June 6

Thursday of the Second Week after Easter

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2:5.

GLORIOUS for the Christian to bear the marks of His Lord. What more blessed for the bride than to be likened to the Bridegroom? What for the members than to be likened to the thorn-crowned Head? His sufferings have even now passed anew before our eyes. All the sufferings of His life were gathered before us in His death. What of bodily suffering was missing when every spot in His holy tender frame was rent with scourges, when limb was disjointed, every sense racked with agony, when from the thorn-encompassed Head, in unrest upon the hard Cross, to the pierced Feet, all was "wounds and bruises and putrefying sores"? What when man disowned his Redeemer, and accused the Holy One as blaspheming Him Whose will He came to do, and the Father for the time owned Him not? And now how is it the scars of His nailed Hands and wounded Feet and pierced Side remain, but in what glory! He rose again, a spiritual Body, yet with the tokens of His Passion. Then He showed Himself to His disciples, to be seen, touched. With that same Body He ascended into heaven. In that same Body He there "liveth to make intercession for us." These glorious wounds plead for us with the Father night and day, to turn away His wrath from us. Those ever-blessed wounds, the memorials of His Passion, the ensigns of His victory. Brighter are they than all created brightness; for their brightness is the glory of the love of God. Such the reward of suffering; such the Pattern ye in your measure are to follow; such the Image to which we are to be conformed, of patient suffering here and everlasting reward hereafter.