Vigils Reading – Memorial of BVM

CRUCIFIED BY LOVE

By St Elizabeth of the Trinity

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No one has penetrated the depths of the mystery of Christ except the

Blessed Virgin. John and Mary Magdalene penetrated deeply this mystery; St P

aul often speaks of “the understanding of it which was given to him“; and yet,

how all the saints remain in the shadows when we look at the Blessed Virgin’s

light!

This is the unspeakable “secret” that she kept in mind and pondered in

her heart” which no tongue can tell or pen describe!… “The Virgin kept all these

things in her heart“: her whole history can be summed up in these few words! It

was within her heart that she lived, and at such a depth that no human eye can

follow her. When I read in the Gospel “that Mary went in haste to the hill

country of Judea” to perform her loving service for her cousin Elizabeth, I

imagine her passing by so beautiful, so calm and so majestic, so absorbed in

recollection of the Word of God within her. Like Him, her prayer was always

this: “Ecce, here I am!”… “The servant of the Lord,” the lowliest of His creatures

: she, His Mother! Her humility was so real for she was always forgetful,

unaware, freed from self. And she could sing: “The Almighty has done great

things for me, henceforth all peoples will call me blessed.“

This Queen of virgins is also Queen of martyrs; but again it was in her

heart that the sword pierced, for with her everything took place within!… Oh!

How beautiful she is to contemplate during her long martyrdom, so serene,

enveloped in a kind of majesty that radiates both strength and gentleness… She

learned from the Word Himself how those must suffer whom the Father has

chosen as victims, those whom He has decided to associate with Himself in the

great work of redemption, those whom He “has foreknown and predestined to

be conformed to His Christ,” crucified by love.

She is there at the foot of the Cross, standing, full of strength and courage

, and here My Master says to me: “Behold your mother”. He gives her to me for

my Mother… And now that He has returned to the Father and has substituted

me for Himself on the Cross so that “I may suffer in my body what is lacking in

His passion for the sake of His body, which is the Church,” the Blessed Virgin i

s again there to teach me to suffer as He did, to tell me, to make me hear those

last songs of His soul which no one else but she, His Mother, could overhear.