Third Point.
The marvel increases when we see then the desire which our blessed Lord had to suffer and to die for us. Whilst living, He said, " I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" (S. Luke xii. 50.) I must be baptized with the baptism of My own Blood; and I feel Myself dying with the desire that My passion and death may speedily come, since by this, man may quickly know the love that I bear to him. It was this feeling which made Him say, on the night preceding His Passion, " With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you." (S. Luke xxii. 15.) Therefore S. Basil of Seleucia writes, " God cannot be satiated by His love for men."
Ah, my Jesus, men do not love Thee, because they do not consider the love that Thou hast borne for them. O God, a mind that reflects that God died for this, and had such a desire to die, that He might show His affection, how can such a mind live without loving Hun? " The love of Christ constraineth us." (2 Cor. v. 14.) S. Paul says, that it is not only that which our blessed Lord has done and suffered, but the love which He has shown in the suffering for us that obliges us, and, as it were, forces us to love Him. Considering this, S. Laurence Justinian exclaimed, " We see the wise infatuated through excess of love." Who could ever believe, had not faith assured us, that the Creator had willed to die for His creatures? When the death of Jesus Christ was preached to the heathen, they regarded it as folly, which they could never believe, as the Apostle testifies, " We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." (i Cor. i. 23.) And how could it be, they would say, that a God, most happy in Himself, Who has no need of anything, should have come down to earth, should have become man, and should have died for the love of men, His own creatures. But yet it is an article of faith, that Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, for His love to us, was given to death. "Christ .... loved us, and hath given Himself for us." (Eph. v. 2.)
