of you at least procure a beautiful image of the crucified Lord, keep it in his room, and at least from time to time give it a glance, saying: “Ah, my Jesus, you have died for me, and I do not love you!”
Were a friend to suffer injuries, blows, and imprisonment for another, he would be greatly pleased that the other should remember it, think of it, and speak of it with gratitude. On the other hand, it would greatly displease him if that other would not think of it or hear it spoken of. So too it greatly pleases Jesus Christ that we often think on his passion; and it greatly displeases him that we will not even think of it.
Oh, how greatly the sorrows and death of Jesus Christ will console us at our death, if in life we shall have often meditated on them with love! Let us not wait for others, at the hour of our death, to place the crucifix in our hands and to remind us of all that Jesus Christ suffered for us; let us embrace him from now on, in life, and keep him always clasped to us, that with him we may live and die. And whoever is devoted to the passion of our Lord cannot but be devoted also to the sorrows of Mary, the remembrance of which will likewise greatly console us at the hour of death. Oh, how good it is to meditate, to meditate on Jesus on the cross! Oh, how good it is to die, to die embracing Jesus crucified, dying willingly for the love of that God who has died for love of us!
Points for Reflection
1. “Meditation is the blessed furnace in which the holy fire of divine love is kindled. Make mental prayer every day, meditating on the passion of Jesus Christ, and doubt not but you too shall burn with this blessed flame” (§10)
2. “Let each of you at least procure a beautiful image of the crucified Lord, keep it in his room, and at least from time to time give it a glance, saying: ‘Ah, my Jesus, you have died for me, and I do not love you!’” (§14)
3. “I recommend you from this day forward to meditate every day on the passion of Jesus Christ. I shall be content if you devote a quarter of an hour to it” (§14)