From the Twenty-Four Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Fourteenth Hour
From 6 to 7 AM
Jesus before Caiphas again, who confirms
His condemnation to death and sends Him to Pilate
My sorrowful Jesus, You are now out of the prison; You are so exhausted that You stagger at each step. I want to place myself at your side in order to sustain You, when I see that You are about to fall.
But I see that the soldiers take You before Caiphas; and You, O my Jesus, reappear in their midst like a Sun, and even though disfigured, You spread light everywhere. I now see that Caiphas is overjoyed in seeing You reduced so badly. At the reflections of your Light, He becomes more blinded, and in his fury, He asks You again: “So, are You really the true Son of God?”
And You, my Love, with supreme majesty, with the grace of your word, and with your usual sweet and moving tone, such as to enrapture the hearts, answer: “Yes, I am the true Son of God.”
And your enemies, though feeling all the power of your word within themselves, suffocating everything, wanting to know nothing else – in one voice, cry out: “He is guilty to death, he is guilty to death!”
Caiphas confirms the sentence to death, and sends You to Pilate. And You, my condemned Jesus, accept this sentence with so much love and resignation, as to almost snatch it from the iniquitous Pontiff. You repair for all the sins committed deliberately and with all malice, and for those who, instead of afflicting themselves because of evil, rejoice and exult over sin itself, and this leads them to blindness and to suffocating any enlightenment and grace. My Life, Jesus, your reparations and prayers echo in my heart, and I repair and pray together with You.
Seventeenth Hour
From 9 to 10 AM
Jesus is crowned with thorns. Presented to the people:
“Ecce Homo!” Jesus is condemned to death
…But under those thorns and that Blood, your Most Holy Face appears, radiant with sweetness, with peace, and with love. And the executioners, wanting to complete the tragedy, blindfold You, place a reed in your hand as scepter, and begin their mockeries. They hail You King of the Jews, they beat You on the crown, they slap You, and say to You: “Guess who hit You!”
…With this reed You hold in your hand, You repair for so many works – good, but empty of interior spirit and also done with evil intentions. In the insults and the blindfold, You repair for those who ridicule the holiest things, discrediting them and profaning them; You also repair for those who blindfold the sight of their intelligence in order not to see the light of Truth. With this blindfold, You impetrate that the blindfolds of passions, of riches and of pleasures may be removed from us.
Eighteenth Hour
10 AM to 11 AM
Jesus is stripped and crowned with thorns for the third time.
“My child, how much souls cost Me! This is the place where I wait for everyone in order to save them, where I want to repair for the sins of those who arrive at degrading themselves lower than beasts, and are so obstinate in offending Me as to reach the point of not being able to live without committing sins. Their minds remain blinded, and they sin wildly. This is why they crown Me with thorns for the third time.
Nineteenth Hour
11 AM to 12 PM
Second Part: Jesus Crucified. With Him we disarm Divine Justice.
“Holy Father, here I am, loaded down with all the sins of the world. There is not one sin which does not pour upon Me; therefore, no longer unload the scourges of your Divine Justice upon man, but upon Me, your Son. O Father, allow Me to bind all souls to this Cross, and to plead forgiveness for them with the voices of my Blood and of my wounds. O Father, do You not see how I have reduced Myself? By this Cross, by virtue of these pains, concede true conversion, peace, forgiveness and sanctity to all. Arrest your fury against poor humanity, against my children. They are blind, and know not what they are doing. Look well at Me, how I have reduced Myself because of them; if You are not moved to compassion for them, may You at least be softened by this Face of mine, dirtied with spit, covered with Blood, bruised and swollen by the so many slaps and blows received. Have pity, my Father! I was the most beautiful of all, and now I am all disfigured, to the point that I no longer recognize Myself. I have become the abject of all; and so, at any cost, I want to save the poor creature!”
