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by Albal Goodier Sj (Author)
Quadragesima is the Latin word for Lent or the forty days of preparation for Easter observed with fasting and prayer by Catholics. This work opens with an overview or a harmony of the Passion, followed by a chapter by chapter consideration of our Lord Jesus Christ's Passion. Let us consider the Last Supper: "Our Lord knew that this was to be the last gathering. At the beginning of the Last Supper He had said: "With desire I have desired (i.e., I have desired with great longing) to eat this Pasch with you before 1 suffer." All through that Supper how keen was His affection for His own; how much He felt for them; how all His words and actions had been directed with a view to giving them comfort and courage! He had bid farewell to His Mother; of that scene, as of all other similar scenes, Scripture tells us not a word, as though the Evangelists felt it to be too sacred for description. But it is not too sacred for meditation, and we may look on. and say and think what we will. He bade farewell to Judas in unmistakable terms; but with how much affection it had been preceded, how much affection was shown even at the parting itself. And He bade farewell to all the rest; we can take them one by one, with their different characters and different shortcomings, and know that He had a special love for each." And the Agony in the Garden: "Undoubtedly the first ingredient of Our Lord's cup of sorrow was the sense of the sin of the world, the sense that in some way it was His own, the sense that in Him it was to be expiated. But this was intensified by many others. There was the intensity of His love. The more we care for others, the more we suffer for them and with them: what, then, must have been the measure of the suffering of Our Lord for us? Again, there was the determination that He would not be out-done in generosity; safely, then, we may say that the greatest sufferer in the world does but approach to the suffering of Our Lord. Again, there was the fact of His refined and perfect nature. The more perfect the creature, the more keenly does it feel; what, then, was the suffering of the nature of Our Lord?" Behold thy Mother; behold thy son. Let us consider this scene a moment: "Of all die scenes in the Passion, there is none more familiar to every one of us than this. The crowd has dwindled away; even its noisy exultation has not been able to keep up its false courage for long. There remain doubt, are not those who have been most violent; they are the partially sympathetic, the more or less faithful remnant, the curious. There remains, too, the guard, mainly of Roman soldiers, divided between contempt for the Victim and contempt for the people who have made such a display of their Eastern ferocity. It is true these soldiers have played their part in the cruelty; but they are Western souls, they are more easily sated in their lust for blood, and they stand there sullen and disgusted. Instinctively, without themselves noticing it, the true mourners have crept closer and closer; the guard does not trouble to prevent them; they find some comfort for themselves in this act of mercy. So three women stand there-Mary Immaculate, Mary the Penitent, Mary the mother of Apostles."
