STATION III. Then they did spit in His face and buffeted Him A. These savage men are tired out. These lovers of brutality, these experts in cruelty, these human beings possessed by unseen wicked spirits, they are all worn out. They, like their masters, feel a want of repose; and oh, wonder inconceivable! such is the length and breadth and height and depth of the charity and the meekness of our God, the Creator of these men, and their Father in Heaven, that He is ready to wait upon them, to conduct them to their rest; to maintain the stillness of the night for them, that they may find repose. Who is like the Lord our God, gracious and patient and easy to forgive evil? Oh, with what infinite joy would He forgive if men would turn to Him! B. They are tired out, and so they take off the filthy clout from His eyes, and they begin their parting mockeries, asking Him: why He would not speak? why He would not tell who struck Him? They add also their parting blows and slaps and buffets, and, as they had wiped His sacred face in order to strike without soiling their hands, so now that their work is done, in order to leave Him as they found Him, once more they cover His sacred face with phlegm and spittle. What can they do worse? Among the Jews, spitting in the face was the extreme of indignity. When Moses cried to God for his sister struck with leprosy: O God, I beseech Thee heal her. The Lord answered him: If her father had spitten upon her face, ought she not to have been ashamed for seven days at least? Let her be separated seven days without the camp (Numbers xii.). So that a child on whom her father had spitten is classed with the unclean lepers, to be separated for seven days. Jesus has been spitten upon by the sacred lips of the Priests, from which nothing but truth is supposed to come. More strongly than by words, the lips of the Priests have declared Him a leper and an outcast. But " quanto vilior tanto carior," the more He is outraged, the more dear He is to His watching Mother, and to the blessed angels, and to His Eternal Father. C. They blindfolded Him. All the work, however, done in this dungeon has been unauthorised and lawless; they must now, therefore, before they withdraw, besides spitting on His face, put all things back in the state in which they were when the Priests saw the gate of the dungeon closed and barred. Once more, then, Jesus is bound; His wrists tightly fastened to the iron ring in the low column; His legs also bound to it with ropes. Thus they leave Him-as far as human eye can judge-miserable and bowed down, a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with infirmity-a Man without help-the poor Man of the broken heart. D. "Attendite." It is a fitting place to do what St. Ignatius recommends, to let our hearts give a little time to count up and measure all the different varieties of shame, of pain, of reproach, of outrage, which our Saviour, our Brother, the representative and Redeemer of our fallen race has undergone in this dungeon, and by which He has sanctified the fourth watch of the night. Mark the strained and most painful position chosen for His weary and exhausted Body; the suffering and agony caused while the cords and ropes are being fastened again; count the bruises from the blows and buffets; notice the livid marks on His pale and swollen face. Reckon up how many times He has been spit upon. Keep in mind, too, the multiplied words of blasphemy; and remember that foul, begrimed rag that covered His eyes; and forget not the sickening stench from the filth accumulated in that dungeon of pitiless cruelty, which reminds Him of the many who have been here saturated with suffering. All their torments are now present to His most tender Heart. O all you who pass bv, He says to us most humbly, come and see if there be sorrow like to My sorrow. "Come and see, too, whether I love you or not. Come and plead with Me, and see if there be anything more that I ought to do for your soul. "I have suffered many things in this dungeon. For which of them all do you shun Me, and neglect Me, and keep aloof from Me, as from an austere enemy?” "Mother of God, pray for us sinners." E. They blindfolded Him and smote His face. In this last watch of the night is fulfilled in a special manner the word of Jeremias: He shall give His cheek to him that striketh Him. He shall be glutted with reproaches (Lament. iii.). "Saturabitur opprobriis." The Latin word conveys to our mind the idea: He shall be saturated with insults and outrages. That is to say, it is not only His Body and His sacred Face that are bruised and tormented, but the cruelties penetrate and reach to His tender and sensitive Heart. Through and through, as we say, He is bruised and wounded, and a Man of Sorrows, whose Body and Soul are steeped in pain and anguish. Great as the sea is Thy destruction, Thy crushing sorrow. The waters encompass Him, and, He says, are come in even unto My Soul (Psalm lxviii.). F. They smote His face. And all the while, from the beginning to the end, He is not conquered, but is conquering. Though the waters are flooding His Soul, many waters cannot quench charity, nor the floods drown it. Picked men, selected tormentors, eminent in heartless cruelty and brutality, have been powerfully helped by all the malicious inventions of Satan, but all in vain. Do you see that we prevail nothing? And, as has been said, His victory is all for us. Thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through Christ Jesus. If we only stay a little while and look at Jesus fighting this our battle, virtue comes out from Him to us, and we too shall conquer the wicked spirits. G. They smote His face. What wonder that our Saviour, after having fought in this way and conquered Satan so thoroughly, expects us also to conquer him? He cannot but require from us patience and meekness and charity and a forgiving spirit, quite beyond heathen virtue. If all these scenes of the Passion could be blotted out, there might be something plausible in our excuses for our anger: "He provoked me; what could I do? No man could bear to be so insulted." But if these scenes of the Passion, the night watches and the day watches, are not gone by or forgotten, but are rendered perpetual and everlasting, these flimsy excuses for our anger will never avail us. When we are brooding over our small grievances, St. Paul stops our mouths by saying: Think diligently upon Him that endured such opposition from sinners against Himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds. For you have not yet resisted unto blood-striving against sin (Hebrews xii.). Anima Christi, sanctifica me. Passio Christi, conforta me. H. They blindfolded Him and smote His face. One part of our Blessed Saviour's most charitable plan is to colour with His sorrows every watch of the night and every watch of the day. For He well knows that Lucifer, our adversary and His adversary, goes about never tiring, every hour of the day and every hour of the night, seeking whom he may devour. Our wrestling is not only against men, who sometimes grow tired and want rest and sleep, but against the rulers of the world of this darkness: the spirits of wickedness, who never slumber and never sleep. Every hour of the day, and through all the watches of the night, we want help from our Saviour Jesus Christ, through Whom God has given us the victory. What wonder, then, that to match the sleepless activity of Satan, He has instituted the perpetual, never-failing Sacrifice, in which, every hour from dawn to sunset and from the setting of the sun to the daybreak, He will Himself be on the altar, offering up all His Sacred Passion for us, and, by His sufferings and His Blessed Mother's compassion, crushing the serpent's head? "Praise and thanks be every instant to the Most Holy and Most Divine Sacrament of the Altar!" I. After such a charitable provision, now that every Christian sufferer and every tempted man can by looking on Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, draw strength out of His wounds, what wonder that He bids us all, in spite of Lucifer, hope always in Him, from the morning watch until the night, and through the dark hours of the night until the sunrise ! What wonder that He solemnly promises to His servants: The sun shall not burn thee by day, nor the moon by night (Psalm cxx.).. Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night, of the arrow that flieth in the day, of the thing that walks abroad in the dark, or of the noon-day devil (Psalm xc.). J. In this last watch of the night then, as at every other time, the spirits of wickedness are wakeful, and watching to see if perchance they can tempt the sleepless. The image of Jesus blindfolded and buffeted and spit upon is to such a powerful protection, if they are only so blessed as to make use of it. In the night I have remembered Thy name, O Lord Jesus, and have kept Thy law (Psalm cxviii.). K. If we think often and wisely of the watches of the Sacred Passion, we shall find ourselves more and more drawn to help the souls for whom He died by works of mercy during the day, and by prayer at night. In the daytime the Lord hath commanded His mercy, and a canticle to Him in the night (Psalm xl1.). About a quarter of a century has passed away since the death of the good old man who was long the champion of |