169 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year ance. It is you, yourself, who handed the innocent Jesus over to the Jews for mocking, scourging, and crucifying. You handed over not some wicked thief, but the gracious Son of God; not an evildoer, but the good and gracious Creator and Father of all. Should you ask Him about His reason for going to the City of Jerusalem, [f.28r] where He would suffer the most horrid kind of death, He would answer you: “for the transgression of [M]y people” (Is 53:8), and He would add, in strict conformity with the truth: “For your enormous and unbearable sins.” You are the one who led Christ to the Cross, and alas! You crucify Him every day when you act impiously! Where will you now turn, having treated your Creator with such great impiety? And yet He calls you to Himself, oblivious to His wounds, injuries, and death. Moreover, He invites His enemy to His table, laden not with exquisite dishes,57 but with His Precious Body. O love! O goodness! O clemency, unheard of and inconceivable! Avail yourself of this favorable opportunity for conversion and work for your salvation and for that of your neighbor, as long as time is granted to you. 3. “[on] the third day [H]e shall rise again” (Lk 18:33) [DRB]. Consider that Christ the Lord is being killed by sinners as many times as they mar their own soul, created in the image of God, with impious evil deeds, just as it is said in the words of the Apostle, in rebuke of sinners: “they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold [H]im up to contempt” (Heb 6:6). Particularly in this most unhappy time, when nearly everyone is immersed in various evil deeds and loosens the control of his appetites, you must know that the most gracious Lord is scourged, spat upon, and crucified again. Countless examples can teach you this. 57 St. Stanislaus had written in the Latin: “mensam ... saliaribus epulis refertam,” where the adjective saliaris comes from the word Salii. “Salii [was] … a college of priests of [the pagan god] Mars …whose sacred processions, accompanied by singers and armed dancers, took place annually in the beginning of March. … [And it was] from the sumptuous feasts that followed the procession of the Salii” that the word saliaris came to be used as a proverb meaning: “splendid, magnificent” (Cassell’s Latin Dictionary: Latin-English and English-Latin, rev. ed., Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York 1955, p. 498 (s.v. Salii)). [Hereafter Cassell’s Latin Dictionary will be abbreviated as CLD.] Cf. SLL, vol. 2, p. 257 (s.v. Saliaris).
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