Meditation 88
MARY'S HEART -SUFFERINGS
MARY'S HEART -SUFFERINGS
1. Suffering and Sorrows.
The heart of the seat, or at least the symbol, of love, and as a consequence it is the seat, or the symbol of sorrow. A heart that loves, suffers. The measure of a loyal and true love is always the intensity of suffering and sorrow.
The Heart of Our Lady was to be a heart of a mother but of a sorrowful mother. Her Heart always appears pierced by a cruel sword. Who could ever fathom how much that heart suffered?
Before the passion of Our Lord Her Heart was always flooded with sorrow since She well knew all that the prophets had foretold regarding that tremendous sufferings He would have to bear for our redemption. At the cradle of Bethlehem on seeing the surrounding poverty, on experiencing the ignorant contempt with which men greeted the birth of Her Son, Her delicate motherly heart would suffer most deeply. And if you go through every mystery of the life of Jesus you will see how everyone of them is marked by some new suffering of the heart of Our Lady.
The anxieties of the flight into, and the exile in, Egypt, the loss of the Child, the presentation in the temple, the prophecy of Simeon, was not all this a terrible overture to the frightful anguish of the Passion? When this finally arrived, the Heart of Our Lady was transformed into an immense ocean of the most bitter waters. It was then that Simeon's dreadful prophecy was fulfilled by a sword of sorrow piercing that Heart as no other heart had ever borne before.
Try to imagine something of Mary's frightful suffering when at the scourging She saw Jesus tied to the column, torn by the blows, with the crown of thorns, the reed and the purple rag, made a mock king. Try to picture what was experienced by that Heart on hearing the yells of that mob, people of God, those people who were supposed for centuries on end to have been sighing for their Messiah.
Accompany Our Lady as She ascends calvary. A truly generous and sorrowful Mother. She witnesses the cruel scenes, the repeated falls under the weight of the cross, the heavy blows of the hammer, the nails which pierced the feet and the hands, the raising of the cross with Jesus on it so disfigured by His sufferings. And then three endless hours of agony. How we long for the end, for the release of death. Our heart can no longer stand that prolonged agony! What must have happened in the Heart of Mary during the agony of Her Son?
And then listen to those words of the dying Victim. Realize the exchange of children. She loses a divine Son Who is replaced by us, ungrateful sinners whose Mother She begins to be! Then the sight of His last moments; the thrust of the spear; the piercing of His Heart while Hers breaks down under the spear of sorrow. Finally when for the last time She held Him in Her arms She pressed Him against Her Heart and then withdrew to the tremendous solitude of the night to weep over Her sad loss. Where is the heart and the mind capable of encompassing the sufferings of the Heart of Mary?
[Excerpted from 'MARIAN MEDITATIONS' Book by Rev. Dr. Ildefonso R. Villar, Salesian Philippine Province, Nihil Obstat; Imprimatur]
The heart of the seat, or at least the symbol, of love, and as a consequence it is the seat, or the symbol of sorrow. A heart that loves, suffers. The measure of a loyal and true love is always the intensity of suffering and sorrow.
The Heart of Our Lady was to be a heart of a mother but of a sorrowful mother. Her Heart always appears pierced by a cruel sword. Who could ever fathom how much that heart suffered?
Before the passion of Our Lord Her Heart was always flooded with sorrow since She well knew all that the prophets had foretold regarding that tremendous sufferings He would have to bear for our redemption. At the cradle of Bethlehem on seeing the surrounding poverty, on experiencing the ignorant contempt with which men greeted the birth of Her Son, Her delicate motherly heart would suffer most deeply. And if you go through every mystery of the life of Jesus you will see how everyone of them is marked by some new suffering of the heart of Our Lady.
The anxieties of the flight into, and the exile in, Egypt, the loss of the Child, the presentation in the temple, the prophecy of Simeon, was not all this a terrible overture to the frightful anguish of the Passion? When this finally arrived, the Heart of Our Lady was transformed into an immense ocean of the most bitter waters. It was then that Simeon's dreadful prophecy was fulfilled by a sword of sorrow piercing that Heart as no other heart had ever borne before.
Try to imagine something of Mary's frightful suffering when at the scourging She saw Jesus tied to the column, torn by the blows, with the crown of thorns, the reed and the purple rag, made a mock king. Try to picture what was experienced by that Heart on hearing the yells of that mob, people of God, those people who were supposed for centuries on end to have been sighing for their Messiah.
Accompany Our Lady as She ascends calvary. A truly generous and sorrowful Mother. She witnesses the cruel scenes, the repeated falls under the weight of the cross, the heavy blows of the hammer, the nails which pierced the feet and the hands, the raising of the cross with Jesus on it so disfigured by His sufferings. And then three endless hours of agony. How we long for the end, for the release of death. Our heart can no longer stand that prolonged agony! What must have happened in the Heart of Mary during the agony of Her Son?
And then listen to those words of the dying Victim. Realize the exchange of children. She loses a divine Son Who is replaced by us, ungrateful sinners whose Mother She begins to be! Then the sight of His last moments; the thrust of the spear; the piercing of His Heart while Hers breaks down under the spear of sorrow. Finally when for the last time She held Him in Her arms She pressed Him against Her Heart and then withdrew to the tremendous solitude of the night to weep over Her sad loss. Where is the heart and the mind capable of encompassing the sufferings of the Heart of Mary?
[Excerpted from 'MARIAN MEDITATIONS' Book by Rev. Dr. Ildefonso R. Villar, Salesian Philippine Province, Nihil Obstat; Imprimatur]
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