11 May, Antonio, Cardinal Bacci: Meditations For Each Day

Mary’s Patience

1. Many people who honour the Cross of Jesus Christ have no liking for their own cross. Many of those who pray fervently to Jesus crucified experience a sense of repugnance and rebellion when they are called upon to suffer with Him and to carry their own cross. But Jesus has said: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) If a man does not love his own cross, he does not love the Cross of Jesus Christ. If we are to be true Christians, we must suffer with resignation and love. Mary gives us a wonderful example of this kind of loving patience. She is the Mother of Sorrows, because when Jesus was in agony for love of us on Mount Calvary, she knelt at His feet. From the depths of her stricken mother's heart she offered up her divine Son and united her own sufferings to the infinite merits of His passion and death. In this way she became the co-redemptrix of the human race. But she had already suffered in patience throughout the earlier part of her life. Let us recall to mind the coldness of her reception in Bethlehem, the birth of her infant Son in a damp cave, the persecution by Herod and the flight into Egypt, the daily privations in the home of Nazareth, the anxious devotion with which she followed our divine Redeemer on his long missionary journeys, and the day when He was finally betrayed and arrested. She knew that her divine Son had it in His power to spare both Himself and her all this suffering and humiliation. Even when they lived in Nazareth, she knew that He had power to multiply loaves of bread, change water into wine, or annihilate His enemies. But she never asked Him to do any of these things. All she ever asked for was a life of intimacy with Jesus. She was happy to co-operate patiently with Him in the work of redeeming the human race. By humbly following Him as far as Calvary she merited to follow Him triumphantly into Heaven on the day of her Assumption.

2. We also have our share of suffering and humiliation. It is useless to try and escape from it, useless to rebel against it. If we embrace the cross patiently and lovingly, as Jesus and Mary did, it will seem lighter, even welcome. If we attempt to cast it from us, it will weigh more heavily on our shoulders. There are two kinds of men, those who bear their cross patiently and embrace it because they wish to be like Jesus, and those who do not want to suffer, and rebel. The former may stagger beneath their daily burden, but they have peace of soul because they are putting into practice the great Gospel precept: “By your patience you will win your souls.” (Luke 21:19) They know that they are on the path to Heaven and this thought is a consolation which cannot be taken from them. The second group of men rebel against the cross and therefore suffer doubly, in body and in soul. “The senseless man,” the Holy Spirit says, “loves not to be reproved.” (Prov. 15:12)

To which of these two categories do we belong? Do we love our cross, or do we carry it patiently at least? Anyone who does not want the cross does not want Jesus. Let the example of Mary and of the Saints inspire us. They always bore their burden patiently, they even looked for suffering and humiliation. If we cannot reach such heroic heights, let us at least accept from the hands of Our Lord the cross which He offers us. Let us accept the sufferings which we meet on the way of life. If we are not heroic enough to seek to be unknown and mortified, let us resolve to accept patiently the inevitable sorrows of life.

3. Holy Mary, Mother of Sorrows, obtain for me the spirit of loving patience which made you the Queen of Martyrs. Help me to carry with resignation the cross which God has given me. Help me to walk like you in the footsteps of Jesus until I reach my Calvary, so that I may join Him and you in the glory of Heaven. Amen.