Monday, June 1 : Saint Bonaventure

Sweet Jesus, how sorry the state in which I see you! Sweetest and most loving, who has condemned you to such a bitter death? Only Savior of all our ancient wounds, who is taking you to undergo so cruel and, even more, so humiliating a wounding? O my good Jesus, sweetest vine, see the fruit your vine is yielding you… Up until this day of your espousals, patiently you have waited for it to produce its grapes yet it yielded only thorns (Is 5,6). It has crowned you with thorns and encircled you with the thorns of its sins. How bitter has become this vine, which now is no longer yours but has become a foreign vine! It has denied you, crying: “We have no other king but Caesar!” (Jn 19,15). When they had cast you out from the vineyard of your city and inheritance, those vinedressers put you to death: not at one fell blow but only after crushing you beneath the long agony of the cross and torturing you with the wounds of whip and nails… Lord Jesus… it is you yourself who surrender your soul to death; no one can take it from you, it is you who give it (Jn 10,18)… O wonderful exchange! The King surrenders for the slave, God for man, the Creator for the one he has created, the Innocent for the guilty.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team