I. St. Simeon's Prophecy

In this valley of tears every man is born to weep, and all must suffer, by enduring the evils which are of daily occurrence. But how much greater would the misery of life be, did we also know the future evils which await us! "Unfortunate, indeed, would his lot be," says Seneca, "who, knowing the future, would have to suffer all by anticipation."

Our Lord shows us this mercy. He conceals the trials which await us, that, whatever they may be, we may endure them but once. He did not show Mary this compassion; for she, whom God willed to be the Queen of Sorrows, and in all things like His Son, had to see always before her eyes and continually to suffer all the torments that awaited her; and these were the sufferings of the Passion and death of her beloved Jesus; for in the temple, St. Simeon, having received the Divine Child in his arms, foretold to her that that Son would be a mark for all the persecutions and oppositions of men. Behold, this Child is set . . . for a sign which shall be contradicted. And therefore, that a sword of sorrow should pierce her soul: And thy own soul a sword shall pierce.

The Blessed Virgin herself told St. Matilda, that, on this announcement of St. Simeon, "all her joy was changed into sorrow." For, as it was revealed to St. Teresa, though the Blessed Mother already knew that the life of her Son would be sacrificed for the salvation of the world, yet she then learnt more distinctly and in greater detail the sufferings and cruel death that awaited Him. She knew that he would be contradicted, and this in everything: contradicted in His doctrines; for, instead of being believed, He would be esteemed a blasphemer for teaching that He was the Son of God; this He was declared to be by the impious Caiphas, saying, He hath blasphemed, He is guilty of death. Contradicted in his reputation; for He was of noble, even of royal descent, and was despised as a peasant: Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? He was Wisdom itself, and was treated as ignorant: How doth this man know letters, never having learned? As a false prophet: And they blindfolded Him, and smote His face . . . saying: Prophesy, who is it that struck Thee? He was treated as a madman: He is mad, why hear you Him? As a drunkard, a glutton, and a friend of sinners: Behold a man that is a glutton, and a drinker of wine, a friend of publicans and sinners. As a sorcerer: By the prince of devils He casteth out devils. As a heretic, and possessed by the evil spirit: Do we not say well of Thee thai Thou an a Samaritan and hast a devil? In a word, Jesus was considered so notoriously wicked that, as the Jews said to Pilate, no trial was necessary to condemn Him. If He were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered Him up to thee. He was contradicted in His very soul; for even His Eternal Father, to give place to divine justice, contradicted Him, by refusing to hear His prayer, when He said, Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me; and abandoned Him to fear, weariness and sadness; so that our afflicted Lord exclaimed: My soul is sorrowful unto death! and His interior sufferings even caused Him to sweat blood. Contradicted and persecuted, in fine, in all His body and in His life; for He was tortured in all His sacred members, in His hands, His feet, His face, His head, and in His whole body; so that, drained of His blood, and an object of scorn, He died of torments on an ignominious cross.

When David, in the midst of all his pleasures and regal grandeur, heard from the Prophet Nathan, that his son should die,—The child that is born to thee shall surely die,—he could find no peace, but wept, fasted, and slept on the ground. Mary with the greatest calmness received the announcement that her Son should die, and always peacefully submitted to it; but what grief must she continually have suffered, seeing this amiable Son always near her, hearing from Him words of eternal life, and witnessing His holy demeanor!

Abraham suffered much during the three days he passed with his beloved Isaac, after knowing that he was to lose him. O God, not for three days, but for three and thirty years had Mary to endure a like sorrow! But do I say a like sorrow? It was as much greater as the Son of Mary was more lovely than the son of Abraham.

IV. The Meeting of Mary with Jesus When He was Going to Death

St. Bernadine says that to form an idea of the greatness of Mary's grief in losing her Jesus by death, we must consider the love that this Mother bore to her Son. All mothers feel the sufferings of their children as their own. Hence, when the Canaanite woman entreated Our Savior to deliver her daughter from the devil that tormented her, she asked Him rather to pity her, the mother, than her daughter: Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously troubled by a devil. But what mother ever loved her son as Mary loved Jesus? He was her only Son, reared amidst so many troubles; a most amiable Son, and tenderly loving His Mother; a Son who, at the same time that He was her Son, was also her God, who had come on earth to enkindle in the hearts of all the fire of divine love as He Himself declared: I am come to cast fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled? Let us only imagine what a flame He must have enkindled in that pure heart of His holy Mother, void as it was of every earthly affection. In fine, the Blessed Virgin herself told St. Bridget, "that love had rendered her heart and that of her Son but one." That blending together of servant and Mother, of Son and God, created in the heart of Mary a fire composed of a thousand flames. But the whole of this flame of love was afterwards, at the time of the Passion, changed into a sea of grief, when St. Bernardine declares, "that if all the sorrows of the world were united, they would not equal that of the glorious Virgin Mary." The greater was her love for Him, the greater was her grief at the sight of His sufferings; and especially when she met her Son, already condemned to death, and bearing His cross to the place of punishment.

The Blessed Virgin revealed to St. Bridget, that when the time of the Passion of Our Lord was approaching, her eyes were always filled with tears, as she thought of her beloved Son, whom she was about to lose on earth, and that the prospect of that approaching suffering caused her to be seized with fear, and a cold sweat to cover her whole body.

Behold, the appointed days at last came, and Jesus, in tears, went to take leave of His Mother, before going to death. St. Bonaventure, contemplating Mary on that night, says: "Thou didst spend it without sleep, and whilst others slept thou didst remain watching." In the morning the disciples of Jesus Christ came to this afflicted Mother, the one to bring her one account, the other another; but all were tidings of sorrow, verifying in her the prophecy of Jeremias: Weeping, she hath wept in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; there is none to comfort her of all them that were dear to her. Some then came to relate to her the cruel treatment of her Son in the house of Caiphas; and others, the insults He had received of Herod. Finally—to come to our point, I omit all the rest—St. John came, and announced to Mary that the most unjust Pilate had already condemned Him to die on the cross. I say the most unjust Pilate; for, as St. Leo remarks, "This unjust judge condemned him to death with the same lips with which he had declared Him innocent." "Ah, afflicted Mother," said St. John, "thy Son is already condemned to death; He is already gone forth, bearing Himself His cross, on His way to Calvary," as the saint afterwards related in his Gospels: and bearing His own cross, He went forth to that place which is called Calvary. "Come, if thou desirest to see Him, and bid Him a last farewell, in some street through which He must pass."

Mary goes with St. John, and by the blood with which the way is sprinkled, she perceives that her Son has already passed. This she revealed to St. Bridget: "By the footsteps of my Son, I knew where He had passed: for along the way the ground was marked with blood." St. Bonaventure represents the afflicted Mother taking a shorter way, and placing herself at the corner of a street, to meet her afflicted Son as He was passing by. "The most sorrowful Mother," says St. Bernard, "met her most sorrowful Son."

When Margaret, the daughter of St. Thomas More, met her father on his way to death, she could only exclaim, "O, father! O, father!" and fell fainting at his feet. Mary, at the sight of her Son, on His way to Calvary, did not faint; no, for it was not becoming, as Father Suarez remarks, that this Mother should lose the use of her reason; nor did she die, for God reserved her for greater grief; but though she did not die, her sorrow was enough to have caused her a thousand deaths.

The Mother would have embraced Him, as St. Anselm says, but the guards thrust her aside with insults, and urged forward the suffering Lord; and Mary followed Him. Ah, holy Virgin, whither goest thou? To Calvary. And canst thou trust thyself to behold Him who is thy life, hanging on a cross? And thy life shall be, as it were, hanging before thee.

"Ah, stop, my mother" (says St. Laurence Justinian, in the name of the Son), "where goest thou? Where wouldst thou come? If thou comest whither I go, thou wilt be tortured with my sufferings, and I with thine." But although the sight of her dying Jesus was to cost her so bitter sorrow, the loving Mary will not leave Him; the Son advanced, and the Mother followed, to be also crucified with her Son, as the Abbot William says: "The Mother also took up her cross and followed, to be crucified with Him."

"We even pity wild beasts," as St. John Chrysostom writes; and did we see a lioness following her cub to death, the sight would move us to compassion. Shall we not also be moved to compassion on seeing Mary follow her Immaculate Lamb to death? Let us, then, pity her, and let us also accompany her Son and herself, by bearing with patience the cross that Our Lord imposes on us. St. John Chrysostom asks why Jesus Christ, in His other sufferings, was pleased to endure them alone, but in carrying His cross was assisted by the Cyrenean? He replies, that it was "that thou mayest understand that the cross of Christ is not sufficient without thine."

VII. The Burial of Jesus

When a Mother is by the side of her suffering and dying child, she undoubtedly feels and suffers all his pains; but after he is actually dead, when, before the body is carried to the grave, the afflicted mother must bid her child a last farewell; then, indeed, the thought that she is to see him no more is a grief that exceeds all other griefs. Behold the last sword of Mary's sorrow; for after witnessing the death of her Son on the cross, and embracing for a last time His lifeless body, this Blessed Mother had to leave Him in the sepulcher, never more to enjoy His beloved presence on earth.

That we may better understand this last dolor, we will return to Calvary and consider the afflicted Mother, who still holds the lifeless body of her Son clasped in her arms. O my Son, she seemed to say in the words of Job, my Son, Thou art changed to be cruel towards me. Thus does St. Bernard speak in her name: "O truly-begotten of God, Thou wast to me a father, a son, a spouse: Thou wast my very soul! Now I am deprived of my father, widowed of my spouse, a desolate, childless Mother; having lost my only Son, I have lost all!"

Thus was Mary, with her Son locked in her arms, absorbed in grief. The holy disciples, fearful that the poor Mother might die of grief, approached her to take the body of her Son from her arms to bear it away for burial. This they did with gentle and respectable violence, and having embalmed it, they wrapped it in a linen cloth which was already prepared.

Finally, the disciples raised the stone and closed up the holy sepulcher, and in it the body of Jesus, that great treasure—a treasure so great that neither earth nor heaven had a greater. Here I may be permitted to make a short digression, and remark that Mary's heart was buried with Jesus, because Jesus was her whole treasure: Where your treasure is, there will you heart be also. And where, may we ask, are our hearts buried? In creatures—perchance in mire. And why not in Jesus, Who, although He has ascended to heaven, is still pleased to remain on earth, not dead indeed, but living in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, precisely that our hearts may be with Him, and that He may possess them?

But let us return to Mary. Before leaving the sepulcher, according to St. Bonaventure, she blessed the sacred stone which closed it, saying: "O happy stone, that doth now enclose that sacred body, which for nine months was contained in my womb; I bless thee and envy thee; I leave thee the guardian of my Son, of that Son who is my whole treasure and all my love." Then, raising her heart to the Eternal Father, she said: "O Father, to Thee do I recommend Him—Him who is Thy Son at the same time that He is mine." Thus bidding her last farewell to her beloved Jesus and to the sepulcher, she left it, and returned to her own house. "This Mother," says St. Bernard, "went away so afflicted and sad, that she moved many to tears in spite of themselves; and wherever she passed, all who met her wept," and could not restrain their tears. And he adds that the holy disciples and women who accompanied her "mourned even more for her than for their Lord."

St. Bonaventure says that her sisters covered her with a mourning cloak: "The sisters of Our Lady veiled her as a widow, almost covering her whole face." He also says that, passing, on her return before the cross still wet with the blood of Jesus, she was the first to adore it. "O holy cross," she then said, "I kiss thee, I adore thee; for thou art no longer an infamous gibbet, but a throne of love and an altar of mercy, consecrated by the blood of the Divine Lamb, which on thee has been sacrificed for the salvation of the world."

She then left the cross, and returned home. When there, the afflicted Mother cast her eyes around, and no longer saw Jesus; but, instead of the sweet presence of her dear Son, the remembrance of His beautiful life and cruel death presented itself before her eyes. She remembered how she had pressed that Son to her bosom in the crib of Bethlehem; the conversation she had held with Him during the many years they had dwelt in the house of Nazareth; she remembered their mutual affection, the words of eternal life which fell from those divine lips; and then the sad scene which he had that day witnessed again presented itself before her. The nails, the thorns, the lacerated flesh of her Son, those deep wounds, those uncovered bones, that open mouth, those dimmed eyes, all presented themselves before her. Ah, what a night of sorrow was that night for Mary! The afflicted Mother, turning to St. John, mournfully asked, "Ah, John, tell me where is thy Master?" She then asked the Magdalene: "Daughter, tell me, where is thy beloved? O God, who has taken Him from us?" Mary wept, and all who were present wept with her.

And thou, my soul, weepest not? Ah, turn to Mary, and address her with St. Bonaventure, saying: "O my own sweet Lady, let me weep; thou art innocent, I am guilty." Entreat her at least to let thee weep with her: "Grant that with thee I may weep." She weeps for love; do thou weep through sorrow for thy sins.