THE DIVINE HEART OF JESUS. SAINT JOHN EUDES CHAPTER V

 

THE INFINITE LOVE OF JESUS

TO HIS HOLY MOTHER HIGH OF SORROW

IN THE PASSION, HIS DIVINE HEART

Just as the adorable Heart of our Savior was inflamed with infinite love for his holy Mother, his sorrows were also  inconceivable when he saw her submerged in an ocean of tribulations at the moment of his passion. Since the Holy Virgin was the Mother of our Redeemer, she fought a continuous love battle within her Heart. Because, knowing that it was God's will that his most beloved Son should suffer and die for our salvation, the ardent love that she had for the divine Will and for the salvation of men placed her, on the one hand, in total submission to divine dispositions. And on the other hand, her incomparable motherly love for her beloved son caused her unspeakable pain in view of the torments she had to suffer for the redemption of the world.

The saints judge that, when the day of his passion arrives, given the love and obedience with which he always behaved with his holy Mother and according to the kindness she has to console her friends in their afflictions, before entering into their sufferings, said goodbye to his dearest Mother. And to do everything within obedience, both to the will of his Father and to that of his Mother, since he did not know any other than that of that divine Father, he asked him for permission to execute what was ordered by his eternal Father; He informed her that it was the will of his Father that she accompany him to the foot of the cross and once he was dead, wrap his body in a canvas to deposit it in the tomb, and gave him instructions on what he should do and where he should remain until he had risen.

It is also probable that he would have made her know what he was going to suffer in order to prepare her and to dispose her to accompany him spiritually and bodily in his sufferings. And since their inner pains were unspeakable, they did not declare them to each other in words, but their eyes and hearts understood each other and communicated their afflictions to each other.

But the most perfect love of both and their total conformity to the vThe divine will did not allow the slightest imperfection in his natural feelings. On the one hand, the Savior was the only Son of his beloved Mother and he felt her pains immensely and, on the other, he was her God and wanted to strengthen her in the greatest known desolation. He consoled her with his words that she listened to and kept carefully in her heart and with new graces that she poured into her soul so that she could endure and overcome the immense pains that were prepared for her. These were so great that if he had been able to suffer instead of his beloved Son, he would have more easily endured his own torments than to see them suffer for him; it would have been more bearable for her to give her life for him than to see him suffer such excruciating ordeals. But since God arranged things differently,She offered her Heart and Jesus her body so that each one would suffer what God had ordained. Mary suffered the torments of her Son and her own in the  most sensitive part that is the Heart and Jesus suffered in his body  inexplicable sufferings and in his Heart the inconceivable sufferings of  his holy Mother.

The Savior said goodbye to his holy Mother and went to sink into the immense ocean of her sorrows. His desolate Mother remained in continuous prayer and accompanied him internally. That sad day began for her with prayers, tears, intimate agonies, in perfect submission to the divine will; She said with her Son in the bottom of her Heart what he said to his Father in the agony of the Garden of Olives: Father, not my will but yours be done.

The night of our Redeemer's prison in the garden, the Jews took him tied, first to the house of Annas, then to that of Caiaphas; There, tired of making fun of him and of insulting him in a thousand ways, each one withdrew to his home. Jesus remained a prisoner in the same house until the day came.  Saint John the Evangelist left the house of Caiaphas, either by order  received from Our Lord or by some divine inspiration, and went to the house of the Holy Virgin to inform her of what happened.

¡Oh God! Who could express the sadness, pains and lamentations that crossed between the Mother of Jesus and her beloved disciple, when he told her what had happened up to then? Certainly the feelings and anguish of both were indescribable. One spoke more with the heart than with the lips, and with the tears more than with words. especially the Holy Virgin because, as her immense modesty did not allow her to be obfuscated words, her Heart suffered the unimaginable.

Later. Seeing that the moment had come to go find and accompany her only Son in his torments, she left her house at daybreak. imitating the divine Lamb in silence, like a mute sheep, bathing the path with her tears and sending the ardent sighs of her Heart to heaven. May the devotees of this desolate Virgin walk on that path and accompany her in pain in her sorrows.

The Jews bring the Savior to the house of Pilate and Herod  amid outrages and outrages; The afflicted Mother could not contemplate the Son because of the multitude and the commotion of the mob, until the  moment when Pilate showed him to the people, scourged and crowned with thorns. It was then when hearing the cries of the mob, the tumult of the city, the insults and blasphemies of the Jews against her Son, her Heart suffered immense pain and her eyes shed fervent tears 1; as she had put all her love in him, although the presence of her Son was what afflicted her the most, he desired her above all else. And it is that love knows such excesses when it supports the absence of the loved one less than the pain, no matter how great, caused by its presence.

Amid such bitterness and anguish this holy sheep yearned to see her divine Lamb. Finally she saw him torn from head to toe by the lashes, his head pierced by cruel thorns, his face bruised, swollen, covered in blood and spittle, with a rope around his neck, his hands tied. A reed scepter in hand and dressed in a mocking cloak. He knew that his Mother was there and she knew that his divine Majesty read the feelings of his heart, pierced with pains no less immense than those he carried in his body.

There he heard the false testimonies that they wielded against him and how they postponed him to the thief and murderer Barabbas. There he heard millions of angry voices shouting: ¡Out, out, ¡crucify him! 2. There he met the death sentence pronounced against the author of life. There he saw the cross on which he was to be crucified and how, with it on his back. he started walking towards Calvary. She, following his bloody footprints, washed the road with as many tears as Jesus shed blood; She too carried the most painful cross that she suffered in her heart. as he carried it on his shoulders.

Finally she arrived at Calvary, accompanied by the holy women who were endeavoring to comfort her. But she was silent, in imitation of the meek Lamb and suffered inconceivable pain when she heard the hammering of the executioners on the nails that fixed her Son on the cross. And how she was so weak from having been awake and crying all night and for not having taken food to sustain herself, when she saw the one who loved infinitely more than herself, lifted up and nailed to the cross, with such cruel pains, without To be able to give her any relief, she fainted in the arms of those who accompanied her as it usually happens in excessive pain. Her tears stopped, she was colorless and trembling. until his Son gave him new strength to accompany him to death.

Then, shedding new streams of tears, she began to suffer another martyrdom of pain at the sight of her Son hanging on the cross. This did not prevent her from exercising her office as mediator before God on behalf of sinners, cooperating with her redeemer for their salvation and offering for them to the eternal Father her blood, her sufferings and her death with the ardent desire for their eternal happiness. The unspeakable love for her beloved Son made her fear seeing him expire and die and, at the same time, it filled her with pain to see how her torments were prolonged that would only end with death.

She, too, wanted the heavenly Father to soften the severity of her torture and also wanted to fully conform to the  dispositions of this adorable Father. And so divine love gave  birth to a battle in his Heart in such conflicting desires and feelings that, because they came from that same love, they caused him  inexplicable pain.

The most sacred Sheep and the divine Lamb looked at and understood each other and communicated their pains that were  such that only the hearts of the Son and the Mother could understand them. Because they loved each other perfectly, they suffered these cruel torments together  because their mutual love was the measure of their pain. Those who consider them will not be able to understand them if they are far from understanding the love of such a Son for his Mother and of such a Mother for her Son.

The sorrows of the Holy Virgin grew and were continually renewed with the new outrages and torments that the rage of the Jews unloaded on her Son. What pain did it feel to hear him shout those words: ¿My God? OMG. why have you abandoned me? l. What bitterness when he saw that they gave him gall and vinegar in the burning of his thirst! ¡Oh grief when he saw his Heart being pierced with a spear! What sadness to receive him dead in her arms! ¡once down from the cross! What sadness when his holy body was taken from him and locked in the tomb! With what regret would he go home to await the resurrection! Certainly this divine Virgin would have preferred to suffer all the pains of her Son rather than see how he suffered! Perfect love works in the hearts that strive to imitate their divine Father and their good Mother, making them gladly bear their own afflictions and vividly feel those of others in such a way that it is easier for them to bear them personally than to watch others suffer them. This is what our Savior did during his life and particularly on the day of his passion. Because knowing that Judas had sold him, he showed greater sadness for his condemnation (when he said that it would have been better for him not to have been born) than for the torments he was going to suffer because of his betrayal.

He also made the women who were crying behind him when he carried his cross see how the tribulations that they and the city of Jerusalem were going to suffer were more sensitive to him than  everything he suffered. Daughters of Jerusalem - he told them - do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time came that say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not given a birth and the breasts that suckled hall no 2. At the very moment that he was nailed to the cross, forgotten about his own tortures, he showed that the needs of sinners were more sensitive to him than his own sufferings, when he asked his Father to forgive them. The love he has for his creatures made him feel his ills more than his own.  That is why one of the greatest torments of our Savior on the cross, more sensitive than his own physical pains, was to see his holy Mother submerged in a sea of ​​bitterness. He had more love for her than for all creatures combined. She was the best of all mothers, the most faithful companion of his travels and work. And because she was very innocent, she did not deserve those sufferings.

She was a Mother who was more filled with love for her Son than the hearts of all the angels and saints and saw her suffer torments never before known. What would not be the affliction of this Mother who had before her eyes such a Son so unjustly tormented and submerged in an ocean of sufferings without being able to give him the slightest relief! It is certainly such a heavy cross that no spirit can understand it. It is a cross reserved for grace, love and the heroic virtues of a Mother of God.