[Editor’s NOTE: In Anno Domini 2024, the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord, celebrated on the 25th of March, takes place next week. In his BFP, however, Laache places Annunciation Day on the Fifth Sunday in Lent.]
159. Tuesday after Annunciation Day.
Thou art worthy, Lord Jesus, to receive glory
and honor and power forever and ever.
Matthew 27, 39-44. And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others, himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.
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“Our fathers trusted in thee; they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying: He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.” In these words David has, in the Twenty-second Psalm, recorded that which Jesus felt and to which he gave utterance while hanging on the cross. In another of the Psalms he says: “As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me: Where is thy God?” (Psalm 42, 10). Let none imagine that the Lord shook off the reproach without feeling it. “Reproach hath broken my heart,” he declares, “and I am full of heaviness; and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” (Psalm 69, 20 and 21). It was a part of his work of atonement to pay for all the reproach and mockery in which men indulge and delight on this poor earth. How many are there not whose pleasure and pride it is to mock and hold others up to derision. Jesus was to be loaded down with this sort of wickedness also. Let the flippant mockers see and hear that which takes place around the cross of the Lord; that should cure them of their abominable passion for scoffing. The weight of his sacred body, weary unto death, and suspended by the nails driven through his hands and feet, gave him unutterable agony; sufferings, such as none of us can imagine, coursed like a consuming fire through all his members, and every nerve was racked with the pains of death. But wounds yet more deep were inflicted on his soul by the reproach with which he was assailed. It must have been hard, beyond our power to conceive, for the Son of God to bear the foul ignominy and insults which were heaped upon him. My Jesus, if thou hadst descended from the cross, they that reviled thee would have seen with terror that thou art the Son of God. But the nails were forged in the scheme of the Eternal, and therefore they riveted thee fast; thou dost love us with the love that is stronger than death and greater than all the agonies of hell.
I would gladly, then, be despised and reviled for thy sake. I, also, feel how reproach and contumely have a mighty power to tempt one away from the cross; but I shall gain the victory through thee, and keep the flesh in subjection. To be reviled for thy sake shall to me be an honor a thousand times more great than any which the world can give. Grant me the grace that I may never dishonor thee by an ungodly life or by impatience in suffering; but let me suffer as a Christian should, and be reviled for that I have thy Spirit. — Save me from the awful crime of reviling thee in thy saints on earth. Amen.
Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
See him dying on the tree!
’Tis the Christ by man rejected;
Yes, my soul, ’tis he! ’tis he!
Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the sacrifice appointed!
See who bears the awful load;
’Tis the word, the Lord’s Anointed,
Son of man, and Son of God.