The life of Christ was evidently less thought of in the early days of Christianity than His death and its preceding Passion. The authors of the Gospels devote to the three last days of His time on earth an amount of space altogether out of proportion to that given to the rest of His three-and-thirty years. Saint John, for example, out of his twenty-one chapters allots seven, or exactly one-third, to the events of the Passion. Again, in the first and simplest of the Creeds, there is hardly any mention of His life at all; attention passes on at once from the birth to the death: "was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate." The same is true of the whole devotional attitude of the Church: the Birth and the Passion and Death absorb almost the whole of the attention of her children. In the liturgy, in the artistic tradition, in the ascetic meditations of the Fathers, always it is to the Passion that thoughts are turned. It has, indeed, been made a taunt against the Catholic Church that she has made Christianity nothing else than the religion of the Crucifix, and in a sense this is perfectly true, for it represents the whole attitude of the followers of the Crucified. Our thoughts move more swiftly to the Passion because, in a quite definite sense, the Passion is of more value in itself and to us than the rest of the crowded moments of His life on earth.
Why do we insist that the value of the Passion outweighs the rest of our Lord's days on earth? Just because it is through the Passion that we have been redeemed. But surely, we make answer, He could have redeemed us without any of that agony? He had no need to die, since every single action of His life could have made atonement for the sins of all the world. Yes, truly He had no need to suffer: we could of course have been saved by the simple decree of His divine will. There is but one answer to all this questioning as to why He died. There is but one word that can explain the tenderness of the Crucified: "God so loved the world," "Christ also hath loved us"; "having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end"; "greater love than this no man hath than that he lay down his life for his friend." Blessed Juliana of Norwich says in a passage of beautiful phrasing, "Love is His token. Who told it to you? Love. Wherefore told He it to you? For love." Yes, love is His token. Love alone supplies the reason for His death willingly suffered, since this is the highest expression of love. Truly when He hung upon the Cross He cried out that all was consum mated, for even love almighty could no further go. Like the penitent whose sins He forgave so freely, He broke the fair white alabaster box of His own dear body, and the whole world has been filled with the fragrance of it. Thus it is, then, that quite rightly the Passion and death of our Blessed Lord do come most powerfully into our lives; since it was by His death that we were redeemed, and because His death represents to us the highest achievement that love can offer. Love expresses itself in the broken phrase of sacrifice.
It behoves me, therefore, to keep ever fresh in mind the Passion of our Lord. How is this best to be done? By a tender devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ. It is true that devotions are always personal, that the whole value of them depends precisely on their being the spontaneous movement of our own hearts. If they are not of our own choosing, if they are foisted on us by someone else who has found them helpful and who would have us therefore take them up, they lose all their efficacy. Hence it is quite possible that this particular devotion may have to be replaced by another according to the feelings of each individual: for one perhaps the Sacred Heart, for another the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary. But the devotion to the Five Wounds was so popular all over Christendom (witness its carved shield on the bosses of the roofs of our cathedrals, its appearance on the bench-head of our old parish churches, its coloured glory in the ancient windows), is so full of love, yet not of sentiment or gush, is so bracing with its refining fierceness of suffering, that it must find many who would welcome its reappearance in this modern world. It is an old devotion, but it is coming back, just because it does keep alive the memory of Christ s death. No one can be unmanned, made effeminate by the sight of a wound. The sight must steady me, give me the necessary sternness to meet life sturdily, yet it adds to all this strength the tenderness of love. At Communion or when I make my visit, and words and thoughts seem to fail, let me turn to these "dumb mouths that open their ruby lips to beg the voice and utterance of my love."
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.