FOURTEENTH MEDITATION OF OUR SAVIOR'S PASSION ~ LUCY HERBERT

BOSCH, Hieronymus 

Ecce Homo 

1490

XIV. Meditation. 

CONSIDER how our Lord was exposed to the view of the people in that deplorable condition together with Barabbas that they might choose one of them to be freed from death. What an affront and contempt of our Savior, to compare him with a wicked thief, and much greater was it to prefer the thief before him! Admire the impiety of the Jews, and still more your own. The Jews knew him not for what he was, or they would never have done as they did; but we who know and profess him to be God, do, notwithstanding, daily prefer our wicked desires and affections before him. But, above all, let us admire the inscrutable abyss of God's love, which preferred our salvation to the welfare of his only Son, who is of such infinite value that Eternity contains nothing so precious! and since he would be so humbled for us let us promise him that, from henceforward, we will love and prefer him before all things, and will be content, for his sake to be postponed to those that are inferior to us.

LUCY HERBERT