OUR LADY OF SORROWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 197, 12 January 1877, Page 13

OUR LADY OF SORROWS.

Wherever there is love, there is a corresponding capacity for sorrow ; tlie magic of love, whether it be human or Divine, is to elevate ut out of ourselves for that which we love. Well did one of the saints say — "The heart is far moie where it loveth than where it liveth." Have you, any of you, ever felt the passion of Divine or human love • have you, any of you, ever felt the strength of aa intense affection ? Have you not felt in that hour, that moment, that you would be ready to give your very life for the object of your thought, that you lived far more for him than yourself, that your greatest joy would be to make the greatest sacrifices for him. That is the nobility of every woman's love, that is the great nobility of Divine love. Imagine, therefore, all the love that could beat in the mother's soul and heart for her only chil 1 ; imagine that love intensided through all the a*ony and force of passion that ever throbbed in the mo-<t passionate heart, imagine that love when it has reached the boundary of mer* hucnan affection, then launched forth into the realms of Divine lore for he was not only her child but her God, and Mary loved Him a» her God with a love more perfect than that of the angels, and Mary loved Him as her Son with a woman's love, more strong and intense than that of all the mothers that ever yet knew joy and sorrow on this eurih. Now He who was the object of her love became tho cause of her sorrow, and her sorrow was proporiioned to that love. As it emptied her heart of every thought and affection, it filled it with the love of her Divine Lord. Fur more easy would the agony of body be than the a->ony of soul ; for there is a sorrow of the soul, a sorrow of the heart, and of the affection, even as our Divine Lord permitted a greater agony to come upon Him, when in Gethsemane He contemplated His passion, than ever whilst He was uudergoing it on the following day; so also we may conclude that Mary's sorrow was far greater than if she bore on her own immaculate peraon all tho blows and the strokes, and the ignominies of her Son. For her sorrow began early and lasted long. She saw it originating in the first days of her holy maternity, when feasting her eyes upon the dazzling beauty of her Divine Son, clasping Him to her bosom and folding Him in her arms in the first spring and ecstacy of a youn» mothers love, when the aged Simeon appeared before her and said to her — " Oh, woman, this child whom thou lovest is set up for a sign that shall be contradicted, and I tell thee that ihy own soul the sword of sorrow shall pierce." This, her Child, to be the source of her sorrow ! This, her joy, to be banished from the society of it, from the holding of it, from the nourishing of Him for ever. Ye§ Mary laid up all these words in her heart. Mary took the word, the

word, the bitter word, from the prophet of His agonies and her sorrow, and from that hour every unfolding grace of the Child was but a wound in her he-.rb. As she folde I Him upon her bosom she knew that she was only nourishing Him in order that she might offer Mimto scorn ami to ignominy. *he leaned H.s young head upon her heart, and God listened to the throb of that faithful heart, but well she knew thah she was only rearing Him for strokes and scourging, for sorrow and for shame. And it was her first groat sorrow that banished all human joy oub of her life. The words of Simeon reTealed to her more clearly the mjstery which she knew before from the prophet who described Him -that her Child was to be the Redeemer of the world, and that her love and her God was also to be a Man of Sorrow, nc-dy, torn from head to foot, despised of men, a worm and not a man, from whom all His beauty was to depart so that men should know him no more. This was her first sorrow.— JL ( atner Burke.