Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost The Gospel Matt. 22. v. 35. Thursday Meditation: A Plaine Path-way To Heaven Thomas Hill 1634
GOSPEL Matt. 22. v. 35.
At that time, the pharisees came to Jesus, and one of them, a doctor of the law, asked Him, tempting Him: Master, which is the great commandment of the law? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. And the Pharisees being gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying: What think you of Christ? whose son is He? They said to Him: David’s. He saith to them: How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool? If David then call Him Lord, how is He his son? And no man was able to answer Him a word; neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions.
THURSDAY MEDITATION
Thou shalt love thy Lord God with all thy heart, with all thy soul &c. When God gave the people of Israel the ten Commandments, he premised these words by way of Preface, to induce them to love him, and loving him to keep them,: I am thy Lord God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, &c. putting them in mind of the temporal benefit he did for them, and commanded them the Sabaoth day in remembrance not only of the benefit of the creation, but also of the conservation of themselves, & all the world for their use, without which, though created, nothing can subsist one moment.
This was the style of almighty God, before the coming of Christ: but after his coming, his style is not, I am thy Lord God, but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, signifying unto us a far greater benefit, the benefit of our redemption and reconciliation: and in our Lords prayer, which we daily say, he styleth himself, Our Father in heaven, and permiteth it as a Preface to incite us to love him.
We are no better then a generation of vipers born into everlasting life, by the death of our parent Christ Jesus, and yet he being raised again to life, or rather rising of himself, loveth us as a parent, and feedeth us with his own flesh in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
O let us cease to be a generation of vipers, let us not crucify our parent, and such a parent any more, with our mortal sins, but endeavor to avoid venial, & to do him all the service we can.
O Lord thou hast commanded me to love thee now, not as my Lord God, but as my Lord Jesus, which signifies a Saviour & Redeemer of our souls from everlasting damnation, as a Father, and such a Father as dwelleth in heaven, and giveth his children heaven for their love.
Oh how sweet, and comfortable a style is this! This is such a benefit that St. Paul sayth, if any man love not our Lord Jesus, let him be Anathema Maranatha, that is to say, accursed in the highest degree.
Who am I, O my Lord Jesus, that thou seekest my love so much by fair and foul means, by benefits and threatenings, as though thou haddest need of my love, and not I of thine! & as though it were not a misery great enough for me not to love thee! I will love thee henceforth, O my sweet Lord Jesus, with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, and will all my strength and abilities, both of body and soul, fortunes, and all.
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