You desire to make your Lord some acknowledgment in your daily life for His death and Passion, to Him so bitter, to you so salutary. It was the desire of a very saintly servant of Christ, Gertrude; and this, she tells us, was His teaching: "When you follow another's interest in preference to your own, you make me some acknowledgment for my captivity, when in the morning of my Passion, I was taken, pinioned, and grievously tormented. When you humbly acknowledge yourself in fault for anything, it is an acknowledgment for the judgment, when at the first hour I was accused by false witnesses, and sentenced to death. So when you refrain your senses from what delights them, it is an acknowledgment of my being scourged at the third hour. When you obey an ill-natured superior, you acknowledge my crown of thorns. When being the injured party you ask pardon first, you honour my carrying of the cross. When you go almost beyond what you can in charity to others, you honour my sharp endurance of being distended on the cross at the sixth hour. When to hinder a sin you endure scorn, contempt or reproach, you acknowledge my death and its humiliation for the salvation of the world at the ninth hour. When being reproached you answer humbly, you, as it were, take me down from the cross. When you prefer your neighbour to yourself as more worthy of honour, or other good thing, than yourself, you repay me for my burial. We may learn, hence, how we may thus daily and hourly put on the Lord Jesus Christ, who for us humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. It may be very profitable to us, spiritually, to follow the instructions of this saintly woman.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp