A new form of meditations for every day in the year. Written originally in French by F. John Crasset. And put into English at the request of several persons of honour and quality, by a well-wisher to devotion.

CXII. MED. Of the Dereliction of our Lord.

MY God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me! How terrible is that dereliction, Which makes a God to groan? Which makes a God to weep? Which makes a God to cry out? Which makes the only one of his complaints? Which he makes before his Enemies? Before a great number of People? Which he makes a little before he dies? Which gives occasion to those that hear him complain, To doubt whether he were the true Son of God, Since he is forsaken by his Father?

Jesus was never separated from Grace: From Glory: from the Divinity. He was always holy: happy: God. This terrible Dereliction Was only a sensible suspension Of the succours, which the Divinity Communicated to his Humanity. It was a shadow of the pain, Which a Sinner feels, who is in Hell, Forsaken by Almighty God.

O my God! I conceive what it is to be damned, By the pain which your Son suffer'd on the Cross. If the deprival of your sensible and comforting presence, Made your Son to groan, Who was substantially united to you, Who will be able to bear for ever The weight of an infinit wrath? Who will be able to suffer in Hell, An eternal separation? An universal privation Of your Grace: Love: Presence: Comfort: Glory: Felicity: Succour: Protection? Of all that can be desired? Of all that can be loved? With a deluge of evils for all Eternity.

O my God! forsake me not, Although I have forsaken you. Deprive me, if it must be, of your Pleasures, But deprive me not of your Grace. If you forsake me during my life, Forsake me not at my Death. If you forsake me now, Forsake me not in Eternity.

O Jesus! 'Tis I that have committed the Sin, And you have born the Punishment. 'Tis I that ought to be forsaken, And you were forsaken for my sake.

O how your Dereliction affrights me! O how your Dereliction comforts me! You were forsaken at your death, That I might not be forsaken at mine. Forsake me not then, O Lord, When all the World hath forsaken me.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. Matth. 28.

Forsake me not, O Lord my God, go not away from me Ps. 37.

Cast me not away in the time of my old age, when my strength fails me, forsake me not. Ps. 70.

My enemies said: God hath forsaken him: persecute and lay hold of him, because there is none to deliver him. ibid. Forsake me not wholly. Ps 118.

He said: I will not desert, nor forsake thee. Heb. 13.