On the first day of the year we commemorate the first shedding of the Precious Blood for us. Christmas week as it draws to a close, introduces us to the new-born King in the weakness of the nature that He shared with sinful man. We now learn that He came, not to manifest His power and majesty, but to be made like unto us in all things, as far as it was possible for one who was the Eternal Son of God. We begin to appreciate that He is flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone.

Today He also proclaims that He is come to suffer for us. We listen to His first cry of pain, and see the strange spectacle of the first commencement of that life, of which the agony upon the Cross was the final consummation. How shall we ever thank Him as we ought? How great a joy we should consider it, if we have the privilege of suffering some little pain for Him in return!

He also declares to us today that He is come to suffer with us, to take part in all the miseries of humanity, to learn by His own experience all that we have to endure in this valley of tears. This it is which should console us in all our troubles. Christ not only knows them all, but has in His mercy felt them all Himself in His Sacred Humanity.