The Twenty-Third Day of May

Mary’s Adoration of Propitiation.

I.

Mary adored her most dear Son in His character of perpetual Victim, always immolated on our altars, incessantly imploring by His death grace and mercy for sinners. Mary adored the Savior on this new Calvary, upon which His love crucified Him. She offered Him to God for the salvation of her new family, and the sight of Jesus on the Cross with His gaping wounds, renewed in her soul the martyrdom of her compassion. At Holy Mass, she beheld again her crucified Jesus, shedding His Blood in streams in the midst of sorrows and opprobrium, abandoned by God and man, and dying in the supreme act of His love. Mary, adoring her God present on the altar by the Consecration, shed abundant tears at the sight of men who make no account of this august sacrifice, who render sterile this Mystery of their Redemption, who dare offend and despise this Adorable Victim immolated under their eyes and for their salvation.

Mary would have wished to offer a thousand deaths to repair so many outrages; for the unfortunate creatures who thus rendered themselves guilty, were her children whom Jesus, when dying, had confided to her. Poor Mother! Was not one Calvary sufficient for her? Why daily renew her sorrows, and pierce her heart with new words of impiety?

Like the best of Mothers, however, in stead of rejecting and cursing sinners, Mary took on herself the debt of their crimes. She expiated them by sufferings, she became herself a victim at the foot of the altar, asking grace and mercy for her guilty children.

II.

Mary adored the state of prisoner that Jesus took by uniting Himself in separably to the Sacred Species. She contemplated His glorified Body, His feet, His hands, condemned to material immobility, His tongue speechless, His soul without exterior expansion, His love without arms, without wings, but tied, bound, unable to show men aught but His amiable chains.

"O happy bonds that keep Jesus in our midst," said Mary, "be ye blessed! Ye are fiery chains that attach me to this divine tabernacle! Silence of my God, how eloquent art thou to my heart! Sacred members of my Savior, you are still more dear to me than when the nails fastened you to the Cross, or when the folds of the winding-sheet encircled you! It is love that binds you here, and that forever, that I may make of Jesus my Treasure, my Prisoner of love, the Companion of my captivity here below, the God of my heart!"

III.

Mary adored the hidden state of Jesus’ Divinity and Humanity in His Sacrament, veiled that man might not attach himself to the glory and beauty of His Person, but should go unshackled to the Divinity of the Word. Jesus thus veiled Himself only to spiritualize man’s faith, to purify his heart, to stimulate his love, and to attract him to the infinite, to the ever-increasing and always new beauty.

Mary, then, adored Jesus veiled, but discoverable by love. She contemplated behind the cloud the beauty of this Sun that manifests Its ardor by the light which It gives to the mind, and Its presence by Its sweetness.

Mary honored the hidden life of Jesus by her own retired and solitary life. She passed the greater part of her time in making reparation for ungrateful man. At sight of the Eucharistic annihilations of Jesus, she would have wished to be annihilated, also, changed into a Sacramental Species, deprived of her own peculiar mode of life. She had, in fact, lost, transformed into Jesus her natural life, as the bread is transformed into the substance of Jesus Christ.

Seeing His Divine Mother at His feet, the Savior consoled Himself for men’s desertion. He loved the sacrifices that He had so generously made, and He preferred His state of annihilation to that of His glory. Mary, His Mother and the Mother of all adorers, indemnified Him for everything, and Jesus love found in describable satisfaction in receiving her prayers and her tears shed for the salvation of the world.

Practice: Assist at Mass to repair, in union with Mary, the crime of those that fail to do so.

Aspiration: O Mary, thou art the true mystical Table whereon we find the delicious Food of our soul, Jesus in the Eucharist!