Graces Attached to the Devotion of the Five Wounds
The Church commemorates the Five Wounds of Our Lord on the Friday of the third week of Lent. The following excerpt is from the series of meditations of Father M. Andre Hamon, S.S.
“The soul finds in these wounds all that is necessary to salvation” (Saint Bernard). “I have found nowhere else,” says Saint Augustine, “so efficient a remedy for all the ills of the soul.”
“Whatever may be our spiritual maladies,” adds Saint Bernard, “an assiduous meditation upon the wounds of the Savior will cure them.” Jesus Christ Himself says by His prophet: “They shall look upon My wounds, and they shall be converted.”
The heart of Jesus is an ocean, and His wounds are the channels through which flow the waters of grace and mercy.”
Saint Bernard also remarks. “It is, in fact, in these wounds that a lively faith is formed; it is there that confidence in God dilates; it is there, above all, that charity is kindled as at its source.”
By dint of considering the excess of love which opened these wounds for us, vile creatures and miserable sinners as we are, the heart is set aflame, and we can no longer live except by love.
Therefore, Saint Augustine called these sacred wounds “his refuge in troubles, his asylum in tribulations, his remedies for the infirmities of the soul.”
It was therein that Saint Thomas Aquinas derived all his knowledge; therein that Saint Francis of Assisi, by dint of meditation upon them, became, through the seraphic ardor of his charity, a miracle of resemblance to the crucified Jesus; there that Saint Bonaventure filled himself with the spirit of piety which embalms all his writings—worthy disciple of Saint Francis that he was—and who wore out the feet of his crucifix by kissing them so often, and who never ceased to exhort the faithful to enjoy the ineffable delights and the delicious unction of piety attached to the devotion to the sacred wounds.
“If you cannot,” says The Imitation of Christ, “raise yourself to lofty contemplations, remain humbly in the wounds of the Savior; you will find consolation and strength.”
