Aspiration of a Soul Condoling with Jesus in His Passion

O MOST tender Jesus, who didst come to seek and to save that which was lost; alas, how cruelly and how unworthily has the world treated thee, and how black has been its ingratitude to thee, who didst lay down thy beloved soul for its salvation! I condole with thee, O my most loving Brother, and I compassionate thee from my inmost heart, when I call to mind the mournful desolation in which thou, most faithful of friends, wast left by all thy friends; how thou wast ruthlessly seized as a thief and a robber, and cruelly bound, and driven towards thy death, scornfully mocked by thine enemies, and assailed with insults and outrages; and didst become as a worm and no man, the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people. Who can meditate without tears on the loving gentleness with which thou wentest forth to meet thine enemies, as they came with swords and with staves to seize thee and deliver thee to death, even as a tender mother goes forth to meet the son of her love; and how thou didst meekly resign thyself into their cruel hands, to rescue them from the jaws of the wolves of hell! While they so pitilessly smote thee, for every blow and for every buffeting thou didst impress a kiss of love on all the souls which should be saved through thy Passion until the day of doom. Oh, how great was thy love towards thine enemies, O most tender Jesus, in that, even while they were cruelly scourging thee, thou didst pour forth for them such availing prayer, that many of them were converted unto thee! And when they thrust the crown of thorns on thy most sacred Head, thou didst weave into their crowns as many gems as there were thorns in thine own. O most gentle Jesus, who can think without an ardent love of thee on the amazing love thou didst manifest to us most ungrateful sinners, when thy sinless hands and feet were so inhumanly nailed to the cross, and all thy limbs so painfully stretched and dragged asunder that all thy bones might be numbered; and thou, the while, wast drawing towards thee, with all the might of thy Divinity, the souls of as many as were ordained to life everlasting. And when thy sacred Side was opened with the lance, thou didst offer the cup of life, filled from thine own Heart, to all who had drunk in Adam the cup of death, that in thee, who art the life, all might be made sons of everlasting life and blessedness. Wherefore, O thou tenderest Lover of my soul, in return for thy love, and for the undeserved bitterness of thy guiltless Passion, I offer thee my whole heart, earnestly desiring, from this moment to the time of my departure hence, to bear with thee all the bitterness and the sorrow of thy sweetest Heart, and of thine immaculate Body; and beseeching thee to wound my heart with a sense and sympathy in thy Passion, and evermore to keep alive its memory within me. Amen.