INTO
THE HOLIES BY THE BLOOD OF CHRIST
What consolation
in all this for nervous persons and neurasthenia or psychasthenia is fast
becoming the terrible scourge of our age who feel like the outcasts of men and
often consider themselves abandoned even by God. Their past sins and even their
smaller faults weigh heavily upon them. They imagine that God has forsaken them
on account of their mistakes in life and the offenses against Him, and that
they will receive neither forgiveness nor happiness either in this life or in
the next. Such spiritual despondency in responsible persons is a sin against
hope and an insult to our Lords Precious Blood, the Price of our Redemption.
Our hope in the Lord must be based, not upon our past record, whether good or
bad, but simply on the goodness and mercy of God. We must confidently expect
forgiveness, grace and happiness, because with the Lord there is merciful
forgiveness, and with Him there is plentiful redemption. Look up to the Cross,
despondent soul, who share in the bitter abandonment of your dying Saviour, and
listen to the words of the Beloved Disciple, He has loved us and washed us in
His blood. He loves us now as much as He did then.
Oh sweetest Blood, that can implore Pardon of God,
and heaven restore, The Heaven which sin has lost. While Abels blood for
vengeance pleads What Jesus shed still intercedes For those who wrong Him most.
Behold how he
loved him, the Jews said when they beheld Jesus weeping at the grave of
Lazarus. If the tears of Jesus were a sign of His love, how much more the Blood
flowing from His five wounds on the Cross. Keep on imploring Jesus for mercy
through His Precious Blood, and this Divine Blood will infuse new life and hope
into your life-blood, and, like St. Stephen, even in your bitter anguish, you
will see the heavens open to your eyes of faith, and by and by you will again
realize that in the end all good things are still before you, that there is a
life awaiting you with endless happiness. For neurasthenics at a certain stage
of their despondency the future has naught in store but gloom and despair.
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St
John the Evangelist at Patmos by Tobias Verhaecht,1598
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And
I wept much, writes St. John of what he saw as a pilgrim in Heaven, because no
man was found worthy to open the book, nor to see it. To this book, by which is
meant the history of the fall and redemption of mankind, or the triumph of
Christianity over Paganism and Judaism, which St. John saw in the hand of God the Father, may be likened the future of our own life, which is
a sealed book to us, and a most perplexing riddle full of anxieties and fearful
uncertainties, especially for nerve racked persons. And one of the ancients
said to me continues St. John, weep not; behold the lion of the tribe of Judah hath
prevailed to open the book, and loose the seven seals thereof.
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