…Someone contemplating the Crucifixion cried out in the end: “O Mary, how can you still love us!” – A strange and wondrous thing is this love for souls! Its paths are different, its order distinct, its manifestations unique.
Mary was a victim of sin, yet she remains forever the “refuge of sinners.” She suffered more than the mind can comprehend, yet she never ceased to love, to understand, and to forgive; indeed, she loves us all the more and inclines herself to us all the more, the worse our state becomes. It has often been seen that at the end of a life rebellious against God, a single “Hail Mary,” recited out of habit, became an anchor of salvation.
No, no one has ever called upon the Mother of Jesus in vain.
How shall we repay her for all this?
Nothing in the world is as difficult as gratitude; the seed of pride within us prevents us from humbling ourselves in thanksgiving, even before the Mother of God Himself. The hardness of our minds hinders us from saying: I have received, I have been blessed; instead, we say: I have, I have earned! – For that sounds grander. But what do you have that you have not received? Therefore, give thanks with love; this is the best way to ask, to be enriched with new graces. Our greatest loss is that we so easily grow accustomed to the absence of love within ourselves – and that we do not examine ourselves on this point. We sometimes strive to do good, but more often we resort to other means, not the shortest and simplest one, which is love. This is not a mere phrase; it is a profound truth worthy of a moment’s reflection.
To one who loves, everything is easy, just as everything was light for Mary because of Jesus. Why, then, do we not make this heavy, dry, wretched life easier for ourselves?
God’s love is a treasure hidden in the field of our earthly calling; it lies beneath a very thin layer of earth, right under our feet. Yet, instead of reaching for it through short and light effort, we look around for fleeting will-o’-the-wisps and sometimes leave this treasure untouched until death, though it is within our grasp.
Let us ask Mary to teach us to seek the treasure of God’s love and to help us find it; we could have no more perfect guide.
As she understood the love of Christ the Lord for humanity and lived, worked, suffered, and loved in one spirit with Him, so too can we, if we attentively, willingly, and with good faith contemplate these most sublime examples.
Sigh: O Mother of love, Mother of Jesus, teach us to thank Your Divine Son for His and Your love for us.
St. Paul calls love “the fulfillment of the law.” Without it, there is nothing; with it, nothing else is needed.
But God grants it only to those who seek it.
From her earliest years, Mary sought the paths of love and the renunciation that flows from love. Her first step recorded in the Gospel is her offering in the temple. She went toward love, reached out her hands to it, prepared her heart for it; she knew what a treasure it was. She desired to love, without ever asking what consequences or obligations this desire would bring. These are never easy or light, but who would trade the love of their heart and all they suffered for it for the greatest treasures of the world?
Mary’s love for the Lord Jesus was not an empty word; it was strength, action, an unceasing sacrifice; it was the most perfect union with His will, an unconditional surrender.
Nothing for herself, everything for Him.
“Love does not seek its own,” says the same St. Paul.
In Mary, we see the model of this self-forgetfulness; we do not read in the Gospel of anything being done for Mary, yet she was the Mother of God, deserving of all honor – but her love always places her in the background. Yet this love of hers enriches her infinitely, so that she would not trade it for any throne in the world; in this love lies her entire life. “Her love is strong as death,” enduring beyond the earthly life of her Beloved. When He died on the cross, when He was briefly in the tomb, and when He rose from the dead, He found in Mary the same heart, filled with the same feelings for Him. True love does not end, for its beginning is in heaven, and to heaven it returns, as to its source.
Our hearts are always chasing after some love,
– but is it the love of God?
Time passes, and we waste ourselves, exhausting the strength of our hearts at the feet of false gods. If love does not improve us, does not bring peace, does not lead us to a straight path or a sure height from which our personal concerns would yield to God’s cause in the world and the good of our neighbors’ souls, then we do not yet have true love.
We must ask for it; we must beg God to let us love Him.
And then we must persevere in what we have asked for and received. We must not squander the treasure received or treat it lightly. With an unceasing act of the heart, we must unite ourselves with God, loving His most holy will, which is fulfilled in every moment over us;
– to love as much as God gives us strength to love Him – and to desire to love Him ever more.
For thirty-two years, St. Augustine loved everything except God, scattering himself in all directions. But then he gathered all the rays of his soul into one focus, and this philosopher, scholar, and genius, to whom the worlds of knowledge stood open, fell into the dust before God, crying: “O love, so ancient and ever new, how late have I known you!”
Yet it was not too late, as his later life proved.
But will not that heavy word “too late!” resound for some of us, as it did for the foolish five virgins in the Gospel?
It is terrifying to think of that late knocking at closed doors, beyond which the dearest voice calls: “I do not know you.” – Dearest, because then the beauty of the One we neglected will be revealed to us all at once, along with our terrible blindness and lamentable laziness, which feared love and the sacrifices it entails. Let us bring to mind this return from the doors closed to us forever and those dreadful words: “I do not know you,” because you did not wish to know Me, because you did not love Me.
St. Augustine’s Sigh:
O Jesus, imprint on my heart Your most holy wounds, that in them I may know not only Your pain but also Your love; Your pain, that I may bear all pain for You, Your love, that I may despise all other loves for You.
From: Meditations for Each Day of May. Notes from May Conferences by Fr. Zygmunt Golian. With the addition of the most exquisite prayers and hymns to the Most Holy Mother. Kraków, 1931. Jesuit Publishing House, pp. 33–41.
Catholic during the Great Apostasy 
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