Novenas - Totus2us

Day 5, Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes. Quote from John Paul II's apostolic letter on the salvific meaning of suffering, Salvifici Doloris: "The Song of the Suffering Servant contains a description in which it is possible, in a certain sense, to identify the stages of Christ's Passion in their various details: the arrest, the humiliation, the blows, the spitting, the contempt for the prisoner, the unjust sentence, and then the scourging, the crowning with thorns and the mocking, the carrying of the Cross, the crucifixion, the agony. Even more than this description of the Passion, what strikes us in the words of the prophet is the depth of the sacrifice of Christ. Here, He, though innocent, takes upon himself the sufferings of all men, because he takes upon himself the sins of everyone. "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all": all the sin of man in its breadth and depth becomes the true cause of the suffering of the Redeemer. If the suffering "is measured" by the evil suffered, then the words of the pr