SECTION IV THE CHARACTERISTICS OF OUR LADY'S DOLORS
The characteristics of our Lady's dolors are, as might be expected,
closely connected with the fountains out of which they spring, and
these must now be the subject of inquiry. Although they will come out
strongly and clearly as we consider the different dolors in succession,
yet a general view of them is necessary in order to give a true idea of
her martyrdom as a whole. When we have once seen it as a unity, we
shall the better understand the marvellous details which a nearer
inspection will disclose to us. The first characteristic of her sorrows
was that they were lifelong, or nearly so. It is generally agreed that
our Blessed Lady did not know she was to be the Mother of God before
the moment of the Incarnation. Until that time, therefore, she might
have had such a gift of prophecy as to foresee confusedly that her life
was to be one of great sorrow and heroic endurance, but her particular
dolors could not have been distinctly before her. But when she actually
bore within herself the Eternal Word made flesh, a great change must
have come over her in this respect. She
was in such unutterable union with God, and understood so deeply and
truly the mystery of the Incarnation, and such a light was shed for her
upon the depths of Hebrew prophecy, that it is impossible not to
believe that the Passion of Jesus lay clearly before her, with all the
Thirty-Three Years of poverty, hardship, and abasement, and
consequently with it, at least in its main outlines, her own
Compassion. This is the least we can think, but in truth we think much
more. We cannot agree with those writers who make her dolors to begin
with the prophecy of Simeon. No doubt God may have been pleased at that
moment to bring the whole sorrowful future more distinctly before her,
and to have painted the vision in more vivid colors. That Simeon's
words were Divine instruments for effecting a change within her soul is
more than probable. But it seems hardly honorable to her to conceive
that during the nine months of her intimate union with the Incarnate
Word she should not have understood His mission of suffering and blood,
or the laws of expiation and redeeming grace, or the certainty that she
also would have to drink deeply of the same cup with Him. At all
events, from the time of Simeon's prophecy, if not from the first
moment of the Incarnation, her sorrows were lifelong. Like those of
Jesus, they were ever before her. She had no bright intervals over
which impending evil cast no sorrow. There was an inevitable uniformity
of shade over her path. The darkest destinies of men are unequal, and
in this inequality there is relief. The sorrow that clings closest
sometimes relaxes its hold. The clouds now and then give way before
strong sunshine, even though it be but for a while. The misfortune,
which occasionally dogs a man all through life, at times seems to grow
weary of its chase, and turns backward, as if it had forsaken its prey,
or at least allowed him breathing-time. But Mary's subjection to sorrow
was riveted upon her as if with iron. It never relaxed. It never grew
milder. It gave her no respite. It was in her life, and only by laying
down her life could she extricate herself from its inseparable
companionship. The Passion was not a dark end to a bright life, or an
obscure sunset after a checkered day of light and gloom, or an isolated
tragedy in sixty-three years of common human vicissitudes. It was part
of a whole, with consistent antecedents, a deepening certainty of the
darkness, but a portion of a lifelong darkness, which for years had
known, in this respect at least, no light. We must bear this in mind
throughout, if we would understand her sorrows rightly. They were not
so much separate events; they were the going on of a charmed life,
round which Heaven had wrapped a singular law of sorrow, only with a
stronger light cast upon some of its abysses than upon others.
But her sorrows were not only lifelong; they were continually
increasing. The more she became familiarized with the vision of them,
the more also she realized them, and the more terrible they seemed.
This growth of them does not appear incompatible with the immensity of
her science, or do any dishonor to it. They gave up new features, new
pains, new depths, new possibilities to her continual meditation, just
as in a far lower degree they do still to ours. The more we occupy our
minds with the mysteries of the Incarnation, the more do we learn about
them. The horizon grows wider the higher we climb. When our eye gets
used to the peculiar soft darkness, the more unfathomable do we
perceive the depth of the abyss to be. What then must all this have
been to her, whose penetrating steadfast gaze was so unlike our cursory
distracted meditation, whose meditation was unbroken for years, and
whose own heart was so deeply interested in the subject? Moreover, as
they came nearer, they naturally became more terrible. They threw a
deeper shadow. They inspired greater fear. The first breaths of the
storm began to blow cold upon her heart. She clung to Jesus. He seemed
more beautiful than ever. But there was no hope. The wide sea was
around her, without a harbor. She had no home but the great deep. It
was the will of God. Meanwhile Jesus waxed more beautiful day by day.
The first twelve years ran out, leaving results of heavenly loveliness
and love beyond our power of summing. Then the next eighteen, when
every word, and every look, and every meek subjection were thick with
mysteries of Heaven. Her life had almost passed out of her into Him, so
exceedingly had He become her light, and life, and love, and all. Then
came the three years' ministry, and it seemed as if the Babe of
Bethlehem, or the Boy of Nazareth, had been nothing to the Preacher of
love, whose words, and works, and miracles appeared to charge the world
with more of supernatural beauty than it could bear, so that men rose
up madly to put out the light which hurt them by its strong shining. As
this loveliness increased, her love increased, and with her love her
agony; and all three were continually increasing, with majesty and with
velocity. The transcendent beauty of the three years' Ministry seemed
to make it impossible for her to endure the Passion; and did it not
seem to show as if by the beauty of His preaching alone, and by His
human tears, and His vigils on the mountains, and His footsore
journeys, and His hunger, and thirst, and sweet patience, and the
persuasiveness of His miracles, and the wondrous enticing wisdom of His
parables, the world might be redeemed, and Calvary be spared? It is a
short word to say, but there are volumes in it: Jesus had become a
habit to her; could He be torn from her and she survive? And so one
motive grew to another, and one thought quickened another, and one
affection intensified another, and thus her dolors grew, quicker than
the gourds grow in summer, and all the quicker as the time grew near.
It was also a characteristic of her sorrows that they were in her soul,
rather than in her body. Not that her body was without its fearful and
appropriate sufferings. We have seen that already. But they were
nothing to the sorrows of her soul. The one bore no proportion to the
other. Physical pain is hard to bear, so hard that when it comes to a
certain point it seems unbearable. It lays hands upon our life, which
shrinks away at the touch. No one can think lightly of bodily pain. Yet
how light is it compared with mental suffering! Even to us the agonies
of the soul are far more dreadful than the tortures of the body. Yet we
are gross and material, compared to our Blessed Lady, almost as if we
were creatures of another species. The more refined and delicate the
soul, the more excruciating is its agony. What then must have been the
pains of a soul which was such an immaculate vessel of grace as hers
was! We have no standards by which to measure what she felt. Her powers
of suffering are beyond our comprehension. All we know is that they
transcended all human experience, and that the two Hearts of Jesus and
Mary were raised into a world of suffering of their own, where no other
hearts of flesh can follow them. Her pains were Martyrdom reversed; for
the seat of the anguish was in the soul, and flowed over, blistering
and burning, on the sympathetic flesh; while with the Martyrs the soul
poured sweet balm into the wounded flesh, and the Heaven within burned
more brightly than the lighted fire or the wild beast's eye without. In
this also she was distinguished in some respect even from Jesus. His
Soul was crucified in Gethsemane, His Body upon Calvary. On her body
not a wound was made; from her veins not a drop of blood was drawn. His
Body and His Blood had come from hers, and it was enough that His
should suffer for them both. This perfectly interior character of her
dolors, so often independent of external circumstances, and requiring
in order to its just appreciation a spiritual discernment, must not be
lost sight of as one of their most distinguishing characteristics.
If we may make bold to think for a moment of what theology calls the
Circuminsession of the Three Divine Persons, the way in which Each lies
in the lap of the Others, it will carry us far beyond any prerogatives
of Mary, putting a simply infinite distance between the Creator and the
creature. Nevertheless, the idea of that eminent unity will draw us out
of our low thoughts more nearly to a just appreciation of the union
between Jesus and His Mother. The Heart of each seemed to lie in the
Heart of the other. This was especially true of Mary. His beauty drew
her out of herself. She lived in His Heart rather than her own. His
interests were hers. His dispositions became hers. She thought with
Him, felt with Him, and, as far as might be, identified herself with
Him. She lived only for Him. Her life was His instrument to be done
with what He willed. In this union sometimes she was the Mother, with
her whole heart poured out upon her Son, rejoicing in all she was, in
all she had, in all she could do or suffer, simply as so much material
to sacrifice for Him. Sometimes it was almost as if she were the child
and He the Father, she so leaned upon Him, and obeyed Him, and had not
a thought which was not His, hardly a thought even for Him. It was for
Him to think and to dispose; she would follow, minister, sympathize,
agree, worship Him with her love. We read wonderful things of the
Saints, and of their union with God; but there never was any to compare
with this union of Jesus and Mary. It stood alone in degree; it stood
alone in kind. It was like itself, and it was like no other union,
except that which it distantly, and yet so softly and so truly,
shadowed, the Unity of the Most Holy Trinity. Now, she lived far more
vitally in this outward life than in her inward life; or, to speak more
justly, this outward life, this life in Jesus, was more inward, more
really her own life, than the other; and it was one of the
characteristics of her dolors that they were not so much in herself as
in Him whom she loved far more than self. There are some human sorrows
which have faint parallels to this. Shadows of it have crossed widowed
mothers' hearts, when their first-born stood glorious on manhood's
threshold, and death put out his light and drew him under. But none
have felt as Mary felt, for none have lived in such union with the
object of their love, and none have had such an object at once Divine,
and human, and their own, which they might so dare to love, with a love
which they need not be at the pains to distinguish from absolute
worship.
Another characteristic of our Lady's sorrows is the union of their
great variety with the fact of their being interior, that is, of their
being unitedly felt in one place, her heart. Indeed, this follows from
the fact of their being interior, and is the cause of a very peculiar
kind of suffering. When the instruments of torture went from one limb
of the Martyr to another, there was almost a relief in the vicissitude.
We most of us know what the concentrated pressure of pain upon one
nerve is like, especially when that pressure is kept tight for hours,
or days, or even weeks. It is quite a different sort of agony from
flying, shifting pains, or even from the fiery shooting, pains which
are so hard to bear. But when we transfer this uniform pressure from a
limb or a nerve to the heart, the result of suffering must be
incalculable. The variety of her sorrows was almost infinite. Both His
Natures, human and Divine, supplied countless diversities of grief,
multiplied its motives, intensified its bitterness. The bodily pains of
the Passion, the mental sufferings, the deep abasements, the cries, the
faces, the very visible thoughts of the multitudes around, were so many
different kinds of pain to her. And then the complete unity of her
undivided affections added immensely to them all. She loved only One.
The causes of her martyrdom were all centred in one. There was no other
object in her heart to call off some portion of her grief and distract
it from its overwhelming fixity. How sweet are the child's cries to the
fresh widow's heart! what an eloquent distraction, better than if an
Angel spoke! Oh, that cry is like a great grace from Heaven,
strong-shouldered to bear so much of the dark burden! But Mary had no
diversion to her woes. Innumerable as they were, they ran up into one
supernatural, many-headed point, and pierced with all their might the
very centre of her life, the beautiful sanctuary of her loving heart.
But this was not all. Not only was she without other objects, other
duties, other loves, to distract her in her misery, but actually that
which should naturally have alleviated her sorrows only embittered and
poisoned them. What should have been light was worse than Egyptian
darkness. What ought to have given life was in her case enough to kill.
The goodness of our Blessed Lord put a special barb of its own on every
shaft that pierced her heart. It was His holiness that made His death
so awful. His love of her, which in its own nature was more than a
consolation to her, nay, was positively her life, was the grand cruelty
of her Compassion. Had she loved Him less, or had He loved her less,
her dolors would not have so far transcended all human parallel. The
exquisiteness of each torture was precisely in her love. But His
Divinity! the secret glory of His bright impassible Nature, might she
not pillow her weary head thereon? O dearest of all the dogmas of the
faith! how many an aching heart and outworn spirit and tempest-troubled
soul, when all the world had gone to shipwreck round it, has lain down
upon thy soft and welcome bed, and tasted peace when all was trouble
above and beneath, within and without! To how many thousands has that
doctrine been like an angelic visitant, bidding the storms cease, and
smoothing even the bed of death! And shall it be nothing to her who has
more to do with it than any other of God's creatures? Nothing? Oh, far
from that; it shall be to her a new abyss, unknown hitherto, of human
sorrow, in which she shall sink immeasurable depths and yet find no
end. It shall so swathe her in suffering that she shall lie to all
appearance helpless on a vast sea of sorrow. Every thing went by the
rule of contraries in her Martyrdom. The very things which of
themselves would lighten her load were like murderous hands that held
her under the dark waters with cruel force. And because she was too
strong to suffocate, she suffered the more terribly. This also is not
without parallel in human sorrow, though none such ever came nigh to
hers. But a sorrow without a sympathy is a rare phenomenon, even on
this unkindly earth. Yet where shall she find sympathy with hers? There
is but one in the whole world who can understand her, and it is He who,
by His sufferings, is inflicting all this suffering upon her. She will
give all her sympathy to Him rather than seek it from Him. She must
bear in secret. St. Joseph knew her well, but he never knew her fully.
Her heart is a mystery even to St. John, although he had been initiated
into the secrets of the Sacred Heart. And that dear Apostle himself
needs her love to keep him upright beneath his Master's Cross. Even in
the eighteen years it is not easy to think that Jesus and Mary talked
much of their future sorrows, or sought sympathy in each other's love.
To me it seems more probable that they never spoke of the matter at
all. Besides which, her sympathy with Him was simply worship; it was
love indeed, true, fond, maternal love, yet it was worship also, and
unlike all common sympathy with grief. When she slowly walked away from
the garden-tomb on Friday night, she re-entered a world where not one
soul
could understand her, not even the holy passionate Magdalen. It was
darkness without one gleam of light, a wilderness all terrors, a life
without one point of attraction, one resting-place for her broken
heart. She shut her sorrows up within herself, enduring them in a
hot-hearted silence, and there were none who could do more than guess
the aching void that was beating like a wild pulse in that maternal
heart.
These were the characteristics of her sorrows; and what is every word
that has been said but a deepening shade to the dark, dark picture?
What then shall we think of that last characteristic of her dolors,
which so amazed St. Bernard, the moderation with which she bore them?
Who is ever able to forget, when they meditate upon our Blessed Mother,
the heavenly tranquility of her "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," at
the Annunciation? The same tranquility is unbroken even when her heart
is breaking beneath the Cross. Except in the case of very high
sanctity, and even there the exception does not always hold, moderation
in sorrow would imply something like coldness or insensibility. We
should hardly love very tenderly anyone the even tenor of whose way
deep affliction could not disturb. In the case of the Saints the love
of God acts as a countercharm to the spells of sorrow. It at once
distracts and compensates, and so makes endurance easier. But with Mary
it was just in her love of God that the exceeding bitterness of her
agony consisted. If then we figure to ourselves the bewildering
complications of misery, the enormous weight of sorrow, the
supernatural aggravations also of it, which she had to bear, and then
the way in which with such resistless might it bore down upon her
solitary heart, it is amazing to see it all break upon her tranquility,
as a billow breaks in idle foam upon some huge promontory, which
quivers to its base as it flings the wild waters back, and yet remains
unbroken. So it was with her. She was not insensible like the cold
granite. On the contrary, the tempest went through her, searched every
corner of her capacious nature, filled to overflowing every possibility
of suffering, and drenched with bitterness every faculty and affection.
Yet not a ruffle passed on her tranquillity. Her peace within was as
untroubled as the cavities of the ocean when the surface is wildly
rocking in the storm. Nevertheless, this tranquility was no protection
to her against the intensity of suffering. It rather enabled her to
suffer more. It allowed the grief to penetrate more unresistedly into
every part of her. Yet there was no wildness, no loud sighs, no broken
sobs, no outspoken words of complaint. Still less---the thought is one
which would never have crossed the mind of an intelligent lover of
Mary, if careless, un theological pictures had not indecorously brought
it before so many of us---still less were there any vehement attitudes
of grief, any contortions of the venerable beauty of her face, any
womanish wringing of the hands, any negligence of dishevelled hair, any
prostrations on the ground as of one overcome with mortal anguish,
least of all any fainting away, any need of a supporting arm around
her, whether it were that of John or Magdalen, any suspension of that
glorious reason which sleep even had not interrupted in its magnificent
exercises since the very first moment of the Immaculate Conception. Let
us in indignant love give to the flames these ignorant, dishonorable
representations, and drive out of ourselves the odious images which
their skill and beauty may have left upon our minds. Mary "stood"
beneath the Cross: that is the simple grandeur of the scriptural
picture, which represented the actual truth, and whose artist was her
own Spouse, the Holy Ghost. And it was on the picture of that calm
standing woman on which her fond child, St. Bernard, gazed in admiring
love. This too is the attractiveness of our Lady's apparitions in the
revelations of Mary of Agreda, compared with her portrait in the
visions of Sister Emmerich. The instincts of the Spanish nun were more
true than those even of the artistic soul of the ecstatic German. Never
then must we put away from ourselves the thought of this moderation of
Mary in her woes. There was nothing wild, nothing unsettled, nothing
dramatic, nothing passionate, nothing demonstrative, nothing excessive;
but she stood in calmest, queenliest dignity, quiet, not as a sweet
evening landscape, or a noontide summer sea, or a green wood at dawn,
or a moonlit mountain-top, or as any other image in the poetry of
nature, but quiet, in her measure and degree, as the Divine Nature of
our Lord while the tumult of the Passion was trampling His Human Nature
to death. Her tranquility was the image of that tranquility. It was one
of many participations in Himself which Jesus gave to her in those dark
hours.
|
E-MAIL