Mary endured a sorrow more cruel than death, Mary: Day 323

Mary endured a sorrow more cruel than death

St. Alphonsus reports how Our Lady told St. Bridget that “the sorrow announced to her by the holy Simeon never left her heart until her assumption into heaven.”

From the day of Jesus’ presentation in the temple forward, how sad

a scene must love have continually placed before the eyes of Mary—a scene representing all the outrages and mockeries that her poor Son was to endure. See how love would have already pictured him to her: agonized with sorrow in the garden, mangled with scourges, crowned with thorns in the praetorium, and finally hanging on the shameful cross on Calvary!

“Behold, Mother,” love says, “what a loveable and innocent Son you offer to so many torments and to so horrible a death! Why should you have saved him from the hands of Herod by fleeing to Egypt, since it is only to reserve him for a far more sorrowful end?” Thus Mary not only offered her Son to death in the temple, but she renewed that offering every moment of her life. She revealed to St. Bridget that “the sorrow announced to her by the holy Simeon never left her heart until her assumption into heaven.” For this reason, St. Anselm addresses her this way: “O compassionate Lady, I cannot believe that you could have endured for a moment so excruciating a torment without dying from it, if God himself, the Spirit of Life, had not sustained you.”

But St. Bernard affirms, speaking of the great sorrow that Mary experi- enced that day in the temple, that from that time forward “she died while living, enduring a sorrow more cruel than death.” In every moment, she lived dying; for in every moment she was assailed by the sorrow of the death of her beloved Jesus, which was a torment more cruel than any death. —St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

Do I have any abiding sorrows that I expect to carry until the day I leave this world? Have I brought these sorrows to Mary to ask her to help me bear them?

CLOSING PRAYER

From a prayer of Venerable Pope Pius XII: From the depths of this vale of tears where sorrowing humanity makes weary progress—through the surges of this sea of ours endlessly buffeted by the winds of passion—we raise our eyes to you, O most beloved mother Mary, to be comforted by the contemplation of your glory.

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