Judy Garland in Summer Stock, 1948
Contrarieties in the Passion
"In the Passion of Our Lord there is a combination of sorrow and consolation. His sorrows were beyond all the united sorrows of the human race ; for He carried all the burden of our sins, the sole source of all our miseries, with the full sense of the weight of them, which is deficient in us at present. " Surely He hath borne our infirmities and car ried our sorrows . . . the chastisement of our peace was upon Him (Isa. liii. 4, 5). His afflictions were both of body and mind, they filled every sense and faculty of His Human Nature, and there was none capable of consoling Him or helping Him. " The waters have come in, even to My soul. ... I am come into the depths of the sea, and the tempest hath overwhelmed Me " (Ps. Ixviii. 2, 3). On the other hand, in the superior part of Our Lord s being, there was imper turbable calm and peace, arising from the Beatific Vision of the Godhead which He always possessed. In the midst of His baptism of fire, He had the peace of a good conscience, the comfort that God was with Him, the knowledge that He was accomplishing the Divine Will, the sight of the heroic constancy of His elect, their triumph over sin and hell, their salvation through His sufferings. So you may rejoice in Our Lord s Passion while sympathizing with His sorrows. In the bitterness of your own trials and disappointments you may yet possess peace and consolation ; you will find in Him the strength to bear them with patience, and dignity, and eternal profit.
