Mary Desolate: the Saint par excellence

“Mary stood at the foot of the cross in her heart-rending stabat, which transformed her soul into a bitter sea of anguish. She is the highest expression in a human creature of the heroism of every virtue. She lived meekness to perfection; she was poor to the point of losing her Son who was God; she was the embodiment of justice, not lamenting the loss of what was hers only because God chose her; she was pure in her emotional detachment from her Son, God… In Mary Desolate, we see the triumph of the virtues of faith and hope, through the love she nourished throughout her whole life. In that moment, this love blazed forth in her active sharing in the work of the Redemption.

In her desolation, which adorns her with every virtue, Mary teaches us humility and patience, prudence and perseverance, simplicity and silence, so that on the background of the ‘darkness’ of ourselves, of all that is merely human within us, the light of God living in us may shine out for the world. Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, is the perfect saint, a monument of holiness towards whom all people may look in order to learn how to clothe themselves with the self-denial taught by the Church down the centuries, and which the saints, in different tones, have echoed throughout the ages.

We do not think enough about Mary’s “passion,” about the swords that pierced her Heart, about the terrible forsakenness she felt on Golgotha when Jesus entrusted her to others… Perhaps the reason for this is that Mary knew all too well how to cover her living, anguished agony with sweetness, light and silence.

Yet, there is no suffering similar to hers….

If one day our sufferings reach such depths that make everything in us rebel because the fruit of our “passion” seems to be taken out of our hands and even more so from our heart, let’s remember her. This ice coldness will make us a bit like her, and the reality of Mary will become clearer in our souls: the All-Beautiful, the Mother of all because by divine will she was detached from everyone, most of all, from her divine Son.

Mary Desolate is the Saint par excellence.
I would like to relive her in her mortification.
I would like to be able to be alone with God like her, in the sense that, even when I am with others, I feel drawn to make the whole of my life an intimate dialogue between my soul and God.

I must mortify words, thoughts, and actions that are outside the moment of God, to set them into the moment reserved for them.

Mary Desolate is the certainty of holiness, a perennial source of union with God, a cup overflowing with joy.”

Chiara Lubich, La Dottrina Spirituale, Città Nuova Editrice 2006 (Roma), pp.183 – 184