THIRD WEEK (1) (1) In the meditation on the Kingdom of Christ we saw our King and Captain calling us one by one to follow Him in the war He comes to wage against sin, the world, and the devil. Then in the meditation on the Two Standards, we saw the two leaders drawn up in battle array, unfurling each his own banner, and seeking to gather all men to it. In this Third Week the battle itself is set before us. For here we behold our King enduring all manner of labours, watchings, and sufferings. Here we see Him warring against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and making those offerings of greater worth and moment, which consist in bearing poverty, injuries, and reproaches. Here, too, we behold Him giving us a supreme example of the third Mode or Degree of Humility, not only accepting poverty, contempt, and suffering, but voluntarily choosing and embracing them, as the means of most perfectly glorifying His Father, overcoming the devil and the world, and procuring our salvation. See Directory xxxv. THE FIRST CONTEMPLATION, at midnight, is how Christ our Lord went from Bethany to Jerusalem, as far as the Last Supper, inclusively. It contains the preparatory prayer, three preludes, six points, and a colloquy. The usual preparatory prayer. The first prelude is to call to mind the history, which is here how Christ our Lord sent two disciples from Bethany to Jerusalem to prepare the Supper; and then Himself came there with the other disciples; and how, after having eaten the Paschal Lamb, and supped, He washed their feet, and gave His most Holy Body and Precious Blood to His disciples, and made them a discourse, after Judas had gone out to sell his Lord. The second is the composition, seeing the place: here it will be to consider the road from Bethany to Jerusalem, whether broad, or narrow, or level, etc.; and likewise the place of the Supper, whether large, or small, whether of one style or of another. The third is to ask for that which I desire. Here it will be heartfelt sorrow, and confusion of face (2), because for my sins our Lord goes to His Passion. (2) Heart-felt sorrow, and confusion of face. This is not unlike the fruit we were instructed to ask for in the First Week, viz. shame and confusion of face (first Exercise); and great and intense sorrow, and tears for my sins (second Exercise). But the motives which are to move us to sorrow are different in each case, in accordance with the different purposes of the two Weeks. In the First Week they are chiefly the foulness and malice of sin in itself, its terrible effects on the soul, and the punishments due to it. In this Third Week the chief motive is heart-felt sorrow and compassion because our Lord suffers for my sins, and for them so willingly goes to His Passion, which is something far higher and nobler. For my sins. See Directory xxxv. 3. This most moving consideration is brought forward again in the sixth point, q.v. Very touching, also, in their simplicity are these last words, goes to His Passion. On other occasions when His enemies sought His life, He passed through the midst of them, or hid Himself from them, and went His way (S. Luke iv. 30; S. John viii. 59; x. 39), for His hour was not yet come. But now it was their hour and the power of darkness (S. Luke xxii. 53), and Jesus of His own will goes to His Passion. The first point is to see the persons at the Supper, and reflecting on myself, to take care to derive some profit from them. The second, to hear what they say, and in like manner to derive some profit from this. The third, to behold what they are doing, and to derive some profit. The fourth, to consider what Christ our Lord suffers in His humanity, or wills to suffer (3), according to the passage we are contemplating; and here to begin with much energy to excite myself to sorrow, grief, and tears; and in the same way to continue my efforts through the other points which follow. (3) Or wills to suffer. These words seem to be added in order to emphasise the voluntary character of our Lord's suffering. "Oblatus est, quia ipse voluit' (Isa. liii. 7, Vulgate), and cf. S. Luke xii. 50. 'I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.' The fifth, to consider how the Divinity hides itself, that is to say how He was able to destroy His enemies, and does not do so; and how He allows His most holy Humanity to suffer so cruelly. The sixth, to consider how He suffers all these things for my sins etc. (4), and what I ought to do and to suffer for Him (5). To finish with a colloquy to Christ our Lord, and at the end an Our Father. (4) For my sins, etc. By adding etc. S. Ignatius seems to mean that our Lord suffered not only for the expiation of our sins, but for other reasons as well, e.g. to manifest the greatness of His love, to give us an example of constancy in suffering, and an assurance of His sympathy and help, above all because of the new Life which is given to us through His Death. (5) As the arrangement of the points in the first Exercise is intended by S. Ignatius to be followed in all the other contemplations of the Mysteries of the Passion, it may be well to say something here in explanation of them once for all. The first three points, viz. the contemplation of the persons, the words, and the acts, are the same as those we have already become acquainted with in the Second Week, and nothing more need be said about them here. In the fourth point, we may consider what Christ our Lord suffers, under those four heads mentioned in the Foundation, viz. sickness, poverty, dishonour, and a short life. Under the head of sickness, which in the strict sense it was not fitting that the Sacred Humanity should suffer (see S. Thomas, Summa Theol. 3a Q. xiv. 4), we may think of all the pains of body, mind, and soul which He endured. Under poverty, we may recall the poverty and nakedness of the Cross, and think how our Lord was stripped and bereft of all things, even to His garments, His friends, His Blessed Mother, and at last of the light and joy of the felt presence of His Heavenly Father. Under dishonour we may consider all the humiliations, indignities, and reproaches which were heaped upon Him, in the successive steps of the Passion. Lastly, we may reflect how His life was cut short by an untimely death, and that the cruel and shameful death of the Cross. In the fifth point, while we think of the hiding of His Divinity, and of the voluntary character of His sufferings and death (S. John x. 17, 18), how He could have destroyed His enemies with a word (S. John xviii. 6), or called legions of angels to His side (S. Matt. xxvi. 53), or of His own will have come down from the Cross, and did not do so, we shall be reminded again and again of the third Mode of Humility, and moved to choose by preference poverty, humiliations, and sufferings, solely out of love for Him and the desire to imitate Him as closely as possible, even though we might avoid these things, not only without sin, but also without any diminution of the praise and glory of God. For Christ our Lord chose all these things voluntarily, not only when He humbled Himself to become incarnate, but all through His earthly life from Bethlehem to Calvary. 'Let this mind,' therefore, 'be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, counted it not a thing to be grasped at to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross' (Phil. ii. 5–8). In the sixth point, we should bring all this home to ourselves by dwelling on our own share in the Passion, considering how our Lord bore our personal and individual sins in His own Body on the tree' (1 Pet. ii. 24), and made there for them a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, while He thought of each one of us, and prayed for each with a special individual love. He loved me and gave Himself for me' (Gal. ii. 20). Speaking of this overwhelming truth Fr. Gallwey (Watches of the Passion, Vol. i, p. 19) quotes a spiritual writer as saying that the day on which we begin to believe and realize that our Lord loved us personally and individually is a very blessed day in our calendar, a new birthday. And he goes on to point out how the Eucharist may help us to realize this truth, for it brings home to us how our Blessed Lord gives Himself and all the virtues of His Life, and Death, and Resurrection wholly to each one of us: Sumit unus, sumunt mille A thousand do not receive more than one. So in His Sacred Passion, it is all for me, to atone for my sins, to give me hope and courage and strength and new life, to waken my heart to love and thanksgiving, to open my eyes to the worth of a soul, to kindle in me a zeal for the salvation of others (cf. Directory And then, with such thoughts in our minds, and affections in our hearts, we are to ask ourselves what we in turn ought, not only to do, but to suffer for Him. Here at last we reach the practical fruit to be drawn from all these contemplations of our Lord's Passion. All our sorrow, and compunction, and tears will be barren, unless they issue in the desire and resolution to do and to bear great and difficult things, out of grateful love for our Redeemer, Who has done and suffered so much for us. At the same time we must be careful not to contemplate the sufferings of our Lord as if they belonged only to this lower world, which He visited in a state of humiliation. The Passion of Christ is not merely an historic memory awaking our compassion and our gratitude, and stimulating us to follow the example He has left us it is a present centre of supernatural grace and power. 'The details of His sufferings as He quits the world contain the law of His glorification now that He is at the Right Hand of the Father, and consequently the law of our own sanctification by the gifts of grace which come to us as members of His glorified Body. We must take up the Cross not merely as preliminary to participating in the glory which shall follow, but as the very law and measure of our participation in that glory. We cannot have our share therein except in so far as we have acquired a vital conformity to the Passion by the experience of its holy demands, its sympathetic tenderness, its divine sanctity, its quickening power.' R. M. Benson, The Final Passover, Vol. iii, Preface i. See also De Imitatione, II, xi, xii. It is obvious that these last three points are to a certain extent involved in the earlier ones; and although for the sake of clearness and emphasis S. Ignatius has placed them after the others, yet they are not necessarily to be considered separately from them, but may accompany them and be mingled with them, as considerations which will greatly enrich our contemplation. It is to be observed, as has been above in part declared (6), that in the colloquies we ought to reason and make supplication according to the subject-matter (7), that is to say, according as I find myself in temptation or in consolation; or according as I desire to have one virtue or another; or according as I wish to disposé |