Passion of Christ
The death of Christ on the cross as the summit of history and poetry -- at once most true and most beautiful. Lacordaire meditates on how an innocent just man dying by the ultimate punishment without deserving it reaches the summit of the pathetic, and the account of his end finds the path to every heart.
Pope Clement VIII, Jerome's Prefaces, On Worship
-
ON THE WORSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE SCRIPTURES.
— The account of Christ's passion rises to the highest accent of history and poetry. A life without stain, charity without limits, the complete sacrifice of self: this explains the divine sympathy his death has obtained from contemporaries and posterity.
"after the account of the public life of Christ comes that of his passion and death. The Gospel, so great up to that point, rises there to the highest accent of history and poetry -- that is to say, of what man possesses that is at once most true and most beautiful."
-
ON THE WORSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE SCRIPTURES.
— An innocent just man dying by the ultimate punishment without deserving it reaches the summit of the pathetic; the entire world is but a faint echo of his story.
"an innocent just man who dies by the ultimate punishment without having deserved it reaches the summit of the pathetic, and if he lived and spoke as Christ did, the entire world will be nothing but a faint echo of his story."
-
II. JEROME TO PAULINUS.
— Jonah prefigures the passion of the Lord by his own shipwreck.
"Jonah, that most beautiful dove, prefiguring the passion of the Lord by his own shipwreck"
-
II. JEROME TO PAULINUS.
— Habakkuk contemplates Christ on the cross: "His glory covered the heavens."
"Habakkuk, the strong and unyielding wrestler, stands upon his watch and sets his foot upon the fortress, so that he may contemplate Christ on the cross"