Mary died from her love for God, Mary: Day 274

Mary died from her love for God

Did Our Lady die of old age? No, says St. Alphonsus; just as her love for God gave her life, so it caused her death.

Well did Mary herself know that her heart was continually burning with divine love. As Bernardine de Bustis says: “Mary, by a unique privilege granted to no other saint, loved God, and was always truly loving God, in every moment of her life, with such fervency, that St. Bernard declares it required a continuous miracle to preserve her life in the midst of such flames.”

These words of the Song of Songs have been applied to Mary: “Who is she coming up from the wilderness, like a column of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the fragrant powders of the merchant?” (See Sg 3:6.) Her entire self-sacrifice is symbolized by the myrrh, her fervent prayers by the incense. All her holy virtues, united to her perfect love for God, kindled in her a flame so great that her beautiful soul—wholly devoted to and consumed by divine love—arose continually to God like a column of smoke, breathing forth on every side a most sweet fragrance.

“Blessed Mary,” says the Abbot Rupert, “just such a column of smoke you have breathed forth as sweet fragrance to the Most High!” Eustachius expresses it in still stronger terms: She is like “a column of smoke, because burning interi- orly as a burnt offering with the flame of divine love, she sent forth a most sweet fragrance.”

As the loving virgin lived, so did she die. As divine love gave her life, so it caused her death. For the Doctors and holy Fathers of the Church generally agree that she died from no other infirmity than pure love. As St. Ildephonsus says: “Mary ought not to die, but if she does, she should die only from love.”

—St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

What does it mean for St. Bernard to say that it took a “continuous miracle” to preserve Mary’s life in the midst of her burning love for God? What does it mean for St. Ildephonsus to say that Mary “died from love”?

CLOSING PRAYER

Mary, the Holy Spirit who came down on you and the Apostles in tongues of fire at Pente- cost is the same Spirit who had overshadowed you when you conceived Jesus. He is the fiery love of the Father and the Son, and he has dwelt in you in a way unlike his dwelling in any other creature. No wonder your heart is aflame with divine love!

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