Virgin, in your love befriend me,
At the Judgment Day defend me.
Help me by your constant prayer. For Reflection:
It is Mary’s desire as Spiritual Mother that all of her children attain eternal salvation. She never ceases praying for us. As the eminent theologian, Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. tells us, “…[Mary] knows all the graces that we need because she is our Mother and has received from God a universal mission to help us all on the way of salvation. Her prayer is fervent and extends to the last sinner without losing any of its intensity. “[Mary] is sovereignly good and prays for all men, yet she prays especially for those who offer no resistance to her good inspirations and faithfully recommend themselves to her, looking upon them with particular tenderness, interceding for them more pressingly, more absolutely, until she finally obtains what she asks and bring them safe home to the harbor of salvation.”
According to this quote, how then do we reap the full benefit of Mary’s intercession? What is your interior response?
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Fairest maid of all creation,
Queen of hope and consolation,
Let me feel your grief sublime.For Reflection:
Though we pray these words with faith and love, it is not possible for us to feel the full measure of Mary’s grief simply because she is the “fairest maid of all creation.” Conceived without sin and never having sinned, she experienced the agony of Christ as deeply as He – especially His love for the souls for whom He was dying. Reverend Garrigou- Lagrange says, “Mary’s heart, like Christ’s whole bruised and crushed being, was transformed with anguish by the sins of mankind, being altered more than the bodies and hearts of the sick, the dying, the martyred.”
You are one of those souls for Whom Jesus and Mary suffered a grief sublime. In light of this, pray again the last line above. May our grief be the grief of true repentance. Journal your thoughts.
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At the cross, your sorrow sharing,
All your grief and torment bearing,
Let me stand and mourn with you.For Reflection:
This stanza from Stabat Mater draws our attention to the fact that Mary stood under the Cross. What does it mean to stand? Reverend Weaver offers one characteristic of Mary’s stance: bravery. He says, “United with her heroic Son, Mary gives a shining example of the fortitude which must be practiced in the battle of life.” And of what is this fortitude the fruit? Prayer, says Father Weaver: “…prayer which comes from a heart that is in harmony with the Heart of God has tremendous power.” To what extent is your prayer life yielding the fortitude you need to stand with Mary? In what one way can you improve it today?
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Mother, may this prayer be granted:
That Christ's love may be implanted
In the depths of my poor soul. For Reflection:
To love as Jesus loves. Mary lived this level of spiritual perfection. Dare we hope for it? Dare we wait for it? Henri Nouwen says that waiting is hope and tells us that “Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.
In the Novena to Our Lady of Hope, we read these verses from Sirach. Church fathers tell us they refer to Mary: I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth; in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come to me all that desire me and be filled with my fruits (Sirach 24:24-26).
Mary makes us a promise. Come to her and she will fill us with her own beatitude. “O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Grace, Hope of the world. Hear us, your children, who cry to you.”
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Virgin, ever interceding,
Hear me in my fervent pleading:
Fire me with your love of Christ. For Reflection:
Perhaps that which hinders us most from attaining “open-ended waiting” is our limited capacity to love. Today’s GraceLine contains the solution to this – we need Mary’s love of Christ since our own love is so weakened by concupiscence and sinfulness. St. Louis de Montfort tells us that if we consecrate ourselves to Jesus through Mary, our Mother gives us the operations of her soul. That means, we can receive her own love of Christ as our own. Is God asking you to make this consecration? Renew it? Live it more fully? How can you begin to do so today?
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Mary, fount of love's devotion,
Let me share with true emotion
All the sorrow you endured. For Reflection:
Rev. Bertrand Weaver, C.P. writes in his book, His Cross in Your Life, that God willed to have Mary at Calvary as an “associate teacher of wisdom.” He says that, “By accepting grief ‘great as the sea,’ she united with her Divine Son in giving mankind an example of bowing before the Will of God when it could not have been more difficult.” Nouwen may have put it this way: Mary’s life was a study of open-ended waiting, a characteristic of which is “giving up control over our future and letting God define our life.”
If you truly pray the above stanza of Stabat Mater you are asking for the same grace. You are asking to live open-ended waiting. To what extent are you really willing to pray for this? What would encourage you? What would hinder you? Give all to Mary, Fount of Love’s Devotion.
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Christ she saw with life-blood failing,
All her anguish unavailing,
Saw him breathe his very last.For Reflection:
With Jesus, Mary had sojourned the agonizing road to Calvary. She had watched Him be beaten and tormented, ridiculed and spat upon. She had watched Him fall. And get up. Fall. And get up. Fall. And get up. She had watched nine inch nails pierce His hands and feet. She had seen Him hoisted into the air on a cross. And now she watches Him take His last breath as His life’s blood runs out. The soldier’s lance pierces them both. In light of this verse and meditation, read John 3:16. Substitute your name for “the world.” Sit with this truth and let it take hold of you. Journal your insights and reflections.
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Christ she saw, for our salvation,
Scourged with cruel acclamation,
Bruised and beaten by the rod. For Reflection:
Henri Nouwen also tells us that waiting is active, not passive. It requires the gift of receptivity, an openess to that which God is doing in the midst of the waiting.
Meditate on the words “Christ she saw…” As this verse says, Mary’s eyes surely saw her Son’s physical condition while she gazed upon Him. But what else might Mary have been seeing as she held vigil at the foot of the Cross? What might she have seen God doing in the midst of this holocaust? What might He be doing as you “hold vigil” in your current waiting period?
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As we sojourn together with Mary through the Stabat Mater, may we faithfully appropriate the gift of redemption, exalt and praise God for His paternal benevolence for us, and enter more deeply into the hearts of Jesus and Mary finding there our hope and our joy.
-Johnnette S. Benkovic
Who, that sorrow contemplating,
On that passion meditating,
Would not share the Virgin's grief?
For Reflection:
Henri Nouwen says that waiting is patient. He tells us that “The word ‘patience’ means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us…Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there.”
With comprehension and concentration, slowly read today’s GraceLine a second time. It is an invitation into Mary’s suffering – to share the Virgin’s grief. Ask Our Lady to take you into her Immaculate Heart and wait there with her. Wait with patience until what is hidden there manifests itself to you. Then journal about your insights.
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The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depths of tenderness. It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the Fount of My Mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.(699) Do all you possibly can for this work of My mercy. I desire that My mercy be worshipped, and I am giving mankind the last hope of salvation; that is, recourse to My Mercy. My Heart rejoices in this feast (998). Say unceasingly the chaplet that I have taught you*...Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once, he would receive grace from My infinite mercy (687)...Through the chaplet you will obtain everything, if what you ask for will be compatible with My will (1731). I am offering people a vessel with which they are to keep coming for graces to the fountain of mercy. That vessel is the image with the signature: "Jesus, I trust in You" (327). I want the image to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter, and I want it to be venerated publicly so that every soul may know about it(341)." *(www.thedivinemercy.org) For Reflection:
"Who can say he is free from sin and does not need God's mercy? As people of this restless time of ours, wavering between the emptiness of self-exaltation and the humiliation of despair, we have a greater need than ever for a regenerating experience of mercy."-John Paul II in a homily on Divine Mercy Sunday in 1994. With the above Holy Words of Love and Mercy how can we not, ourselves, show mercy to all sinners by following His directives?
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