'O King of glory and man of sorrows! Whoever loves thee has suffered, whoever loves thee consents to suffer. He is promised both to glory and to pain.

Man suffers, on thy account, even in his dreams; so suffered, though she did not know thee, the wife of the judge who condemned thee. Who loves thee a little, or mourns for thee, has only to realize he follows thy way; he is made to partake, like Simon the Cyrenian, the hard burden of thy cross.

Those who bless thee are cursed; mankind casts them out from its communion; and, in this place of exile from the human family, they are, themselves, doubly exiled.

All those who loved thee have suffered; but all those who have suffered for thee, loved thee all the more. Pain unites to thee, as joy unites to the world.

Pain inebriates, like a generous wine, those thou invitest to thy mysterious banquet, and forces from their anguished hearts hymns of adoration and love.

Happy is he who, like the Cyrenian, has stooped to take his share of the cross thou drawest! Happy is he who wills to endure, in his body, that which remains, will remain to the end of the world, to suffer, of thy sufferings, for the Church, thy body!

Happy is the faithful minister who continues, in his flesh, thy sacrifice and thy conflict! While he strives and groans, I see him, in vision, leaning on thy breast, like, on the day of the funeral feast, him whom thou didst love.

For himself, while charity bears him, dusty and bleeding, from place to place, from suffering to suffering, he, unknown to the world, reposes on thy breast, in a sacred
retreat, and tastes, in silence, the sweetness of thy words.

Happy the faithful minister! His charity multiplies his sacrifices, and his sacrifices
augment his charity; love, which is the soul of his work, is, also, its great reward.

Happy the faithful minister! What every Christian would desire to be, he already is. That cross which everyone tries in his turn, he carries without ceasing. This Jesus, with whom the world ceaselessly disputes our gaze, is himself his world, and the
object of his unceasing contemplation.

Happy, thrice happy, if all his desire is to add a few voices to the concert of the blessed, and to remain hidden in the joy of all, keeping only in his heart the invisible regard and the eternal "Well done!" of his Master and Father!'