1. A priest, in the course of making his rounds of a workhouse hospital, came upon an old man who was nearing death. He was at once impressed by the quiet dignity of his bearing, and one day he heard the story. The sick man had been wealthy in the world, had built up a very prosperous business. He had retired some seven years ago, and his eldest son suggested that he should make over the business, dividing all he possessed equally among his five children. All five were comfortable in life, and all assured him that he would always have a home and welcome as long as he lived.
He took them at their word and signed all over to them. When everything was completed and they were secure in their possession and their father was now entirely dependent on them, they literally threw him out. There was nothing left for him to do but seek a place in the workhouse. This from his own and at the end of his days!
As we kneel this morning before the wounded Heart of Christ, it is well worth while remembering that He is like us in everything except sin, and that, therefore, when He complains of ingratitude, His words come to us weighted with significance. He singled out for special mention to St. Margaret Mary the sting of ingratitude which He felt, and all the more poignantly because He had to suffer it from "His own."
There was a particularly bitter taunt in Pilate's words: "Thy own nation and Thy chief priests have delivered Thee up to me." It recalls the day when He came into His own city of Nazareth and His own people despised and rejected Him because He was only a carpenter, and that other occasion when "they were filled with anger and rose up and thrust Him out of their city," even making an attempt to hurl Him over the brow of the hill to destruction.
It is well to put ourselves in the place of that helpless, friendless old man and from what we feel for him try to realize even a little of the disappointment and sorrow and humiliation of Jesus Christ. And, as we do so, it is of first importance to look into the years behind ourselves and see how we have been consistently ungrateful to this same Christ.
There are Catholics who regard sanctity and deep personal love of God and divine things as being all well enough for certain coteries of women or for boys up to the time of First Communion, but not for men. Religion seems to them weak and cowardly, turning the other cheek and asking the person who has robbed you to help himself to more. Much light will come on the problems here suggested if the soul begins to realize, on the one hand, the deep sincerity of the love of the Sacred Heart and, on the other, its own base ingratitude. For such a soul, seeing itself a traitor, recognizing its own depravity, cannot but grow in humility and love. That is why it learns to accept, as just exactly its due, every sort of snub and insult. A truly humble person is almost glad to be tolerated.
This is not servility or weakness; it is truth learned from the Sacred Heart crushed by one's own ingratitude. It is to put oneself in one's proper position. To take that place and keep it is no mark of a weakling but a proof of terrific strength. To learn the lesson of silent endurance of injustice is the mark of a soul very closely modeled upon the perfect soul of Christ.