Our Lady Beneath The Cross
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“They crucified HER” we can truly say as we stand at the feet of Jesus Crucified and try to enter into the Immaculate Heart of our Mother Most Sorrowful.
She was as crucified in heart as her Divine Son was crucified in body. Besides, if many of the mystics in the past and even today, are given the experience of one or other of Christ’s sufferings on the cross—the crown of thorns, the Sacred Wounds or the pains of the scourging—we believe that Mary, the Queen of Mystics and of Martyrs, the Co-redemptrix and the divinely appointed Associate of Jesus in the very work of redemption, was given a like privilege surpassing that of any or of all the saints. Was she not given to experience, not only spiritually in her heart, but even physically in her body, the pains of her Beloved’s crucifixion?
Her one-ness with Jesus Crucified: he is lifted up in body; she in heart; He suffers unspeakably in every member; she, more than any other, shared with Him those pains. He is filled with mortal shame and confusion; her heart was an abyss of bitter sorrows.
Yet, just as Jesus from the Cross loved and forgave all sinners and prayed for those who crucified Him, so did Mary reflect most perfectly the love and forgiveness of His Heart in hers. She is the Mirror of Justice reflecting in her sorrowful heart all the sufferings by which Jesus satisfied the Justice of His Father for the sins of mankind. So, likewise, she is the Seat of mercy, for she will hold in her arms at the end, the price of our salvation, the lifeless body of her Jesus Crucified.
“Son, behold thy Mother!” You cannot contemplate Jesus Crucified without hearing from Christ’s dying lips the mandate quoted above. Our Lady told the servants at the wedding feast at Cana, “Do whatever he tells you”. Jesus, with His dying breath told us all, “Behold thy Mother!” It is a command from the lips of the dying God that we honor, imitate and above all LOVE His mother, the Mother of God and our Mother.
