and shameful actions have I not been guilty of? I have lived in a profound forgetfulness of thy blessings; I have been insensible of thy goodness, rebellious against thy light, deaf to thy inspirations, disobedient to thy law, a lover of the world, disgusted with eternal things, attached to myself, remote from thee, full of self-love, and void of the love of thee! I found the time too short for satisfying my pleasures; and the world too little for satiating my corrupt desires: but it seemed great to me when I was to love it preferably to thee, or to lose thee for the sake of it. Every age appeared to me far enough advanced for offending thee, but too feeble for serving thee. I committed by will and desire the evil that age and strength did not permit me to commit in deed: always willing to sin: but fainting, tepid, and slothful in thy service.

IV. Thou, O my God! as the the true friend of my soul, moved with compassion towards it, thou wouldst not even wait the days employed by nature in the formation of bodies; thine was formed, animated, and filled with the divine majesty, in an instant, out of the desire thou hadst to make an advantage of every moment, and to bestow on the work of love and grace, the time that nature requires for hers. And for my part, Ō infinite goodness! though I had not the use of reason till many years after my birth, I did not know thee even then; and though I found thy blessings heaped upon me in the course of my life, I did not seek thee, nor serve thee, neither did I concern myself about loving thee; but I contented myself with a languishing, or rather with a dead faith. I was present in thy thoughts when thou began to suffer; thou knewest me when thou acceptest of such great punishments, and the foresight of my miseries excited in thee the impatience of remedying them. Have mercy on me, O Lord! and convert me to thee, that I may begin, at least now, to love and obey thee; make me weep bitterly for the disorders of my life past, and change me so into thee, that I may no longer breathe after anything but thee.

V. O that I had never offended thee! O that I had employed the whole time of my life in loving and serving thee! If in the first moment when I return to thee with my whole heart, I find myself so touched, so changed, and so different to what I was before; what must I have been, O my God! if I had never departed from thee? I should have been now thy faithful servant, wholly filled with thy love, and wholly transformed into thy spirit. O infinite patience! that hast so long expected me. O infinite goodness! that hast borne with me till now. O infinite love! that callest me to thee, possess me, and transform me wholly into thee. From this moment to the last of my life, I resign myself to thee, to spend it entirely with thee; I am extremely sorrowful for having offended thee, O my God! behold me now at thy feet. I intreat thee, that the same love which urged thee in so lively a manner to

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suffer for me, may cause a continual fountain of tears to flow from my heart, that I may weep, the residue of my life, for the misfortune of having displeased thee. This is the business of thy love; to it I resign all my concerns; treat with it about all my necessities; and I beg nothing from thee but what it begs for me.

VI. Was it not reasonable that thou shouldst spend the first hours of thy coming into the world, with the most Blessed Virgin, whom thou foundest full of grace, love, and purity; and who was so agreeable to thee that thou wouldst become her son? Thou desiredst that I should have a share in thy love, and thou wast at that time wholly concerned about my miseries and their remedy. O Divine Shepherd! who camest to seek, not the just, because there were none- -but sinners; how thou didst love this poor strayed sheep! However, the soul of the Blessed Virgin lost nothing of its right for all those benefits thou bestowedst on us; thou wast rich enough both for her and us. As thy love is divine, it is neither limited nor divided: and thou givest thyself, at the same time, wholly to all, and wholly to every one in particular. I was no less present to thy knowledge and love than the Blessed Virgin, though she was most strictly united to thee by the bond of perfect charity. After what I see, what I believe, and what I owe thee, O my Divine Saviour! can there remain in me anything that does not burn with the fire of thy love? O the lukewarmness! O the obstinacy of my heart! Destroy it, O Lord! and inflame me entirely with that heavenly fire, since all my happiness consists in being consumed therewith. When thou wast pleased to accept, for my salvation, of all the pains which thy Father showed thee in the moment of thy incarnation, by that love, obedience, and perfect resignation, and by the violent sorrow wherewith thy holy humanity was overwhelmed, thou acquiredst the pardon of my sins, the dissipation of my darkness, the remission of eternal punishments, and the change of temporal ones into the merit of grace and glory. You obtained for me faith, hope, charity, and all other virtues ; victory over my enemies, and a perfect deliverance from all my evils; thou didst at first fill me with blessings, and at thy entrance into the world thou didst so accomplish the work for which thou camest thither, that you had stopped there, I should have been more than sufficiently redeemed: why, then, O my God! was not that sufficient for thy love which was sufficient for my salvation? O God of love! he who loves thee not knows thee not, and has never considered what thou hast done for him..

VII. We are never wearied with what pleases us; we desire it, and love the continuance of it. Thus, the abundant communication of thy blessings, and of thyself, being to thee a most agreeable thing, thou wouldst not return into heaven, nor be satisfied with those first sufferings, which did but increase the love with which

you burned for man's salvation; thou wouldst satiate it, by thirtythree years labours, and by the death of the cross. O love! immense love! infinite love! let every tongue be silent, and every understanding remain in a profound admiration. Diffuse thyself throughout my soul, O holy love! melt its ice; soften its hardness, that thou mayest no longer find therein any resistance to thy divine impressions; inflame, dilate, and fortify my heart. What shall I say, O divine love! I consecrate to thee my life, my soul, my powers, my faculties, and whatever I am. Dispose of me, and what belongs to me, according to thy will. I desire but thee alone; give me as great a desire of being thine, as thou hast had of suffering for me, that I may always love thee, and ever desire to love thee. O Mother of God, Virgin most pure, and dispenser of graces! love you that Lord for me, who has granted me so many blessings by you; and since you know the greatness of my obligations, obtain for me the pardon of my past sins, and the grace of serving that divine Saviour faithfully for the future. O celestial court! O blessed inhabitants of heaven, you who are the conquest of that God made man for the love of men, bless him and love him for me; and inflame me for ever with that fire wherewith you perpetually burn. Amen.

SECOND SUFFERING OF CHRIST.-The time he passed in the womi of his blessed Mother.

I. Seeing the Son of God was so intent on seeking out the means of suffering for our redemption, the least circumstance of his actions ought not to escape our notice; and in order to preserve an eternal acknowledgment thereof, we ought to fix them deeply in our mind. His love made him endure imprisonment in the womb of his mother; he rejected everything that could mollify its rigour, for, very far from receiving any comfort from the divine nature, since he had miraculously suspended the sweetness, which his blessed soul ought to have diffused over his body, by virtue of the hypostatic union, the divinity served only to make him suffer still the more. The Blessed Virgin herself, though she was to him a true paradise of delights, by reason of her perfect purity, did not diminish his sense of corporal pain: because those delights, containing nothing sensible, consisted only in the blessings which our Lord communicated to that holy soul, and in the mutual love which united the Son and the mother, but after a most pure and spiritual manner: for the quality of mother of God did not exempt the Blessed Virgin from a human state: and though her pregnancy, which was the work of the Holy Ghost, was free from many miseries; yet she was subject to all those that could be compatible with her virginal purity, and eminent sanctity.

II. The Son of God being willing, therefore, to become like the children of Adam, embraced all their miseries, sin only excepted; and there was nothing with regard to the humanity, that could sweeten the inconveniences of his prison. As his most holy conception was God's work, it was accomplished in an instant, and his body formed by the operation of the Holy Ghost, in the full extent required by human nature for the functions of life. The soul which was united to it in the same moment, was so full of grace and wisdom that it not only excelled every human and angelic creature, but was worthy of being united to the divinity, and of becoming the most perfect instrument of the wonders which God designed to work for the salvation of men. Christ then possessed that plenitude of grace and wisdom in so eminent a degree, that it could not increase in him with age; and he had no less thereof in his mother's womb, than when he ascended into heaven, and sat at his Father's right-hand: to grow in wisdom had been to acquire some degree of it which he had not possessed before, and this defect could not agree with the dignity of his person.

Nicodemus was terrified, when our Saviour told him that, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.-John iii. 3. For as he grossly understood that sentence, it seemed frightful, and even impossible for a reasonable man, already old, to return into his mother's womb and be born again. Hence it is also that St. Augustine, in the hymn he sung with St. Ambrose on the day of his baptism, makes use of this strong expression, speaking to Christ: O Lord, when thou tookest upon thee to deliver Man, thou ab horedst not a virgin's womb. Now the expression of horror or abhorrence shows an aversion accompanied with a reluctance. Our Saviour however had none of these to hinder him from shutting himself up in that prison; he bore the trouble of it with the same love and patience as he did all the other sufferings of his life, and he remained therein as many months, as it is thought Adam had spent hours in the delights of the earthly paradise. He would not even retrench from thence the forty days in which other children have neither life nor soul; but he anticipated the time of his own, contrary to the order of nature, that he might the sooner begin to suffer.

III. As Job never gave greater marks of his love to God than when he was reduced, from the highest pitch of human prosperity, to live on a dunghill; so the Son of God, who could not bear that any one should surpass him in love, expressed his in a particular manner by descending from heaven into the womb of a woman, to remain therein for several months. He accommodated himself in this to the opinion of men, who believe that the surest proof of friendship is, to suffer much for him one loves; and that the more unworthy he is, the more heroical is that friendship. He had no

regard to the smallness of our merit, but only fixed his thoughts on what manner he could express much love to us; that men who are naturally sociable and sensible of friendship, might be touched with his, and prefer him to all creatures. This also obliged him to conceal his majesty, that he might be able to abase himself unto us; for as St. Augustine says, (Serm. 8 de Nat. Dom.) Love cannot bear majesty, because the one removes, and the other attracts; majesty takes away confidence and love establishes it; majesty keeps everything below it within the bounds of respect, and love puts those upon a level that love one another. Therefore, that we might have recourse in our miseries to the divine goodness with greater freedom, it found out that admirable means of hiding its majesty; and it has had such regard to our lowliness, that it seems to have sacrificed its own grandeur thereto.

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IV. This clearly shows how little God will esteem those, who have a great deal of love for themselves. God is high, says St. Augustine (Serm. 2 de Ascens.), if you exalt yourselves, he will fly from you; if you humble yourselves, he will descend unto you. fore, although one may sometimes conceal his humility, and the knowledge of ones own nothingness, before men, on account of his employments, posts, dignity, or for some other reason; yet, we must confess, that nothing shows more fully, how near to, or how far from God one is, than the interior sentiment one has of himself in the presence of his Majesty. But, because it is easy to be deceived herein, and a man who thinks he has but a small esteem of himself, often nourishes a secret pride in the bottom of his soul, in order to discover this snare, we must consider whether in common life we love what humbles us; whether by any interior conviction of our own meanness, and by a true hatred of ourselves, we sincerely desire contempt and the lowest place, and whether we shun being preferred through the fear of displeasing God, for then one may be assured of the solidity of his disposition; and when the glory of God, the good of our neighbour, and the quality of his employment requires it, he may maintain his authority before men, and still be humbled before God. But, if the honour of the world puffs us up, if contempt casts us down, and if confusion oppresses us and fills us with sadness and displeasure, with indignation and trouble, we ought, then, to lament in the presence of God over our state, beg of him, with tears, the spirit of humility, and acknowledge how far we are from the purity of his love, since true humility is so necessary a disposition to perfect charity; and to be fully persuaded, that we cannot obtain the love of God, but by such means as Christ made use of testifying his to us.

V. We must not here forget the extreme desire our Saviour had of being closely united to those souls whom he loved so much. For although he could have built himself a paradise of delights, as