The Twenty-Four Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The 24 Hours of the Bitter Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Luisa Piccarreta, the Little Daughter of the Divine Will

†Third Hour: From 7 to 8 PM†

The Legal Supper

Preparation before Each Hour

Jesus, You have already arrived in the Upper Room with Your beloved disciples and sat down at table with them. What grace, what kindness does not Your whole person express as You prepare to enjoy earthly food for the last time! Everything about You is Love. You are not only atoning for the sins of the palate, but also asking for the blessing of the food. Jesus, my life! Your gentle gaze seems to search the hearts of Your disciples. Even at this moment when You are taking food, Your heart is saddened by the thought that Your apostles, who are so dear to You, are still weak and unstable. You think especially of the faithless Judas, who already has one foot in hell, and in the depths of your heart you speak with melancholy:

"What good is My blood that I shed? Behold a soul that, enriched by Me with so many benefits, still perishes!" With your eyes radiating light and love, You look at him as if You wanted to make him understand the great evil he wants to inflict on himself. But Your boundless love allows You to endure this pain. You do not even reveal it to Your disciples. While You are saddened by Judas, Your heart is filled with joy when You see Your favorite disciple John on Your left. Since You can no longer hold back Your love, You gently draw him to You and let his head rest against Your heart to give him a foretaste of the joys of paradise. The two disciples represent the rejected and the chosen: the rejected in Judas, who already feels hell in his heart, the chosen in John, who rests blissfully on Your breast.

My sweet good! I too draw near to You, and with Your favorite disciple I would like to nestle my tired head against Your adorable heart and ask You: Let me also taste the joys of heaven on this earth, so that the earth may no longer be earth for me, but heaven, and I may be enraptured by the sweet harmonies that resound in Your heart. But in the melodious sound of these divine harmonies, I realize that many a heartbeat is accompanied by pain. It is for the lost souls. O Jesus, do not allow souls to perish. Make Your heartbeat merge with theirs and make them feel the beats of a heavenly life, as was the case with Your beloved disciple John. Attracted by the sweetness and flavor of Your love, may they all surrender to You.

My Jesus! While I rest in Your Heart, give me too the food You gave to the apostles: the food of love, the food of Your Divine Word, the food of Your Divine Will. O do not deny it to me, which You Yourself so ardently desire to give, so that Your life may be formed in me.¹

My greatest good! So close to You, I see that the food You enjoy in union with Your dear disciples is a lamb. This lamb is a symbol. Just as there is no lifeblood left in it through the power of fire, so You, the mystical Lamb of God, must also be consumed through the power of love. Not a drop of Your blood will remain for You, since You shed it out of love for us.

Thus, my Jesus, You do nothing that does not vividly present Your painful suffering, which You constantly have present in Your spirit, in Your heart and in everything. From this I draw the lesson that You will never deny me the food of Your love if I keep the memory of Your suffering present in my mind and heart. How I thank You, O Jesus! No act comes forth from You that would not make me present to You and would not strive to show me a special favor. Therefore I ask You that Your suffering may always be in my spirit, in my heart, in my looks, in my steps, in my pains, so that I may always find You present to me wherever I stir and move, inwardly or outwardly. But also grant me the grace that I may never forget what You have done and suffered for me. May this grace be the magnetic needle that attracts my whole being, draws me into You and never lets me leave You again.

Reflections and Practices

by St. Fr. Annibale Di Francia

Before taking food, let us unite our intentions to those of our Lovable and Good Jesus, imagining having the mouth of Jesus in our mouth, and moving our tongue and cheeks together with His. By doing this, we will not only draw the Life of Jesus Christ into ourselves, but we will unite to Him in order to give to the Father complete glory, praise, love, thanksgiving and reparation owed by creatures, and which the Good Jesus Himself offered in the act of taking food. Let us also imagine being at the table near Jesus Christ, and now looking at Him, now praying Him to share a bite with us, now kissing the hem of His mantle, now contemplating the movements of His lips and of His Celestial eyes, now noticing the sudden clouding of His Most Lovable Face in foreseeing so much human ingratitude!

Just as Loving Jesus spoke about His Passion during supper, as we take our food, we will make some reflections on how we meditated the Hours of the Passion. The Angels hang on our words, to gather our prayers, our reparations, and take them before the Father in order to somehow mitigate the Just Indignation for the so many offenses received from creatures—-just as they carried them when Jesus was on earth. And when we pray, can we say that the Angels were pleased; that we have been recollected and reverent, in such a way that they were able to joyously carry our prayers to Heaven, just as they carried those of our Jesus? Or did they rather remain saddened?

While afflicted Jesus was taking food, He remained transfixed at the sight of the loss of Judas; and in Judas He saw all the souls who were going to be lost. And since the loss of souls is the greatest of His pains, unable to contain it, He drew John to Himself in order to find relief. In the same way, we will remain always close to Him like John, compassionating Him in His pains, relieving Him, and giving Him rest in our heart. We will make His pain our own, we will identify ourselves with Him, to feel the heartbeats of that Divine Heart, pierced by the loss of souls. And we will give Him our own heartbeats in order to remove those piercings; and in the place of those piercings we will put the souls who want to be lost, so that they may convert and be saved.

Every beat of the Heart of Jesus is one “I Love you” which resounds in all the heartbeats of creatures, wanting to enclose all of them in His Heart in order to receive their heartbeats in return. But Loving Jesus does not receive it from many, and therefore His heartbeat remains as though suffocated and embittered. So let us pray Jesus to seal our heartbeat with His “I Love you,” so that our hearts too may live the Life of His Heart and, resounding in the heartbeats of creatures, may force them to say, “I love You, Jesus!” Even more, we will fuse ourselves in Him, and Loving Jesus will let us hear His “I Love you,” which fills Heaven and earth, circulates through the Saints, and descends into Purgatory. All the hearts of creatures are touched by this “I Love you”; even the elements feel New Life, and all feel Its effects. In His breathing too, Jesus feels as though suffocating for the loss of souls. And we will give Him our breath of love for His relief; and, taking His Breath, we will touch the souls who detach themselves from His arms in order to give them the Life of the Divine Breath, so that, instead of running away, they may return to Him, and cling more tightly to Him.

And when we are in pain and almost feel that our breath cannot come out freely, let us think of Jesus, Who contains the breath of the creatures in His own Breath. He too, as souls become lost, feels His breath being taken away. So, let us place our sorrowful and labored breath in the Breath of Jesus in order to relieve Him; and let us run after the sinner with our pain, so as to force him to enclose himself in the Heart of Jesus.

My beloved Good, may my breath be a continuous cry at every creature’s breath, forcing her to enclose herself in Your Breath.

The first Word that Loving Jesus pronounced on the Cross was a Word of Forgiveness, to justify all souls before the Father, and turn Justice into Mercy. And we will give Him our acts to excuse the sinner, so that, moved by our apologies, He may not allow any soul to go to hell. We will unite with Him as sentries of the hearts of creatures, so that nobody may offend Him. We will let Him pour out His Love, willingly accepting all that He may dispose for us—coldness, hardness, darkness, oppressions, temptations, distractions, slanders, illnesses and other things, so as to relieve Him from all that He receives from creatures. It is not by Love alone that Jesus pours Himself out to souls, but many times, when He feels the coldness of creatures, He goes to the soul and makes her feel His cold, to release Himself through her. And if the soul accepts it, Jesus will feel relieved from all the coldness of creatures, and this cold will be the sentry to someone else’s heart, to make Loving Jesus loved.

Other times, Jesus feels the hardness of hearts in His own, and unable to contain it, He wants to pour Himself out, and comes to us. He touches our heart with His Heart, making us share in His pain. And we, making His pain our own, will place it around the heart of the sinner in order to melt his hardness, and take him back to Him.

My beloved Good, You suffer greatly for the loss of souls, and out of compassion, I place my being at Your disposal. I will take Your pains and the pains of the sinners upon myself, leaving You relieved, and the sinner clinging to You.

O my Jesus, O please, let my whole being be melted in love, so that I may be of continuous relief to soothe all Your bitternesses.

¹ Not the life of grace that can be assumed in the hermit soul (Luisa), but the life completely in the will of God.

Sacrifice and Thanksgiving