like a luminous path in the air
descended from Heaven; it was a procession of angels who came up to
Jesus and strengthened and re-invigorated him. The remainder of the
grotto was filled with frightful visions of our crimes; Jesus took them
all upon himself, but that adorable Heart, which was so filled with the
most perfect love for God and man, was flooded with anguish, and
overwhelmed beneath the weight of so many abominable crimes. When this
huge mass of iniquities, like the waves of a fathomless ocean, has
passed over his soul, Satan brought forward innumerable temptations, as
he had formerly done in the desert, even daring to adduce various
accusations against him. 'And takest thou all these things upon thyself,'
he exclaimed, 'thou who art not unspotted thyself?' then he laid to the
charge of our Lord, with infernal impudence, a host of imaginary
crimes. He reproached him with the faults of his disciples, the
scandals which they had caused, and the disturbances which he had
occasioned in the world by giving up ancient customs. No Pharisee,
however wily and severe, could have surpassed Satan on this occasion;
he reproached Jesus with having been the cause of the massacre of the
Innocents, as well as of the sufferings of his parents in Egypt, with
not having saved John the Baptist from death, with having brought
disunion into families, protected men of despicable character, refused
to cure various sick persons, injured the inhabitants of Gergesa by
permitting men possessed by the devil to overturn their vats,8 and
demons to make swine cast themselves into the sea; with having deserted
his family, and squandered the property of others; in one word Satan,
in the hopes of causing Jesus to waver, suggested to him every thought
by which he would have tempted at the hour of death an ordinary mortal
who might have performed all these actions without a superhuman
intention; for it was hidden from him that Jesus was the Son of God,
and he tempted him only as the most just of men. Our Divine Saviour
permitted his humanity thus to preponderate over his divinity, for he
was pleased to endure even those temptations with which holy souls are
assailed at the hour of death concerning the merit of their good works.
That he might drink the chalice of suffering even to the dregs, he
permitted the evil spirit to tempt his sacred humanity, as he would
have tempted a man who should wish to attribute to his good works some
special value in