RESPONSORY

From “Meditations on the Life and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” by John Tauler (+1361)

Look then, O my soul, on thy Bridegroom, Who is both thy God and thy Maker, and see how He hath gone up to the bed of His love; low wide He hath stretched out His arms to embrace thee; and how lovingly He hath invited thee to Himself, making use, as it were, of the words of the Song of Songs: “Come to Me, My sister, My bride, My dove; come, I say, into the holes of the rock, into My own sweet wounds. Come, for behold! I am ready, and our bed is covered with flowers, adorned with the roses of My wounds, and of My own precious Blood. Come then, O my soul, with thy whole self, and see all that thy God hath suffered for thee. Behold, but with great compassion, how His sacred limbs have been stretched, and disjointed, and torn, and pulled, and disturbed far and wide out of their joints, so that not one cleaves to its own place, and they can all easily be numbered. Can there be any one who is not moved to compassion by such unutterable pain? Oh! how all His sacred limbs and nerves were stretched and bent like bows, as they were drawn one towards the other. Oh! how entirely He offered Himself for us, when He had not even one limb which was not tortured in horrible agony and labor, and wholly busied in the work of our salvation. For so inhumanly was He stretched, that one limb could bring no help to another, because all alike were tortured with suffering and pain beyond all comprehension. We, indeed, if we are visited with some slight wound, can hardly suffer any one even gently to touch it; yet the whole weight of Christ’s sacred Body pressed upon the wounds of His hands and feet. Oh! how pitiably were all His limbs and nerves contracted! how were all His inward parts troubled, and hurt, and worn away? This pain surpassed all grasp of human understanding; it was simply intolerable, yet it lasted for so long a time. Hence Venerable Bede says: “Christ hanging upon the Cross, His hands and feet fastened by nails, was consumed and worn away by a slow death, and He continued in pain, not because it was a pleasure for Him still to live, but lest His Passion might too soon be over.” Let us, for a little while, be made partakers of this bitter Passion, for it was our sins which inflicted it upon the Son of God. Let us repay, in some poor way at least, our tender Lord for His Passion, so far as we are able. This surely will we do, if we wish to be conformed to His Crucifixion, and as St. Paul says, we will crucify the flesh with its damnable vices and concupiscences, by resisting them even to blood, and so wear it away by the afflictions of the Cross, that sin may no more reign in our mortal body, and the power of concupiscence may be held ever strongly bound by the fear of God. We will so conform ourselves to Christ’s Crucifixion, as if we too lay stretched upon the Cross, by taking and drawing it into our hearts with all love, so that we may say with Andrew the Apostle: “O good Cross, so long desired, and now, at last, prepared for a soul that loves you; behold, safely and gladly I come to you, so that thou, too, may receive me with rejoicing, as a disciple of Him Who hung upon thee; for ever have I been your lover, and ever have I desired to embrace you.”