Patience - December 23

Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings

MATER DOLOROSA
[continued from yesterday]

...Considering the intensity, bitterness, and dura­tion of her sufferings in soul and body, the question arises: Could mortal have made greater sacrifices, or have suffered more in behalf of any cause, than Mary made and suffered by consent­ing to give her Son for the salvation of men?

What did patriarch or prophet, or apostle do for the salvation of men in comparison with what Mary suffered for it? If those who, at Christ's in­vitation, abandoned their nets and boats to fol­low Him, shall hereafter sit on thrones and judge the world, what must be Mary's place in the king­dom of God, since she, in obedience to the divine will (to appropriate the words of St. Paul), "spared not her own Son, but delivered Him up for us all"?

Let the redeemed learn, then, what they owe to Mary. Let them think of her more than thirty years' martyrdom, in consequence of her mater­nal instincts leading her to desire that the chalice of suffering might pass from her divine Son, while her obedience to the diyine 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!"

Let them look often and thoughtfully upon the scene on Mount Calvary!....
[Continued tomorrow]
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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