COMMEMORATIVE OF The Most Adorable Passion OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. TRANSLATED FROM CATHOLIC SOURCES. WITH AN APPENDIX: CONTAINING The Office of Tenebrae FOR THE THREE LATTER DAYS OF HOLY WEEK, AND OTHER PORTIONS OF The Divine Office of Holy and Easter Weeks. TRANSLATED FROM THE ROMAN BREVIARY. Mihi autem absit gloriari nisi in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi, per quem mihi LONDON: JAMES BURNS, 17 PORTMAN STREET; J. H. PARKER, OXFORD; T. STEVENSON, CAMBRIDGE. M.DCCC. XLII. PREFACE. THE present series of Devotions has been compiled with the view of supplying, in a measure, the want which is believed to be extensively felt, of some assistance towards realizing, for the purposes of meditation, the solemn subject of the Passion and Holy Weeks. It is almost obvious, that mere exhortation, however earnest and forcible, is quite inadequate to this end, without something which may serve to bring the actual details of the last memorable days of our Lord's Life of Suffering vividly before the mind's eye, as in a picture; and the minuteness with which the Holy Evangelists have been guided to depict the several incidents of the adorable Passion, may of itself be taken as a divine intimation of the mode in which Christians are intended to contemplate it. But it is quite remarkable, as experience abundantly shews, how apt this especial feature of the sacred text is to be overlooked. Hence the value of such assistance as those, whose minds are habitually accustomed to realize the past and the absent as the present, can alone furnish towards bringing together and bringing out what in the Gospels is liable to escape notice a |