What wonder if they whom He cast a short while ago on the ground, now take their revenge and fell Him with heavy blows to the earth?

We read, too, that the Priests were the first to spit on His sacred face. This form of insult we may be sure is not forgotten in the Garden.

Va victis: wo to the conquered! wo to the fallen! was in those days an approved maxim. Bnt never till now has there been a fallen man, a conquered man, so given up to outrage and ignominy and cruelty as Jesus of Nazareth is, Who yet is neither fallen nor conquered. For by His meekness He shall conquer.

H. The Cohort and the Tribune and the servants took Jesus and bound Him.

He is bound, but not conquered; He is conquering, and shall possess the land.

Very many the

Yet, His Heart "Yet, more, O Francis Xavier

With

Many are the blows that fall upon Him. words of hatred poured out against Him. does not say that there is one too many. Lord, yet more!" was the response of St. when our Lord showed him what he was to endure. desire infinitely more intense the Heart of Jesus is crying out: "Yet more, My Father, yet more!" And oh, do it quickly, do it quickly, is His humble prayer to men for how am I straitened till it be accomplished? As we have seen, He had no mind at all to redeem the world, as He might do, through the infinite value of one precious tear dropping from the eye of the Son of God made Man. As He is betraying Himself and all His Divine rights in order to be able to suffer, so, too, He is robbing His sufferings of their right to have an infinite value, and has resolved, as if their worth were only measurable, that there shall be a proportion both in quantity and variety between His sufferings and the multiplied sins of men.

I. They bound Him.

As we contemplate Him bound and chained, iet us remind ourselves once again that He is the Mediator, the

go-between. He has to reconcile God with man, and man with God. One part of His work is easy, that is, to move the Eternal Father to forgive man. For, the instant the Father looks on the face of His Christ, out of the infinite reverence due to God made Man, and to Man Who is God, His Father is perfectly appeased, and angry no more with the fallen race.

But now Christ Jesus the Mediator must turn to men and incline their hearts to turn back to their Father Who is in Heaven. Here begins His labour beyond measure. Now must He exert His infinite Wisdom and His inventive Charity, that into the Watches of the Passion, by night and by day, there may be crowded sorrow so multiplied, so varied, so heart-rending, that one or other of the many scenes shall have power to draw every kind of sinner back to his God.

This night and the coming morrow are most carefully planned so that the proud man shall witness doings and sufferings that shall wean him from all love of pride.

The sensual sinner, too, must be so scared and terrified by what he sees that he shall renounce the lust of the flesh. The lover of rule shall find himself in presence of spectacles that shall render the pride of life odious to him, and poverty most dear.

The hopeless sinner shall see sights and hear words that shall bring back the life of hope, and the warmth of love to his frozen heart.

All poor sinners, moreover, shall with their eyes and ears take in the great truth, that they must strike their breasts and do penance.

This is the cause why men and the powers of darkness are permitted to have their hour. Our Saviour Jesus wishes to present Himself to us as the Man of Sorrows in so many shapes of woe and suffering, that no heart shall be able to harden itself against the melting influence of His charity. There is no one that can hide himself from His heat (Psalm xviii.).

It is not therefore the anger of God that requires all the blood, all the wounds, all the sorrows of the Sacred Passion. It is the charity of God that multiplies shapes and forms of sorrow in order that one or the other of them may succeed in moving men to understand how evil and how bitter a thing it was when they abandoned the infinite Goodness of their God, and went over as traitors to Lucifer.

J. The Cohort, the Tribune, and the servants of the Jews took Jesus.

These men we see with our eyes. But we must pass beyond what the eye can see or the ear hear. First, then, with the eye and ear of our faith we must see and hear the spirits of wickedness who are working against Jesus, far more busily than men are.

Then, secondly, we must penetrate into the mind and Heart of our adorable Saviour Himself, and contemplate how with an energy and activity beyond that of His restless enemies, He is praying and desiring with desires insatiable, that wounds and sorrows be multiplied in His Soul, and on His Body, till every sin that man has committed, or shall commit, is not only cancelled and outweighed and blotted out, but quite forgotten in the beauty and glory of the graces and virtues that abound in the redeemed soul which sin once disfigured; and till, moreover, for every want and weakness and disease of man's soul medicinal grace is provided in profusion; in fact, till redemption is truly and really abundant, passing far beyond a mere reparation of the ruin caused by the Fall. For not as the offence, so also the gift. For much more the of God and the gift, by the grace of one Man Jesus Christ, hath abounded (Romans v.).

grace

Then lastly we must raise our contemplation to the Eternal Father, Who, yielding to the desires of His Divine Son, mingles the bitter chalice for Him, and lays upon Him the iniquities of us all.

K. They took Jesus and bound Him.

And most humbly and lovingly He calls to us, O all you who pass by, stay a little while and see if there be sorrow like to My sorrow! But still, forget not, that if My wounds and bruises are many, yet there is not one too many, nor yet enough to satisfy the desire and prayer of My Heart!

Not too many to make men see what Lucifer is, and what manner of master he will be to them if they choose to spend their eternity in his prison-house.

Not too many to prove to incredulous and despairing men that I love them, and for My own sake will forgive their sins. Not too many to wean fallen men and blinded men from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

Not too many to move the forgiven sinner still to be a mourner and a penitent for his forgiven sins.

Not too many to enkindle in the heart of My servants the fire that is in My own Heart, and which I came to cast upon the earth.

L. The Cohort and the Tribune and the servants bound Him.

"This time," they are crying round Him, "this time He shall not escape." And their boast seems to be a truth. This at least is quite true, that this time He will not escape. But, that He shall not escape, that these knotted cords and ropes shall render escape impossible, this is as far from truth as light from darkness. If in His secret soul He whispered the slightest wish, Let us break their bonds asunder (Psalm ii.), the chains and ropes would become like Samson's bonds, threads of web. But never will He by word or wish break these bonds. "For purposely and from choice, I am become as a Man without help (Psalm lxxxvii.). In days past when they cast hands on Me, I passed through the midst of them. For then My hour was not come." Now His hour is come.

"Your hour is come," He said to them just now, but if it is their hour, still more is it HIS HOUR. Hence St. John afterwards wrote, Knowing that HIS HOUR was come. Yes, at last His long-desired hour is come, and He is able

to work out in detail the plan of redemption. In this hour then They have set Me as an abomination to themselves; 1 am delivered up, and I came not forth (Psalm lxxxvii.). Why this change of plan? why pass through their hands previously and not now? For this reason, among many. That He foresees how, in time to come, men contemplating this scene, His chains, His bonds, His bruises, the drops of sweat gathered on His brow in consequence of the straitened cords-shall be powerfully attracted by the almighty weakness of His goodness. In their inmost hearts as they gaze on this prisoner, this bondsman, this Man without help, they will say and say most heartily: "Take, O Lord, take all my liberty!" He sees how enemies that one day loved to bind Him, shall be changed into devoted servants, and become so strengthened, so inebriated by His Sacred Passion, and His Blood, that they shall be able to say: Now, behold, being bound in the Spirit, I go to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Ghost in every city witnesseth to me, saying that bands and afflictions wait me in Jerusalem. But I fear none of these things, neither do I count my life more precious than myself (Acts xx.). Well may our Divine Saviour say: I have made all things new, if weak men, by looking at Him in His bonds, can be so filled with the virtue that comes out from Him that for His sake they can welcome chains, and fear none of these things.

M. They took Jesus and bound Him.

And so when the spirits of wickedness, and men their agents, resolve on binding Jesus, His Heart at once responds : "Fiat mihi"-be it done to Me according to your will. For He sees in this hour the long line of poor sinners, whose chains are to be upon them not only during the watches of one night and one day, but throughout the never-ending eternity; and He knows how His chains and bonds will break the everlasting chains of these hapless dupes of Satan; and how they, set free by His bonds, shall spend their eternity, not under the power of the