First Friday Three Points for Meditation

From Fr. Croiset and St. Margaret Mary, source: Devotion to the Sacred Heart. These points of meditation are recommended to all who are consecrated to the Sacred Heart for every First Friday.

ON THE SENTIMENTS OF THE Heart of Jesus Christ at the sight of the ingratitude of men, and of the outrages, to which His excessive love for these very men, has exposed Him. WE may represent to ourselves the pitiable state to which the Son of God was reduced in the garden of Olives, when He allowed His imagination to bring before Him, with the greatest liveliness possible, and with all the circumstances that added to His affliction, the greatness of His torments and the indignity of the insults He would have to endure, unto the end of ages, from three kinds of persons: from the Jews who would not acknowledge Him; from heretics who, though they would acknowledge Him, would not believe in His benefits; and from the faithful themselves, who, believing in Him, would repay Him only with ingratitude. At this sight He began to fear, as the Gospel tells us, to be sad and sorrowful, and at last He fell into a sort of agony, receiving no consolation from any one, not even from His faithful disciples, to whom He complained of it, when He said to them: “My soul is sorrowful unto death, and you forsake me, when you see me reduced to so miserable a state.” Let us imagine that Jesus Christ is making this complaint to us.

FIRST POINT. — THE SENTIMENTS OF THE HEART OF JESUS CHRIST AT THE SIGHT OF THE TORMENTS HE WOULD HAVE TO ENDURE, FROM THE CRUELTY OF THE JEWS. Consider what were the sentiments of Jesus Christ, when He represented to Himself distinctly on one hand, the singular favours He had bestowed on this people, and on the other, the cruelties and the outrages, that He would have to endure from this very nation, after many benefits. All the graces that had preceded His coming, had been granted only in consideration of the merits of Jesus Christ. For that nation chiefly, the Son of God had become man. From it, in preference to any other, He had selected His relations and His friends, He had therein worked His miracles, and preached His doctrine, and for so many benefits He receives no return but harshness, persecution, and insults. Shelter is refused Him when He is about to be born into the world: almost as soon as He is born, He is obliged to seek refuge among strangers. How unworthily was He treated during His whole life? but what did He not suffer at His death? He was taken like a thief, dragged like a culprit along those very streets through which, a few days before, He had been led in triumph as the Messiah. He was struck on the face, as an insolent man, in the house of Caiphas; He was spit upon as a blasphemer; He was treated with, contempt and as a mock king; He was made for a whole night the butt of insolent soldiers, who load Him with insults; He was treated by Herod as an idiot and a fool; He was condemned to be scourged like a miserable slave — a criminal was preferred before Him, as if He were the more wicked; lastly, He was condemned to the most ignominious of deaths, and nailed to a cross, on which He expires in the sight of a great number of persons, the greater part of whom had been witnesses of His miracles, and in whose favour He had worked them, without one person being found in all this number of people to take His part, or even to compassionate Him. They pass even from insensibility to contempt, and from contempt to horror and execration. But they are perhaps deceived. No, they are not deceived. They know very well how blameless His life has been, how holy and exemplary, miraculous, and filled with benefits and prodigies; and for this they persecute Him. All this presented itself clearly and distinctly to Jesus Christ. He knew well the dignity of His person, the greatness of His benefits, the disinterestedness of His love, the baseness, the rage, and the malice of those who treated Him so cruelly. A noble soul, when it is powerfully possessed by love, and hopes by suffering to make known its passion, is capable of offering itself. spontaneously to torments; but the more generosity and tenderness it has, the more pain it feels in bearing injustice and ingratitude: especially when it sees itself sacrificed to the envy of its enemies, and betrayed by those, from whom it had reason to expect help in its misfortunes, and when it sees that all that it suffers, is not capable of inspiring them with the smallest sentiment of compassion. No one ever represented to himself events, with all their circumstances, more strongly or more distinctly than Jesus Christ. No one had ever a more generous heart, and consequently one more sensible to ingratitude. Oh God! with what a torrent of bitterness was this Sacred Heart then inundated, in representing to Himself what He had done for this people, and what this people would do against Him. Let us judge, who feel so deeply the least contempt, especially when it comes from those who are under some obligation to us, what must have been the feelings of Jesus Christ at such a spectacle. The grief by which His Heart was oppressed, must have been very cruel, since it was the only torment of His Passion, of which Jesus Christ made any complaint. My soul is sorrowful unto death, He said to His disciples, and you forsake Me, when you see Me reduced to so pitiable a state: Attendite et videte, si est dolor, sicut dolor meus! Consider and see if there is a sorrow equal to mine. Oh ingratitude! oh cruelty! and in so terrible an oppression, in such mortal sadness, no consolation. Generatio prava, atque perversa, haeccine reddis Domino popule stulte et insipiens? (Deut. xxxii.) Ungrateful men! Insensible Christians! ls this your gratitude for your Saviour, and for your God? No, no, Lord; it shall never be true that Thou art so universally abandoned; it shall never be true that Thou canst not find any one to participate in Thy sorrow. I ask of Thee, oh Lord, that Thou wouldst pour, from Thy Heart into mine, one drop of that torrent of bitterness with which Thine was inundated, at the sight of so much ingratitude and so many insults, that, if I am not happy enough, to be able to blot out my sins, by the shedding of all my blood, I may be at least afflicted enough, to wash them away continually by my tears.

SECOND POINT. — THE SENTIMENTS OF THE HEART OF JESUS CHRIST AT THE SIGHT OF THE OUTRAGES, WHICH HE SHOULD HAVE TO ENDURE FROM THE MALICE OF HERETICS. Consider that the second object of the fear, and of the terrible sadness, in which the Heart of the Son of God was plunged, was the number of the outrages and injuries, that He would have to endure, from the malice of heretics, to the end of ages, and which His imagination represented to Him, with all the circumstances that added to His affliction, without diminishing them or concealing any of them from Him. Nothing is more painful to a generous heart than ingratitude, especially when accompanied by great contempt. But the most enormous of all ingratitude is that, by which man not only does not correspond with the benefits he has received, but even denies that he has ever received such benefits, in order to be at liberty to ill-use his benefactor, without being considered ungrateful. Jesus Christ knew distinctly, at that time, that there would be great numbers of Christians, who would renew, in His Sacred Body in the Adorable Eucharist, aH the outrages of which the malice of demons could be capable. That, to be at liberty to exercise upon Him all their fury and rage, they would carry their malice so far, as to deny in the Adorable Eucharist, the real presence of the Body of Jesus Christ. Who would have believed that men could be capable of such excessive malice, and who can imagine anything more afflicting, than to see, that the most wonderful mark of the greatest love, is made use of only to heap injuries on Him, Who has so much loved us? His imagination represented clearly to Jesus Christ, all that has happened in these latter ages. He saw His temples profaned, His Altars demolished, His Priests murdered, and His Adorable Body thrown to the ground, trampled under foot, and made the object of the scoffs and insolence of the greatest sinners, the horror and the execration of impious men. What must have been the sentiments of this tender and generous Heart? Was it necessary, oh Lord, to work so great a miracle, to furnish men with a means of treating Thee so unworthily? Was it necessary, through an excess of love, to remain with them unto the end of ages, to be until the end of ages, the object of their contempt and of their rage? Is not such a picture, enough to wither a heart with grief and sadness? Art Thou then, O King of glory, He Whom I see in so many places covered with insult and ignominy? Art Thou the God of Majesty before Whom the Seraphim bow down with respect, Whom I see so insolently treated by the wretched worms of the earth? Art Thou an object of horror and execration to Thy creatures, to Thy slaves, to Thy own children, and all this because Thou hast loved them too much? Who could ever have imagined, that there would be in man, an excess of malice, equivalent to the excess of Thy goodness, an excess of ingratitude, corresponding so to speak with the excess of love with which Thou hast loved us? But, my beloved Saviour, should not I be guilty of worse ingratitude if, in considering Thy sentiments at the sight of such cruel ingratitude, I were myself insensible to Thy grief? Here is the place, oh Lord, where I see Thee, as Thy Prophet has described Thee: the last of men, the man of sorrows (Isa. liii. 3). Heretics have treated Thee as the last and most contemptible of men, and have fulfilled the Prophecy which said, that Thou shouldst be satiated with insults: saturabitur opprobriis (Thren. iii. 30). But oh my God, will these heretics, these inhuman children, these impious men never be satisfied with treating Thee so insolently, with offering Thee such outrages? And shall I never be touched by seeing Thee so ill-treated? This sad picture, this sight made Thee even sweat blood. I beg of Thee that it may move me to tears, and that if my heart cannot feel that grief which oppressed Thine, the confusion I feel at being so insensible to Thy sufferings may supply in some degree for my insensibility.

THIRD POINT—THE SENTIMENTS OF THE HEART OF JESUS CHRIST AT THE SIGHT OF THE INGRATITUDE OF THE GREATER NUMBER OF THE FAITHFUL. Consider that it was no less an object of affliction and sadness for Jesus Christ, to see the ingratitude of the greater number of the faithful themselves, who would show only coldness, indifference, and forgetfulness towards this most loving Saviour. He saw the little esteem, not to say contempt, that would be felt for the greatest proof of the most ardent love. He saw that whatever He might do to be loved by the faithful, and to be continually with them by instituting the adorable Eucharist, neither this excess of love, nor His benefits, nor even His presence would have power to oblige them to love Him, nor to prevent them from forgetting Him. He represented to Himself those Churches wherein He dwells for the greater part of the time, without adorers. He foresaw the want of respect and reverence with which persons would behave in His presence. He saw clearly, how many would be found, who, losing entire hours in vain conversation, or useless visits, or spending the greater part of the day in idleness, would never find time, or rather would never be in the humour, to spend a quarter of an hour at the foot of His Altars. Lastly, how many who would not be induced to visit Him at all, and who would scarcely go, once in eight days, to adore Him with coldness. He knew how many others would visit Him without devotion, and how much irreverence and formality there would be in these visits; and lastly how few would visit Him with eagerness. This loving Saviour knew distinctly, that the greater number would trouble themselves no more about Him, than if He were not upon earth, or as if when on earth, He were not the same as in Heaven. When He foresaw that Jews, Gentiles, and heretics would feel nothing for Him but hardness and contempt, this bad treatment caused Him extreme pain; but, after all, these are His declared enemies: and what do we expect from an enemy? But, what pained Him most was, that those who acknowledge His benefits, that the little flock which professes fidelity towards Him, that His own children should be insensible to His benefits, and should not be touched at the sight of the grief caused Him by these insults, nay should also despise Him by their irreverences and sacrileges. If Gentiles, Turks, and men who are professedly wicked, had vomited forth abuse against Me, I would have borne it without complaining, might the loving Saviour say: Si inimicus maledixisset mihi, sustinuissem utique. (Ps. liv. 3). But that Christians, Catholics, of whom I have been not only the Redeemer, but am still the daily food; that my own children should feel nothing for me but indifference, that they should even treat me with contempt! Tu vero homo unanimis qui simul mecum dulces capiebas cibos! (Ibid.) At this sight, at this thought, what were the sentiments of the Heart of Jesus Christ? that is of the most tender and generous Heart that ever existed; of a Heart that loves the hearts of men passionately, and Who meets in the hearts of these very men with nothing but coldness, hardness, and contempt. Super omnes inimicos meos, He says by the mouth of His Prophet (Ps. xxx. 12), factus sum opprobrium: I have been made the sport and the laughing-stock of My enemies. At least amidst the insults that I have received, I should have met with a great number of servants and devoted friends, but it is quite the contrary: Qui videbant me foras fugerunt a me. (Ibid.) Scarcely did I disguise Myself under the feeble forms of bread, to which the excess of My love has reduced Me for the sake of the pleasure of being continually with men, than they removed further from Me, they forsook Me, they forgot Me as One Who had no place in their heart: Oblivioni datus sum tanquam mortuus a corde. But did our loving Saviour, in representing all this to Himself, exaggerate the cause of His grief and sadness? Did this frightful picture deceive Him, which placed before Him so many insults, and outrages, and so extraordinary an insensibility in the hearts of so many Christians? Is it then true that Jesus Christ has been treated thus? Is it true that His people have been insensible to this ill-treatment? Alas! It is enough for me to reflect on my own sentiments, and am not I a prodigy of insensibility, if in considering all this, I am still unmoved? Ah. Lord! can I think of all this, and at the same time reflect, that it is a God who suffered this fearful sadness, in which His Heart was plunged at the sight of so much insult and dishonour, that it is a God who willingly accepted and bore this opprobrium and this disgrace for me, and not die of grief and love? If a man or a slave, had suffered the hundredth part of what Jesus Christ has endured, and still bears daily on our Altars, for the love of us, we could not refuse to love Him, to be grateful to Him, to give Him at least marks of compassion, and to say sometimes: That poor unhappy man really loved me, and he would not have borne so much, if he had not loved me so dearly.” Shall it be only the proofs of the love of Jesus Christ, still daily forgotten and despised in the Adorable Eucharist, ill-treated for the love of us, to which we shall be insensible, and what is more, which we shall repay only by ingratitude and coldness? Can it be that the heart of man is capable of such an excess of hardness and insensibility? Alas! Lord, it is but too capable of it, and it will soon give proof of it, if that love which has obliged Thee to expose Thyself to such indignities and outrages for it, does not force Thee to soften its hardness, and warm its coldness, to make it feel its injuries to Thee, and render it capable of Thy love. For of what use would be all the miracles Thou hast wrought, and all the torments Thou has endured, but to harden and make me more guilty, if I were not touched by them, if I did not feel grateful, and if I did not love Thee more in consequence? As I hope, oh Lord, that Thou wilt not refuse me Thy grace, I make at this moment a strong resolution, to give Thee in future undoubted proofs of my love, and of my just gratitude. I have been until now, insensible to Thy benefits, insensible to Thy sufferings, indifferent towards Thee, though I know that Thou art continually with us. I have great reason, my loving Saviour, to. feel diffidence in my promises and resolutions, having been hitherto, so inconstant and unfaithful in Thy service; but it seems to me, that Thy mercy now inspires me with greater courage, and that I shall be in future more constant and faithful, in the promise I make Thee, of showing, by my respect in Thy presence, by my frequent visits, and by my assiduity in attending upon Thee, the sincere devotion I feel to thy Sacred Heart, and the ardent desire I entertain, of repairing as far as possible, during the rest of my days, by my respect, and every kind of homage, all the contempt and the outrages, Thou hast endured in the adorable Eucharist, as also the forgetfulness and the extraordinary indifference that are shown towards Thy adorable Person in the Blessed Sacrament: Diligam te Domine virtus mea, Dominus firmamentum meum, et refugium meum. (Ps. xvii. 1.)