The benefit of our Redemption is almost beyond our ability to praise
2 min • Digitized on March 3, 2022
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 44
By Venerable Louis of Granada
CHAPTER IV.
THE FOURTH MOTIVE WHICH OBLIGES US TO PRACTISE VIRTUE: THE INESTIMABLE BENEFIT OF OUR REDEMPTION.
Let us now consider the supreme benefit of divine love, the redemption of man. But I feel myself so unworthy, so unfitted to speak of such a mystery that I know not where to begin or where to leave off, or whether it were not better for me to be silent altogether.
Did not man, in his lethargy, need an incentive to virtue, better would it be to prostrate ourselves in mute adoration before the incomprehensible grandeur of this mystery than vainly essay to explain it in imperfect human language.
It is said that a famous painter of antiquity, wishing to represent the death of a king’s daughter, painted her friends and relatives about her with mournful countenances. In her mother’s face grief was still more strongly depicted. But before the face of the king he painted a dark veil to signify that his grief was beyond the power of art to express.
Now, if all that we have said so inadequately expresses the single benefit of creation, how can we with any justice represent the supreme benefit of Bedemption?
By a single act of His will God created the whole universe, diminishing thereby neither the treasures of His riches nor the power of His almighty arm. But to redeem the world He labored for thirty-three years by the sweat of His brow, He shed the last drop of His blood, and suffered pain and anguish in all His senses and all His members.
What mortal tongue can explain this ineffable mystery? Yet it is equally impossible for me to speak or to be silent. Silence seems ingratitude, and to speak seems rashness.
Wherefore, I prostrate myself at Thy feet, O my God! beseeching Thee to supply for my insufficiency, and if my feeble tongue detract from Thy glory, while wishing to praise and magnify it, grant that Thy elect in heaven may render to Thy mercy the worship which Thy creatures here below are incapable of offering Thee.