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 I poured forth all the treasures of My love—producing blood for your welfare; to you though was that most precious stream counted but as dung, squandered recklessly for some fleeting vanity. From this My Cross with last and dying voice, with tears breathing nought but piety, I called you to penitence, but as deaf adders you stopped your ears and hardened your hearts to the sweet incantations of love. On this Cross, full of sorrows and of confusion, painfully I suffered death, that I might recover eternal life for your souls; and you, meanwhile, before the countenance of God dying for you, did laugh with the scribes, mock with the Pharisees, sport with the soldiers. This My Cross was a noble pulpit from which I, the Master of humility, of patience, and of charity, taught you the love of your enemies, praying to the Father for My foes and My persecutors. But you! what did you take in, what did you learn? Answer, what? The implacable madness and rage of a Saul, the boastings of a Goliath, the impieties, and crimes, and vengeance of a Cain, a Joab, or an Absalom. And what! were your hopes too rash to calculate on finding safety in that Cross? Ah, wretched ones! Are ye not those to whom the withering roses of this world were more acceptable than My thorns? Are ye not those who sucked in the sweet poison from the cup of Babylon, but rejected the chalice of My passion? Are ye not those who, fleeing the embrace of My Cross, rushed into the arms of lust which polluted you, of the world which betrayed you, of Satan who erects his trophies upon your ruin? These, these were