toil and pain and anguish He departed from the light of day, and
what He had to suffer before He reached his Father's Kingdom. He
also cried with a loud voice, that He might inflame the lukewarm and
slothful to devotion and love.

Moreover He cried with a loud voice as a sign of the glorious
victory which He had gained, when after a single combat with His
strong and cruel enemy, and having descended into the arena--the
battlefield of this world--He had routed him on Mount Calvary and
stripped him bare of his spoils. This victory, this glorious
triumph, Christ proclaimed with a loud voice, and thus departing
from the battlefield triumphant and victorious, He departed to the
place of all delights, to the heart and breast of God, His Father,
commending to it, as to a safe refuge, both Himself and all His own,
with the words, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit."

We may learn from these words that the eternal Word, our Lord Jesus
Christ, had been let down like a fishing-hook or great net, by the
Father of heaven, into the great sea of this world, that He might
catch not fish but men. Hear how He says: "My word, that goeth forth
out of My mouth shall not return unto Me void, but shall execute
that which I please, and shall prosper in the thing whereto I send
it." And this net is drawn by the Father out of the salt sea, to the
peaceful shore of His fatherly heart, full of the elect, of works of
charity, of repentance, patience, humility, obedience, spiritual
exercises, merits and virtues. For Christ drew unto Himself all the
afflictions and good deeds of the good; just as St Paul says, "I
live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Even so, Christ lives in
all the good, and all who have been willing and obedient instruments
in the hands of Christ. In all such Christ lives and suffers and