Dilexit nos, et tradidit semetipsum pro nobis.

"He hath loved us, and hath delivered Himself for us."-----Eph. 5:2

Consider that the eternal Word is that God Who is so infinitely happy in Himself that His happiness cannot be greater than it is, nor could the salvation of all mankind have added anything to it or have diminished it; and yet He has done and suffered so much to save us miserable worms that if His beatitude [as St. Thomas says] had depended on that of man, He could not have done or suffered more: "As if without him He could not be happy;" and, indeed, if Jesus Christ could not have been happy without redeeming us, how could He have humbled Himself more than He has done, in taking upon Himself our infirmities, the miseries of infancy, the troubles of human life, and a death so barbarous and ignominious?

   None but God was capable of loving to such an excess so wretched sinners as we are, and who were so unworthy of being loved: A devout author says: If Jesus Christ had permitted us to ask of Him to give us the greatest proof of His love, who would have ventured to ask of Him that He should become a child like unto us, that He should clothe Himself with all our miseries, and make Himself of all men the most poor, the most despised, and the most ill-treated, even to being put to death by the hands of executioners, and in the greatest torments upon an infamous gibbet, cursed and forsaken by all, even by His Own Father, Who abandoned His Son that He might not abandon us in our ruin?

  But that which we should not have had the boldness even to think of, the Son of God has thought of and accomplished. Even from His childhood He has sacrificed Himself for us to sufferings, to opprobrium, and to death: He hath loved us, and hath delivered Himself for us. He hath loved us, and out of love hath given us Himself, in order that we, by offering Him as a victim to the Father, in satisfaction for our debts, might through His merits obtain from the Divine goodness all the graces that we desire; a victim dearer to the Father than if we had offered Him the lives of all men and of all the Angels. Let us therefore continually offer to God the merits of Jesus Christ, and through them let us seek and hope for every good.

Affections and Prayers