Imprisonment.
"I was in prison and you came to Me." "Lord when did we see Thee ... in prison?"
(St. Matt. xxv. 36, 39).
1st. Prelude. Turris Davidica.
2nd. Prelude. Grace to visit Him in His prison.
Point I. Dependence.
Our blessed Lord's life, during the nine months, was a life of imprisonment. He chose for Himself a position of dependence, helplessness and inability. He Who was the Light of the world chose to live in darkness; He Whom the Heavens cannot contain chose a more cramped position than any prisoner has ever had to endure; He Who was infinite allowed Himself to be confined; He Who was immortal took a mortal body. He endured all the sufferings that helplessness and inability and immobility entail; and we have to keep reminding ourselves that He was fully alive to all His sufferings. We are not making an imaginary picture, but trying to realize what were the actual facts of those nine months. His Mother understood, let us try to do the same. Let us go to the "Tower of David" where Our Lord is kept a prisoner and let us remember that He is there for us. Let us not be amongst those to whom He will have to say sadly: "I was in prison and you did not visit Me." Later on, at the end of His life, He will allow His own people to take Him prisoner and will stand still while they put the chains on His wrists and will allow Himself to be dragged where they wish. Later on still He will choose to be imprisoned in the little Host and to make Himself to the end of time our Prisoner of Love.
Thy imprisonments were all voluntary, my Jesus, they were all suffered out of love and out of love for me. Oh, may these visits that I am paying Thee during the blessed season of Advent result in my imbibing more of the spirit of my imprisoned Master. Mine too is a voluntary imprisonment; I am His captive because I said: I will be His servant, "I will not go out free" (Ex. xxi. 5). I gave up my liberty, preferring to be His prisoner rather than the devil's free man. Naturally He takes me at my word, but oh, sometimes prison-life is very hard to bear! He chains me to a bed of sickness, where I must lie still and see the work I long to do left undone or, what is perhaps harder still, badly done; He gives me great desires and no means of fulfilling them; He fills me with plans and schemes for His glory and then seems to make it impossible for them to be realized; He trains me, as I think, for some particular position and then detains me in another for which it seems to me I have not the least aptitude; He sets limits to my strength; He seems to keep me always in the background; He appears to use everybody else except me for His work; He seems to cramp my efforts and allow me no scope for the talents He has given me.
The Divine Prisoner Himself answers my plaints: My child, all these things only prove that you are My prisoner, that I have taken you at your word and that I do with you as I wish. Your time is not lost any more than Mine was. By doing My Will, however inscrutable it may seem to you, you are doing far more for Me than if you were doing your own. Trust me, be patient, bear and suffer all for Me, Who am a Prisoner for you. I love you to be dependent on Me, I love you to walk by faith, I love you to trust Me, and so I am constantly doing little things to remind you that you are My prisoner. Strive to be a prisoner of love as I am, that is (1) one who is in prison for love of another, (2) one who loves his chains, (3) one whose every act in prison is done to please Me.
Point II. Darkness.
How much darkness adds to the sufferings of prison life! It was a suffering which Jesus living in Mary endured for me; and yet while He, the Light of the world was there, her blessed womb was flooded with light, with the light of Heaven itself.