Patience - December 21

Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings

MATER DOLOROSA
[continued from yesterday]

...That we may learn how hard it is to form any adequate idea of Mary's sorrow, the Church ap­plies to her the words of the prophet Jeremias:

"To what shall I compare thee, or to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what shall I equal thee, that I may comfort thee, O Virgin Daughter of Sian? For, great as the sea is thy destruction" (Lam. ii. 13).

Of Mary, Father Faber says:

"Her sinless body was delicately framed for suffering beyond all others, except that of her Son. The more refined and delicate the soul, the more excruciating its agony."

Mary was not an unconscious instru­ment in the work of Redemption up to the mo­ment Christ's passion began, and then its un­willing witness.

She was not only a sorrowful witness of the scenes which preceded and accompanied the awful tragedy of Calvary; she not only fully real­ized all that Jesus suffered, but she foresaw be­fore He was conceived in her womb all that He would suffer. So much at heart, indeed, had she the object of His sufferings, that she was constrained out of love for sinners and obedience to God to devote Him to those sufferings, while all the affection of her soul inclined her to save Him from them.

Let those who would form some idea of her compassion look at Mary, from the moment of the Incarnation, standing in spirit as truly under the shadow of the cross as when she actually stood by the cross of Jesus on Mount Calvary....
[to be continued]
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Compiled and Edited by Rev. F. X. Lasance
Author of "My Prayerbook," etc.
1937, Benziger Brothers
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See