The Passion and the Death of Jesus Christ

Top Highlights

“He offers his own blood,’ says a learned writer, ‘speaking better than the blood of Abel: for that cried for justice; the blood of Christ for mercy.’” (Page 27)

“root out of my heart every affection that belongs not to Thee.” (Page 31)

“Ah, my Lord, dost Thou thirst for me, a most vile worm as I am? and shall I not thirst for Thee, my infinite God? Oh, by the merits of this thirst endured upon the cross, give me a great thirst to love Thee, and to please Thee in all things. Thou hast promised to grant us whatever we seek from Thee: Ask, and ye shall receive.⁴ I ask of Thee but this one gift—the gift of loving Thee. I am, indeed, unworthy of it; but in this has to be the glory of Thy blood,—the turning of a heart into a great lover of Thee, which has, at one time, so greatly despised Thee; to make a perfect flame of charity of a sinner who is altogether full of mire and of sins. Much more than this hast Thou done in dying for me. Would that I could love Thee, O Lord infinitely good, as much as Thou dost deserve!” (Page 125)

“St. John Chrysostom asserts that God has loved every individual man with the same love with which he has loved the world: ‘He loves each man separately with the same measure of charity with which he loves the whole world.’³ So that each one of us is under as great obligation to Jesus Christ for having suffered for every one, as if he had suffered for him alone.” (Page 28)

“Jesus Christ then said to her reproachingly, ‘O ignorant that thou art, what dost thou mean? From the first moment that I was in my Mother’s womb, I suffered in my heart all that I afterwards endured on the cross.” (Page 43)