Saint-Quentin. It was April 3, Good Friday. Here are the last of the interventions made during Lent of 1885 in the Basilica of Saint-Quentin. Two books by the author are entitled Discourse (I and II); they contain 13 speeches. The last, “Passion de notre Seigneur Jésus Christ”, focuses on the celebratory content of Good Friday.
The tone of the text, with a few concessions to the stylistic excesses of devotional literature on the Heart of Jesus, can surprise the usual reader of the spiritual works of Dehon. We find a historical and judicial setting. Dehon makes us look to the goal: the cross. With this point of arrival in our eye, he begins his description of the facts above, the places, the participants, the hours and the times, the precise order of events… Searching rigorous social and legal analysis. And, of course, along these lines are also the spiritual and theological consequences of these facts.