The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus ChristEmmerich, Anna Katharina
Religion
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Emmerich, Anna Katharina
Jesus Christ -- Passion -- Devotional literature
I felt that Jesus, in delivering himself up to Divine Justice in
satisfaction for the sins of the world, caused his divinity to return,
in some sort, into the bosom of the Holy Trinity, concentrated himself,
so to speak, in his pure, loving and innocent humanity, and strong only
in his ineffable love, gave it up to anguish and suffering.
He fell on his face, overwhelmed with unspeakable sorrow, and all
the sins of the world displayed themselves before him, under countless
forms and in all their real deformity. He took them all upon himself,
and in his prayer offered his own adorable Person to the justice of his
Heavenly Father, in payment for so awful a debt. But Satan, who was
enthroned amid all these horrors, and even filled with diabolical joy
at the sight of them, let loose his fury against Jesus, and displayed
before the eyes of his soul increasingly awful visions, at the same
time addressing his adorable humanity in words such as these: 'Takest
thou even this sin upon thyself? Art thou willing to bear its penalty?
Art thou prepared to satisfy for all these sins?'
And now a long ray of light, like a luminous path in the air
descended from Heaven; it was a procession of angels who came up to
Jesus and strengthened and re-invigorated him. The remainder of the
grotto was filled with frightful visions of our crimes; Jesus took them
all upon himself, but that adorable Heart, which was so filled with the
most perfect love for God and man, was flooded with anguish, and
overwhelmed beneath the weight of so many abominable crimes. When this
huge mass of iniquities, like the waves of a fathomless ocean, has
passed over his soul, Satan brought forward innumerable temptations, as
he had formerly done in the desert, even daring to adduce various
accusations against him. 'And takest thou all these things upon thyself,'
he exclaimed, 'thou who art not unspotted thyself?' then he laid to the
charge of our Lord, with infernal impudence, a host of imaginary
crimes. He reproached him with the faults of his disciples, the
scandals which they had caused, and the disturbances which he had
occasioned in the world by giving up ancient customs. No Pharisee,
however wily and severe, could have surpassed Satan on this occasion;
he reproached Jesus with having been the cause of the massacre of the
Innocents, as well as of the sufferings of his parents in Egypt, with
not having saved John the Baptist from death, with having brought
disunion into families, protected men of despicable character, refused
to cure various sick persons, injured the inhabitants of Gergesa by
permitting men possessed by the devil to overturn their vats,8 and
demons to make swine cast themselves into the sea; with having deserted
his family, and squandered the property of others; in one word Satan,
in the hopes of causing Jesus to waver, suggested to him every thought
by which he would have tempted at the hour of death an ordinary mortal
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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