peace through our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; grace for your good, that you may make good progress in that same grace, in like manner as you have begun, and come to a profitable issue therein: mercy to be kept in your remembrance and gratefully received, seeing that the Eternal God, the supreme Goodness, for us sinners deigned to become man, afflicted, spat upon, shamefully entreated, condemned of His own, vilely rejected in such wise that the common people, led away by the counsel of the priests and having to choose between two, chose, instead of Jesus the innocent Saviour, a robber and villainous homicide, and placed the Saviour in such derision and shame that He uttered a lamentation in the words of Jeremiah: Hear, I pray you, all ye people and see my sorrow. And again: O all ye that pass by the way, attend and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow.[1] Also He cried to His Father saying: O God, why hast thou forsaken me?[2] Such was indeed His cry, as He hung on the cruel and shameful cross and suffered the blasphemy of the priests, who surrounded the cross and shouted and hissed out the mocking words: He trusted in God: let him now deliver him.[3] Vah,[4] thou that deetroyest the temple of God . . . come down from the cross![5] But His cry was: O God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? It is that cry that calls upon us to mark His boundless mercy, to suffer blasphemy in the spirit of love along with Him, and to be thankful for the mercy wherewith He redeemed us from everlasting damnation.
Such, then, is the mercy that comes to you from
