Wednesday In Passion Week.

Text from The Liturgical Year.

by: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.

   Volume 6.

   Passiontide & Holy Week.

At Rome, the Station is in the Church of Saint Marcellus, Pope and Martyr. This Church was once the house of the holy lady, Lucina, who gave it to the Pontiff, that he might consecrate it to God.

The passage in the Epistle, from Leviticus, wherein our duties to our neighbour are so clearly and so fully defined, is read to us today in order that we may see how we fulfil these important duties, and correct whatever short-comings we may discover in ourselves.

It is God Who here speaks; it is God Who commands. Observe that phrase: “I am the Lord”: He repeats it several times, to show us that if we injure our neighbour, He, God Himself, will become the avenger.

How strange must this doctrine have seemed to the catechumens, who had been brought up in the selfish and heartless principles of paganism !

Here they are told that all men are brethren, and that God is the common Father of all, commanding all to love one another with sincere charity, and without distinction of nation or class.

Let us Christians resolve to fulfil this precept to the letter; these are days for good resolutions. Let us remember that the Commandments we have been reading were given to the Israelite people, many ages before the preaching of the law of love.

If, then, God exacted from the Jew a cordial love of his fellow-men, when the Divine Law was written on mere tablets of stone, what will He not require from the Christian, who can now read that law in the Heart of the Man-God, Who has come down from Heaven and made Himself our Brother, in order that we may find it easier and sweeter to fulfil the precept of charity ?

Human nature united in His Person to the Divine, is henceforth Sacred; it has become an object of the Heavenly Father’s love. It is out of fraternal love for this our nature that Jesus suffered death, teaching us, by His own example, to have such love for our brethren, that, if necessary, we ought to lay down our lives for them.

It is the Beloved Disciple that teaches us this, and he had it from his Divine Master.