Lent with Bossuet – Meditations on the Gospel (34)

Follow Jesus in Humiliation and Death

See how Jesus Himself gives the character of death to His triumphal entrance. As was His custom, in glory He always remembered death.

Thus even on Mount Tabor, where He was taken up and transfigured in such a marvelous manner, Moses and Elias, who had come to honor Him and speak with Him, “spoke of His decease that He should accomplish in Jerusalem (Lk. 9:31), while fulfilling all the ancient prophecies and all the figures of the Law.

In leaving this glory, He was filled only with His death, and He forbade His disciples to “tell the vision to no man, till the Son of man be risen from the dead” (Mk. 17:9). It was, therefore, necessary to die, and this is what He wanted them to understand well, in order for them to see the way they had to follow after Him, so as to arrive at the resurrection and the glory.

Let us accustom ourselves to the example of Jesus, in all that flatters us, to keep in our mind always, as keenly as we can, the thought of death. Let us accustom ourselves always to join these two ideas: glory and earthly pleasure, eternal confusion; and again these two: the cross and mortification, glory and eternal happiness.

It is by force of thinking of it often, that we can join together these ideas which seem so far apart from one another. As much as we can, we must do violence to the senses, lest they prevail and seduce us.