Fr. Dehon's meditations on the passion of Jesus.
After the institution of the Holy Eucharist and the magnificent discourse that St. John has preserved for us, the Saviour takes the road that leads from the Cenacle to Then the sadness begins to invade His soul: He began to be saddened. The most vivid anxiety and terror arise to afflict Him: He began to feel dread. All His sufferings and their many moral causes present themselves to Him simultaneous- 1y, and the impression that He experiences is so vivid that He cannot help allowing this sor rowful complaint to escape: “My soul is sad. even unto death.”
This divine Heart chose to love us to the point of undergoing all the agonies of sadness, terror, and anxiety in order to preserve us from them. He felt the effects of anxiety so that we should not be disquieted and that we might practise His precept: “By your patience you will win your souls” (Luke 21: 19) . It is His will that we, like St. Peter, should walk upon the waters of sadness without becoming submerged.
What a tender Heart! This chalice of bitter agony, perhaps the most painful of all His suf ferings, He wished to empty to the dregs, in order to save us from it or to temper it for us. What compassionate love and what infinite gratitude do we not owe to Him?
(Fr. Dehon,The love of the Sacred Heart II, 1905)
