The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Bossuet’s Preface To The 'Meditations'
Preface
Of all the sermons delivered by Jesus
Christ, the most remarkable, as to
both time and circumstances, are : —
First, the one He delivered on the
mountain at the beginning of His preaching,
which contains the chief precepts of the New
Law, and shows forth its true spirit.
Secondly, those which He preached at the end of His life, from His triumphal entry into Jerusalem up to His death; whilst of these, again, the most remarkable are the two that He gave during the Last Supper and the time following upon it, up to the night of His agony in the Garden of Olives.
We will distribute the reading of Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, and of these other two just mentioned, into days, so that a quarter of an hour may be spent every morning, and the same every evening, in devout meditation on them.
At each fresh Truth proposed we must pause a little to make an act of Faith: — 'I believe; that is true; He who says it is Truth itself.’
Thus we shall look at each particular Truth that He reveals as a portion of that Truth which is Jesus Christ Himself: that is to say, which is God Himself; but God coming near to us — communicating and uniting Himself to us : — for this is what Jesus Christ is.
We must, then, reflect on each particular Truth that He has revealed by His own mouth; fix our hearts on it; love it : — because it unites us to God through Jesus Christ Who taught it to us, and Who has Himself told us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.[1]
- ↑ John xiv. 6.