[00:00] ♪ Ave, regina, mater misericordine ♪ Praised be Jesus and Mary. Amen. They tried to arrest Him, but no one laid a hand upon Him because His hour had not yet come.

[00:32] This small detail in today's Gospel reveals a lot. First, it reveals the fact that nobody takes the life of our Lord. He is the one who chooses to lay down His life freely. And that is very important because the essential condition for love is freedom. And so it also reveals to us that our Lord enters into His hour freely

[01:05] as a response to the loving obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father. And He also enters into His hour for love of us, for our sake, and our salvation. This loving obedience of the Son of God made man to the will of the Heavenly Father makes the work of redemption adequate, rigorous, and, as theologians would say, superabundant.

[01:39] It's adequate, meaning that it completely satisfies and it's completely sufficient in itself. But not only, it's also rigorous, meaning that the work of redemption by our Lord meets all the demands of strict justice. But not only, it goes way beyond that because it is also, and most importantly, superabundant,

[02:09] meaning it goes infinitely beyond what is required by strict justice. This is the nature of love. It goes beyond. And this is important to remember because this is where we draw from, the infinite, superabundant merits of Christ. That means it never ends. Our wounds, our problems, all of that is but a drop of water

[02:43] in comparison to the ocean of the superabundant merits of Christ. So we should never stop drawing from the superabundant merits of our Lord because it's infinite and inexhaustible. The evil one, his characteristic action is that of discouragement. And discouragement has a paralyzing quality. And what does it do?

[03:13] It prevents us from drawing from the superabundant merits of our Lord. We need to absolutely reject that. In our life of prayer, in our frequenting of the sacraments, we need to have confidence, not in ourselves, but in the superabundant merits of our Lord. May Our Lady give us this grace to always have confidence in the love that Christ has for us.

[03:44] He offers and He freely gives the superabundance of His love to each and every one of us. Let us never, never stop drawing from the heart of our Lord.

[04:22] Amen.