Meditations On The Funeral, And Burial Of Christ Our Lord Point II

UGOLINO DI NERIO 
The Entombment 
1325-28

THE II. POINT.

1. The body being wrapped and bound up, it is piously to be believed, that it was laid upon a brier, as the custom was to carry the dead, and all that company of devout women followed weeping, with the mother of the deceased, who wept like the widow of Naim, for the death of her only Son, who died in the flower of his age.

Colloquy

O merciful God, why comest thou not to meet this discomforted widow, and saith unto her. Noli flere, weep not? Why dost thou not touch the coffin wherein this blessed young man her only Son and thine lieth enclosed, and saith unto him. Adolescens tibi dico surge. Young man I say unto thee arise, restoring him unto his mother, who without him remaineth so solitary and desolate? But I see (Lord) that the time is not yet come, for first Jonas is to enter into the belly of the whale, and the Son of man, to be three days, and three nights in the heart of the earth, to come forth from thence afterwards alive.

2. It is likewise piously to be believed, that the quires of Angels, decided themselves into two parts, whereof the one accompanied the soul of Chrost our Lord, as we shall hereafter see: the other came to accompany this divine body, united likewise with the divinity to the end to honor the same, as it beseemed; fulfilling that which was written. And his Sepulcher shall be glorious, for many things which concurred to honor the same whereof one was, this company of glorious Angels, of whom we may say that which Isaias said. The Angels of peace, shall weep bitterly; not for that they did truly weep, but for that if they had been capable of tears, their charity would have constrained them to weep. where they saw there was so just a cause to weep.

Colloquy

O Angels of peace, obtain for me that I may bitterly weep for the death of my Lord, and with the tears of my heart, accompany those that weep, since I have been the cause that he hath been so cruelly handled, as is able to move all men to weep.

~ Venerable Luis de la Puente S.J. 

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