Saints'
Prayers
selected
from the annals of history unto our current day
Meditations
Meditations for Advent and Easter
by the author of "Meditations for Lent," "St. Francis and the Franciscans," "The Life and Revelations of S. Gertrude," Etc. Etc.
Meditation V - Thursday
The Heart of the Infant Jesus, Our Coming Saviour
"But I will look towards the Lord, I will wait for God my Saviour: my God will hear me." (Micheas, vii. 7.) Ant. at Magnificat.
1st Prelude. - Behold the Infant Jesus coming forth from the womb of Mary as our Saviour.
2nd Prelude. - Pray that you may obtain the full benefit of the salvation He is about to accomplish.
1st Point. - Consider the meaning of the word saviour, and what it implies. It implies danger from which deliverance is needed; it means the deliverer. The danger is sin; the danger is eternal ruin; and so great is the danger, that only a God can be the deliverer. Oh, how that Lord has loved His creatures! Their danger did not lessen His security; their ruin could not shake His stability; and yet He cannot rest in His security, or repose in His stability, without coming Himself to save and to give rest to His creatures. Well may we "look towards" the Lord. If we were perishing in a torrent, with what eagerness would we not look towards a deliverer who appeared on the bank of the river, hastening to our assistance! With what hope, with what love we should gaze upon him! and if we knew that he could certainly save us, with what faith we would expect him!
2nd Point. - In Advent we should unite ourselves with the whole Church in expecting our Deliverer. We should offer up ceaseless acts of faith in His power, of confidence in His love, and of hope in His goodness. Perhaps our deliverance will be proportioned to our earnestness in preparing for it. Above all, we should unite ourselves with Mary. Her spotless purity, her burning love, her perfect faith, her ceaseless tears and intercedings, brought the Messiah from heaven, whom her nation had so long desired. Then let us offer our desires of deliverance in union with hers. Let us unite ourselves to her faith, her hope, and her charity in expecting Jesus. Let us beseech Him to accept her sublime acts of virtue in atonement for our coldness, and for her sake to "come and deliver us." He can refuse nothing to her prayers whose love won Him from heaven to earth. If we desire to obtain special favours and graces at Christmas, let us be devout to Mary; let us ask all through her in Advent. She is the tabernacle before which we should pray, and none ever knelt before her in vain.
3rd Point. - Let us endeavour to ascertain the special danger from which we should ask individually to be delivered. In the order of grace, as in the order of nature, there is some special disease to which we are predisposed, and which will prove our ruin, if we do not watch its symptoms and check its progress. How carefully and anxiously we watch the disease by which we think ourselves endangered! how we guard against all that might excite it or increase it! and then, if the least danger is apprehended, how quickly we consult the physician, how implicitly we abide by his directions! Would to God we were one-half as anxious about the constitutional malady of our souls. But let us begin now; let us consult our spiritual physicians, employ the remedies they prescribe, and occupy ourselves during this Advent in imploring our coming Saviour to deliver us from this malady, whose danger He knows better than we can.
Aspiration. - Heart of my Infant Jesus, come and deliver me.
Form your resolution, and place it in the Heart of the Infant Jesus. Examen of Meditation.
Return to the Fourth Meditation . . . Proceed to the Sixth Meditation