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.

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.

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?