Immaculate Heart of Mary

THE VIRGIN KEPT ALL THESE THINGS IN HER HEART
By St Elizabeth of the Trinity 7
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“Those whom God has foreknown He has also predestined to become
conformed to the image of His divine Son,” the One crucified by love…No one has
penetrated the depths of the mystery of Christ except the Blessed Virgin.” John
and Mary Magdalene penetrated deeply this mystery; St. Paul 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! This Mother of grace will form
my soul so that her little child will be a living, “striking” image of her first-born,
the Son of the Eternal, He who was the perfect praise of His Father’s glory…
She responded fully to the divine election of which the Apostle speaks; she
was always “pure, immaculate, and without reproach” in the eyes of the thriceholy God. Her soul is so simple. Its movements are so profound that they cannot
be detected. She seems to reproduce on earth the life which is that of the divine
Being, the simple Being. And she is so transparent, so luminous that one would
mistake her for the light, yet she is but the “mirror” of the Sun of Justice…
“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 is 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.

7 St Elizabeth of the Trinity. I have Found God: Complete Works – Volume 1. Trans. Sister Aletheia
Kane, O.C.D. Washington: ICS Publications, 1984. 141, 160-161.