Let us now see what moved this Lord to suffer such exquisite torture, and whether there was any self-interest in it. In reply I will quote a notable saying of Avicena Moro referred to by Saint Thomas Aquinas, which declares that God is by nature absolutely generous, and that no creature possesses this virtue in perfection. (I Dis. 18, art. 3 in corp.) For no one does good without any prospect of gaining by it, and the perfection gained by the creature when it acts solely according to its nature suffices for that. The Creator alone possesses this pre-eminence that by nothing he has done, or does, in this world has he acquired any new perfection. He is naturally and perfectly liberal because all he gives and does is done gratis, without reward. Therefore let us seek no other cause for God’s actions but his goodness alone.

This being so, let us ask our Lord why he drank a chalice of such sorrows. Thou, Lord, whose riches, whose glory, whose bliss, whose joys are so immense that though Thou shouldst create a thousand worlds they could not be augmented, why didst Thou will to subject Thyself to such tortures? Why choose to drink of this most bitter cbalice? Why should this most sublime, most simple Substance clothe Itself with flesh and incur the trials of our mortality? And if that was little, what hadst thou to do with prisons, stripes, blows and insults, thorns and nails and the Cross? Why didst Thou will to sink to such unfathomable depths?