Page:Meditations For Every Day In The Year.djvu/171

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

thought or detracting word! Reflect how many do the same repeatedly, and in the extremes of folly and madness renounce their God like Judas. "A fool worketh mischief, as it were for sport" (Prov. x. 23), says Solomon. Take care not to be of this class, and endeavor to appease God's indignation against those who are in this number.

FRIDAY.

The Paschal Lamb.

I. Christ ate the paschal lamb with His disciples the day before He suffered, in order to teach His followers obedience to the laws of God in every circumstance of life. He therefore sent Peter and John to procure for that purpose "a large dining-room furnished." (Mark xiv. 15.) Such ought to be your soul, dilated with pure charity, and furnished with all the ornaments of virtue, as often as you receive in holy communion the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Ponder the words the Master addressed to His disciples: "With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you before I suffer." (Luke xxii. 15.) Admire the excess of His love towards us: He longed for the moment in which He was to leave us His precious body and blood, and to suffer and die for us. Oh that you were as desirous of suffering for Him!

II. Christ observed all the ceremonies prescribed by the law, in eating the paschal lamb. In each of these ceremonies He reflected upon Himself and His passion, of which these were the prefigurative representations. " Christ our pasch," says the Church, " is immolated, for He is the true Lamb who takes away the sins of the world." Imagine you see Christ with His disciples stand-