6) Mary's endless patience

Renewal of Consecration to Jesus through Mary

Three days remain before the great feast of the Annunciation, postponed this year because Easter came early. St Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort recommends the Annunciation as being a fitting day for consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary (or renewal of consecrations). He mentions this in his work True Devotion to Mary (1712) where he also refers approvingly to La triple couronne de la bien-heureuse Vierge Mère de Dieu (The Triple Crown of the Blessed Virgin Mother of God), by Fr F Poiré, published in 1634

In the days remaining before the Annunciation, I am posting excerpts taken from chapter 11 of the  of fourth treatise  in The Triple Crown of the Blessed Virgin. This chapter addresses eight great qualities of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. The sixth excerpt concerns her exceptional patience

6) Mary's patience

According to St James, patience hath a perfect work, [1]  bringing the other virtues to a gentle perfection. The patience of the Blessed Virgin was truly heroic, deeply good-natured and most accomplished.

[1] Omne gaudium existimate fratres mei, cum in tentationes varias incideritis : scientes quod probatio fidei vestrae patientiam operatur. Patientia autem opus perfectum habet : ut sitis perfecti et integri in nullo deficientes. 
My brethren, count it all joy, when you shall fall into divers temptations; Knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience. And patience hath a perfect work; that you may be perfect and entire, failing in nothing. [James i. 2-4]

The patience of the Blessed Virgin was truly heroic

     Truly heroic: If spiritual suffering is incomparably greater than that of the body, what then must have been the suffering of the Blessed Virgin when she perceived St Joseph's troubles, when torrents of anxiety overwhelmed her afflicted spirit and when her own soul a sword did pierce? [2]  If love is the measure of suffering, what must she not have endured on seeing the blessed fruit of her womb and the unique object of her love being brought forth into a world of such great wretchedness and poverty?  What were the marks of her pain when after eight days she saw Him covered with His own blood, then in great distress when hunted to death and forced to seek refuge in Egypt? When she lost Him at the age of twelve? When she heard Him called a Samaritan, possessed of a devil, a drunkard, a seducer of the people and someone who violated the Law? When she learned he had been condemned to die on a Cross like a common malefactor? When we see a the suffering of someone who is dear to us, we too feel pain within ourselves. What must it have been like for this Mother when the unspotted Lamb, her own Son, was bound with rope and fetter, dragged through the streets of Jerusalem and from one court to another by soldiers who were unspeakably insolent, to the accompaniment of jeers and insults from the people who saw Him pass? When He was mocked, slapped, spat upon, struck and wounded by blows, covered in His own blood from head to toe, pierced with nails, given wine and vinegar to drink, blasphemed against and abused in every way imaginable? 

     If someone would need a firm and stout heart to bear being separated from someone dearly loved, to see his soul torn from him by terrible torments and cruelties, then great God! what would be the state of Mary's heart when her Son bade her His last farewell from the Cross? When in place of Jesus, she received John, the Disciple replacing the Master, a man for God? If the height of patience means to suffer the greatest of evils with a spirit at once firm and resolute, then the Virgin Mary's patience was heroic to a miraculous degree, for she saw Him who was the best of all the children in creation suffer all these excesses, she saw Him give up the ghost, after His death she held Him in her arms, keeping her emotions largely hidden from view, maintaining her composure and without showing any sign of weakness?

 [2]  Luke ii. 35

The patience of the Blessed Virgin was kind-hearted

     Even more remarkable is that Mary's patience was deeply kind-hearted, so that the Blessed Virgin's heart never felt the slightest emotion of indignation, of anger or of vengeance towards those who treated her Son so brutally. On the contrary, from the bottom of her heart she commended them immediately to God and implored Him, by the Cross and by the death of His beloved Son, to pardon their blindness. Even when their rage causes them to show no mercy in spilling the precious blood of this gentle Lamb, Mary offers her Son to the Eternal Father on their behalf, entreating Him to avert His gaze from the bloody suffering so as to concentrate on the adorable face of His only-begotten Son, who was offering His own martyrdom for the sake of their forgiveness.

The patience of the Blessed Virgin was perfect

     Finally, Mary's patience was perfect because with incredible perseverance she held steady right to the very end so as to offer to God a full sacrifice in all its perfection. This is what the Evangelist noted when he said that she stood by the Cross, [3]  meaning thereby that although her heart was plunged into the depths of pain and grief, she nevertheless held firm unto the end, untroubled by the rage of the Scribes or the criminality of the executioners, having no fear of the darkness descending on the earth ... remaining focussed unceasingly on the limitless patience, the fearsome justice and the infinite mercy of God; with an unshakeable expectation of the coming glory of her Son and the fulfilment of all Heaven's promises. Her patience did not end there but stayed with her until the end of her life, enabling her to accept trials with resignation, mitigating for her the tribulations she met with in this mortal prison, allowing her to bear with calmness the absence of her dear Son, receiving in exchange the sacred Word of God which guided her along the difficult paths and past the difficult encounters of this life, leading to the ascent of Mt Horeb.

 

[3]  Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother. John xix. 25

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.