DAILY CONTEMPLATION

August 28, 2026 ~ Mesore 22, 1742

As he who seduced Adam said of himself, “I will sit in the sides of the north,”
so he persuaded Adam by saying, “Taste, and you shall be as gods.”
By pride then have we so fallen as to arrive at this mortality.
And because pride had wounded us, humility makes us whole.
God came humbly, that from such a great wound of pride He might heal man…
He was taken by the Jews; He was reviled of them.
You heard when the Gospel was read, what they said, and to Whom they said, “You have a devil.”
And He said not, You have a devil, for you are still in your sins, and the devil possesses your hearts.
He did not say this, which if He had, He would have said truly:
but it was not meet that He should say it, lest He should seem not to preach Truth, but to retort evil speaking.
He let go what He heard as though He heard it not. For a Physician was He…
and He came to [us,] sick men, that whatever He might hear, whatever He might suffer, He should despise;
by this very thing teaching us humility, that being taught by humility, we might be healed from pride…
He was seized, buffeted, scourged, spit upon, crowned with thorns, suspended on the cross,
died, pierced by the spear, taken down from the cross, laid in the sepulcher.
That same Jesus Christ our Lord, that same Jesus exactly, He is the complete Physician of our wounds.
That crucified One at whom insults were cast, and while He hung on the cross
His persecutors wagged the head, and said, ​”​If He be the Son of God, let Him come down from the cross” —
He, and no other, is our complete Physician…
for the cross was taken not as a proof of power, but as an example of patience.
There He cured your wounds, where He long bore His own;
there He healed you of death eternal, where He vouchsafed to die the temporal death.
And did He die, or in Him did death die? What a death was that, which slew death!
St. Augustine