THE FIRST DOLOR
THE PROPHECY OF ST. SIMEON
NOWHERE in the Old Testament do we seem to come so near to God as in
the book of Job. Nowhere is He more awfully enshrouded in mystery, or
more terrible in His counsels regarding the children of men; and yet
nowhere is He more plainly or more tenderly our Father. It is because
the mystery of suffering is depicted therein. Because it is all so
human, it seems to lead us so far into the Divine. Because it is the
uttermost trial of the creature, he lies the more completely in the
Creator's arms. The calamities of Job are to the Old Testament what the
Passion of our Lord is to the New, and the one was an intentional
foreshadowing of the other. When we come to speak of our Lady's dolors,
we remember the touching picture of Job's friends, when they heard of
his afflictions and came to visit him. "When they had lifted up their
eyes afar off, they knew him not, and crying out they wept, and rending
their garments, they sprinkled dust upon their heads toward Heaven. And
they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no man
spoke to him a word; for they saw that his grief was very great." They
knew that silence was the best consolation. There was nothing which
could so touch the heart of the mourner, as the fact that his friends
appreciated the excess of his bereavement. When at last they spoke,
then they irritated. The charm of their sweet silent presence was gone.
Sympathy degenerated into an argument. An unconvincing argument could
end only in reproach. They, more than Job himself, "wrapped up
sentences in unskillful words." But still more wonderful than this
silence of the friends of Job was the silence of Jesus on the Cross,
deeply suffering a distinct inward martyrdom because of the sorrows of
His Mother. He spoke no word to her, but that one whereby He made her
over to St. John. No maxim full of celestial wisdom, no tone of filial
endearment, no acknowledgment that He saw and felt her sufferings, no
blessing full of grace and fortitude, fell on her ear as He hung upon
the Cross. In truth, she needed none of them. She saw His Heart. She
understood her Son. She was by this time marvelously accustomed to the
ways of God. Silence was His devotion to her sorrows, just as silence
was the magnificence. of her suffering. Silence was in truth a
wonderful thing with Jesus and Mary. Indeed, it was almost the colloquy
they had held together for Three-and-Thirty Years. But His silence was
the silence of a full heart; and it is somewhat of that fulness which
we must ask of Him when we meditate on His Mother's sorrows. We cannot
think rightly of them, unless He vouchsafes to help us to the truth.
All we ask is one spark of what burned in Him during those silent
hours: one spark would be enough to set our hearts on fire. and consume
us with keenest love for the remainder of our mortal years. He must be
our model in sympathy with Mary, as He is in all things else. Like all
the rest of sanctity, it is He Himself Who taught devotion to our Lady.
both by precept and example.
Forty days had gone since the Angels sang at midnight. Mary. and Joseph
had been deep down all the while in Divine mysteries. The shepherds had
worshipped the newborn Babe. The three kings had laid their mystic
offerings at His feet. and the new star had melted away in the purple
of the nocturnal skies. The world had gone upon its road as usual.
Every morning there was political news in Rome, every morning
philosophical discussions in the schools of Athens. The caravans went
in and out of the gates of the white Damascus. and the sun shone on the
bend of the Orontes at Antioch. The imperial officials made up their
books and lists at Bethlehem. and Joseph and Mary were items in the
account of the provincial taxation. In the common course of things, and
according to the law, on the first of January Jesus for the first time
had shed His blood. How much had passed since the twenty-fifth of
December! Since that day the Creator had been visible in His own
creation, though it was almost under ground, in a kind of grotto, or
natural stable for kine. Now the second of February was come. Joseph
and Mary, with the Child, leave the spot where those Forty Days have
fled as swiftly as a heavenly vision. They wind round the skirt of the
narrow hill whereon the city is built. The pruned vineyards on the
steeps have scarcely yet begun to weep their vernal tears where the
knife has wounded them. But the cornfields where Ruth gleaned are
green, and the clear sunshine of early spring is on the gray rocks by
Rachel's tomb. The roofs of the Holy City are in sight, with the
glorious temple shining above all. To that temple, His own temple, the
visible Infant God was now going.
Mary had spent twelve years of her sinless life in the courts of the
temple. It was there that she had outwardly dedicated her virginity to
God, which she had vowed in the first moment of her Immaculate
Conception. It was there she meditated over the ancient scriptures, and
learned the secrets of the Messias. She was coming back to it again,
still virgin, yet, mystery of grace! a mother with a child. She came to
be purified, who was purer than the untrodden snow on Lebanon. She came
to present her Child to God, and do for the Creator what no creature
but herself could do, give Him a gift fully equal to Himself. When the
second temple was built, the ancients of the people lifted up their
voices and wept, because its glory was not equal to the glory of the
first; but the first temple had never seen such a day as that which was
now dawning on the temple of Herod. The glory of the Holy of Holies was
but a symbol of the real glory, which Mary was now bearing thitherward
in her arms. But she had two offerings with her. She bore one, and
Joseph the other. She bore her Child, and he the pair of turtle-doves,
or two young pigeons, for her purification. Many saw them pass. But
there was nothing singular in them, nothing especially attractive to
the eyes of the beholders. So it always is where God is. Now that He is
visible, He is in truth, except to faith and love, just as invisible as
He ever was.
Others, too, were drawing toward the temple for the morning sacrifices.
There was the aged Simeon. The blossoms of the grave were clustered
thickly on his head, He had outlived his own day, with its men and
things, its sympathies and associations. He was not mixed up with the
spirit of the times. He was above its politics. He kept apart from the
conflicts of its disputatious Pharisees and Sadducees. The world seemed
to him to be growing more and more intolerably wicked, and less and
less a place for him, less and less a home at all possible for weary
souls. But there was one thing he had longed to see. He was willing
Heaven should be put off, if only he might see that sight on earth. The
Christ! God had promised him that so it should be. "He had received an
answer from the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had
seen the Christ of the Lord." He was coming that day to the morning
sacrifice, whether with clear views, or any spiritual presentiments, or
an unwonted fire in his heart, who can tell? There was another, also,
that morning in the temple, a widow of fourscore years and four, the
daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser, from the olive-spotted plain
of Acre and the mild inlets of the western sea. The spirit of prophecy
dwelt within her. She needed not to come to the temple; for she never
departed from it, "by prayers and fasting serving night and day." And
now Mary and Joseph have entered with the Child. What preparations has
not God vouchsafed to make for that solemnity in the temple on the
second of February! How many graces have gone to sanctify the aged
Simeon! What long years of austerity and what great heights of prayer
are known to the soul of Anna! There has been more work in the soul of
Joseph than went to the creation of the world. Mary is the very chosen
trophy of the Divine magnificence. Volumes of commentary have been
written on her gifts, her graces, and her interior beauty, and yet how
little do we know! Then there is the Incarnate Word, Whom the
silent angels of the temple are worshipping in tremulous awe, as
He crosses the threshold of His earthly house. Was there any lighting
up in the Infant's eye as He took possession of His temple? Did the
lights go out in the Holy of Holies, now that the Holiest of all was
outside the veil, throned in a mortal Mother's arms?
Mary made her offerings, and "performed all things according to the law
of the Lord." For the spirit of Jesus was a spirit of obedience; and,
although the brightness of angelic innocence was dull beside the
whiteness of her purity, she obeyed the law of God in the ceremony of
her purification, the more readily as it was in fact a concealment of
her graces. But she bore also in her arms her true turtle-dove, to do
for Him likewise "according to the custom of the law," She placed Him
in the arms of the aged priest Simeon, as she has done since in vision
to so many of the Saints; and the full light broke on Simeon's soul.
Weak with age, he threw his arms around His God. He bore the whole
weight of his Creator, and yet stood upright. The sight of that infant
Face was nothing less than the glory of Heaven. The Holy Ghost had kept
His promise. Simeon had seen---nay, was at that moment handling--"the
Lord's Christ," a blessed priest! worn down with age, wearied with thy
long years of waiting for the "consolation of Israel," kept alive in
days which were out of harmony with thy spirit, even as St. John the
Evangelist was after thee, surely He Who made thee, He Who is so soon
to judge thee, He Whom thou art folding so fondly in thine arms, must
have sent the strength of His omnipotence into thy heart, else thou
wouldst never have been able to bear the flood of strong gladness which
at that moment broke in upon thy spirit! Look at Him again, See those
red lips so soon to speak thy sentence of eternal life. Light thy heart
at the fire of those little eyes. It is the Christ! Oh, how much
prophecy is fulfilled! The history of the world is finding its
accomplishment, The crown is being put upon creation. The long secular
yearnings of patriarchs, and kings, and prophets,---they were all after
the beauty of that Infant Face. Thou hast seen the Christ. Every thing
is in that word. The sight was heaven. Earth has nothing more to do
with thee. It had best roll itself away from under thy feet as quickly
as possible, and let thee drop into the infinite Bosom of thy Father,
the beauty of Whose Son may kill thee by the gentlest and most
beautiful of deaths. It is hard for him to part with that sweet burden
from his arms. In that extreme old age the vents of song have been
opened in his soul, and in the silence of the temple he sings his Nunc dimittis, even as Zachary sang
his Benedictus, and Mary her Magnificat. Age after age shall
take up the strain. All the poetry of Christian weariness is in it. It
gives a voice to the heavenly detachment and unworldliness of countless
Saints. It is the heart's evening light, after the working hours of the
day, to millions and millions of believers. The very last compline that
the Church shall sing. before the midnight when the doom begins and the
Lord breaks out upon the darkness from the refulgent east, shall
overflow with the melodious sweetness of Simeon's pathetic song. Joseph
was wrapt even then in an ecstasy of holy admiration. Even Mary
"wondered" at the words, so deep, so beautiful, so true; for she knew,
as no others knew, how marvelously her Babe was of a truth the light of
all the world. And when, in her humility, she knelt for the blessing of
the aged priest, had he Jesus in his arms still when he blessed her,
and did he wave the Child above her in the Sign of the Cross, like a
Christian Benediction, or had she Jesus in her arms, holding Him at His
Own creature's feet to get a blessing? Either way, how wonderful the
mystery! But what a strange blessing for thee. happy sinless Mother!
There is other poetry in Simeon than those strains of light which
flashed from him but a while ago. There is other music now for Mary's
ear, the terrible music of dark prophecy which the Holy Ghost utters
from His sanctuary in the old priest's heart; and we would fain think
that Simeon held Jesus in his arms when he uttered it, by the very way
in which he begins. "Behold, this Child is set for the fall, and for
the resurrection of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be
contradicted. And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many
hearts thoughts may be revealed."
Simeon was silent. But over Mary's soul there came an inexplicable
change. Perhaps she learned now what she had not known before. But more
probably it only came to her then in another way. Yet it was a change,
an operation of grace, a new sanctification, an immense work of God. A
clear and detailed vision of all her sorrows, especially of the whole
Passion, was with its minutest circumstances instantaneously impressed
upon 'her soul; and her immaculate heart was deluged with a sea of
sorrow, which was supernatural both in its kind and its intensity. It
seemed as if the vision came from the very face of Jesus, as if His
eyes looked it into her and engraved it there. She saw His Own Heart
all unveiled, with all its inward dispositions. It was as if the
Incarnation had come upon her again, and in a different way. She was
raised to fresh heights of holiness. She entered upon another vast
region of her appanage as the Mother of God. She was the same Mary, and
yet a different one, who but a while ago had entered the temple. But
there was no surprise with this portentous change. No starting, no weak
tremor, no fluttering of the spirit. Her unshaken peace grew more
peaceful, because of the world of bitterness that had gone down into
it. The Light of the World had flashed up on high in Simeon's arms, in
Simeon's song, and there followed darkness, deeper, thicker, more
palpable, than that of Egypt. Suddenly out of the sunshine of
Bethlehem, she found herself in the heart of the eclipse on Calvary;
and she was calm as before, with unastonished dignity, with the
tranquility of unutterable love, with the strength of divinest union,
and with the sword right through her broken heart, which should remain
there for eight-and-forty years, and then, when Jesus should draw it
out of the wound, she would bleed to death with love.
She heard Anna come into the temple, and acknowledge Jesus as her God.
She heard the words the aged prophetess spoke about Him to those there
who "looked for the redemption of Israel." She was careful that the
least things which the law ordained should be obediently fulfilled; and
then, with Joseph and the Child, she wended her way back to the green
hollow of Galilee, to the steep sloping streets of the sequestered
Nazareth, with the sword, that sharp sword of the Holy Ghost, within
her heart. Since she left her home in December, how much has passed!
But the sunset looks on Nazareth, gilding its white cottages, as though
all things had gone on the same from the beginning. Oh, how cruel
unchanging nature looks to a heart that has been changed in its own
despite!
Such is the mystery of our Lady's first dolor. Let us now pass to the
consideration of its peculiarities, The time at which it came, the
action in which it found her engaged, are remarkable. She had just
given to God a gift equal to Himself. There never had been such an
offering made to Him since creation began. There never can be such
another, only repetitions of the same. She had thus surpassed all
angelic worship; and she well knew that in giving Jesus back to God she
was giving Him away from herself. Her reward was immediate: it was an
unutterable life-long sorrow. Such is the way of God. This first dolor
discloses to us one of the most universal supernatural principles,
which characterize His dealings with His Saints. Earthly sorrows are
the roots of heavenly joys. A cross is a crown begun. Suffering is
dearer to the Saints than happiness; for the similitude of Christ has
passed upon them. They have His tastes, His inclinations. They thirst
for suffering, because there is something in it which is favorable to
union with God. It puts out the deceitful lights of the world; and
darkness is the light by which we can most spiritually discern God.
Moreover, the immensity of the sorrow, and the instantaneous manner in
which it followed upon her oblation, illustrate the surpassing holiness
of our Blessed Mother. God proportioned her cross to her powers of
bearing it. Nor was there any reason for delay. She needed no
preparation, no gradual process of inferior graces, no ascending scale
of lesser crosses. A whole world of sorrow might fall at once upon her.
She was ready for it, more immovable than the hills which stood around
Jerusalem. Oh, who would ever have dreamed that human fortitude could
have been so like Divine omnipotence? Henceforth every action became a
suffering, every source of
joy a fountain of bitterness. There was no hiding-place in her soul,
whither the bitterness did not penetrate. Every look at Jesus, every
movement that He made, every word He uttered,---all stirred, quickened,
diffused, the bitterness that was in her. The very lapse of time itself
was bitterness, for she saw Gethsemane and Calvary coming down the
stream toward her. Postures and attitudes, in which she saw her beloved
Son, no matter how natural they were, or, as we should speak,
accidental, had some startling likeness in them to something which was
to happen in the Passion. He was a constant study to her for the
Passion, a model which she had always before her. When a carpenter's
tool pressed against the palm of His hand, she saw the wound of the
nail there. The white brow of boyhood often seemed as if it had a
coronal of rosy spots around where the thorns should be. The prickly
pears, that made garden-hedges for the villagers of Nazareth, always
reminded her of the crown of thorns. The Passion hart become an
inevitable vision to her; It was always before her eyes. She could not
look away. She could not see either to the right or the left of that
apparition, which like a blood-red sunset occupied the whole field of
sight. Never was there such a strange alchemy of life. Every thing
about it was commuted into bitterness. The brightest joys made the most
rigorous bitters; and the process went on the most successfully, when
the sun was shining brightest, and the mother's heart expanded to its
genial light and heat. We could not bear so much as five minutes of the
suffering she then endured: and hers was lifelong. She belonged to
sorrow. It had drawn her life under its dark waters. Her life was
hidden in the Heart of Jesus, amid gloomy forms, appalling shadows,
dread insights into horrible gulfs of sin, thunders and lightnings of
Divine wrath, frenzies of lawless demons, excesses of human cruelty,
and a very living show of instruments of the Passion.
But common life was still to go on; common duties had still to be
performed. No truce was given her, no dispensation. It is not often
that extreme poverty can grant a dispensation even to the extremest
grief. And in her life the hardships of poverty were carried to the
uttermost. Whenever she had aught to spare, it went straightway to the
poor. Joseph and herself had to earn their livelihood, and Jesus must
share the task when He is old enough. Now let us think of this. When
grief has come and fastened its burden upon our backs, when the
white-faced dead is lying in a silent room upstairs, we have tried to
move about the house as usual, and to give our orders, and to take an
interest, or to seem to do so, in a variety of things, and to appear
calm. And did it succeed? Was it not just the most heart-breaking thing
of all? Oh, yes! we should have rested. The planet should have stopped
whirling eastward for a while, and all the world's duties stood still
in a dead calm, till we had lain down and wept, and then got up again
to go about our work. Yet we never had more than the touch of God's
little finger upon us, while both His Hands, heavier than a thousand
worlds, held Mary down in the dust. Nevertheless, no duty saw her
absent. No common thing missed at her hands the same degree of zeal and
attentiveness which the greatest could require. She seemed busy
everywhere, engrossed in every thing, with a mind all free and at her
own disposal. She went and drew water from the well. She cleaned the
house, and prepared the food, and spun the flax. Every thing was at its
right time and in its proper place. But the sword was there, in the
very quick of her heart. It stirred at each step, till it made very
nerve shrink, and her whole being thrill with agony. And this did not
last a week, until her dead was buried, and the green grass of the
grave-mound waved above it, and time went by shaking healing off its
wings on the soul which sorrow had parched and dried. Oh, no! Her dead
was never buried. There He was, living before her, and it was His very
life that to her was continual death. What a life,---to work, to be
active, to be collected, to be unselfish, under such an overwhelming
burden! Her grief was all interior. She was obliged to deny it the
satisfaction of an outlet .She would have seemed beside herself, and
would have been treated accordingly, had she allowed it to appear. Her
very thoughts were poisoned with wormwood: but she must not speak. Who
would have understood her, if she had spoken? She must not weep, or
only in secret and at dead of night; for why should she weep without
visible cause for it? She had food, she had raiment, she had Joseph for
a husband, Jesus for a son. Summer came, and filled the hollow valley
with greenness and with plenty. Away from the great roads, peace and
tranquility were round Nazareth. Why should she mourn? Never has the
earth seen a grief like this, never a grief like it in magnitude, never
a grief of like kind with this.
Time brought no relief. The vision was always there with a terrible
fidelity. And it was the same vision, too. There was not even the
cheerless comfort of a vicissitude of sorrow. It belonged to the
greatness of her mind that she could call before her at any moment all
the impressions which had ever been made upon her, that they should
continually be present to her inward eye in multitudes, and that there
should be in her as little succession of ideas as comports with the
imperfection of a created mind. Thus the past was one present to her,
and the future was a second present, and the present was a third
present. The greatness of her science was simply converted into an
incalculable power of suffering. The clearness of her perceptions was
as knives in flesh and soul. There was something dreadful in the
immutability of the vision. Moreover there was something infinite in
the vision. For custom did not familiarize it to her; on the contrary,
it became fresher, its edges grew sharper, it went in deeper. There was
a perpetual novelty about its monotonous images. Depths of significance
kept opening out in it, like the interlacings and unfoldings of an
unwieldy thunder cloud; and each of these depths, pushed the boundaries
of her possibility of suffering far further than they were before. Who
can think of any alleviation she could have had? Can the imagination
suggest any? None! none! The beauty of Jesus, we know, was hourly
driving Simeon's sword in. It was a hammer that rose and fell with
almost every pulse that beat in His veins. The Light of the world was
forever passing in and out of the house; but, strange to say! He cast
terrific shadows upon her, her whom He enlightened most of all; and the
more she exulted, the more intolerably she suffered. And so her days
went by, in the village of Nazareth, and among the bazaars of
Heliopolis.
It was occupation enough to her to attend to her sorrows. It was a
cruel distraction to have to go through her ordinary actions, and the
round of daily domestic duties. Is it not our experience that almost
all distractions are cruel, even when they are kindly meant? We had
rather weep than be consoled. We shall come round sooner, if those who
love us will only let us muse on our sorrow for a while. But Mary had
other sorrows to look to than her own, sorrows that not only caused
hers, but absorbed them again, and made them so forgetful as to be
hardly conscious of themselves, the sorrows of Jesus. Yet this was no
alleviation to her lifelong woe. On the contrary, it was an
aggravation. It barbed everyone of them afresh with a double bark. Thus
each sorrow was double. It echoed in two hearts. And the reverberation
made both hearts ache. What she suffered in the heart of Jesus was far
worse than what she suffered in her own. And all this mysterious
process went on in secrecy and concealment for years and years. She
sought no sympathy; she made no lamentation. She was as quiet as Heaven
when its songs are silent.
A life, with a heart broken almost from the first! This it was to be
the Mother of God. This came of her being so bound up with Jesus. A
heart-broken life? And what is life? What does the word represent? Oh,
such a breadth of diversified experiences, such multitudinous flocks of
thoughts, such crowds of complicated actions, such weariful endurance,
such tiresome coming round of the four seasons, such a swift slowness
of time, every thing so long in coming, and then coming before its
time! And to her powers of soul life was so much broader, so much
deeper, so much longer, so much more vital! And her life was a
heart-broken life. What is a broken heart? Hearts do not often break.
But we can tell what an aching heart is, or a wounded heart. Nay, we
have lived on, when our heart got crushed once. It was only a momentary
crush. The wheel of life went over it. Then it was over. Yet the
surviving it seemed a miracle. But what is a broken heart? And then a
life, with a heart broken all the while, almost from the first! O Mary!
thou wert the Mother of God, and therefore thou knowest!
But if we look attentively at this first dolor, we shall see that it
contains five distinct dolors, five separate wounds in itself. First of
all, in the offering she had made
to God, she had offered Jesus of her own free will to death. Strange
fruit of the greatness of a mother's love! Yet it was out of love that
she had made the offering, out of the holiest, purest, most
disinterested love of God. For He Who was her Son was also God, and He
Who was God was the victim likewise. But could she have foreseen all
that was involved in this? Oh, yes! every thing. Nothing had escaped
her. Nothing could be more intelligent, nothing more mature, than the
offering she had made. And when long years of oppressive sorrow had
come to lay their added weights upon her broken heart, the very thought
of retreating would have seemed worse than Calvary; for it would have
been an infidelity to Him whom she so lovingly adored. But she had
given Him away; she had given Him to death. For nine months she had
possessed Him. Never was creature so rich, never creature so supremely
blessed. Even then almost her first thought had been to bear Him over
the hill-country of Juda to Elizabeth and John. All the while she had
been longing to see His Face, and behold the light in His eyes, to hear
the tone of His infantine voice, to throw her arms around Him and press
Him, her treasure, the world's treasure, the Father's treasure, to her
bosom. She was His human Mother, and her heart was human, exquisitely
human. She woke from her ecstasy, and He was lying on her robe upon the
ground on Christmas night, stretching out His little hands to her, as
if her arms were His home, as they were. She had only had Him forty
days. Her maternal love had not begun to satisfy itself, though it had
been feeding all the while on His perfections. Nay, it was further from
being satisfied than when she first saw Him. Forty days, not a thousand
hours; and now she was giving Him away, giving Him to death, and the
sword of Simeon had gone deep into her heart to show her what a gulf
henceforth lay between herself and Him. She could have no more quiet
possession of Him. She could not forbid His Passion. He belonged to
sinners. He belonged to the anger of His Father. He was a victim, whom
she was to guard until the hour of sacrifice was come. What an office
for a mother to hold! This is what came of being the Mother of God.
But, if she had thus made Him over to the cruelty of His Divine office,
she could the less bear the contradictions of others to His honor, His
happiness, or His doctrine. Simeon had spoken of contradictions. What!
would not the whole world be at His feet? Even if He was to die,
because by the Divine ordinance without shedding of blood there is no
remission of sin, surely till then men will hang upon His lips, will
follow Him wherever He goes, to feed on His celestial words. Sinners
will everywhere be converted. The days of the saints will come back
again to the chosen people and the promised land. And when He has died
upon the Cross, the whole world will hasten to confess His royalty, and
will throng into the Church which He has founded. No! it was not to be
so. She knew it was not to be so. But what was there to contradict
about Him? He was beauty, He was truth, He was love, He was gentleness
itself. Who could be rude to Him? Who could contradict truth, eternal
truth? But she saw how it was all to be. He showed it to her in
Himself, when He unveiled to her the secrets of His soul. There was not
a dark look ever cast on His venerable face, there was not a cold word,
or a willful misunderstanding, or a petulant retort, or an unbeseeming
liberty, or an irreverent taunt, or a dire imprecation, or a chilling
blasphemy, from that hour to the day of doom, which did not go into her
heart with excruciating distress. The howling cries of those multitudes
at Jerusalem, ravening for His Blood, echoed day and night within her
maternal heart. This then was to be the first fruits of that
magnificent oblation, in order to make which grace had to raise her
almost to heights, certainly to neighborhoods, Divine! Men would not
appreciate her offering. They would not understand it. They would scout
it, mock it, contradict it, be cruel to it. No one yet has ever
understood it, either in Heaven or earth, save the Eternal Father to
whom she made it. He alone knew the worth of what she gave, the worth
of Jesus, of the Incarnate Word. Do we know it? Impossible; for, if we
did, our lives would not be what they are. There is a knowledge which
brings practice along with it: it is the knowledge by which sanctity
knows, not the mere knowledge of the understanding.
Alas! poor Mother! Her heart is all wounds, one opening into another,
lifelong wounds, which, like the stigmata of the Saints, bleed, but
never ulcerate. At least those who contradict Him shall learn at last
to see the greatness of their error. They shall come back to Him like
wanderers. They shall one day become themselves triumphs of His
redeeming grace. Out of Him flow grace, and sweetness, and attraction,
and healing. His beauty, confessed at last, shall wind itself around
them as a spell. Thus the grief of all this contradiction may be
endurable. But, no! the sword of Simeon, like the sword of the Cherubim
that guards the entrance of the earthly paradise, "flames and turns
every way." Positus in ruinam
multorum, set for the fall of many, their utter fall, their
ruin, their irreparable ruin! Is Jesus to lose forever some of His Own
creatures? Nay, is He to drive them from Himself by the very brightness
of His light, by the very heavenliness of His beauty? Are there to be
souls for whom it would have been better had He never come? Oh, cruel
thought, cruelest of all! For the more Mary mused upon the Passion, and
the longer she had it all before her eyes, all the more avariciously
she coveted souls, the more she hungered and thirsted after the harvest
of the Passion, and became the Mother of sinners because she was the
Mother of the Saviour, the Mother who gave Him away to death when she
had possessed Him but forty days in Bethlehem. The countless multitudes
of those who were to be saved were the nearest approach to an
alleviation of her inconsolable sorrow. But even upon this semblance of
a consolation she was not to lean. Oh, it was a fearful thought to
think of her beautiful Child, that He was to be in some sense a
destroyer. Not altogether a Saviour, but a law of life which was to be
a sentence of death to some, nay, to many. Things had become very grave
now between God and His world. Jesus would be a touchstone. Men must
take their sides now, more definitely, more intelligently. God was
weary of their sins, weary of waiting for their return. The very
greatness of this last long-prophesied mercy made the rejection of it
the more fatal and irretrievable. The salvation of men would now be in
some respects more like that of the Angels. Their probation was
becoming more Divine, and therefore more decisive. To reject Jesus was
to be lost eternally, and yet the "Rejected of men" was one of the very
names which Scripture gave Him. If any thing could have been hard to
Mary's faith, it would have been that Jesus was to be the ruin of many
souls; and faith's heroic acceptance of this worshipful truth only made
the edge of it keener, and the point sharper, to go down into her
heart.
It is part of our imperfection that one impression upon our mind dulls
another. We cannot attend to many things at once. Even sorrows, when
they come thickly, in some measure neutralize each other. Great sorrows
absorb us, and then little ones fall upon us, and we hardly feel them
more than the drops of a thunder-shower. We are conscious of them: but
the suffering they cause is hardly distinct. But it was not so in our
Lady, with the perfections of her unfallen nature. Her self-collection
was complete, and embraced every thing. There was no confusion in her
mind from want of balance. It received, appreciated, and thoughtfully
handed on to her exquisite sensibilities of pain, every slightest
aggravation of anyone of her multiplied sorrows. So it was now. The
curse incurred by her native land, because of the rejection of Jesus,
was a distinct and bitter grief. All the glories of its past history,
from the Exodus to the Maccabees, rose up before her mind. Her heart
swelled over the vicissitudes, now sad, now glorious, of her people.
She thought of the Tombs of the saints and prophets scattered among the
hills. Her eye traversed the battlefields, where the sword of man had
so often avenged the majesty of God. It was the land of promise, very
various, very beautiful. It had what no other land had upon it, the
golden light of God's mysterious choice. It was the holy East advancing
to the water's edge, and confronting that grand West which it was first
to convert, and then civilize, and last of all to glorify. It was not a
mere feeling of patriotism which stirred within her. That land had been
the earthly home of heavenly truth, when the rest of the world lay in
the cold shadow of spiritual darkness. It was more like a sanctuary
than a region of the earth's geography. There was hardly a mountain
which had not seen some miracle, hardly a hollow to which some promise
was not attached. The banks of its river, the shores of its inland sea,
were overhung with clouds of sacred poetry. A very network of
prophecy layover the whole land, over all the localities of the
separate tribes. Their virtues and their faults had to do with the
geography of the regions allotted for their dwelling. The peculiar
scenery of the country was the imagery of the Scriptures; and it was
soon to be something more, because of the teaching of her Son. Then
there was Jerusalem. Even the great God had loved that city, almost as
if He were a man, with a human affection. He had cherished it in His
heart as fondly and as wistfully as any Hebrew who mused upon it
beneath the willows by the waters of Babylon. Jesus Himself wept over
it, as if His heart would break, from the top of Olivet. Poor city!
fair city! it was the trophy of so many mercies, of so much divine
tenderness, of so many victories of Divine love. It was the tabernacle
of the visible glory of the Most High. The sweet savor of sacrifice
rose from it evermore. And now the adorable blood of Jesus was to lay
it all desolate, and the Roman fire, and then the ruin of ages, were to
lick up almost the vestiges of its holy places! What made Jesus weep,
what made Him feel like a mother who would fain shelter her young
beneath her wings, must needs have been to Mary the intensest misery.
And Simeon's sword had not forgotten even this! Sweet Mother! Thy Son
and thyself must ruin Judah, the chosen, the long-endured, the
delightful of the world. Fain as thou art to be nothing but the glad
channel of God's love to earth, thou must be content to be an
instrument of His wrath as well. Thou, too, Mother of mercy! art not
thou thyself, even to this day, set for the fall of many, both in the
old Israel and in the new? Sweet is the will of God, even when it is
terrible in its counsels over the children of men!
This was not altogether such a picture of Jesus and of the consequences
of His coming, as a mother's heart would have desired, if nature had
been bidden to paint it. The sun should have been without clouds. The
shadows that darkened the landscape were too many and too heavy. Around
the Infant Jesus what should there be but light and joy, unmingled
mercy, unbroken peace, all night and the relics of night passed away
and gloriously melted down to gold in the sunrise? He came with the
sole intention of love, and lo! the immediate consequence of His coming
is contradiction, ending with the everlasting ruin of many souls, and
the laying waste of His earthly country, and the dispersion of His
chosen people. But the blood of the Holy Innocents would have been a
lesson to Mary, if she had needed teaching, of what those are to
expect, and in what mysterious dark laws they are involved, who come
very near to Jesus. Now, at least if His coming shall not exclusively
accumulate praise and worship for the single attribute of the Divine
clemency, the justice of God shall find its glory therein. All things,
at any rate, shall be for the great, the greater, the greatest glory of
God. Yes, they shall in truth; but not altogether as might have been
expected. The mission of Jesus was an infinite possibility of glory for
God. But what was infinite in it rested at the possibility. God was not
to have one tithe of the glory which was due to Him for the sending of
His Son. The wills of men should contrive to frustrate it at every
turn. To such an extent should their malice succeed, that there should
actually be an appearance of failure over the whole scheme of
redemption. It should be possible, in time to come, for theologians to
speak as if the redemption of Mary in the Immaculate Conception were
the grand, almost sufficient, work of redeeming grace. The very
sweetness, and humility, and forgiveness of Jesus should act as
stumbling-blocks in the way of His Father's glory. Nay, the very things
which, because they were so divine, should have fructified most to the
glory of God, shall furnish occasions and opportunities for greater
outrage against the Divine Majesty than sinners could have had without
the Incarnation. Alas! how darkness is gathering round the very cradle
of the Child! Christmas is deepening into Passiontide, with unnatural,
unseasonable combination. Poor Mother! here are five wounds in one.
Thou hast offered Him to death: His appearance will be the signal for
numberless contradictions to start up against Him: He is set for the
downright ruin of many: Because of Him the land and the people will be
cursed: He will enable men to desecrate God's glory more than all
generations have done before. Poor Mother! which way wilt thou look?
Jesus Himself has the crown of thorns round His Infant Heart, which
will one day be seen upon His brow; and is it less cruel on the heart
than on the head? As to sinners, there is to be no such universal
salvation of them as might come near to a compensation for all this
grief. As to God, there is far from free course to His glory; much
glory, doubtless, but then also unheard-of impiety, the ways and means
thereto being furnished by His own exceeding paternal love.
Such were the peculiarities of the first dolor. Not much need be said
about her dispositions in it. Partly they have been in great measure
anticipated in what has been said, and partly they are, many of them,
so far above our comprehension, so indistinguishable in the dazzling
brightness of the inward beauty of "the King's daughter," that we know
not what to say. A book might be written on Mary's interior beauty; and
in these days it greatly needs writing. Meanwhile we will delay a while
on three graces which our Lady exercised in a heroic degree in this
first dolor. The first was her practical acknowledgment of the
sovereignty of God. There can be no doubt that this is the fundamental
idea of all worship. There is no making terms witH God. The obligations
are all on one side. The completeness of our subjection is the
perfection of our liberty. God is Master. There can be no questioning
of justice or of goodness, where He is concerned. The essence of
sanctity lies in the enthusiastic acknowledgment of this sovereignty.
Our prerogative is in our responsibility. It is by this that we come to
have royal hearts toward God. It is comparatively easy to say this,
when the sun shines, and even to fancy that we believe it. But when
darkness closes in, and sorrows give us no respite, and the doors of
Heaven seem barred to prayer, and human injustice makes us its victim,
and human unkindness tramples on us when we are fallen, and human love
betrays us, and God's face is turned the other way, then it is hard,
with whole-hearted sincerity and royal equanimity, to confess the
absolute, irresponsible, majestic sovereignty of God, with no desire to
tear the veil from off its mysterious reasons, with no shadow of desire
to turn ever so little the other way the Will that seems riding us down
so fiercely. We hold all from God. Who does not know that? All good
comes from Him. All good must go to Him. His glory is the sole
significance of all good. His will is law, and the sole law. All laws
that are eternal are only so because He is eternal from Whom they flow.
They are manifestations of Him, not His obligations. It cannot be
otherwise; for the nature of things, as we speak, what is it but the
character of God? All this is very clear when the sun shines on it.
Happy they whose natures are such that all through life there is a
fixed sunbeam on this grand truth of God's sovereignty! But listen to
the cries of anguish from Job, which make the rocks of Edom ring again,
till the whole world hears. By the side of his magnificent patience
whose clamorous submission God has bidden to pass into a proverb of
sanctity, place the silent endurance of the Mother of God, her heart
quelled, beautified, made glorious, well-nigh beatified, by the
exulting sense of God's supreme sovereignty. There can be no
magnificence among creatures equal to the perfection of obedience.
God-made-man was so enamored of the loveliness of obedience, that He
clung to it for thirty years, and left Himself barely three wherein to
save the world, and, in order even to do that, only changed the outward
form of His obedience. And this old wicked world, why is it rocking to
and fro, and getting weary of itself, but for the want of that spirit
of subjection in which alone terrestrial beatitude consists?
Furthermore, in this dolor our Blessed Lady entered perfectly into all
the dispositions of God about Jesus, herself, and us. We are often told
in spiritual books that we ought to enter into the dispositions of God
about us, or conform ourselves to the interior dispositions of Jesus.
Since the seventeenth century such language has become universal among
spiritual writers, expressing an old truth in a new way, a way adapted
to the change which has come over the modern mind. Let us try to affix
a definite meaning to this language. Everybody has a certain way of
looking at things, especially things which concern himself. He has a
point of view peculiar to himself. This is the reason men can so seldom
agree perfectly about the commonest things, hardly indeed about matters
of fact; and this shows how intimate to a man is this private point of
view, how much of himself is implicated in it, how it helps to fix and
stereotype his character. Now, this point of view arises from a variety
of causes, a man's own disposition, the disposition of his parents, his
early associations, the circumstances and localities of his youth, and,
above all, his education. Nearly every family and household have mental
peculiarities of their own, which others recognize and appreciate far
more distinctly than themselves. The same is true of religious
communities, of large cities, and finally of nations themselves. In
this peculiarity we shall for the most part find that the weaknesses
and unworthinesses of our character entrench themselves. There is a
necessity of littleness in all peculiar spirit, whether it be family
spirit, party spirit, community spirit, or national spirit. In the case
of the individual there is a necessity of selfishness. It is from our
own point of view that we are able to take magnified views of self: it
is that which supports our vanity, and make it seem reasonable and
true; it is that which is the standard whereby we judge others; it is
that out of which all misunderstandings come. It is plain therefore
that, in the work of the spiritual life, this stronghold has, if not to
be destroyed,---and destruction is a rare work in holiness,---at least
to be taken, sacked, and garrisoned afresh. How is this to be done?
Let us turn from ourselves to God. God also has His point of view. In
Him it is essentially true. He has His view of the world, of the
vicissitudes of the Church, of certain maxims of life, of vocations, of
duties, of sin. He intends each of us for a particular work, and gives
us the number and the kind of graces requisite to fit us for that work.
He gives us light up to a given point and no further, grace in certain
quantity and not beyond, and of one sort, not of another. He has,
dispositions about us, both with reference to our natural characters,
and to our supernatural correspondence to His grace. He has certain
dispositions with regard to our sanctity. This is the foundation upon
which all spiritual direction rests. It is of immense importance to us
to know what God's particular dispositions are about ourselves; and
these are chiefly discernible in the operations of grace in our souls.
But we ourselves cannot see these operations, nor pass any safe
judgment upon them, at least in the long-run, because of the disturbing
force of self-love. Hence we put ourselves under the guidance of
others, of men who have a particular gift in them because of their
priestly character, and whose prayers for light God will answer very
specially, in reward of our obedience and in aid of their
responsibilities.
When we come to know God's dispositions about us,---and many of them,
the most important, we may know at once, because they are general, and
follow from His being God, then the next step is to enter into them,
that is, to banish from our minds our own corresponding dispositions,
and put His in their place. This is not done all at once, but by
degrees. Gradually, first in one thing, then in another; we come to
take God's views of things. We look at them from His point of view,
either forgetful or disdainful of our own. It is His interests, or the
supernatural principles He has infused into us, or the disclosures He
has made to us of His will, which regulate this point of view, and not
our own likings and dislikings, our natural tastes or acquired
character. This emancipates us from the littleness of family, from the
littleness of community, from the littleness of country, but, above
all, from the littleness of self. The work implies nothing less than a
complete inward revolution. It makes the new man. It is the similitude
of Jesus. It is the mystical death of self. But there are seasons of
fearful struggle to go through, before we reach the goal. It is a long,
an arduous transformation, with many digressions, many willful
retrograde movements, many dull times of stupefied cowardice. There are
excesses of acute suffering to be endured, for the whole operation goes
on in the very quick of our nature.
In Mary this deifying operation was complete. This was owing to her
immense graces, and also to the perpetual nearness of Jesus. The
prophecy of St. Simeon, though it did not lay bare to her for the first
time, brought formally before her for her acceptance, manifold
dispositions of God regarding Jesus, herself, and us sinners. As she
had been formally called upon to give her consent to the Incarnation,
so now she was definitely called upon to enter into these dispositions
of God and make them her own, to appropriate them to herself by a
heroic sanctity. We have already seen that these dispositions were by
no means such as the mother's heart would naturally have desired. They
involved terrible sacrifices. They raised her to heights where mere
humanity could hardly respire. They plunged her in oceans of
supernatural sorrow. Indeed in the sorrow of this first dolor there is
something which we might also venture to call unnatural, because, not
only of the relation in which it placed the Mother to the Son, but also
of the free will of the Mother in the matter. Into these dispositions,
and with the most perfect intelligence of them which a creature could
have, she entered heroically. A ship could not sail into harbor with
more calm dignity or more irresistible grace, than she glided out of
nature, earth, and self, into the deep bosom of her Heavenly Father.
The third disposition we shall notice is her generosity in the
acceptance of this dolor. With us, generosity in spiritual things is
often to be measured by the degree of struggle and reluctance through
which the virtue forced its way. But it was not so with our Blessed
Lady; It was with her supernatural generosity as it is with our natural
generosity. Its gracefulness was in the absence of effort. It was born
without the pains of birth, out of the abundance of her heart. It
leaped forth spontaneously. It waited to make no calculations. It
fought no battle. What had it to fight within a nature so subjected to
grace in its inmost recesses, as hers was? From the greatness of her
grace what was supernatural came as obviously to her as what is natural
comes to us: and it is in this instantaneous, almost unconscious
alacrity, that the attractiveness of generosity consists in us.
Suffering and reluctance are two different ideas. She suffered
intensely; but there was no rebellion in her lower nature. There was no
conflict in her will.  There could have
been, but there was not. It was
inconsistent with the grandeur of her union with God. What took place
in our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane had no parallel in His Mother.
She had no chalice of sin to drink, no chalice of the Father's anger;
but a cup of simple bitterness which Jesus Himself was forever holding
to her lips. Could she have struggled against Him ever so little? Could
the slightest ripple pass over her conformity to His will, when He
Himself was her cup-bearer? In the Agony in the Garden we have to
suppose our
Lord's Divine Nature mysteriously cloistered off, so far as regarded
many of its principal effects, from the human nature to which it was
united. Nay, more than this, we have to suppose a miraculous desertion
of the lower part of His human nature even by the higher human
faculties, in order to arrive at that stupendous conflict in His
all-holy Soul, that momentary and apparent, yet intensely mysterious,
insurgency of His lower will against His higher. But surely this is a
specialty to Him.
It is part of the world's salvation. It is a sublimity in Him of which
she is not capable, without being lowered. It has to do with sin and
with the angry justice of the Father. It was the revolt of His purity
against the loathsomeness of the manifold iniquity in which He was to
clothe Himself. It was the culminating-point of the magnificence of His
sacrifice. In Mary it would simply be the transient failure of her
consummate holiness, without the necessity or the dignity of
redemption. We cannot therefore admit it for one moment. It would have
broken her tranquility. It would have loosened the compactness of her
perfect nature. It would have exaggerated the womanly element in the
exalted Mother of God. It would have brought her down to a lower level.
It would have made her more like one of the Saints. For one moment her
will was visible in the mystery of the Annunciation, and then it sank
down into the deep will of God, and was never seen again. Far out at
sea, in the wide calm a wave will rise up from the heaving plain of
waters, crest itself with silver, catch the light, and fall back again
all noiselessly into the huge deep, and leave no traces, no wake,
behind. So it was with our Lady's will. God called it up in the
Annunciation. It shone for the moment, and withdrew itself again into
His, and was seen no more. She who often saw God, she who was so united
with Him as never saint or angel was, she who had more grace than all
the world beside, she who was more glorious than the blessed in their
glory, who have no will apart from the will of God,---could it be
otherwise with her? Not the generosity of our Blessed Mother was in the
spontaneous alacrity and untroubled calm of her conformity to the sweet
will of God. She, who had given without struggle all that God had asked
of her in the Incarnation, gave also without struggle all that followed
from that first consent.
But let us now consider the lessons which this first dolor teaches to
ourselves. It was a lifelong unhappiness. Unhappiness is not without
mystery even in a fallen world. By rights there should be no
unhappiness at all. For is not the whole world full of God everywhere,
and can there be unhappiness in the neighborhood of God? How much
goodness and kindness is there in every one around us, if we only take
a kindly view of them ourselves! Sin is easily forgiven to those who
are in earnest. Grace is prodigally bestowed. There is an almost
incredible amount of actual enjoyment, and pain and suffering
themselves are quickly turned to sanctity. Yet for all this the
unhappiness of the world is real. Almost every heart on earth is a
sanctuary of secret sorrow. With some the grief is fresh. With others
it is old. With immense numbers the unhappiness is literally lifelong,
one out of which there is no possible escape except through the single
door of death. With some it arises from having chosen an unfit lot in
life from the first. With others it is from the unkindness, misconduct,
or misunderstanding of those they love. In some cases men have to
suffer for their religion, and its consequences are made by the cruelty
of others to last to the end of their days. Not unfrequently it comes
from men's characters, or from their sins, or from some consequences of
these. Now and then it is the burden of a broken heart, a heart which
has been overweighted, and so has snapped, and thus lost its elasticity
and the power of throwing off its sorrow. To such suffering time brings
no healing. The broken heart lies bleeding in the hand of its Heavenly
Father. He will look to it. No one else can. It is astonishing how
shallow all human consolation is. The waters glitter so in the sun, we
do not see the sandy bottom, only just below the surface. We believe it
deep, till we have once been to draw water there, and then we learned
all about it, for we drew as much sand as water.
Now, what is to be done with this lifelong sorrow? Let our Lady teach
us out of the depths of her first dolor. Her sorrows were lifelong.
This was the characteristic the first dolor impressed upon them. She
suffered without seeking consolation. She suffered without needing to
lean on human sympathy. She suffered in silence. She suffered in joy.
Let us put this aside, not as inimitable; the time will come when we
shall be able to imitate even these things; but let us put it aside as
beyond us now. But she had no suffering which was dissociated from the
Passion of Jesus. We can make our sorrows in a measure like hers by
continually uniting them to the sorrows of our dearest Lord. If our
sorrow comes from sin, of course it cannot be like Mary's sorrow; but
it can be just as easily, just as acceptably, united with the passion
of our Lord. He will not despise the offerings. The fact of our griefs
being a consequence of sin need not even increase the measure of our
grieving. Happy they, and true sons, whom our Father punishes in this
life! Like Mary, we must be loving, sweet, and patient with those who
cause us any unhappiness, and, laying our head with unrestrained and
unashamed tears on out Lord's Bosom, let us think quietly of God and
Heaven. It is not a slight consolation for lifelong mourners to know
that our Blessed Lady was a lifelong mourner too. Let us be of good
cheer. Let us look our great sorrow in the face, and say to it, "You
have made up your mind not to part with me till I go down to the grave:
be, then, a second guardian Angel to me, be a shadow of God, hindering
the heat and glare of the world from drying up the fountains of prayer
within my heart." All of us, even if we have not a lifelong sorrow,
have a guardian Angel of this description. Our sorrows may not be one,
but many. They may come on guard, like sentinels, one following the
other as each watch of this earthly night is done. Unhappiness is like
a secret, subterranean world. We are perpetually walking over it
without knowing it, and so seeming unkind and thoughtless one to
another when in our hearts we are not really so. What a consolation,
then, it is to us to reflect that the lives both of Jesus and Mary were
lives of one incessant, secret unhappiness! With confidence, therefore,
may we seek the Mother of sorrows, and ask her to be the Mother of our
sorrow. Jesus has a special love for the unhappy. The longest day has
its evening, the hardest work its ending, and the sharpest pain its
contented and everlasting rest.
Another lesson which we learn from this first sorrow of Mary is, that
the highest use of God's gifts is to give them back to Him again.
Nothing is in reality our own, except our sin. God is jealous of any
thing like a proprietary feeling, even in the gifts of nature; but in
respect of the gifts of grace this jealousy is increased a
thousandfold. We must make Him the depository of His own gifts, because
we do not know how to use them rightly. We must be like children who
bid their father keep the little treasures which he himself has given.
So with the gifts of God. They are more ours:---when in His keeping
than in our own. Everything which increases our feeling of dependence
upon Him is sweet, and safe, and true, and right, and the best thing.
Besides which, God is the end for which all things were given. Nothing
good is meant to stay with us. It would not keep good. It would spoil.
Every creature is a channel, through which things find their way back
to God as surely as blood finds its way back to the heart, through
endless turnings, and has done its work, not in delaying
anywhere,---which would be disease,---but in passing on, and in passing
swiftly, kindling and making alive as it went along. Moreover, our
humility is always in peril if we detain a gift of God, even if it were
for no longer than to look it in the face, and love it, and then think
of it with complacency when it is gone. We must refer every thing to
God. It is the secret of being holy. Grace comes, and temptations give
way, and great things are done, and love is all in a jubilee, and then
self begins to sing an undersong; but we are making such a noise with
praising God that we do not hear, and she is wounded, and holds her
tongue, and we know nothing of it. Could we not keep up that beautiful
noise forever? Oh, yes! for graces are always coming; like the people
in the streets, there is no end to them,---sometimes a thinning, never
a break. So we could be always praising God, always sending back to
Him, when we have humbly kissed them, the gifts and graces He has sent
us. Besides which, God and His gifts are two very different things.
Sometimes He feigns as if He would overreach us, in order to try our
love. He sends us some very heavenly gift, and then watches to see if
we will take it for Himself, and rest in it, not as if it were our own,
yet not as if it were His, but as if it were Himself. But the soul that
loves truly can never fall into this mistake. It no more thinks of
lying down on one of God's best gifts to rest itself than we should
dream of lying on the green, yielding billows of the sea to sleep. It
must reach God, nothing short of God. It keeps giving back His gifts,
as if in constant protest that, needful as they are, they are not
Himself, and cannot stand in His stead.
Another lesson to be learned is, that in this world sorrow is the
recompense of sanctity. It is to the elect on earth what the Beatific
Vision is to the saints in heaven. It is God's presence, His
manifestation of Himself, His unfailing reward. We must not be amazed,
therefore, if new efforts to serve God bring new sorrows in their
train. By the supernatural principles of the spiritual life they ought
to do so. If we are able to bear them, these sorrows will come at once.
Their delay is only the index of God's estimation of our weakness. Yet
we need not fear that they will be disproportioned to our strength.
God's blows are not dealt out at random. Our crosses are poised to a
nicety by Divine wisdom, and then Divine love planes them, in order to
make them at once smoother and lighter. But we can have no real comfort
in devotion if we are without trials. We have no proof that God accepts
us, no security against delusion. We know that the stars are in their
old places in the sky; but in different states of the atmosphere they
seem much farther off than at other times, or again much nearer, like
teardrops of light on the very point of falling to the earth. So is it
with God. Joy makes Him seem far off, while sorrow brings Him near,
almost down into our bosom. When sorrows come, we feel instinctively
their connection with the graces which have gone before, just as
temptations so often have an odor about them of past victories. They
come up one after another, dealing their several blows upon our poor
hearts, with such a modest heavenly significancy upon their faces, that
it is easy to recognize angels beneath the thin disguise. As we touch
them, even while the thrill goes through us, we feel that we are almost
handling with our hands our own final perseverance, such solid
evidences are they of our adoption, so full of substantial graces in
their presence, and leaving such a legacy of blessings when they go. A
heart without sorrows is like a world without a revelation. It has
nothing but a twilight of God about it.
Furthermore, our sorrow must be our own. We must not expect anyone else
to understand it. It is one of the conditions of true sorrow that it
should be misunderstood. Sorrow is the most individual thing in the
whole world. We must not expect, therefore, to meet with sympathy at
all adequate to what we are suffering. It will be a great thing if it
be suitable, even though it is imperfect. It is a very desolate thing
to have leaned on sympathy, and found that it would not bear our
weight, with such a burden of sorrow upon our backs. It is very
difficult to erect ourselves again. The heart sinks upon itself in
dismay. It has used its last remaining strength to reach the place
where it would rest itself, and now what is left for it but a faintness
which opens all the wounds afresh, and a dismal conviction that the
grief is less tolerable than it was before? It is best, therefore, to
keep our sorrows as secret as we can. Unfitting sympathy irritates us,
and makes us sin. Inadequate sympathy lets the lame limb fall harshly
to the ground. The denial of sympathy excites almost a querulous
despair. God knows every thing. There are volumes of comfort in that.
God means every thing. There is light for every darkness out of that
simple truth. Our hearts are full of angels when they are full of
sorrows. Let us make them our company, and go on our road, smiling all
the day, scattering such sweetness round us as mourners only are
allowed to scatter, and God will understand us when we go to Him. Who
can comfort like those who also mourn?
We must expect also that it will be in some measure with us as it was
with Mary; our sorrows will be fed even by our joys. God sends us joys
before sorrows, to prepare our hearts; but the joys themselves contain
prophecies of the coming sorrows. And what are those sacred fears,
those strange presentiments, those vague expectations of approaching
evil, by which joys are so often accompanied, but the shadows which
they bring along with them? It is out of the brightness of life that
its darkness mostly comes. In all manner of strange ways joys turn to
sorrows, sometimes suddenly, sometimes gradually. Sometimes what was
expected as joy comes in the shape of sorrow. Sometimes the very
enjoyment of the joy turns it into sadness, as if an enchanter's wand
had been waved over it. Sometimes it is gladness to the last, but when
it goes it leaves grief behind, a grief it was all the while concealing
under its cloak, and we never suspected it. So again when a sorrow has
become calm, and the freshness of its sting seems worn off by time, by
endurance, or by the distraction of our duties, a joy comes to us,
makes us smile as it enters our souls, but, when there, goes at once to
the fountain of sorrow, wakes up the slumbering waters, digs the source
deeper, and shakes the earth around to make the spring flow more
abundantly. There are few who have not experienced this kindling and
enlivening of grief by the advent of gladness. But, in truth, in a
world where we can sin, in a strife where we so often lose sight of
God, in a dwelling which is rather an exile than a home, all joys are
akin to sorrows, they, are almost sorrows in holiday attire. Joy is
life looking like what it is not. Sorrow is life with an honest face.
It is life looking like what it is. Nevertheless, there is the truest,
the heavenliest of all joys in sorrow, because it detaches us from the
world, and draws us with such quiet, persuasive, irresistible authority
to God. The sunrise of grace within the soul is full of cloud, and
doubt, and uncertain presages, even amid the flashings of beautiful
light which are painting the troubled sky everywhere. But when the orb
has mounted to the top of its noonday tower, all clouds will have
melted away into the blue, no one knows how. For to turn joys into
sorrows is the sweet, safe task of earth: to turn sorrows into joys is
the true work of heaven, and of that height of grace which is heaven on
earth already.
There is still another lesson to be learned. We must all enter into
this dolor in some way or other in life. The characteristic of Mary's
sorrow is that Jesus caused it. But this is not peculiar to her
affliction. He will be a cause of blessed sorrow to every one of us.
There are very many happy earthly things which we must sacrifice for
Him; or if we have not the heart to do so, He will have the kind
cruelty to take them from us. Persecution is a word of many meanings, a
thing of countless shapes. It must come infallibly to everyone who
loves our dearest Lord. It may come through the hard tongues of the
worldly, or in the suspicions, and jealousies, and judgments of those
we love. In the peace of family love and domestic union it often comes
from hands which make it hard to be endured; and, because of religion,
there is keen misery where the casual visitor sees nothing but the
edification of mutual love. Who was ever let alone to serve Jesus as he
wished? It is idle to expect it. The husband's love rises against it in
the wife. The mother will tear her children from the Saviour's arms.
The father looks with suspicion on the claims of God, and jealousy of
the Creator will make him harsh to a child who has never given him an
hour of trouble in life beside, and to whom he never has been harsh
before. The brother will forego the manliness of fraternal affection,
and bring the bitterness of the world's judgments into the sacred
circle of home, if Jesus dares to lay a finger on his sister. Oh, poor,
poor world! And it is always the good who are the worst in this
respect. Let this be laid to heart and pondered. Outside of us, beside
this inevitable persecution, our Lord will bring trials and crosses
round us, at once to preserve our grace and to augment it. The more we
love Him the thicker they will be. Nay, our love of Him often gets us
into trouble we hardly know how. It almost leads us into faults, into
imprudences to be repented of. Suddenly, especially when we are
fervent, the ground gives way under our feet, and we sink into a pit,
and in the retrospect our fall seems inexcusable, and yet how did it
all come to pass? How also is it within the soul? Are there not such
things as the pains of love? Are they not more common than its joys?
Then there is the worse pain of not feeling our love, of seeming to
lose our love, of its forever slipping away from us. There are also
interior trials, by which self-love is put to a painful death, and a
cleansing of our inmost soul by fire which is exceeding agony. Then
there are the distresses into which the love of Jesus entraps us. It
persuades us to give up this world, to put out all the lights where-
with earth had made our hearts gay, to break ties, to eschew loves, to
commit ourselves to hard, dull lives, and then it leaves us. God hides
His countenance from us. All view of the other world is shut off from
us. Just as it is at sundown, no sooner has the last rim sunk below the
horizon, than, as if evoked by a spell, from riverside, from woody
hollow, from pastures where the kine are feeding, from meadows with the
haycocks standing, there rises up a cold, white, blinding mist; so is
it in the soul: no sooner is God's Face gone, than past sins, ghastly
things, break up from the graves in which absolution laid them, and
present imperfections, and unknown temptations, and chilling
impossibilities of perseverance, all rise up together, and involve the
soul in the coldest, gloomiest desolation, through which no star can
pierce, and it is much if a sickly whiteness tells us that there is a
moon somewhere. Who does not know these things? It is no use
shuddering. They are not on us now; but they will come back again, be
sure, when their hour arrives. Thus Jesus is in us a cause of sorrow,
in us He is a sign to be contradicted, in us is He set for the rise and
fall of many.
These are the lessons which the first dolor teaches us, and they are
lifelong lessons, as its sorrow was. Let us now go home to Nazareth
with Mary. Angels accompany her steps, full of astonishment and
reverence at her grief. Perhaps it is their first lesson in the
profound science of the Passion. So she went her way through the
streets of Zion, and over the hills, and through the glens by the
watercourses, until she came to the green basin of Nazareth, the Mother
bearing her Child! And they were all in all to each other. And who
shall tell what mute language they spoke, as the Child's Heart beat
against the Mother's heart in sorrow and in love? And each was dearer
to the other than before, and we also perhaps were dearer to them than
an hour ago? For the shadow of Calvary had already fallen, both on the
Mother and the Son; and they loved the shadow, and it was we who cast
it.
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