3RD PROMISE

"I will console them in all their troubles."

One immediately thinks of Matthew 11:28, "Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened...and I will refresh you."

This is a promise backed up by action.  Jesus spent many hours, day and night, even when He was tired, taking care of people in need, who were like "sheep without a shepherd."  He felt pity for the woman of Naim, already a widow, who lost her only child, a son.  He wept at the death of His friend Lazarus, and raised him up.  Even when He was walking to Calvary, His concern was for the weeping women of Jerusalem.  No one can deny the loving concern Jesus has for those who suffer, nor His power to bring them relief.

He knows how to console the suffering, because He Himself suffers.  What did He not suffer?  Physically?  Emotionally?  The betrayal of friends, the hatred of the people He was sent to save?  He suffered not just in the past; He suffers even now in a mysterious way, though He is happiness itself.

Because He is a man of sorrows Himself, we have such a High Priest to whom we can confidently bring our own sorrows of life. 

"For we have not a high priest who can not have compassion on our infirmities, but one tempted in all thing like as we are, without sin."  (Hebrews 4:15)  "Tempted" means also to be "tested."  Our Lord was tried and tested, and proved true.  He suffered all we do, and in a worse way, yet He never sinned.

So He can be our strength and comfort as well, and give us the grace to carry our crosses like He did, without sin.  "Learn from me....and you will find rest."  When we unite our sufferings to His, especially in Mass, our burdens become lighter.  We find rest.

But who seeks Him?  To this day, He waits for us in the Tabernacle, and not everyone comes.  Many prefer to seek comfort in the world, to their own worse end.  In this way, the ignored Heart of Jesus suffers still.  How much He longs to "gather us under his wings like a mother hen."  To give us His peace which the world cannot give.  But there He remains, available to us, but ignored by many.  Let us make up for this by paying a visit to Him in the Tabernacle as many times as possible this month.