189 part i: sunday meditations for the entire year self. For the more you exhaust yourself working in the vineyard of the Lord, the more assured you may be of your eternal salvation and of an everlasting reward. Therefore, always gather up the fragments left for you; use whatever remaining time you have for the salvation of your neighbor; apply and dedicate the strengths and supernatural graces that super-abound in you to the care of the same neighbor, lest you have to render an exact account (and indeed, this will happen for certain) about wasting gifts and talents, if you have indeed wasted them, in the strict judgment of the awesome Judge, Christ, the author of the salvation of us all. For He is ready, if need be, to pour forth His Blood again for even just one soul. [f.37r] SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF THE LORD70 Before Holy Communion 1. “Which of you convicts [M]e of sin?” (Jn 8:46). Behold, the most just Lord, Redeemer of the world, has committed no evil deed or crime. Why, nevertheless, was He seized as an evil doer? Why was He accused, condemned, and led to capital punishment like a criminal? Why then, worse than any robber or great miscreants, was He crucified and put to a death as cruel as it was shameful? Your sins did this. “For the wickedness of my people” says the Divine Majesty with the lips of a prophet “have I struck him” (cf. Is 53:8) [DRB]. Look and ponder: How such great audacity, nay wickedness is contained in your everyday falling so rashly and so easily; in being so negligent to amend, while you obstinately adhere to evil deeds. On their account the Savior of the world suffers such great, such severe, and unfathomable torments! Jerusalem, Jerusalem — the soul that is not just burdened, but overwhelmed by a load of sins; the soul that chose the ill-fated road leading to the infernal region: 70 In the current liturgical calendar, this is the Fifth Sunday of Lent.
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