icance when compared to
His. Did we ever offer ourselves to suffer every imaginable indignity
and torture for our kindred? Did we ever offer even to die a most
shameful and cruel death for them? We never did; and if we had even
attempted it, we should have found our puny and imperfect love unable
to carry us through the terrible sacrifice.

God alone is capable of so great a love. He assumed our nature, and
in it He suffered more than human mind can conceive. Look at Him in
the garden, oppressed and overpowered with an agony of sorrow. Follow
Him through the different stages of his bitter passion. Contemplate
that cruel scourging, the crowning with thorns, the filthy spittle
which covers His sacred face, and the other insults and indignities
heaped upon him. Follow Him to Mount Calvary; see Him there nailed
upon an infamous gibbet, suffering every torture of mind and body to
his very last breath. And why did He undergo all this? Because He
loved us. And now, are all they, whom He loved so well, and for whom
he suffered so much, around the throne of his glory in heaven? They
certainly are not. Are even all they, who were his special friends in
this world, around him in heaven? Surely we have every reason to fear
that one of them at least, Judas the traitor, is not there. And is
Jesus unhappy because they are not all there? Certainly not. If,
then, His happiness is not marred by the loss of those whom he loved
so much, neither shall ours be, if we find that some of our own are
lost. We shall be like him in beatitude, because we shall see him as
he is.

In the mean time, do all in your power to instil principles of virtue
into your children, if you are a parent; into your pupils, if you are
a teacher, or clothed in any other way with authority over your
fellow-creatures. See that none of them be lost through your own
fault. For if there is one thing above all others difficult to
understand, it is how fathers and mothers can be happy in heaven,
when they see their own children lost through their own negligence,
or bad example? Again, how can teachers, guardians, and pastors of
souls be happy in heaven, when they see those committed to their care
ruined forever, through their negligence? Again, how can those men be
happy who have seduced others from the path of virtue, by immoral
discourses, bad books, and evil actions? These certainly are hard
things to understand; and still we must believe that all they who
enter heaven