CHAPTER IX ++++++++The Compassion of Mary++++++++ VI THE SEEMING EXCESS OF THE COMPASSION. But there is another point in the resemblance between the Passion of Jesus and the Compassion of Mary, which must not be omitted. It is the seeming excess of her sorrows over His. We call it seeming, because no one in his senses would dream of saying that Mary's sufferings equalled those of our Blessed Saviour. But her Compassion, as we have seen, is a Divine work, a Divine mystery, and, inasmuch as this semblance is an undeniable feature of it, it must have been intentional. Every thing in a Divine work is notable, and we learn from it by the mere noting of it, even where it is beyond our powers of explanation. It was in the joint mystery of the Compassion and Passion that the Mother and the Son saddened each other. Now, in proportion as His beauty exceeded hers, His power to increase her sorrow exceeded her power to augment His. It was a more terrible thing for the Mother to see the Son expiring on the Cross, than for the Son to see his mother broken-hearted at the foot of the Cross. But when we remember that He was God, and that her whole love of Him was what it was because He was God, still more disproportioned will her suffering appear to His; and she too the weaker vessel, the less capable of enduring such highly-wrought agony as that on Calvary. We must bear in mind also that inward pain is greater than outward pain, and that as she had no visible Passion to compare with His, the sorrow, which each outward pain and outrage of His caused in her, must have been inward also. His bodily Passion produced a mental counterpart in her. She was inwardly scourged, inwardly crowned with thorns, inwardly stripped, inwardly nailed to the Cross, and she died inwardly. All that was outward in Him was obliged to be inward in her. So also, when the Passion ended, the Compassion had at least three hours, perhaps six, of agony crowded with dreadful mysteries, yet to run. The fear of His limbs being broken, the wound of the lance, the taking down from the Cross, the embalming, the burial, and the desolation, all these sorrows were crucifying Mary's woe-weary heart while He was flashing light and beauty and glory through the caverns of Limbus and being worshipped by the congratulations of all the patriarchs, kings, and prophets of the olden time. Moreover, she was left behind to mourn for fifteen years, and what was that delay but a prolongation of all that was hardest to bear in each of her seven dolors through more than twice seven years? The words are easily written, but what hidden worlds of heroic endurance and desperate heart-worn life do they not imply! And there was one thought through all that scene on Calvary which she alone could have, and which must have reigned supremely over her mind, inspiring her with an incredible hatred of sin, and throwing a peculiar light upon the Passion, which it is not easy for us to conceive. It was the knowledge that Jesus was at that moment paying the price of her Immaculate Conception,----that His Passion was for her redemption, and so principally for hers,----that it was more for hers than for that of the rest of the world together. Who then shall say what the Passion looked like to Mary's eye? CLICK NEXT FOR PART VII E-MAIL HOME-------BACK TO THE PASSION--------CATHOLIC CLASSICS www.catholictradition.org/Passion/mary14-6.htm