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Today's Devotional

All the signs that the angels gave to the shepherds by which they might discover the infant Jesus were marks of humility. “And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger” (Luke, 2:12). Thus would the Son of God, the King of Heaven be born, because he came to destroy the reign of pride, which had been the original cause of all the evils that had fallen upon lost man.

The prophets had previously foretold that our redeemer would be the most abject of men, and acquainted with scorn and contempt. And how much did he suffer from those who despised and rejected him! He was treated as a drunkard, a magician and a blasphemer. What ignominies did he undergo in his passion! He was abandoned by his own disciples, one of them even sold him for thirty pieces of silver, and another denied that he knew him. He was conducted through the streets bound like a robber, scourged like a slave, treated as a fool, as a mocking, buffeted, spit upon in the face, and at last made to die, nailed to a cross between two thieves, as the vilest malefactor in the world. “Was then,” exclaims St. Bernard, “the most noble treated as the vilest of men?”

“But, my Jesus,” continues the same saint, “the more you were humiliated, the more dear you have become to me.”

About the author and the source

Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) was a Catholic bishop and a prolific author.