obtain them, I offer thee thy fastings, watchings, prayers, and austerities. Regard the evils which thou hast endured, and pardon me those I have committed. If thou wilt not that the sinner be condemned, because he is the work of thy hands, and because thou lovest everything thou hast made, how canst thou suffer me to lose the fruit of so many labours, and that thy merits should be unprofitable to me?

IV. Thou hast seen so much malice and enormity in my sins, that thou thoughtest thyself unable to blot them out by thy blood; thou judgest thy sufferings necessary for remedying so great an evil; and thou hadst no repose, till I was fully healed. And I, who am the author of my own evil, and bear it within myself, I eat, sleep, and live in tranquillity with my enemy; I regard him as the companion, and often even as the sweetness of my life. Commiserate my blindness, O divine goodness! and since thou didst penance so many years, for expiating my sins, I conjure thee, by that same penance, to communicate the fruits of it to my soul; that is, a perfect knowledge of my crimes, and a sincere sorrow for having committed them.

Dispel my darkness, O Lord! and destroy that thick wall which is between thee and me. Can there be any greater evil imagined than to take pleasure in doing what displeases thee so, that for punishing it thou condemnest to eternal pains, those souls whom thou lovedst so much as to die for them upon the cross? And yet I am so blind, that I account sin a small matter, and even sometimes regret because I cannot sin as often as I would.

I know not how to ask what I desire, nor even know what I ought to desire. If I were illuminated with thy light, O my God; how long soever my life were, I would spend it all entirely in weeping, though I had never committed but one only sin; and I am unconcerned after having committed so great a number of them. But since I neither know how to desire, nor how to ask thee for what is proper for me, O God of mercy! do thou ask that spirit which conducted thee during thy mortal life, why it made thee fast, watch, and suffer so much for my sins? and according to the answer it makes thee, give me what I know not how to ask thee for. Cast thy eyes upon thy own sufferings, O Lord! and grant me by them what they have merited for me.

V. Apply to thy service, O Lord! my senses and whole body. Thou knowest that this earthly body opposes my happiness, and often stifles the holy seeds which thou sowest in my soul; give me strength and courage to resist this enemy; teach me to discover its artifices, and the malice of its excuses: for what can I do without thy help, against so formidable an adversary? Thou hast given me it for the companion of my pilgrimage, with obligation of nourishing it, lest it should faint; and of chastising it, that it

may be subject: how ill do I observe that so necessary a medium; for I am much more inclined to flatter my body, than to correct it; and this gives it the boldness of rising up against me. Fasten, O Lord! my flesh to thy cross, with the chains of thy love; and inspire me, by thy austerities, with the discretion, the will, and the strength of treating this body of sin, as thou wouldst have me to treat it.

Turn away my eyes, and shut them by thy fear, that they may not see vanity but only to despise it, nor fix their looks upon what may hurt my soul. Set, O Lord! a watch to my mouth, and a door to my lips (Ps. cxl. 8), that I may never utter what I ought to conceal. Death and life, according to thy word (Prov. xviii. 2) are in the hand of the tongue; grant that mine may never give any wound either to myself or to my neighbour; and that instead of speaking too much, I may be attentive to hear thee in a profound silence. Thou hast also said by one of the prophets (Jer. ix. 21), that the senses are the gates by which death enters into our souls: shut therefore my gates after thee, O my God! when thou hast entered into my heart, that thou mayest remain in it alone, and that nothing may enter therein which displeases thee. Destroy my vicious affections, and grant that I may use temporal things only for mere necessity. VI. Thou knowest, O Lord! the innumerable sins which the irregular love of my body has occasioned me to commit; allow me to confess them also before thee in the bitterness of my soul, in running over all the years of my life. [One may accuse himself here of his sins in particular, and afterwards make the following prayer]— O charitable physician! fortify my weakness, that I may be able to resist my corrupt inclinations. Thou seest the deep roots they have taken in my heart, and the fruits of death they produce therein. Pluck up these fatal roots, even to the smallest fibres; teach me how thou wouldst have me to serve thee, and give me the will and strength to execute what thou shalt teach me. Grant me grace to love what afflicts me, and to be pleased in tribulation; since I find therein a means of satisfying for my crimes. Grant that I may detest them with as much sorrow, as I have had pleasure in committing them; and that I may have as much love for penance as I have had for sin. But thou knowest better than I, O my God! what is proper for me: I resign myself to thee; pardon me what thou pleasest, and punish me as much as thou wilt. I only beg of thee the grace to desire nothing but what thou wilt do. Smite, burn, cut, and spare me not in time, that thou mayest spare me in eternity.

VII. O Jesus, my salvation and life! thou canst put an end to my evils. Thou desirest no less the familiarity and love of converted sinners, than of souls that have always been innocent. When Magdalen the sinner had cast herself at thy feet and bathed

them with her tears, thou didst regard her as one of thy faithful lovers, and she was soon allowed to pour out her perfumes upon thy head. Paul, thy persecutor, had no sooner expressed his readiness to obey thee, but heaven became his school, and thou didst vouchsafe to instruct him thyself. Raise up my dejected spirit also, O thou life of my soul! I embrace thy sacred feet; I desire to love thee, O divine Jesus! I desire to love thee, serve thee, and be wholly thine. Let my crimes be absorbed in the abyss of thy mercies, and may the very remembrance of them be lost.

It is true, O Lord! that my soul is unworthy to appear before such pure eyes, that it cannot defend itself from the corruption that surrounds it, and that it is always defiled with a thousand stains: but what can hurt whom thou protectest, what can overthrow whom thou supportest, what can divide whom thou unitest, and what can make him tremble whom thou lovest? My soul, wholly miserable as it is, is no less thine than the soul of the faithfullest of thy servants. If I consider myself, I ought to keep at a distance from thee, O my God! but when I regard thee, my heart desires thee, and my whole interior sighs after thee. Unite me to thee and consume what displeases thee in me. With thee I can do all things, and shall fear nothing, because thou art my treasure my glory and the centre of my happiness.

O Mother of God and refuge of sinners, faithful companion of the labours of your only Son, the only one among pure creatures exempt from all sin! have pity on this miserable sinner; obtain him the pardon of his sins, and the grace of serving your Son faithfully. Blessed spirits! inhabitants of that heavenly Jerusalem, which was not only built for the just, but also for sinners, receive my desire of dwelling therein one day with you, and permit no earthly thing to separate me from your company. Amen.

THIRTEENTH SUFFERING OF CHRIST.-His Hunger and Thirst

after Justice.

I. Jesus Christ has put hunger and thirst after justice (wherein the saints and all those who live have a real desire of pleasing him), in the number of those great evangelical virtues, which lead us securely to happiness. We must understand by the word justice the sanctity of Christian virtues, and the observation of the divine law, which justify us, remove us from sin, and convert us to God, which enlighten, purify and dispose us to the perfection of his love, and to the communication of his gifts. This hunger and thirst after justice, which is nothing else but a fervent desire of sanctity, is. so precious in the sight of God, that he has thought himself obliged to reward it with the greatest of all blessings, which is the

perfect accomplishment of all our desires. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice, for they shall be filled (Mat. v. 6), that is to say, because they shall enjoy that happy state, wherein God is loved and served without imperfection; for this is what the just desire above all things.

II. Now this hunger after justice has two parts; the one regards our own sanctity, and the other the sanctity of our neighbour. By the first, we desire to see ourselves disengaged from the love of the world and of ourselves, that we may no longer love anything but God alone; and the second makes us wish that God may be known, loved, and served by all men. The recompense of the first is that meat wherewith Jesus Christ was fed, when he said: My food is, that I do the will of him that sent me.-John iv. 84. For those souls that hunger after sanctity submit themselves in all things to the divine will, enjoy God in the exercises proper for their condition, till they possess him with plenitude in eternity. As to hunger after the perfection of our neighbour, it is seldom recompensed but in the other life; because nothing is to be seen in this, but tepidity and disorder. And the saints shall not be satisfied therein, till there be no more vice to root out, nor tepidity to warm, nor anything to be desired for our neighbour, but eternal happiness, which he shall be already in possession of.

III. There is no virtue that gives greater pain to the servants of God, than this thirst after the salvation of our neighbour; for as to what concerns their own particular perfection, they are employed in rooting out of their heart all earthly love, in resisting the inclination of corrupt nature, in overcoming themselves, and in mortifying their flesh; but in regard to the salvation of their neighbour, when they have once begun to love God with their whole heart, the divine light increases in them, and makes them know how much God deserves to be loved. Then they become sensible of the misery of those who live in sin; are oppressed with a continual desire of seeing all men subject to the law of God; and are no less touched with the wanderings of others, than with that wherein they themselves formerly lived.

But because this two-fold hunger devours the saints in this life, God promises them, as a reward, to fill them in the other. This is St. Augustine's observation (Serm. Dom. in Mont.), who, making the beatitudes of the gospel correspond to the gifts of the Holy Ghost, adds, that "hunger after justice is nothing else but the gift of fortitude; because we need a great deal of it, to root out of our hearts the love of the earth: and he, who is touched with the divine love, has need of a powerful help of the Holy Ghost, for supporting the grief which the ruin of his brethren occasions him, and for undertaking all the labours necessary to their conversion, without fearing either contradictions, affronts, or death itself."

Thus is this virtue the principle of so many heroic actions, which the saints have done for the glory of God, and the salvation of their neighbour.

IV. Christ has suffered everything that is most painful in this virtue for the ardent zeal and continual thirst with which he burned, to see all men obey the divine law, practise virtue, avoid sin, allow themselves to be guided by the motions of the Spirit of God, increase in his knowledge and love, and follow the measure of love which he had for his Father. And because he regarded our evils as his own, he felt for us the privation of so many blessings, as lively as if he had been deprived of them himself.

This sense of our evils continued in him as long as his life. St. Paul (2 Cor. xi. 28, &c.), who had but a spark of that immense fire wherewith our Saviour was inflamed, said, that the care of all the churches devoured him; that he was consumed interiorly by the scandals he beheld; that he was no longer his own, but the charity of Jesus Christ urged him to become all things to all men; that he esteemed himself happy in suffering for the elect; that though Jesus Christ was his life, and death his happiness, he knew not which he should love best, if he had his choice, whether to be dissolved and be with Christ, or to remain in the flesh, for saving souls; that he loved Jesus Christ so far, as to defy all creatures to separate him from thence; and yet the Holy Ghost was his witness, that the obstinacy of the Jews penetrated him with such great sadness and continual sorrow of heart, that he wished to be an anathema from Christ for the love of his brethren.-Rom. ix. 2, 3.

If the apostles had these sentiments, what must those of Christ have been, whom an eternal love had brought upon earth for the salvation of all men? Who lived the space of thirty-three years in a continual hunger and thirst after our justice; to whom were present all the sins committed and to be committed, from the be- . ginning of the world to the consummation of ages; who distinguished their number, and weighed their enormity, by his divine wisdom; and who wept for them, in fine, in proportion to his love, and to the extreme desire he had of delivering us from them.

This was to him so great a torment, and so incomprehensible a bitterness of heart, that it may be said, he suffered as many deaths as he beheld sins, and as he desired to save souls; for he preferred their salvation to his own life; and the offence against God was severer to him than the cross. He offered his blood for every one of us in particular, and the height of his grief was to foresee that his death would be unprofitable to many.

V. It is our duty to consider, after having so grievously offended God, what we owe to this divine Saviour, who wept so bitterly for the sins we daily commit with so much ease. But the perfect

conviction of this truth is above all our views: and there is