EXERCISE FOR FRIDAY.
Devotion to the Passion of our Lord .
O DIVINE and adorable Jesus! Saviour of mankind, I most humbly adore thee, and beseech thee to penetrate my soul with the most lively gratitude for that infinite love, which brought thee from heaven to suffer and die for me. O do not permit that I should ever be one of the ungrateful number who forget thy sufferings, or think of them with indifference. Ah! where should I be for all eternity, if thou hadst not loved me better than thy own life? Should not thy bitter sufferings fill my heart with compassion and sorrow, since they were occasioned by my sins? Yes, my adorable Saviour! divine Victim of my sins! I will at least think of thee, who hast never forgotten me. I will live for thee, who didst not refuse to die for me. I now most fervently offer to thee, in union with the oblation of thyself on the cross, the sacrifice of my whole being. I desire to accompany thee in spirit through all the stages of thy sufferings, and to commemorate them by the most sincere sentiments of gratitude for thy love, and sorrow for my sins and those of the world. Adorable Jesus! overwhelmed with sorrow for my sins in the Garden of Olives! give me the grace of sincere contrition and perfect conformity to thy holy will; teach me, by thy wonderful patience in the midst of the most cruel insults, the virtue of meekness; let thy profound humiliations, when thou wert crowned with thorns, and clothed with a purple garment, animate me to conquer my pride, and despise sincerely the opinion of the world; associate me to the hippy few who followed thee to Mount Calvary, and beheld thee crucified. Thou didst end thy life, O merciful Jesus!
