Among the collected Cantiques (hymns) that we have from St. Louis de Montfort is a series that may be rightly named the “Holy Week Cantiques”. This group of hymns provides a sustained series of meditations on the Passion and Death of the Lord and as well as the Sufferings of Our Lady as she participated in the mystery of his Cross. I have been making heavy use of these hymns during this season of Lent at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Island as each of our Sunday Holy Hours on the first five Sundays of Lent has been devoted to focused meditation on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary – one considered in detail each Sunday. Our praying of the Rosary on each of these Sundays has featured an extended meditation on the particular mystery being considered that is taken from the rich and moving insights into these mysteries found in Fr. de Montfort’s Holy Week Cantiques. My hope is to refine this project and then to publish it as a small booklet of Rosary meditations so that others can have the experience of praying the Rosary with St. Louis de Montfort in this way.
Below is a sample:
THE FIRST SORROWFUL MYSTERY
THE AGONY
We offer you, Lord Jesus this first decade in honor of your mortal agony in the Garden of Olives, and we ask of you by this Mystery and through the intercession of your holy Mother contrition for our sins. Amen.
It is I who am the guilty one,
And Jesus is the innocent.
My groaning declares
How miserable I am.
Our Father ….
Jesus sees hideous death
Approaching with menace,
Seeking to conquer him
Even though he is the Almighty.
Hail Mary….
He sees all of the offenses,
The indifferences, of ungrateful man,
The contempt of his sufferings,
Of his death and of his blood.
Hail Mary ….
He sees himself insulted
Even in the Most Blessed Sacrament
That he shall leave us as a pledge
Of the burning ardor of his love.
Hail Mary ….
Seeing these things, he calls out
With a voice weakened and diminished:
O my Father, I ask of you:
Exempt me from these crosses.
Hail Mary ….
But this gentle Savior,
Brimming over with charity,
Says: My Father, I wish to do
All that your holy will would ask of me.
Hail Mary ….
In this mysterious agony,
When he is ready to expire,
The great God permits that an angel
Should come and reassure him.
Hail Mary ….
O Christians! Who can comprehend
The terrible intensity of his torment?
Do you see his feeble body
Sweating forth great drops of blood?
Hail Mary ….
Will we be, then, without feeling?
Will we be not touched at all
In seeing the terrible evils
That our sins inflict upon him?
Hail Mary ….
O my piteous, wretched Jesus,
Why must you suffer such great torment,
For you truly are not guilty
But are just and wholly innocent?
Hail Mary ….
Jesus, plead with your Father
That he have mercy on us all,
Or that he show forth his anger
Against us and not on you.
Hail Mary ….
Forgive us for this great suffering,
O Jesus agonizing,
For our crimes and our offenses
Have placed you in this torment.
Glory be ….
May the graces of the Mystery of the Agony of Jesus come down into our souls. Amen.
