Mary's Tears

I got this article on my inbox this morning and found it very enchanting to read about the tears of Mary.  Very little is said about the Blessed Virgin and the mystery of her life is something that captivates me.  The grace of her demeanor.  The strength of her resolve.  And although I cannot really grasp everything about her life, there is just something that draws me to keep getting to know her.  

I'm pondering about this article written by Leon Bloy who is a French Novelist and poet who "reflects a deepening devotion to the Catholic Church and most generally a tremendous craving for the Absolute. His devotion resulted from a complete dependence on charity."  I'm imagining how a writer like him lived his life dependent on donations from friends and acquaintances just to sustain his pursuit of the craft.  I'm imagining how his circumstances have led him to ponder upon the spiritual truths that led him to gaze face to face at the Virgin's tears.  What an intimate encounter.  These days, you don't change upon these encounters often.  The world is heavily reliant on the physical nature of interactions.  For me, I continue to marvel at the beauty of these mysteries and hope I get in touch with them too one day.

Mary's Tears

The tears of the Mother of Sorrows fill the Scriptures and flow down across the centuries.  All of the weeping mothers, widows and virgins will add nothing to this copious outpouring that would suffice to cleanse the hearts of ten thousand desperate worlds. 

All those who are hurt, destitute or oppressed, the sad tide of humanity that choke the fearful paths of life will find succor in the ample folds of the sky-blue cloak of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows.   Each time that someone falls weeping, whether in a throng of people or alone, she is there weeping too, because all tears belong to her as the Empress of Beatitude and Love. 

Mary’s tears are the very Blood of Jesus Christ, but differently shed, just as her compassion was a sort of internal crucifixion for the divine humanity of her Son. Tears are a legacy of the Mother of Sorrows, such an awesome legacy that it cannot be frittered away in the vain affections of the world without committing some kind of sacrilege. 

Saint Rose of Lima said that our tears belong to God, and that whoever sheds them without thinking of Him, steals them from Him. They belong to God and to she who gave God the flesh and blood of His human form. 

If Saint Ambrose, recalling Monica, refers to Augustine as “the son of so many tears”, how much more so are we sons of the tears of that special creature who, as the Mother of God, received the matchless privilege of offering to the Eternal Father a sufficient atonement for the nameless, boundless crime through which Jesus obtained the redemption of the world? 

When Saint Monica wept for the misdemeanors of the future doctor of grace, her tears ran like a river of glory bearing her incredulous son in her tirelessly outstretched arms to the Author of Grace. Yet tears were all she had to offer and the conversion of her only son was all she had in mind.

When Mary weeps over us, her Tears are indeed a universal out flowing of heavenly Blood, of which she is the sovereign Dispenser, and this outpouring is at the same time the most perfect of oblations For, through grace, she is the only mother who has the power to lead her countless other children to worship by dint of her tears. 

The tears of the Blessed Virgin are only mentioned once in the Gospel, when she utters her fourth word after she has found her Son. And it is she who is speaking then. Elsewhere, the gospel-writers merely say that Jesus wept, and this must be sufficient for us to guess as to what His Mother is doing. 

Saint Bernardino of Sienna says that the grief of the Blessed Virgin was so great that if it were divided and shared among all creatures capable of suffering, they would die in an instant. Now, if we take account of the way in which this simple soul, filled with the Holy Spirit, was so greatly illumined with the Holy Spirit for whom the future had a present and significant reality, this affirmation must be heard down the ages, not just on Good Friday, but at every moment of her life from the Annunciation of the Archangel unto her death.

- Leon Bloy (1846-1917)