SERMON XX
THE MOTHER OF SORROWS
"There stood by the cross of Jesus His Mother." JOHN 19, 26.
The beauty of Jesus is inexhaustible. He is beautiful always, beautiful everywhere, in the disfigurement of the Passion as well as in the splendor of the Resurrection. But above all things Our Divine Saviour is beautiful in His Mother. If we love Him, we must love her. We must know her in order to know Him. As there is no true devotion to His Sacred Humanity, which is not mindful of His Divinity, so there is no adequate love of the Son, which disjoins Him from His Mother, and lays her aside as a mere instrument.
Mary was not an unconscious instrument of the designs which God accomplished through her. Before she consented to become the Mother of Jesus, Mary understood the ransom that must be paid for sinners, she foresaw the sorrows with which the sufferings of her Son would desolate her soul, and in consenting to cooperate with God in the work of salvation, she willingly accepted the lifelong martyrdom which the crucifixion caused her to endure.
The Catholic view of this question must be clearly brought out before Christians can properly understand the relation in which she stands to the redeemed. It is what Mary consented to suffer, and actually did suffer that gives her a right to the gratitude and devotion of Christians, that makes her intercession all powerful with Christ, and shows that the confidence which Catholics repose in the patronage of the Blessed Virgin is well founded.
What did Mary suffer? St. Liguori applies to her the words of Isaias : "He will crown thee with the crown of tribulation" will crown her Queen of Martyrs. That we may know how hard it is to form any adequate idea of Mary s sorrows, the Church applies to her the words of the Prophet Jeremias : "To what shall I compare thee, to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem ? To what shall I equal thee, O Virgin daughter of Sion? For great as the sea is thy broken-heartedness."
Who can measure the sea ? While sailing across its wide expanse, the largest vessel seems but an atom on its bosom. In sight is a great waste of water, which is but a fraction of that other mighty waste of water which the horizon conceals from view. At certain points, the length, breadth and depth of the sea may be measured, while at other points it stretches out and sinks down so far and so irregularly as to baffle all human efforts to accurately estimate its volume. Thus the sea, while not infinite in extent, is, humanly speaking, immeasurable. This is why the sea is truly a picture of Mary's broken-heartedness. Now and again, definite views are obtained of certain features of Mary's sorrows, which for the moment seem to offer some basis for an accurate estimate of all her sufferings. When, however, an attempt is made to measure them, other aspects of the depth, the intensity, and the duration of her dolors are revealed in such bewildering proportions as to render futile all efforts to measure the sea of her broken-heartedness. Meditation thus shows us, that Mary's sorrow, although falling short of the infinite, is measureless.
The factors that help us to form a faint, an imperfect idea of Mary s sufferings are:
(1) Mary's sanctity;
(2) Jesus lovableness;
(3) Mary s foreknowledge of Christ s sufferings, and her willingness to participate in them.
As disease dulls and deadens the nerves, the sensitiveness of the body to pain, until in certain forms of sickness the power to suffer is diminished, destroyed, so that the body of the afflicted one may be cut and burned without feeling any pain; so sin destroys the feelings of the heart, dries up the fountains of compassion in the soul until the very power to sympathize with another is diminished or altogether lost. As the greatest capacity for physical sufferings exists in the perfect body, so the greatest capacity for mental anguish exists in the soul.
Mary was sinless, preserved by a singular privilege from all stain of sin. Her soul remained unclouded by even a shadow of an imbruting passion. She not only retained all the natural feelings of her pure heart unimpaired, but she cultivated them to the highest degree that it was possible for a creature to attain. The more refined, delicate the soul, the more excru- ciating the agony. Mary s sinless body with its exquisite perfections was delicately formed beyond all others but that of her Son. It is therefore evident that Mary, both by nature and grace, had the greatest capacity of love, to sympathize, and to suffer; and as she had consecrated herself entirely to God there were neither worldly interest, nor human ties to distract or divide her love. It was centered wholly in Jesus.
The maternal instinct impels mothers, sometimes, to love, to cling to their children despite the latters utter unworthiness and depravity. Mary, however, loved Jesus because He was infinitely worthy of her affection. No mother ever had such a Son. Mary's Son was both human and divine "the splendor of the Father's glory and the figure of His substance" at once the Son of Mary and the Son of God. In Mary there was concentrated, as in one consuming flame, the strongest affection which a mother ever cherished for a child, and the intensest love that a Creature ever bore the Creator. And since it was impossible for greater love to exist between two beings than that which existed between Mary and Jesus, there could be no greater sympathy than that of Mary and Jesus.
Every suffering inflicted on the Sacred Humanity of Jesus was a sword of sorrow that pierced Mary's soul. But in order to see how immeasurable Mary's sufferings were, we must acquire some idea of her foreknowledge of Christ's Passion, of her willingness to participate in it, of the heroic, holy purpose that animated Mary when she consented to cooperate, to suffer, in the cause of man's salvation. Mary's sanctity entitled her to the fullest confidence of the Deity, as to the means by which the world's redemption was to be accomplished. While God conceals His counsels from the proud and wicked, He confides them to the humble and innocent. Mary was selected because of her humility. She was full of grace; she had found favor with God. Upon no creature has such an eulogy been passed as that which God the Father, by the mouth of the Archangel Gabriel, pronounced upon Mary. No creature was ever admitted to that close and marvelous union that existed between Mary and the Eternal Father. Living only for God, and in God, it may well be believed that secrets were committed to her of which priests and prophets were kept in ignorance; just as Jesus communicated to John, by reason of his virginal sanctity, secrets concerning which the other Apostles dared not even question their Master. It may well be believed that Mary knew more than the prophets of old, upon whose vivid portrayals of the sufferings of the Messias she had often meditated; that she knew more than Joseph, who learned from the Angel that Jesus would "save His people from their sins" that she knew more than Simeon, whose vision of the Passion enabled him in those forcible, expressive words, to liken Mary's sympathy with Jesus in His suffering to a sword of sorrow that would pierce her soul.
While the Apostles were often, during the lifetime of their Master, rebuked for their slowness to believe, their failure to understand, never once was Mary's faith or understanding rebuked. On the contrary she is represented as keeping the divine counsels, pondering them in her heart. Mary showed in the Magnificat and at Cana the fullest appreciation of His divine character and of His coming.
The extent of Mary's knowledge is not a mere matter of speculation. It is a matter of fact that, before the Incarnation, she was the only daughter of Israel that entertained a correct notion of the character of Messias. The other women of Judea regarded the coming Messias as a great temporal prince. Hence as the time of His coming approached, a consuming desire to be the mother of the Messias burned in the breast of every Jewish woman. With this object in view, the maid sought marriage, the wife prayed for fruitfulness, and implored the Lord to save her from sterility as from a curse.
No such ambition, as Cardinal Newman says, was cherished by Mary. On the contrary, by a vow ofvirginity, she had made her mothership of the Messias, humanly speaking, impossible. She had such a true conception of that exalted Divinity that she deemed perpetual continence and a life of sanctification in the temple necessary to prepare herself, not for the mothership of the Messias, but to become the handmaid, the servant of the woman whom God would deem worthy of so high an honor. In this, what testimony does not Mary bear to that incomparable dignity to which God, regarding her humility, exalted her. No less an authority than Cardinal Newman interprets Mary's reply to the Angel; "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," as signifying that Mary simply aspired to become the servant of the Mother of the Messias. Mary entertained such correct ideas of the Messias before the Angel's visit, what fullness of knowledge must she not have received through Gabriel's message and his answers to her questions. Her dialogue with the Archangel shows plainly that she was not selected as a mere instrument, but as a free, intelligent agent; that she was free to refuse to become the Mother of the Messias, and that she consented only after having attained to a clear understanding of what would be required of her. "She was troubled;" says the Gospel, at the Angel's words, and asked, in her own mind, the meaning of his salutation. The angel having allayed her fears, Mary asked plainly: "How shall this be done, for I know not man?" Mary did not blindly consent, like the Apostles, to participate in the work of the Messias, and afterwards, like them, fail in her part when it came to drink of the cup of Christ's bitterness. She consented only after she had known what sacrifice that consent would demand of her; and therefore she never afterwards shrank from what was laid upon her: "Be it done unto me according to Thy word. "It is clear that Mary could have absolutely refused to become the Mother of the Messias, nevertheless, her acceptance was so deliberate, was given with such full knowledge of the sufferings which it involved, and with such willing obedience to the Counsel of God; and consequently, was so meritorious, that the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of Elizabeth, declared Mary blessed for having consented: "Blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished in thee which were spoken to thee by the Lord."
Let those, then, that would form an idea of her sorrows, look at Mary, from the moment of the Incarnation, standing in spirit as truly under the Cross as when she stood by the Cross of Jesus on Mt. Calvary. During those thirty-four years of martyrdom, her knowledge of Jesus sufferings did not increase, but her realization of them became more and more vivid and painful in proportion as she beheld Jesus increase in wisdom, and age, and grace before God and man.
Her power to love and her power to suffer increased day by day, until she saw Jesus offer Himself a bleeding, dying victim on the Cross. What more touching, entrancing, than the scene enacted in the stable of Bethlehem. The winter winds were joyful with the music of the multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and singing : "Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." The dismal cave was lighted up with the glory of Heaven; angels and wondering, adoring shepherds came to worship the new-born Saviour ; and Mary and Joseph lovingly, adoringly contemplated the Heavenly Babe. Had that scene, which has filled the earth for centuries with light and gladness, no joy for Mary? Did not its splendor for the time being dispel the shadow of the Cross? Did not Mary, in the words of Holy Scripture, rejoice, "because a man was born into the world," and for the moment, turn the eye of her soul from the vision of Calvary?
Alas! no, the joyous light of Bethlehem only projected the shadow of the Cross more distinctly. The scene in the stable, it is true, touched Mary's soul, joy welled up in her heart, but only that the thought of Calvary might instantly change it into an ocean of bitterness. As Mary laid the Divine Infant in the manger, as she saw His little arms stretched out as if to embrace her, she thought of the time when that same Jesus would be laid upon the Cross, when His hands would be stretched out in crudest torture, in infinite love, to embrace the whole human race ; as she listened to the song of the Angels, she thought of the blasphemies with which men would demand His death ; as she looked on the reverent shepherds she thought of the wild beasts that put Him to death; as she looked
on the glory of Heaven lighting the first opening of His eyes, she thought of the gloom that would fall upon their closing; as she saw earth and Heaven rejoicing over His birth, she thought of how both man and God would forsake Him in death; as she clasped Him to her bosom, she thought of the time when He would be laid at last, all bleeding and bruised, and wounded and lifeless, on her breast. Thus even at Bethlehem, Mary stood in the shadow of the Cross.
There are pictures, some of which are regarded as inspired in their conception and miraculous in their salutary influence, that afford clearer views of Mary's ever present sorrows than any illustration that human tongue can offer. The painting of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, for example, represents the Blessed Virgin as revolving in her mind the prophecies concerning the Messias. With a face full of sweetness and sadness, she gazes upon the Child Jesus Whom she holds upon her arm, only to see Him startle at the vision of His future sufferings, the instruments of His Passion the reed, the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the Cross, as they loom up in the dim distance.
Then again, there is the painting that may be called the Shadow of the Cross. It represents a scene in the workshop at Nazareth. Joseph is employed at the carpenter's bench, Mary sits plying the distaff. A bright summer day pours a flood of light into the room. Jesus, a beautiful youth, with filial piety informing every feature, advances with out-stretched arms towards His Mother to embrace her, and to imprint a kiss upon her cheek. Oh ! what happiness would this scene have been to Mary, with what joy would it have dilated her soul, if only the future had been concealed from her! But, alas! looking at Jesus, the Mother's joy is turned into grief, because she sees the body and out-stretched arms of her Son cast the Shadow of the Cross on the opposite wall ! But if this was Mary's cruel portion during the joyful mysteries, who can imagine what must have been the bitterness of her grief during those cruel scenes that followed, when every torture of Jesus, like a sword, actually pierced her soul.
The Passion of our Lord may be said to begin on the Thursday in Holy Week in the house of Lazarus at Bethany. On that Thursday morning Jesus went to Bethany to bid His Mother farewell and to obtain her consent to His Passion, as He had before done to His Incarnation. Not that it was necessary, but it was fitting and convenient to the perfection of His filial obedience. He then went to Jerusalem with His disciples. The Last Supper, the First Mass, took place that night. Having celebrated the Passover He passed out of the city again with His disciples to Mount Olivet where Judas betrayed Him. He was seized by the mob and conducted to the court of the High Priest. St. John, as soon as Jesus had been condemned to death, returned to the house with the news of the sentence.
Mary, the broken-hearted Mother, prepares to leave the house with Magdalen and the Apostle. John, by his knowledge of the city, will lead her to the end of the street where she can meet Jesus on His road to Calvary. Everywhere the streets are thronged with multitudes setting in one tide to Calvary. Heralds at the corner of the streets blow their harsh trumpets, and proclaim the sentence to the people. What a journey for a mother. The procession comes in sight; the tall horse of the centurion shows first, and leads the way. The trumpet sounds with a wailing clangor. The women look from the lattice above. She sees the thieves, the crosses, everything and yet only one thing Himself. As He draws nigh the peace of her heart grows deeper. It could not help it ; God was approaching, and peace went before Him. Now, Jesus has come up to her. He halts for a moment. He lifts the one hand that is free, and clears the blood from His eyes. Is it to see her ? Rather that she may see Him, His look of sadness, His look of love. She approaches to embrace Him. The soldiers thrust her rudely back. And she is His mother. For a moment she reeled with the push, and then again was still, her eyes fixed on His, His eyes fixed on hers, such a look, such an embrace, such an outpouring of love, such an overflow of sorrow. Has He less strength than she? Yes. He staggers, is overweighed by the burden of the ponderous Cross, and falls with a dull dead sound upon the street, like the clang of falling wood. She sees it. The God of Heaven and earth is down. Men surround Him like butchers round a fallen beast ; they kick Him, beat Him, drag Him up again with cruel ferocity. It is His third fall. She sees it. He is her Babe of Bethlehem. She is helpless. She cannot get near. The terror of this scene to Mary beggars description. We must not forget that her heart was eminently feminine. Fancy the sea of wild faces into which she looked in those crowded streets. Every passion was glaring out of those ferocious eyes, rendered more horrible by their human intelligence mingled with the inhuman fiery stare of diabolical possession. A multitude, with the women, possibly the children, all athirst for blood, raving after it, yelling for it as only a maddened populace can yell. It was a very vent of Hell, that voice of theirs, a concourse of the most appalling sounds of rage and hate and murder, and blasphemy and imprecation, and of that torturing fire and their own hearts which those passions had fiercely lighted up. The sights and sounds thrilled through her with agonies of fear. Visible by her blue mantle, she floats about on the billows of that tossing crowd, like a piece of wreck on the dark weltering waters of a storm. And she is apart from Jesus. He is perishing in the waves of that turbulent people. He is engulfed, and she can stretch out no hand to save Him. She cannot yet hear Him, and thus she followed slowly on to Calvary, Magdalen and John beside themselves with grief, but feeling as if grace went out from her blue mantle, enabling them also to live with broken hearts.
The way of the Cross was ended, and Christ was raised on the Tree of Shame. Mary turned to the foot of the Cross, passing the soldiers who were casting lots for the seamless garment of her Son. She raised her eyes to Heaven for strength, and they met the eyes of her Crucified Son. Upon beholding Jesus fastened to the Cross, she stood speechless, riveted to the spot by this cruel spectacle. Everything disappeared before the Cross; the sun veiled its gaze in very shame, the heavens became dark, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent asunder, the graves gave up their dead. All nature seemed to participate in Mary's grief and to suffer with her. The multitude were terrified and fled down the mountain striking their breasts, saying : "He was truly the Son of God." Yet amidst the wild confusion caused by nature sympathizing with the dying Saviour, caused by the earthquakes which shook Golgatha's mount to its very foundation -Mary remained unmoved, with hands folded in prayer, sunk in meditation on her Crucified Love, and the few pious women of Jerusalem wept, and said with compassion: The poor Mother !
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, as a pious writer tells us, approached Our Blessed Lady with the profoundest reverence and sympathy and asked her permission to take the Body down from the Cross. They fixed the ladder against the Cross. Joseph mounted first and Nicodemus after him. Mary with John and Magdalen remained immediately beneath them. It seemed as if some supernatural grace issued forth from the adorable Body, softening and subduing all their thoughts, making their hearts burn with divine love, and hushing them in the deepest and most thrilling adoration. With gentle, trembling hand Joseph touched the Crown of thorns, and delicately loosened it from the head on which it was fixed, disentangled it from the matted hair, and without daring to kiss it passed it to Nicodemus, who reached it to John, from whom Mary, sinking on her knees, receives it with such devotion as no heart but hers could hold. Every blood stained spike seemed instinct with life, and went into her heart, tipped as it were with the Blood of her Son, inoculating her more and more deeply with the spirit of His Passion. Who can describe with what reverential touch Joseph loosened the nails so as not to crush those blessed hands and feet? Each nail was silently passed down to Mary, and the poor Mother bent over those mute relics crusted, too, as they were with the Precious Blood which she adored in its unbroken union with the Person of the Eternal Word. But now the Body was detached from the Cross. Mary is kneeling on the ground. Her fingers are stained with blood. She stretches the clean linen cloth over her arms and holds them out to receive her Son, her lost Son, come back again, and come back thus !
Now the Body is low enough for John to touch the Sacred Head, and receive It in his arms, that It might not drop in that helpless rigid way; and Magdalen is holding up the feet. It is her old post. It is her post in Heaven now, highest of penitents, most beautiful of pardoned spirits! For one moment Mary prostrates herself in an agony of speechless adoration, and the next instant she has received the Body in her extended arms. The Babe of Bethlehem is back again in His Mother's lap. What a meeting! What a restoration! For a while she remains kneeling, while John and Magdalen, Joseph and Nicodemus and the devout women adore, and whisper: "The poor Mother!" Then she passes from the attitude of the priest to the attitude of the Mother. She rises from her knees still bearing the burden as lightly as when she fled into Egypt, and sits down upon the grass, with Jesus extended upon her lap. There was not a feature of His Blessed Countenance, not a mark upon His Sacred Flesh, which was not at once a sorrow to her, and a very volume of profoundest meditations. In vain for her were the birds thrilling their even-song, the weight of the eclipse being taken off their blithe little hearts. In vain for her were the perfumes of the tender fig-leaves rising up in the cold air, and the buds bursting greenly, and the tender shoots full of vernal beauty. Her grief was past nature's soothing. For her Flower had been cruelly gathered and lay withered there upon her knee. But now He must be swathed in the winding sheet for burial and Mary must take her last look at that dead face. Mothers live lives in their last looks.
Who shall tell what Mary's was like? With heroic effort she has bound the napkin around His head, and has folded the winding sheet over the sweet face. And now there is darkness indeed around her. The very Body had been a light and a support. She has put out the light herself. Her own hands have quenched the lamp, and she stands facing the thick night. O, brave woman! O Mary thou didst pierce thy own heart through and through, with the same hand which hid His face ! And the women wept again with compassion and said, "The Poor Mother" Poor! but through whom? Through us my friends ! He was bruised for our sakes, says the prophet, and our sins crucified Him, killed Him; and Mary the Queen of prophets should not have known this? She knew it well and felt the sufferings of her Son, inflicted by our sins all the more keenly. What reason have we not then for sorrow, for the profoundest grief, the bitterest tears over our sins which have robbed this good Mother of her Son?
In the city of Padua in Italy, St. Francis de Sales relates, is a street called the Road of Mercy. It received its name from the following incident. Two university students met one dark night, and without recognizing each other fell into a quarrel, because neither would get out of the way of the other with the result that one stabbed the other one to death. The
murderer pursued by the authorities fled in despair to the house of a widow whose only son was his fellow student and best friend. He threw himself at her feet, told what he had done, and begged her to hide him. The good woman took pity on him and concealed him in her house. It was not long before her only son was brought home to her dead, for it was he whom the student had stabbed. Sobbing aloud she went to the murderer and said, "What did my poor son do that you have so cruelly murdered him?" But when he heard that it was his own dear friend, he broke down with grief, tore his hair, and instead of asking the good mother s forgiveness, he threw himself at her feet and begged her to deliver him over to the hands of the Justice, in order that he might publicly expiate his crime. The grief-stricken mother, who was a most Christian lady, was so touched by the evident sincere grief of the youth that she said: "If you beg God's forgiveness and promise to amend your life, I will allow you to go free." He made the promise and obtained his liberty.
My friends, we have also robbed a poor Mother of her only Son, the Son of Mary, Who loved us as our best friend, more than life, we have by our sins crucified Him. We might have died a thousand times, we might have forfeited eternal life, but the Mother to whom we took refuge, the Mother of Sorrows, rejected us not and promised to allow us to go away for given provided we beg God s forgiveness, and amend our lives.
Let the redeemed learn then what they owe to Mary. Let them think of the sufferings that she endured for thirty-four years, in consequence of her maternal instincts leading her to most earnestly desire that the chalice of suffering might pass from her Divine Son, while her obedience to the divine counsels and her devotion to man's salvation, doing a holy violence to her love, forced her to say: "Let the will of the Father be done; let my Son suffer death to redeem His people from their sins; thus making it her higher love to do the will of God than to enjoy the companionship of Jesus.
Let them look often and thoughtfully upon the scene on Mount Calvary! Let them meditate on Mary's holy heroism. Let them think of her as a woman, weak in her sex, as a mother wounded in her tenderest affections, as sorrowful unto death, yet tearless, unwavering in her purpose to fulfill the promise made to God through Gabriel, willing to drain the chalice of affliction, resolved to witness the end, to see Jesus blot out the handwriting against sinners with the Most Precious Blood, to stand by the Cross until she heard: Consummatum est, It is finished, until she saw her Son become the Saviour of the world, and the children of wrath become the children of God, until the death of Jesus left her amid the shadows of Calvary in a desolation so unutterable that the earth has no name for its anguish.
Let Christians look upon Mary crowned by Jesus on Calvary, in the words of Isaias, "with the crown of tribulation," and then they will understand why Mary takes an interest in their spiritual welfare; why she jealously guards the affairs of their salvation in life; why she bends all her energies at the hour of death to protect souls from the assaults of the Demon. Then they will understand why that unfailing devotion which Mary displayed from Nazareth to Calvary, to the cause of the world s redemption, she now exhibits in behalf of each and every one redeemed, to the end that the Precious Blood of Jesus shall not have been shed for any soul in vain. Amen.
Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Faith, Imprimatur 1916
THE MOTHER OF SORROWS
"There stood by the cross of Jesus His Mother." JOHN 19, 26.
The beauty of Jesus is inexhaustible. He is beautiful always, beautiful everywhere, in the disfigurement of the Passion as well as in the splendor of the Resurrection. But above all things Our Divine Saviour is beautiful in His Mother. If we love Him, we must love her. We must know her in order to know Him. As there is no true devotion to His Sacred Humanity, which is not mindful of His Divinity, so there is no adequate love of the Son, which disjoins Him from His Mother, and lays her aside as a mere instrument.
Mary was not an unconscious instrument of the designs which God accomplished through her. Before she consented to become the Mother of Jesus, Mary understood the ransom that must be paid for sinners, she foresaw the sorrows with which the sufferings of her Son would desolate her soul, and in consenting to cooperate with God in the work of salvation, she willingly accepted the lifelong martyrdom which the crucifixion caused her to endure.
The Catholic view of this question must be clearly brought out before Christians can properly understand the relation in which she stands to the redeemed. It is what Mary consented to suffer, and actually did suffer that gives her a right to the gratitude and devotion of Christians, that makes her intercession all powerful with Christ, and shows that the confidence which Catholics repose in the patronage of the Blessed Virgin is well founded.
What did Mary suffer? St. Liguori applies to her the words of Isaias : "He will crown thee with the crown of tribulation" will crown her Queen of Martyrs. That we may know how hard it is to form any adequate idea of Mary s sorrows, the Church applies to her the words of the Prophet Jeremias : "To what shall I compare thee, to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem ? To what shall I equal thee, O Virgin daughter of Sion? For great as the sea is thy broken-heartedness."
Who can measure the sea ? While sailing across its wide expanse, the largest vessel seems but an atom on its bosom. In sight is a great waste of water, which is but a fraction of that other mighty waste of water which the horizon conceals from view. At certain points, the length, breadth and depth of the sea may be measured, while at other points it stretches out and sinks down so far and so irregularly as to baffle all human efforts to accurately estimate its volume. Thus the sea, while not infinite in extent, is, humanly speaking, immeasurable. This is why the sea is truly a picture of Mary's broken-heartedness. Now and again, definite views are obtained of certain features of Mary's sorrows, which for the moment seem to offer some basis for an accurate estimate of all her sufferings. When, however, an attempt is made to measure them, other aspects of the depth, the intensity, and the duration of her dolors are revealed in such bewildering proportions as to render futile all efforts to measure the sea of her broken-heartedness. Meditation thus shows us, that Mary's sorrow, although falling short of the infinite, is measureless.
The factors that help us to form a faint, an imperfect idea of Mary s sufferings are:
(1) Mary's sanctity;
(2) Jesus lovableness;
(3) Mary s foreknowledge of Christ s sufferings, and her willingness to participate in them.
As disease dulls and deadens the nerves, the sensitiveness of the body to pain, until in certain forms of sickness the power to suffer is diminished, destroyed, so that the body of the afflicted one may be cut and burned without feeling any pain; so sin destroys the feelings of the heart, dries up the fountains of compassion in the soul until the very power to sympathize with another is diminished or altogether lost. As the greatest capacity for physical sufferings exists in the perfect body, so the greatest capacity for mental anguish exists in the soul.
Mary was sinless, preserved by a singular privilege from all stain of sin. Her soul remained unclouded by even a shadow of an imbruting passion. She not only retained all the natural feelings of her pure heart unimpaired, but she cultivated them to the highest degree that it was possible for a creature to attain. The more refined, delicate the soul, the more excru- ciating the agony. Mary s sinless body with its exquisite perfections was delicately formed beyond all others but that of her Son. It is therefore evident that Mary, both by nature and grace, had the greatest capacity of love, to sympathize, and to suffer; and as she had consecrated herself entirely to God there were neither worldly interest, nor human ties to distract or divide her love. It was centered wholly in Jesus.
The maternal instinct impels mothers, sometimes, to love, to cling to their children despite the latters utter unworthiness and depravity. Mary, however, loved Jesus because He was infinitely worthy of her affection. No mother ever had such a Son. Mary's Son was both human and divine "the splendor of the Father's glory and the figure of His substance" at once the Son of Mary and the Son of God. In Mary there was concentrated, as in one consuming flame, the strongest affection which a mother ever cherished for a child, and the intensest love that a Creature ever bore the Creator. And since it was impossible for greater love to exist between two beings than that which existed between Mary and Jesus, there could be no greater sympathy than that of Mary and Jesus.
Every suffering inflicted on the Sacred Humanity of Jesus was a sword of sorrow that pierced Mary's soul. But in order to see how immeasurable Mary's sufferings were, we must acquire some idea of her foreknowledge of Christ's Passion, of her willingness to participate in it, of the heroic, holy purpose that animated Mary when she consented to cooperate, to suffer, in the cause of man's salvation. Mary's sanctity entitled her to the fullest confidence of the Deity, as to the means by which the world's redemption was to be accomplished. While God conceals His counsels from the proud and wicked, He confides them to the humble and innocent. Mary was selected because of her humility. She was full of grace; she had found favor with God. Upon no creature has such an eulogy been passed as that which God the Father, by the mouth of the Archangel Gabriel, pronounced upon Mary. No creature was ever admitted to that close and marvelous union that existed between Mary and the Eternal Father. Living only for God, and in God, it may well be believed that secrets were committed to her of which priests and prophets were kept in ignorance; just as Jesus communicated to John, by reason of his virginal sanctity, secrets concerning which the other Apostles dared not even question their Master. It may well be believed that Mary knew more than the prophets of old, upon whose vivid portrayals of the sufferings of the Messias she had often meditated; that she knew more than Joseph, who learned from the Angel that Jesus would "save His people from their sins" that she knew more than Simeon, whose vision of the Passion enabled him in those forcible, expressive words, to liken Mary's sympathy with Jesus in His suffering to a sword of sorrow that would pierce her soul.
While the Apostles were often, during the lifetime of their Master, rebuked for their slowness to believe, their failure to understand, never once was Mary's faith or understanding rebuked. On the contrary she is represented as keeping the divine counsels, pondering them in her heart. Mary showed in the Magnificat and at Cana the fullest appreciation of His divine character and of His coming.
The extent of Mary's knowledge is not a mere matter of speculation. It is a matter of fact that, before the Incarnation, she was the only daughter of Israel that entertained a correct notion of the character of Messias. The other women of Judea regarded the coming Messias as a great temporal prince. Hence as the time of His coming approached, a consuming desire to be the mother of the Messias burned in the breast of every Jewish woman. With this object in view, the maid sought marriage, the wife prayed for fruitfulness, and implored the Lord to save her from sterility as from a curse.
No such ambition, as Cardinal Newman says, was cherished by Mary. On the contrary, by a vow ofvirginity, she had made her mothership of the Messias, humanly speaking, impossible. She had such a true conception of that exalted Divinity that she deemed perpetual continence and a life of sanctification in the temple necessary to prepare herself, not for the mothership of the Messias, but to become the handmaid, the servant of the woman whom God would deem worthy of so high an honor. In this, what testimony does not Mary bear to that incomparable dignity to which God, regarding her humility, exalted her. No less an authority than Cardinal Newman interprets Mary's reply to the Angel; "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," as signifying that Mary simply aspired to become the servant of the Mother of the Messias. Mary entertained such correct ideas of the Messias before the Angel's visit, what fullness of knowledge must she not have received through Gabriel's message and his answers to her questions. Her dialogue with the Archangel shows plainly that she was not selected as a mere instrument, but as a free, intelligent agent; that she was free to refuse to become the Mother of the Messias, and that she consented only after having attained to a clear understanding of what would be required of her. "She was troubled;" says the Gospel, at the Angel's words, and asked, in her own mind, the meaning of his salutation. The angel having allayed her fears, Mary asked plainly: "How shall this be done, for I know not man?" Mary did not blindly consent, like the Apostles, to participate in the work of the Messias, and afterwards, like them, fail in her part when it came to drink of the cup of Christ's bitterness. She consented only after she had known what sacrifice that consent would demand of her; and therefore she never afterwards shrank from what was laid upon her: "Be it done unto me according to Thy word. "It is clear that Mary could have absolutely refused to become the Mother of the Messias, nevertheless, her acceptance was so deliberate, was given with such full knowledge of the sufferings which it involved, and with such willing obedience to the Counsel of God; and consequently, was so meritorious, that the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of Elizabeth, declared Mary blessed for having consented: "Blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished in thee which were spoken to thee by the Lord."
Let those, then, that would form an idea of her sorrows, look at Mary, from the moment of the Incarnation, standing in spirit as truly under the Cross as when she stood by the Cross of Jesus on Mt. Calvary. During those thirty-four years of martyrdom, her knowledge of Jesus sufferings did not increase, but her realization of them became more and more vivid and painful in proportion as she beheld Jesus increase in wisdom, and age, and grace before God and man.
Her power to love and her power to suffer increased day by day, until she saw Jesus offer Himself a bleeding, dying victim on the Cross. What more touching, entrancing, than the scene enacted in the stable of Bethlehem. The winter winds were joyful with the music of the multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and singing : "Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." The dismal cave was lighted up with the glory of Heaven; angels and wondering, adoring shepherds came to worship the new-born Saviour ; and Mary and Joseph lovingly, adoringly contemplated the Heavenly Babe. Had that scene, which has filled the earth for centuries with light and gladness, no joy for Mary? Did not its splendor for the time being dispel the shadow of the Cross? Did not Mary, in the words of Holy Scripture, rejoice, "because a man was born into the world," and for the moment, turn the eye of her soul from the vision of Calvary?
Alas! no, the joyous light of Bethlehem only projected the shadow of the Cross more distinctly. The scene in the stable, it is true, touched Mary's soul, joy welled up in her heart, but only that the thought of Calvary might instantly change it into an ocean of bitterness. As Mary laid the Divine Infant in the manger, as she saw His little arms stretched out as if to embrace her, she thought of the time when that same Jesus would be laid upon the Cross, when His hands would be stretched out in crudest torture, in infinite love, to embrace the whole human race ; as she listened to the song of the Angels, she thought of the blasphemies with which men would demand His death ; as she looked on the reverent shepherds she thought of the wild beasts that put Him to death; as she looked
on the glory of Heaven lighting the first opening of His eyes, she thought of the gloom that would fall upon their closing; as she saw earth and Heaven rejoicing over His birth, she thought of how both man and God would forsake Him in death; as she clasped Him to her bosom, she thought of the time when He would be laid at last, all bleeding and bruised, and wounded and lifeless, on her breast. Thus even at Bethlehem, Mary stood in the shadow of the Cross.
There are pictures, some of which are regarded as inspired in their conception and miraculous in their salutary influence, that afford clearer views of Mary's ever present sorrows than any illustration that human tongue can offer. The painting of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, for example, represents the Blessed Virgin as revolving in her mind the prophecies concerning the Messias. With a face full of sweetness and sadness, she gazes upon the Child Jesus Whom she holds upon her arm, only to see Him startle at the vision of His future sufferings, the instruments of His Passion the reed, the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the Cross, as they loom up in the dim distance.
Then again, there is the painting that may be called the Shadow of the Cross. It represents a scene in the workshop at Nazareth. Joseph is employed at the carpenter's bench, Mary sits plying the distaff. A bright summer day pours a flood of light into the room. Jesus, a beautiful youth, with filial piety informing every feature, advances with out-stretched arms towards His Mother to embrace her, and to imprint a kiss upon her cheek. Oh ! what happiness would this scene have been to Mary, with what joy would it have dilated her soul, if only the future had been concealed from her! But, alas! looking at Jesus, the Mother's joy is turned into grief, because she sees the body and out-stretched arms of her Son cast the Shadow of the Cross on the opposite wall ! But if this was Mary's cruel portion during the joyful mysteries, who can imagine what must have been the bitterness of her grief during those cruel scenes that followed, when every torture of Jesus, like a sword, actually pierced her soul.
The Passion of our Lord may be said to begin on the Thursday in Holy Week in the house of Lazarus at Bethany. On that Thursday morning Jesus went to Bethany to bid His Mother farewell and to obtain her consent to His Passion, as He had before done to His Incarnation. Not that it was necessary, but it was fitting and convenient to the perfection of His filial obedience. He then went to Jerusalem with His disciples. The Last Supper, the First Mass, took place that night. Having celebrated the Passover He passed out of the city again with His disciples to Mount Olivet where Judas betrayed Him. He was seized by the mob and conducted to the court of the High Priest. St. John, as soon as Jesus had been condemned to death, returned to the house with the news of the sentence.
Mary, the broken-hearted Mother, prepares to leave the house with Magdalen and the Apostle. John, by his knowledge of the city, will lead her to the end of the street where she can meet Jesus on His road to Calvary. Everywhere the streets are thronged with multitudes setting in one tide to Calvary. Heralds at the corner of the streets blow their harsh trumpets, and proclaim the sentence to the people. What a journey for a mother. The procession comes in sight; the tall horse of the centurion shows first, and leads the way. The trumpet sounds with a wailing clangor. The women look from the lattice above. She sees the thieves, the crosses, everything and yet only one thing Himself. As He draws nigh the peace of her heart grows deeper. It could not help it ; God was approaching, and peace went before Him. Now, Jesus has come up to her. He halts for a moment. He lifts the one hand that is free, and clears the blood from His eyes. Is it to see her ? Rather that she may see Him, His look of sadness, His look of love. She approaches to embrace Him. The soldiers thrust her rudely back. And she is His mother. For a moment she reeled with the push, and then again was still, her eyes fixed on His, His eyes fixed on hers, such a look, such an embrace, such an outpouring of love, such an overflow of sorrow. Has He less strength than she? Yes. He staggers, is overweighed by the burden of the ponderous Cross, and falls with a dull dead sound upon the street, like the clang of falling wood. She sees it. The God of Heaven and earth is down. Men surround Him like butchers round a fallen beast ; they kick Him, beat Him, drag Him up again with cruel ferocity. It is His third fall. She sees it. He is her Babe of Bethlehem. She is helpless. She cannot get near. The terror of this scene to Mary beggars description. We must not forget that her heart was eminently feminine. Fancy the sea of wild faces into which she looked in those crowded streets. Every passion was glaring out of those ferocious eyes, rendered more horrible by their human intelligence mingled with the inhuman fiery stare of diabolical possession. A multitude, with the women, possibly the children, all athirst for blood, raving after it, yelling for it as only a maddened populace can yell. It was a very vent of Hell, that voice of theirs, a concourse of the most appalling sounds of rage and hate and murder, and blasphemy and imprecation, and of that torturing fire and their own hearts which those passions had fiercely lighted up. The sights and sounds thrilled through her with agonies of fear. Visible by her blue mantle, she floats about on the billows of that tossing crowd, like a piece of wreck on the dark weltering waters of a storm. And she is apart from Jesus. He is perishing in the waves of that turbulent people. He is engulfed, and she can stretch out no hand to save Him. She cannot yet hear Him, and thus she followed slowly on to Calvary, Magdalen and John beside themselves with grief, but feeling as if grace went out from her blue mantle, enabling them also to live with broken hearts.
The way of the Cross was ended, and Christ was raised on the Tree of Shame. Mary turned to the foot of the Cross, passing the soldiers who were casting lots for the seamless garment of her Son. She raised her eyes to Heaven for strength, and they met the eyes of her Crucified Son. Upon beholding Jesus fastened to the Cross, she stood speechless, riveted to the spot by this cruel spectacle. Everything disappeared before the Cross; the sun veiled its gaze in very shame, the heavens became dark, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent asunder, the graves gave up their dead. All nature seemed to participate in Mary's grief and to suffer with her. The multitude were terrified and fled down the mountain striking their breasts, saying : "He was truly the Son of God." Yet amidst the wild confusion caused by nature sympathizing with the dying Saviour, caused by the earthquakes which shook Golgatha's mount to its very foundation -Mary remained unmoved, with hands folded in prayer, sunk in meditation on her Crucified Love, and the few pious women of Jerusalem wept, and said with compassion: The poor Mother !
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, as a pious writer tells us, approached Our Blessed Lady with the profoundest reverence and sympathy and asked her permission to take the Body down from the Cross. They fixed the ladder against the Cross. Joseph mounted first and Nicodemus after him. Mary with John and Magdalen remained immediately beneath them. It seemed as if some supernatural grace issued forth from the adorable Body, softening and subduing all their thoughts, making their hearts burn with divine love, and hushing them in the deepest and most thrilling adoration. With gentle, trembling hand Joseph touched the Crown of thorns, and delicately loosened it from the head on which it was fixed, disentangled it from the matted hair, and without daring to kiss it passed it to Nicodemus, who reached it to John, from whom Mary, sinking on her knees, receives it with such devotion as no heart but hers could hold. Every blood stained spike seemed instinct with life, and went into her heart, tipped as it were with the Blood of her Son, inoculating her more and more deeply with the spirit of His Passion. Who can describe with what reverential touch Joseph loosened the nails so as not to crush those blessed hands and feet? Each nail was silently passed down to Mary, and the poor Mother bent over those mute relics crusted, too, as they were with the Precious Blood which she adored in its unbroken union with the Person of the Eternal Word. But now the Body was detached from the Cross. Mary is kneeling on the ground. Her fingers are stained with blood. She stretches the clean linen cloth over her arms and holds them out to receive her Son, her lost Son, come back again, and come back thus !
Now the Body is low enough for John to touch the Sacred Head, and receive It in his arms, that It might not drop in that helpless rigid way; and Magdalen is holding up the feet. It is her old post. It is her post in Heaven now, highest of penitents, most beautiful of pardoned spirits! For one moment Mary prostrates herself in an agony of speechless adoration, and the next instant she has received the Body in her extended arms. The Babe of Bethlehem is back again in His Mother's lap. What a meeting! What a restoration! For a while she remains kneeling, while John and Magdalen, Joseph and Nicodemus and the devout women adore, and whisper: "The poor Mother!" Then she passes from the attitude of the priest to the attitude of the Mother. She rises from her knees still bearing the burden as lightly as when she fled into Egypt, and sits down upon the grass, with Jesus extended upon her lap. There was not a feature of His Blessed Countenance, not a mark upon His Sacred Flesh, which was not at once a sorrow to her, and a very volume of profoundest meditations. In vain for her were the birds thrilling their even-song, the weight of the eclipse being taken off their blithe little hearts. In vain for her were the perfumes of the tender fig-leaves rising up in the cold air, and the buds bursting greenly, and the tender shoots full of vernal beauty. Her grief was past nature's soothing. For her Flower had been cruelly gathered and lay withered there upon her knee. But now He must be swathed in the winding sheet for burial and Mary must take her last look at that dead face. Mothers live lives in their last looks.
Who shall tell what Mary's was like? With heroic effort she has bound the napkin around His head, and has folded the winding sheet over the sweet face. And now there is darkness indeed around her. The very Body had been a light and a support. She has put out the light herself. Her own hands have quenched the lamp, and she stands facing the thick night. O, brave woman! O Mary thou didst pierce thy own heart through and through, with the same hand which hid His face ! And the women wept again with compassion and said, "The Poor Mother" Poor! but through whom? Through us my friends ! He was bruised for our sakes, says the prophet, and our sins crucified Him, killed Him; and Mary the Queen of prophets should not have known this? She knew it well and felt the sufferings of her Son, inflicted by our sins all the more keenly. What reason have we not then for sorrow, for the profoundest grief, the bitterest tears over our sins which have robbed this good Mother of her Son?
In the city of Padua in Italy, St. Francis de Sales relates, is a street called the Road of Mercy. It received its name from the following incident. Two university students met one dark night, and without recognizing each other fell into a quarrel, because neither would get out of the way of the other with the result that one stabbed the other one to death. The
murderer pursued by the authorities fled in despair to the house of a widow whose only son was his fellow student and best friend. He threw himself at her feet, told what he had done, and begged her to hide him. The good woman took pity on him and concealed him in her house. It was not long before her only son was brought home to her dead, for it was he whom the student had stabbed. Sobbing aloud she went to the murderer and said, "What did my poor son do that you have so cruelly murdered him?" But when he heard that it was his own dear friend, he broke down with grief, tore his hair, and instead of asking the good mother s forgiveness, he threw himself at her feet and begged her to deliver him over to the hands of the Justice, in order that he might publicly expiate his crime. The grief-stricken mother, who was a most Christian lady, was so touched by the evident sincere grief of the youth that she said: "If you beg God's forgiveness and promise to amend your life, I will allow you to go free." He made the promise and obtained his liberty.
My friends, we have also robbed a poor Mother of her only Son, the Son of Mary, Who loved us as our best friend, more than life, we have by our sins crucified Him. We might have died a thousand times, we might have forfeited eternal life, but the Mother to whom we took refuge, the Mother of Sorrows, rejected us not and promised to allow us to go away for given provided we beg God s forgiveness, and amend our lives.
Let the redeemed learn then what they owe to Mary. Let them think of the sufferings that she endured for thirty-four years, in consequence of her maternal instincts leading her to most earnestly desire that the chalice of suffering might pass from her Divine Son, while her obedience to the divine counsels and her devotion to man's salvation, doing a holy violence to her love, forced her to say: "Let the will of the Father be done; let my Son suffer death to redeem His people from their sins; thus making it her higher love to do the will of God than to enjoy the companionship of Jesus.
Let them look often and thoughtfully upon the scene on Mount Calvary! Let them meditate on Mary's holy heroism. Let them think of her as a woman, weak in her sex, as a mother wounded in her tenderest affections, as sorrowful unto death, yet tearless, unwavering in her purpose to fulfill the promise made to God through Gabriel, willing to drain the chalice of affliction, resolved to witness the end, to see Jesus blot out the handwriting against sinners with the Most Precious Blood, to stand by the Cross until she heard: Consummatum est, It is finished, until she saw her Son become the Saviour of the world, and the children of wrath become the children of God, until the death of Jesus left her amid the shadows of Calvary in a desolation so unutterable that the earth has no name for its anguish.
Let Christians look upon Mary crowned by Jesus on Calvary, in the words of Isaias, "with the crown of tribulation," and then they will understand why Mary takes an interest in their spiritual welfare; why she jealously guards the affairs of their salvation in life; why she bends all her energies at the hour of death to protect souls from the assaults of the Demon. Then they will understand why that unfailing devotion which Mary displayed from Nazareth to Calvary, to the cause of the world s redemption, she now exhibits in behalf of each and every one redeemed, to the end that the Precious Blood of Jesus shall not have been shed for any soul in vain. Amen.
Source: The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Faith, Imprimatur 1916
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