Of the Dolours of Mary

This is part one of an eight part series on the Seven Sorrows of Mary by St. Alphonsus de Liguori taken from the "The Glories of Mary" -  Asst. Ed.

DISCOURSE IX

Mary was the Queen of Martyrs for her martyrdom was longer and greater than that of all the Martyrs.

Who can ever have a heart so hard that it will not melt on hearing the most lamentable event which once occurred in the world? There was a noble and holy Mother who had an only Son. This Son was the most amiable that can be imagined - innocent, virtuous, beautiful, who loved His Mother most tenderly; so much so that He had never caused her the least dis­pleasure, but had ever shown her all respect, obedience, and affection : hence this Mother had placed all her affections on earth in this Son. Hear, then, what hap­pened. This Son, through envy, was falsely accused by His enemies; and though the judge knew, and himself confessed, that He was innocent, yet, that he might not offend His enemies, he condemned Him to the ignominious death that they had demanded. This poor Mother had to suffer the grief of seeing that amiable and beloved Son unjustly snatched from her in the flower of His age by a barbarous death; for, by dint of torments and drained of all His blood, He was made to die on an infamous gibbet in a public place of execution, and this before her own eyes.

 Devout souls, what say you? Is not this event, and is not this unhappy Mother worthy of compassion? You already understand of whom I speak. This Son, so cruelly executed, was our loving Redeemer Jesus; and this Mother was the Blessed Virgin Mary; who, for the love she bore us, was willing to see Him sacrificed to Divine Justice by the barbarity of men. This great torment, then, which Mary endured for us a torment which was more than a thousand deaths-deserves both our compassion and our gratitude. If we can make no other return for so much love, at least let us give a few moments this day to consider the greatness of the sufferings by which Mary became the Queen of martyrs; for the sufferings of her great martyrdom exceeded those of all the martyrs; being, in the first place, the longest in point of duration; and, in the second place, the greatest in point of in­tensity.

First point. As Jesus is called the King of sor­rows and the King of martyrs, because He suffered during His life more than all other martyrs; so also is Mary with reason called the Queen of martyrs, having merited this title by suffering the most cruel martyrdom possible after that of her Son. Hence, with reason, was she called by Richard of Saint Lawrence, ' the Martyr of martyrs¹' and of her can the words of Isaias with all truth be said, "He will crown thee with a crown of tribulation ;"²²  that is to say, that that suffering itself, which exceeded the suf­fering of all the other martyrs united, was the crown by which she was shown to be the Queen of martyrs. That Mary was a true martyr cannot be doubted, as Denis the Carthusian,³³  Pelbart,⁴⁴  Catharinus, and others prove; for it is an undoubted opinion that suffering sufficient to cause death is martyrdom, even though death does not ensue from it. Saint John the Evan­gelist is revered as a martyr, though he did not die in the caldron of boiling oil, but' came out more vigorous than he went in.'⁵⁵  Saint Thomas says, ' that to have the glory of martyrdom, it is sufficient to exercise obe­dience in its highest degree, that is to say, to be obedient unto death.'⁶⁶  'Mary was a martyr,' says Saint Bernard,.' not by the sword of the executioner, but by bitter sorrow of heart.'⁷⁷  If her body was not wounded by the hand of the executioner, her blessed heart was transfixed by a sword of grief at the passion of her Son; grief which was sufficient to have caused her death, not once, but a thousand times. From this we shall see that Mary was not only a real martyr, but that her martyrdom surpassed all others; for it was longer than that of all others, and her whole life may be said to have been a prolonged death.

'The passion of Jesus,' as Saint Bernard says, 'com­menced with His birth.'⁸⁸ So also did Mary, in all things like unto her Son, endure her martyrdom throughout her life. Amongst other significations of the name of Mary, as Blessed Albert the Great asserts, is that of ' a bitter sea.'⁹;⁹ Hence to her is applicable the text of Jeremias : " great as the sea is thy destruction."^1O;¹⁰ For as the sea is all bitter and salt, so also was the life of Mary always full of bitterness at the sight of the pas­sion of the Redeemer, which was ever present to her mind. ' There can be no doubt, that, enlightened by the Holy Ghost in a far higher degree than all the pro­phets, she, far better than they, understood the predic­tions recorded by them in the sacred Scriptures con­cerning the Messias.' This is precisely what the angel revealed to St. Bridget;¹¹¹¹ and he also added, ' that the Blessed Virgin, even before she became His Mother, knowing how much the Incarnate Word was to suffer for the salvation of men, and compassionating this in­nocent Saviour, who was to be so cruelly put to death for crimes not His own, even then began her great mar­tyrdom.'¹²¹²

Her grief was immeasurably increased when she be­came the Mother of this Saviour; so that at the sad sight of the many torments which were to be endured by her poor Son, she indeed suffered a long martyr­dom,¹³¹³ a martyrdom which lasted her whole life. This was signified with great exactitude to Saint Bridget in a vision which she had in Eome, in the church of Saint Mary Major, where the Blessed Virgin with Saint Si­meon, and an angel bearing a very long sword, red­dened with blood, appeared to her, denoting thereby the long and bitter grief which transpierced the heart of Mary during her whole life.¹⁴¹⁴ Whence the above-named Eupert supposes Mary thus speaking: ' Be-deemed souls, and my beloved children, do not pity me only for the hour in which I beheld my dear Jesus expiring before my eyes; for the sword of sorrow pre­dicted by Simeon pierced my soul during the whole of my life: when I was giving suck to my Son, when I was warming Him in my arms, I already foresaw the bitter death that awaited Him. Consider, then, what long and bitter sorrows I must have endured.'¹⁵

Wherefore Mary might well say, in the words of David, "My life is wasted with grief, and my years in sighs."¹⁶¹⁶ "My sorrow is continually before me."¹⁷¹⁷ ' My whole life was spent in sorrow and in tears; for my sorrow, which was compassion for my beloved Son never departed from before my eyes, as I always fore­saw the sufferings and death which He was one day to endure.' The Divine Mother herself revealed to Saint Bridget, that ' even after the death and ascension of her Son, whether she ate, or worked, the remem­brance of His passion was ever deeply impressed on her mind, and fresh in her tender heart.'¹⁸¹⁸ Hence Tauler says, ' that the most Blessed Virgin spent her whole life in continual sorrow;'^{19 19}for her heart was always occupied with sadness and with suffering.

Therefore time, which usually mitigates the sorrows of the afflicted, did not relieve Mary ; nay, even it in­creased her sorrow; for, as Jesus, on the one hand, advanced in age, and always appeared more and more beautiful and amiable ; so also, on the other hand, the time of His death always drew nearer, and grief al­ways increased in the heart of Mary, at the thought of having to lose Him on earth. So that, in the words addressed by the angel to Saint Bridget: ' As the rose grows up amongst thorns, so the Mother of God ad­vanced in years in the midst of sufferings; and as the thorns increase with the growth of the rose, so also did the thorns of her sorrows increase in Mary, the chosen rose of the Lord, as she advanced in age; and so much the more deeply did they pierce her heart.'^2O20  Having now considered the length of this sorrow in point of duration, let us pass to the second point-its greatness in point of intensity.

Second point. Ah, Mary was not only Queen of martyrs because her martyrdom was longer than that of all others, but also because it was the greatest of all martyrdoms. Who, however, can measure its great­ness? Jeremias seems unahle to find any one with whom he can compare this Mother of Sorrows, when he considers her great sufferings at the death of her Son. " To what shall I compare thee ? or to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem ?... for great as the sea is thy destruction: who shall heal thee?21²¹ Wherefore Cardinal Hugo, in a commentary on these words, says, ' O Blessed Virgin, as the sea in bitter­ness exceeds all other hitterness, so does thy grief ex­ceed all other grief.'²²²² Hence Saint Anselm asserts, that ' had not God by a special miracle preserved the life of Mary in each moment of her life, her grief was such that it would have caused her death.'^{23 23}Saint Ber­nardino of Sienna goes so far as to say, ' that the grief of Mary was so great that, were it divided amongst all men, it would suffice to cause their immediate death.'²⁴²⁴ But let us consider the reasons for which Mary's martyrdom was greater than that of all martyrs. In the first place, we must remember that the martyrs endured their torments, which were the effect of fire and other material agencies, in their bodies; Mary suf­fered hers in her soul, as Saint Simeon foretold : "And thy own soul a sword shall pierce."²⁵²⁵ As if the holy old man had said : ' O most sacred Virgin, the bodies of other martyrs will be torn with iron, but thou wilt be transfixed, and martyred in thy soul by the Passion of thine own Son.' Now, as the soul is more noble than the body, so much greater were Mary's sufferings than those of all the martyrs, as Jesus Christ Himself said to Saint Catherine of Sienna : ' Between the suf­ferings of the soul and those of the body there is no comparison.' Whence the holy Abbot Arnold of Chartres says, ' that whoever had been present on Mount Calvary, to witness the great sacrifice of the Immaculate Lamb, would there have beheld two great altars, the one in the body of Jesus, the other in the heart of Mary; for, on that mount, at the same time that the Son sacrificed His body by death, Mary sacri­ficed her soul by compassion.'²⁶²⁶

Moreover, says Saint Antoninus,²⁷²⁷ while other martyrs suffered by sacrificing their own lives, the Blessed Virgin suffered by sacrificing her Son's life- a life that she loved far more than her own; so that she not only suffered in her soul all that her Son en­dured in His body, but moreover the sight of her Son's torments brought more grief to her heart than if she had endured them all in her own person. No one can doubt that Mary suffered in her heart all the outrages which she saw inflicted on her beloved Jesus. Any one can understand that the sufferings of children are also those of their mothers who witness them. Saint Augustine, considering the anguish endured by the mother of the Macchabees in witnessing the tortures of her sons, says, ' she, seeing their sufferings, suffered in each one; because she loved them all, she endured in her soul what they endured in their flesh.'²⁸²⁸ Thus also did Mary suffer all those torments, scourges, thorns, nails, and the cross, which tortured the innocent flesh of Jesus, all entered at the same time into the heart of this Blessed Virgin, to complete her martyrdom. ' He suffered in the flesh, and she in her heart,'²⁹²⁹ writes the Blessed Amadeus. ' So much so,' says Saint Lawrence Justinian, ' that the heart of Mary became, as it were a mirror of the Passion of the Son, in which might be seen, faithfully reflected, the spitting, the blows and wounds, and all that Jesus suffered.'^3O30 Saint Bona-venture also remarks that ' those wounds which were scattered over the body of our Lord were all united in the single heart of Mary.'³¹³¹

Thus was our Blessed Lady, through the compas­sion of her loving heart for her Son, scourged, crowned with thorns, insulted, and nailed to the cross. Whence the same Saint, considering Mary on Mount Calvary, present at the death of her Son, questions her in these words: 'O Lady, tell me where didst thou stand 1 Was it only at the foot of the cross ] Ah, much more than this, thou wast on the cross itself, crucified with thy Son.'^{32 32}Richard of Saint Lawrence, on the words of the Redeemer, spoken by Isaias the prophet, " I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the Gentiles there is not a man with me,"³³³³ says, 'It is true, O Lord, that in the work of human redemption Thou didst suffer alone, and that there was not a man who sufficiently pitied Thee; but there was a woman with Thee, and she was Thine own Mother; she suffered in her heart all that Thou didst endure in Thy body.'³⁴³⁴

But all this is saying too little of Mary's sorrows, since, as I have already observed, she suffered more in witnessing the sufferings of her beloved Jesus than if she had herself endured all the outrages and death of her Son. Erasmus, speaking of parents in general, says, that 'they are more cruelly tormented by theii children's sufferings than by their own.'³⁵³⁵ This is not always true, but in Mary it evidently was so; for it is certain that she loved her Son and His life beyond all comparison more than herself or a thousand lives of her own. " Therefore Blessed Amadeus rightly af­firms, that' the afflicted Mother, at the sorrowful sight of the torments of her "beloved Jesus, suffered far more than she would have done had she herself endured His whole Passion.'³⁶³⁶ The reason is evident, for, as Saint Bernard says, 'the soul is more where it loves than where it lives.'³⁷³⁷ Our Lord Himself had already said the same thing: " where our treasure is, there also is our heart."³⁸³⁸ If Mary, then, by love, lived more in her Son than in herself, she must have endured far greater torments in the sufferings and death of her Son than she would have done, had the most cruel death in the world been inflicted upon her.