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 enemies, as they came with swords and with staves to seize thee and deliver thee to death, even as a tender mother goes forth to meet the son of her love; and how thou didst meekly resign thyself into their cruel hands, to rescue them from the jaws of the wolves of hell! While they so pitilessly smote thee, for every blow and for every buffeting thou didst impress a kiss of love on all the souls which should be saved through thy Passion until the day of doom. Oh, how great was thy love towards thine enemies, O most tender Jesus, in that, even while they were cruelly scourging thee, thou didst pour forth for them such availing prayer, that many of them were converted unto thee! And when they thrust the crown of thorns on thy most sacred Head, thou didst weave into their crowns as many gems as there were thorns in thine own. O most gentle Jesus, who can think without an ardent love of thee on the amazing love thou didst manifest to us most ungrateful sinners, when thy sinless hands and feet were so inhumanly nailed to the cross, and all thy limbs so painfully stretched and dragged asunder that all thy bones might be numbered; and thou, the while, wast drawing towards thee, with all the might of thy Divinity, the souls of as many as were ordained to life everlasting. And when thy sacred Side was opened with