Within Your Wounds

Within Your Wounds Hide Me ...."

and The Fifteen Prayers of St. Bridget of Sweden

October 15, 2018

Any Catholic who has prayed the Anima Christi with any regularity has said the words quoted above many times. I have been one such Catholic for many years now, and I recite that prayer every time I receive the Holy Eucharist. It is only in the past few months, however, that I began to dwell on them with a sense of shame and embarrassment. In late June or July of this year, 2018, I found and started praying the Fifteen Prayers of St. Bridget of Sweden in the Adoration Chapel at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Littleton, Colorado, very near my son's home. Those fifteen prayers focus on the Passion and death of Our Lord, with an in depth reflection on Jesus' experience from Gethsemane to the Cross. Each of the Fifteen identifies a particular aspect of His suffering, and begs the grace of repentance, of His mercy, and of His help in time of temptation. And though two of them mention the Jews, Pilate, and/or others as cause for His pain, I insert myself, a sinner, instead.

St. Bridget's prayers also include the words "within Your wounds shelter me" (in the eleventh prayer),and after several week's of saying those prayers, I began to wonder how I dared ask my Lord and Savior to use the wounds I had caused as a shelter for me. After all, I thought, it was I whose sins are the cause of those wounds - which is also the reason I accuse myself instead of others. Now, any time I gaze at a Crucifix large enough to reveal the wound of the spear, I recall that worrisome phrase and ask why - how is it possible that my Lord and Savior would allow me to hide in the very wounds I had inflicted?

Then, as I asked that question during recitation of the Rosary before Mass at my home parish, St. Mary in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, one morning, the answer came through looking at the wall behind the altar. From the pews, to the left of that altar is a painting of the Annunciation by Diego Velasquez, in the center is a beautiful Crucifix, and to the right is a Velasquez painting of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin. As I looked at the three in sequence, left to right, I understood that it is only through the suffering and death of Christ that anyone can see the glory of Heaven. Further, it is through our sharing in His suffering in the course of our lives, united with His, that we give meaning to His presence in the world today. And further still, it is His presence with us in our suffering that makes that suffering tolerable, and can go so far as to make it joyful. So, in this sense, when we ask to 'hide in His wounds,' we are asking to share in His suffering and thus participate in His saving power.

Prayer to Jesus:

Source of Divine Mercy

O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the loving heart of St. Joseph, grant us the grace of hiding us within Your Most Sacred Wounds, that, like You, we may accept our woundedness and pain, whatever the source, and bear them patiently, lovingly, and even joyfully, by offering them as our way of ‘satiating’ the thirst for our love that You felt on the cross. Grant also that when our pain becomes too much for us to handle alone, we may call upon the Father, as You did in Your last moments. And finally, grant us the grace to turn to You alone at the moment of our death, that we may join the angels and saints in praising You and singing to Your Great Glory forever!!

Amen.