CHAPTER IX ++++++++The Compassion of Mary++++++++ V THE PASSION AND COMPASSION COMPARED. OUR fifth point was to compare the Compassion and the Passion together. But a great deal of this has already. been done by implication in the course of the preceding inquiries. The first point of similitude is in its interior character. The mental sufferings of the Passion went far beyond its bodily tortures, not merely because anguish of heart is worse to bear than pain of body, but also because they were of a far more awful description, and because they were of longer duration. The inward agony, by which the shame and guilt of sin were expiated, was far more terrific than the blows, and wounds, and diversified atrocities which the cruelty of sinners could inflict upon the Body of Jesus. His inward pains were more numerous, more various, more vehement, burned deeper, and lasted longer. The abandonment of the Father and the weight of His angry justice were, of course, the most intolerable sufferings of the Passion, and both those were interior. Next to them we must rank the sorrows of Mary, and they chiefly affected Him inwardly. Sin, the third of His executioners, tortured His soul more than His Body. Thus, though our attention is naturally most drawn to His outward Passion, we shall never rightly conceive even of that, unless we remember that by far the greater portion of His Passion was interior. The visible Passion was but the tossing surface of an invisible deep. Mary's Compassion also was interior, in her heart as well as His. It was drawn, too, from the same afflictive sources. It had passed through His Heart before it entered into hers. At the same time, there is certainly a contrast, in this respect, as well as a similitude. For she had no outward Passion to correspond with His. Her interior agony was not, of course, without aching exhaustion of the frame, bitterest smarting and crushing of the fleshly heart, and intolerable burning of the brain. Her body suffered as well as her soul. It had to hold fire, and the fire burned it through and through. Nevertheless, there was nothing at all to answer to the outward Passion of our Blessed Lord. Her outward Passion was the fifteen years of wearisome, suffering delay which was her lot when He had ascended into Heaven. The Passion and the Compassion may also be compared together, in that each was the cause of the other. Both were causes, and both were effects. It was our Lord's Passion which filled our Lady's heart to the brim with bitterness; and it was our Lady's Compassion which was one of the main ingredients in our Saviour's Passion. Only our Lady's Compassion was not coextensive with the Passion as its cause, while it was coextensive with it as an effect, because it took it all in, embraced it, assimilated it to itself, and made it utterly its own. The contents of our Lady's heart could not fill our Lord's, but hers could hold the contents of His. The Mother crucified the Son, and the Son, crucified as He was, went and placed Himself with all the implements of His Passion in His Mother's heart, making it large enough by breaking it. It was not only that each pain of the Passion was represented in her Compassion. It is most likely that she really felt it all, just as it was, not in all its intolerable reality, but in such dread reality at least as was according to the measure of her immense capabilities of suffering. The Saints have felt it so, in their lesser measure, great in our eyes as that lesser measure was. They have been invisibly stigmatized, and they have been led in horrible inward unimaginable tortures through all the mysteries of the Passion, miraculous power often being needed to prevent the separation of body and soul. Can we imagine that this inward real compassion was granted to them, and that she was without it? It is also another similitude between the Compassion and the Passion, that just as Saints have been allowed in mystical ways to feel the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, so have they also been allowed mystically to participate in the sorrows of Mary. Both the Compassion and the Passion have been recognized fountains out of which have flowed some of the most singular and at the same time the best-accredited phenomena of mystical theology. CLICK NEXT FOR PART VI E-MAIL HOME-------BACK TO THE PASSION--------CATHOLIC CLASSICS www.catholictradition.org/Passion/mary14-5.htm