I woke up thinking of Blessed Angela of Foligno this morning, and something she said about Christ Crucified as the one book necessary to her. I once wrote about it someplace else: "The blessed Angela suffered many tears and painful sufferings throughout the stages of her conversion. The only relief she found was the contemplation of Jesus and him crucified, which became the one 'book' necessary to her for instruction as well as consolation, and more importantly, the love necessary to do "penance, as long and as hard as life itself" as she so often phrased it."
It is what I meant in saying that the icon of Christ in the Sanctum Sanctorum is better than any homily on Christ as King.
There is so much written, so much studied, so many books...
Christ crucified.
“Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love nor floods sweep it away.” - Song of Songs, 8: 6-7
Maybe this is one reason the Rosary is effective in conversion--Our Lady teaches us as we meditate on what we "see," while the actual words used are very simple and kept to a minimum.
ReplyDeleteThe verse from the Song of Songs...the world washes over us but cannot destroy love. May Christ always reign in our hearts.
ReplyDeleteIt's fitting then, that St. Thomas Aquinas attributed the fruition of his works to meditating before the crucifix.
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