This Holy Week, Jesus invites us to voluntarily bear affliction and mortification, to taste the sweetness of Holy Communion.
By Fr. Thaddaeus Lancton, MIC
A gaze of the heart. Examining the depth of one’s heart.
There is no one way to translate the Latin title Inspectio Cordis, given to the collection of meditations for Sundays by the Founder of the Marians, St. Stanislaus Papczyński (1631-1701).
These meditations, published weekly on Fridays in preparation for the Sunday Mass, follow the style and purpose of our holy Father Founder. While his original text is worth reading, his examples and style can feel outdated to the modern reader. As his spiritual son, I will attempt my best to imitate his style and imitate his ministry of preaching to hearts.
The goal is to allow Jesus to gaze into your heart and teach you self-examination, leading you to a more fruitful reception of Holy Communion, where there is a true encounter of our hearts with His Sacred Heart – especially fitting during this period of National Eucharistic Revival.
Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion – Cycle B
March 24, 2024
This Sunday’s Inspectio Cordis meditation uses the original meditations – in quotation marks – from St. Stanislaus Papczyński.
Before Holy Communion
1. “He sent two of his disciples…”
“Consider that whenever Christ the Lord draws near to souls who are pious and devoted to Him, He always sends ahead two disciples, like envoys: that is, an affliction or a cross that would exercise us in patience; and a mortification that would make our will submissive to His. Then, after these two messengers, He himself comes and bestows upon us spiritual delights, and a precious sweetness.”
We may incorrectly assume that affliction and mortification are indications of Jesus’ displeasure toward us. However, they prepare His way, so that He may fill us with sweet delights. How we interpret His messengers changes greatly how we receive them: whether as punishments or as purifying gifts. This Holy Week, Jesus invites us to voluntarily bear affliction and mortification, to taste the sweetness of Holy Communion.
What is your typical reaction to affliction and voluntary mortification? How can you embrace them, to open your heart to the joy of union with Jesus?
2. “Untie it and bring it here…”
“Consider that the donkey from today’s Gospel can represent simple, honest, and obedient people, whom the Lord orders to be brought to Him. For He Himself associates with simple people; He places the honest ones at his side, and His brothers are the obedient ones who do his will (cf. Lk 8:21), as He Himself did the will of the Father who is in Heaven. For just as the donkey is a simple animal, inasmuch as it bears whatever burden has been laid upon it and is obedient to its lord and his command (it goes wherever it is driven, or comes back whenever called); so it is necessary that the soul, the servant of Christ, be simple, in order to bear most steadily both injuries, which are great burdens, and the yoke of obedience.”
Simplicity of soul flows from deep trust in the Father’s goodness, present even in adversity and darkness. Jesus “unties” us from complexity, deceit, and rebellion, that we may be brought closer to Him in Holy Communion to bear with Him the Cross.
What complexities of life bind your heart? How can you grow in Jesus’ simplicity and so bear His Cross?
3. “The Master has need of it…”
“God seeks out exactly such people so that He may easily place His yoke upon them, and may manifest and enjoin to them His will. Obviously, a human will that is opposed to God is not fit to serve Him… The Lord Jesus has need for obedient servants, as He Himself was; for His sustenance was to do the will of the Father and to be obedient to Him till death on the Cross. His most holy apostles, through whom He converted the whole world, were servants of such a kind. Since He is the giver of all good and all virtue, ask Him today for this quality: that you may become to Him like a beast of burden and that you may be with Him always.”
Sometimes, in a false humility, we believe that God doesn’t have need of us to fulfill His will. But He has need of our wills, to accomplish His plan, such that He can use us as He desires, as He can use the “beast of burden.”
Are you willing to surrender your entire will to Jesus, who “has need of it”? How can you unite your will to His through Holy Communion?
After Holy Communion
1. “So they went off…”
“The true servants of God are those who carry out all they are commanded to do with great readiness, eagerness, and perfection… obedience knows no hindrance, obstacle, or difficulty. Indeed, only the obedient man conquers difficult things; the more difficult the order is that is given to him, the more willingly he accomplishes it. For the true servant of God often turns very important matters over to God, distrusting his own mind with regard to them, and hopes that God would see them through… Naturally, the authentic spirit of true obedience consists in the prompt readiness to obey, although the task may seem impossible to achieve. Since obedience is almighty, it overcomes all difficulties and never leaves unfinished something it had once undertaken.
“Therefore, take caution, you who have received in the Most Holy Sacrament the Son of the immortal Father, obedient unto death, lest you disobey Him to whom you are bound. Beware, lest you push away all those things that you have a duty to accomplish and which God, through His deputies, commands you to do. Take heed, for it is better to be ready to die rather than to disobey.”
Where do you find yourself disobedient to the Father’s will? Where do you distrust that His grace will supply your weakness to overcome all difficulties?
2. “And he sat on it…”
“The Roman emperors, returning from wars and celebrating their triumph, used to ride into the city of Rome on elephants or crowned camels; and You, the Emperor of Heaven and of the whole world, You enter the royal city of David sitting upon a young donkey! What self-contempt! What humility!
“O my soul, what could happen to you hereafter that is so painful and burdensome that you would not take it upon yourself out of love for Jesus? What is there so shabby, worthy of disdain, and so contemptible that you would dare to reject, inasmuch as seeing today your Leader humiliated this way? What can restrain you in the future from contempt for the world? What reasoning can convince you about things you desire or choose that are splendid, beautiful, and remarkable?
“The newborn Christ lay between the ox and the donkey; He entered Jerusalem on a donkey. What for? To teach you that people who love inexpensive things and hold the lofty ones in contempt, and who deride and despise all ostentation, shall be granted an easy admission into the heavenly Kingdom. As for you, your every cross, however heavy, would become lighter if you prepare yourself through self-contempt to carry it; if you learn beforehand to forget about yourself, if you grow used to count yourself for little, and eagerly desire to be regarded as nobody. Jesus more easily bore the crown of thorns, the purple cloth of mockery, and all the ridicule and insults of Friday, because He entered the city on Sunday so humbly, riding on the back of a donkey.”
What are you willing to take upon yourself out of love for Jesus? How can your share of the Cross become lighter through deeper humility and trust in His love?
3. “And when he entered Jerusalem the whole city was shaken” (Mt 21:10)
“Just as the eternal Word, Christ the Lord, stirred up Jerusalem by entering it, thus we may believe that the whole human soul… is moved, changed, and transformed when visited by the same Lord with all His humanity and divinity. He transforms a soul once subservient to flesh into one completely subordinated to the spirit, and the one formerly given over to sensual things into a lover of mortifications. He makes the one formerly addicted to various passions into a cultivator of many virtues, and the one afflicted by frigidity and dryness to one abounding in graces of devotion and heavenly consolations. Moreover, the proud becomes transformed into the humble, the rebellious into the obedient, and the follower of the world into the follower of God. These are the effects of the Most Holy Sacrament; these are the most certain signs of divine grace abiding and acting in a man.
“If on this day you feel affected, stirred up, and moved in an unusual way; if you are discouraged or filled with anger or jealousy; if you crave to be soothed and covered with flatteries, if you are given to the vanities of the world or feel that your heart is not yet fully detached from them; if you flee before even the smallest of crosses, if you dread the divine will and refuse to resign yourself to it, then know that you received Christ the Lord the same way as the Pharisees did, and not as the jubilant crowd that danced for joy. Therefore, you must quickly correct this error.”
We receive Holy Communion and yet remain in our same sins. This Holy Week is an opportunity to allow Jesus to transform us from within, to be witnesses to the power of His love. We must let Him love us in our sins and so transform us into saints.
How can you correct the error of receiving Jesus in Holy Communion but not being transformed interiorly? How can the power of His love “shake” your heart out of complacency and manifest the “signs of divine grace”?
Next week: Easter Sunday, The Resurrection of the Lord.
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