Bl. Angela of Foligno - The Forgotten Companion of Christ: Abjection

Nov 24, 2025

On the second of the companions of Jesus Christ, which is abjection or abasement. How opposed Christians now are to it. Reasons why one must endure contempt, whether one is at fault or not.

(1) The second of the companions with whom the Son of God associated Himself during His life on earth was a perfect self-contempt, a great abjection, and a shameful, voluntary, and extreme ignominy that He chose to undergo continuously here below. For He wished to live as a servant and as a vile slave whom no one would deign to claim or protect, and even as one of the most wicked and most lost of slaves.

And indeed we see how He was driven out, exiled, affronted, mocked, bound, struck, beaten with sticks, scourged, and finally—without anyone caring to defend Him or to listen to reason concerning Him—placed, like a vile and miserable slave, among the wicked and the thieves, condemned with them, and punished as they were, by the ultimate torment, a death most infamous and shameful. He also always defended Himself in words and deeds from temporal honor when anyone wished to offer Him any in this world; and He avoided it and fled from it just as constantly as He wholeheartedly embraced and willingly suffered an infinity of reproaches for which He had given no cause or occasion.

(2) And in truth, what cause, what reason could the Lord of the whole world have given men—what injury, what wrong had He done them—to oblige them almost all to persecute Him, even to ridicule Him, and to join derision to cruelty against Him? Scarcely was He born and wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger when persecution drove Him into foreign lands. When He came to perfect age, some called Him an idolatrous Samaritan, a demoniac, and a possessed man; others, a glutton and a drunkard, a seducer, and a false prophet: Behold, they said, a glutton and a drunkard, a man who, far from being among the true prophets and the just, and far from performing miracles by the power of God, casts out demons only by the power of the prince of demons.

Some led Him to the tops of mountains and to the edge of precipices to throw Him down. Others raised stones against Him to stone Him. They cried out on all sides against His person in a thousand ways: some made bloody mockeries of Him, others secretly plotted against His life; and others published infamous slanders about Him, imputing to Him blasphemy and the intent to deceive the people through the illusions of His words and through the appearance of His seemingly noble actions; so that they hunted Him everywhere, and no one wanted to offer Him refuge.

Finally, having united themselves to seize His person shamefully, they made Him appear before judgment, dragging Him bound like a criminal from one tribunal to another and from one judge to the next. Then each one vied to spit in His face, to strike Him with blows, to dress Him like a fool in an old royal robe, to crown Him with thorns, to insult Him with mock reverences and feigned genuflections, to strike His head with a reed while veiling His face; in short, each strove to be the most skillful in inventing ways to cover Him with all sorts of reproaches, while on the other hand those cruel tormentors were no less eager to torment and tear Him with scourges; and being unable to satisfy their cruelty enough, they gnashed their teeth at Him like bloodthirsty dogs who, after declaring Him wicked and criminal, condemned Him to the last torture, where they dragged Him and executed Him completely naked.

Meanwhile, of His own disciples one betrayed Him, another denied Him, and all together abandoned Him and left Him alone in the hands of that troop of cruel men who, having seized Him, made Him a spectacle to the whole world then assembled from all parts for the most solemn of all feasts.

Before their eyes they exposed Him publicly, hung completely naked on a cross on which they made Him die with as many insults as cruelties; His death, His tears, and even His prayers being no less a subject of derision to them than all the rest of His life. Ah well, said some, there you are, you who know how to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days! This is, said others, this is the one who knows how to save others; yet He cannot save Himself!—and similar insults.

And at the same time that His garments served as material for the gambling of some, others maliciously went to offer vinegar and gall to that poor dying man who so humbly asked them for a little water to quench His thirst.

Even after His death they did not leave Him in peace: they pierced His heart with a lance, and if someone had not asked for His body to bury it out of charity, it ran the risk of being left on the ground, naked and without burial. Some still called Him a seducer: We remember, they said to Pilate, what that seducer said while he was still alive. Others suppressed the truth of His resurrection, and others denied it openly: so that during His life, at His death, and after His death, He was in nothing but abasement, contempt, and perpetual dishonor—an estate He chose to seek and suffer, so as thereby, as man, to attain the state of glorious resurrection, and to raise us by that same means to the state of sovereign glory.

(3) Behold how this glorious Son of God, our Teacher and our true Master, has become our pattern and our example, to teach us to despise temporal glory; and to show us that far from having to seek it, we must rather reject it when it is offered and presented to us: for He Himself never sought anything but the glory of His Father; and as for His own glory, far from seeking it, He rejected and despised it, lowering Himself from Heaven even to the feet of His disciples, and annihilating Himself by taking the form of a servant, and becoming obedient unto death: and again, what death? Not merely any death, but one of the most dishonorable and ignominious, and at the same time one of the most painful—that is to say, the infamous and cruel death of the cross.

(4) But alas, alas! Where now can one find someone who cherishes this prerogative and this fellowship of the Son of God? Where can one find people who flee honors and who love the shame attached to poverty, to low conditions, to abject offices, and to all humiliating things? Where can one find those who have no aversion to being annihilated, lowered, despised?

Does not each person desire to be praised and esteemed for the good he has, that he does, that he says, or that he imagines himself to have or to do? And does one not even run after flatterers to applaud shamefully all their vain flatteries? In truth there is no one who has not corrupted his way by abandoning God’s way; and it can be said positively that there is not a single one who does and practices that solid good of which I have just spoken. If, however, someone were excepted, it could only be a soul united with Jesus Christ as a member with its head, by the bond of a true and living love; and who, seeing that her King, her Master, and her divine Head wished to love and cherish this company, seeks to conform herself to His divine will by the love she bears Him.

(5) I understand, it seems to me, that more than one will say to me here: As for me, assuredly I love God; and I even seek to love Him more: that is why I care very little for the honor of the world and whether it is denied me; nevertheless I cannot bear to be dishonored; and I cannot consent to be lowered, insulted, affronted, and covered with confusion before the world.

This is an evident sign of very little faith, of weak righteousness, of a very limited love, and of great tepidity! Whoever speaks thus must consider either that he has indeed committed things for which he is worthy of shame and confusion (and few are innocent on this point), or that he has not committed any. If he has committed them, whether openly or in secret, and wishes to act as a true penitent and not as a false just man, it is very just that he suffer and endure not only with patience but even with pleasure of body and mind; for the penalty of this shame and confusion, when he suffers it with patience, satisfies what he owes to God and to his neighbor according to the will of God’s justice.

But if he has committed no evil either in deed or in will, he must still suffer shame and confusion, if God thus permits it, with a hundred times more patience and joy than in the first case; for then all that he endures of confusion and reproach turns to an increase of grace; and as grace increases, it becomes for him the cause of a greater measure of glory and reward: and there is no doubt that holy souls and true friends of God grow and are perfected in such a manner through humiliations when they come to them without being their fault, and when they suffer them with patience; just as those who endure poverty and other afflictions for the love of God are perfected.

Assuredly Jesus Christ loved reproaches and fled honors only to teach His friends how, by imitating Him, they may grow in merit and in grace.

Such is how this second company has always been inseparable from the life of Jesus Christ, whose beginning, middle, and end—if we are willing to consider them—were nothing but pure humiliation, through continual dishonor and abasement, the Son of God having always been disapproved and rejected by the world and by all those who love the world.