That the Same Sensory Objects of Which We Have Spoken Are Means and Instruments for the Good Governing of Our Senses, If From Them We Pass to Meditation on the Incarnation of God the Word and on the Mysteries of His Life, Suffering, and Death

Above I showed you how from sensory things we can lift our minds to the contemplation of God. Now learn another way to raise your mind from the sensory to the divine—namely by passing from it to meditation on the Incarnation of God the Word and on the most holy mysteries of His life, suffering, and death. All sensory things of this world can serve as an occasion for such meditation and contemplation, if, after first passing in thought—as we said above—through the fact that the Most High God is the first cause Who gave them their existence and all that is in them: their powers, perfections, actions, and place among other creatures, you then reflect how great and boundless is the goodness of this same God, when He—being the sole source of all created existence—willed to descend to such humility and self-emptying as to become man, to suffer and die for men, permitting the work of His own hands to arm itself against Him and to crucify Him.

So then, when you see, or hear, or touch instruments, cords, whips, pillars, thornbranches, nails, hammers, and other such things, call to mind how all these once served as instruments of your Lord’s suffering.

When you see poor dwellings, or live in such a house, pass in memory to the cave and the manger of your Lord, who was born as man. When you see rain falling, remember those bloody drops of sweat that dripped from the divine body of the most sweet Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and watered the earth. When you see the sea and boats upon it, remember how your God once walked upon the waters and, standing in a boat, taught the people. Let the stones you see represent to you those stones that split at the moment of your Lord’s death; and let the earth you walk upon remind you of that trembling by which it was shaken then, at the end of Christ’s Passion.

Let the sun bring to your memory the darkness that overshadowed it then; let water remind you of the water that, together with blood, flowed from the divine side of the Lord when a soldier pierced Him on the cross after He had died. When you drink wine or any other drink, call to mind the vinegar and gall with which your Master was given to drink on the cross.

When you dress yourself, remember that the eternal Word clothed Himself in human flesh in order to clothe you in His Divinity. Seeing yourself clothed, reflect on Christ the Lord, who deigned to be stripped naked so as to receive scourging and to be nailed to the cross for your sake. If some voice strikes you as sweet and appealing, transfer that loving draw to your Savior, in whose lips all grace and sweetness was poured forth, as it is sung in the Psalms: ”grace is poured upon Your lips” (Ps. 44:3), and because of the sweetness of His speech the people clung to Him without wishing to tear themselves away from listening to Him, as the holy Evangelist Luke testifies, saying: ”the people… all held close to Him, listening to Him” (Lk. 19:48). When you hear the noise and shouting of a crowd, reflect on that most lawless cry of the Jews: ”Take him, take him, crucify him” (Jn. 19:15), by which the Lord’s ears were struck at that time. When you see a beautiful face, remember that the Lord Jesus Christ, who is ”fairer in beauty than the sons of men” (Ps. 44:3), out of love for you deigned to appear on the cross as one who has “no form nor beauty, humbled more than all the sons of men” (Is. 53:3). Every time the hours strike, let there come to your mind that mournful anguish of heart that seized the Lord Jesus when in the Garden of Gethsemane He began to be horrified at the approaching hour of suffering and death; or think as though you hear those blows of the hammers that were heard as the Lord was being nailed to the cross. And in general I say to you: in every sorrowful circumstance that befalls you or others, keep in mind that all our grief, sorrow, and suffering is nothing compared to the painful torments and wounds by which the soul and body of the Lord were afflicted during His saving Passion for our salvation.