Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
MATER DOLOROSA
[continued from yesterday]
...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 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 her affliction; calm, when it came to making the sacrifice required for the redemption of the world; resolved to witness the end, to see Jesus blot out the handwriting against sinners with the most precious blood He had drawn from the fountains of her heart; 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 Jesus' lifeless body enfolded to her breast left her, amid the shadows of Calvary, in a desolation so unutterable that 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 affair of their salvation in life; why she bends all her energies at the hour of death to protect souls from the assault of the demon.
Then they will understand why that unfailing devotion to the cause of the world's redemption which Mary displayed from Nazareth to Calvary she now exhibits in behalf of each and everyone of the redeemed: to the end that the precious blood of Jesus shall not have been shed for any soul in vain.
-Vide "Sermons" by Very Reverend D. I. McDermott, D.D.
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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
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