Eternal Father, I offer Thee the precious blood, etc., etc.
Twenty-fifth Day.
How beautiful a virtue is true humility! We love and admire it in others, but we ourselves are far from possessing it. Humility is the foundation on which all other virtues are built. Pride is a most hateful vice in the sight of God, for He would rather [pg 306] receive a humble sinner than a saint inclined to pride. God resists the proud, and gives His grace to the humble. The devotion of the precious blood will secure humility. Jesus shed His blood amid the greatest humiliations. In the Garden of Olives, bowed to the earth, He poured forth His blood in an agony of shame and horror over the sins of men; He was beaten like a slave in the court of Pilate; the blood poured from His face, wounded by blows and defiled by spittle, and from His head crowned with thorns. It stained the streets of Jerusalem on His way to Calvary; it flowed to the foot of the cross, as He hung and died between two malefactors, where He was considered the most abject of men. Let us learn the lesson of humility from the death of Christ.
Prayer.
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the precious blood, etc., etc.
Twenty-sixth Day.
Zeal for souls, zeal for the glory of God, was the motive that induced the Son of God to come down from heaven to suffer and die on the cross. Might not we, also, do something for the glory of God and the good of souls, if we had a little zeal towards that end? The apostles learned zeal from the Passion of Our Lord. When the Lord had died on the cross, they became inflamed with zeal and worked in an apostolic manner that souls might be brought to the kingdom of God; suffering became precious in their sight, because they endured it for the good of humanity. We that profess the love of the precious blood must also have zeal for the salvation [pg 307] of souls. What can we do? We can pray; we can offer up our petitions incessantly for some particular individual until we are heard; we can surround people by such influences that their minds will be changed and brought back to God. But frequently we are inactive and inattentive to these means which God has given us; we are not filled with zeal for furthering the devotion to Christ's precious blood, and for the salvation of souls.
Prayer.