Mary Was the Queen of Martyrs, Because Her Martyrdom Was Longer and Greater Than That of All the Martyrs
Who could have a heart so hard that it would not melt on hearing of a most lamentable event that once happened in the world? There was a noble and holy mother who had but one only Son; and he was the most lovable that could be imagined—innocent, virtuous, beautiful, and most loving toward his mother. So loving was he that he had never given her the least displeasure, but had always shown her every respect, obedience, and affection. And so the mother had placed upon this Son all her earthly love. Now what happened? It happened that this Son, through envy, was falsely accused by his enemies; and the judge, though he knew and even confessed his innocence, yet, in order not to offend his enemies, condemned him to an infamous death, precisely as they had demanded. And this poor mother had to suffer the affliction of seeing that lovable and beloved Son so unjustly taken from her, in the flower of his youth, by a barbarous death. For he was made to die in torment, drained of his blood before her own eyes, in a public place, upon an infamous gibbet.
Devout souls, what do you say? Is this case, and this unhappy mother, worthy of compassion? You already know of whom I speak. This Son so cruelly slain was our loving Redeemer Jesus, and his Mother was the Blessed Virgin Mary, who, for love of us, was willing to see him sacrificed to the divine justice by the barbarity of men. This great pain, then, which Mary suffered for us—a pain that cost her more than a thousand deaths—deserves our compassion and our gratitude. And if we can return nothing else for so much love, let us at least pause today for a little while to consider the bitterness of the suffering by which Mary became Queen of martyrs. For her great martyrdom exceeded in suffering that of all the martyrs—being, first, the longest martyrdom, and second, the greatest martyrdom.
First Point. As Jesus is called the King of sorrows and the King of martyrs, because he suffered in his life more than all the other martyrs, so also is Mary justly named the Queen of martyrs, having merited this title by suffering the greatest martyrdom that could be endured, next to that of her Son. And so she was rightly called by Richard of St. Laurence the martyr of martyrs: Martyr martyrum. And to her may be applied what Isaias said: Coronans coronabit te tribulatione (Isa. 22:18)—“He will crown thee with a crown of tribulation.” For that very suffering, which exceeded the suffering of all the other martyrs united, was the crown by which she was shown to be the Queen of martyrs.
That Mary was a true martyr cannot be doubted, as the Carthusian, Pelbart, Catharinus, and others prove; for it is an established opinion that suffering sufficient to cause death constitutes martyrdom, even though death does not then follow. St. John the Evangelist is revered as a martyr, although he did not die in the caldron of boiling oil, but came out sounder than he went in: vegetior exiverit quam intraverit. It is enough, says St. Thomas, to obtain the glory of martyrdom that one should be obedient even to the point of offering himself to death. Mary was a martyr, says St. Bernard, not by the sword of the executioner, but by the bitter sorrow of her heart. If her body was not wounded by the hand of the executioner, yet her blessed heart was pierced by grief at the passion of her Son—a grief sufficient to cause her not one death, but a thousand. And from this we shall see that Mary was not only a true martyr, but that her martyrdom surpassed that of all the other martyrs; for it was a longer martyrdom, and—if I may so express it—her whole life was a long death.
The passion of Jesus began with his birth, as St. Bernard says; and Mary too, in all things like her Son, suffered her martyrdom throughout her whole life. The name of Mary, among its other meanings, signifies, as Blessed Albert the Great affirms, a bitter sea: mare amarum. And so to her is applied the passage of Jeremias: Magna est enim velut mare contritio tua (Lam. 2:13)—“Great as the sea is thy destruction.” For as the sea is all salt and bitterness, so the life of Mary was always full of bitterness at the sight of the passion of the Redeemer, which was ever present to her. It cannot be doubted that, being more enlightened by the Holy Spirit than all the prophets, she understood better than they the predictions concerning the Messiah, which they recorded in their holy Scriptures. This is exactly what the angel revealed to St. Bridget. And so, as the same angel declared, the Virgin—knowing how much the incarnate Word was to suffer for the salvation of men, even before she became his Mother, and feeling compassion for this innocent Savior who was to be so cruelly put to death for crimes not his own—began from that time her great martyrdom.
Her grief afterward increased beyond measure when she was made the Mother of this Savior. So that, at the painful thought of all the sufferings her poor Son was to endure, she truly experienced, as Rupert the Abbot says, a long martyrdom—a martyrdom continued through her whole life. And this very thing was signified by the vision St. Bridget had at Rome, in the church of St. Mary Major, where the Blessed Virgin appeared to her with St. Simeon and an angel who carried a sword that was very long and red with blood; by which was prefigured the long and bitter grief that pierced the heart of Mary during her whole life. And so the same Rupert puts these words into the mouth of Mary: O redeemed souls, my beloved children, do not pity me only for that hour in which I saw my dear Jesus dying in my presence; for the sword of sorrow foretold to me by Simeon pierced my soul during my whole life. When I was giving suck to my Son, when I was warming him in my arms, I already saw the bitter death that awaited him. Consider, then, what long and cruel sorrows I must have endured.
And so Mary might truly say in the words of David: “My life is wasted with grief, and my years in sighs” (Ps. 30:11). Dolor meus in conspectu meo semper (Ps. 37:18)—“My sorrow is continually before me.” My life was wholly passed in grief and tears; for my grief, which was compassion for my beloved Son, never departed from before my eyes, since I saw continually the sufferings and the death that he was one day to endure. The divine Mother herself revealed to St. Bridget that even after the death and ascension of her Son into heaven, the memory of his passion—whether she ate or worked—was deeply impressed and ever fresh in her tender heart. Tauler therefore says that Mary passed her whole life in perpetual sorrow, and that her heart was always occupied with thoughts of sadness and of suffering.
So that time, which usually softens the sorrows of the afflicted, did not relieve Mary; indeed, time itself increased her sorrow. For as Jesus advanced in years, on the one hand he continually showed himself more lovely and lovable, and on the other the time of his death was ever drawing nearer, and grief at having to lose him on this earth continually increased in the heart of Mary. As the rose grows up among thorns, the angel said to St. Bridget, so the Mother of God advanced in years in the midst of sufferings; and as the thorns increase with the growth of the rose, so this rose chosen by the Lord, Mary, as she increased in age, was the more pierced by the thorns of her dolors. Having considered the length of this suffering, let us now pass on to the second point: the consideration of its greatness.
Second Point. Ah, Mary was Queen of martyrs not only because her martyrdom was longer than that of all others, but also because it was the greatest of all. But who can measure its greatness? Jeremias seems unable to find anyone to whom he might compare this Mother of sorrows when he considers her great suffering at the death of her Son. “To what shall I compare thee, or to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? For great as the sea is thy destruction; who shall heal thee?” (Lam. 2:13). And so Cardinal Hugo, commenting on these words, says: O blessed Virgin, as the bitterness of the sea exceeds all other bitterness, so your grief surpasses all other griefs. Hence St. Anselm affirms that if God had not, by a special miracle, preserved the life of Mary, her grief would have been sufficient to cause her death at every moment of her life. And St. Bernardine of Siena goes so far as to say that the grief of Mary was so great that, if it were divided among all men, it would be enough to cause their immediate death.
But let us consider the reasons why the martyrdom of Mary was greater than that of all the martyrs. In the first place, it must be remembered that the martyrs suffered their martyrdom in the body, by fire or by steel; but Mary suffered her martyrdom in her soul, as St. Simeon had foretold: “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce” (Luke 2:35). It was as if the holy old man had said to her: O holy Virgin, the bodies of the other martyrs will be torn with iron, but you will be pierced and martyred in your soul by the passion of your own Son. Now, as the soul is more noble than the body, so much greater was the suffering of Mary than that of all the martyrs—as Jesus Christ himself said to St. Catherine of Siena: “There is no comparison between the sufferings of the soul and those of the body.” And so the holy Abbot Arnold of Chartres says that whoever had been present on Calvary at the great sacrifice of the immaculate Lamb, when he was dying on the cross, would have beheld there two great altars: one in the body of Jesus, the other in the heart of Mary. For there, at the same time that the Son sacrificed his body in death, Mary sacrificed her soul in compassion.
Moreover, while the other martyrs, as St. Antoninus says, suffered by sacrificing their own lives, the Blessed Virgin suffered by sacrificing the life of her Son, whom she loved far more than her own life. So that she not only suffered in spirit all that her Son suffered in body, but the very sight of his sufferings brought more grief to her heart than if she had endured them all in her own person. There can be no doubt that Mary suffered in her heart all the torments by which she saw her beloved Jesus tormented. Everyone knows that the sufferings of children are also the sufferings of their mothers, when they are witnesses of them. St. Augustine, considering the anguish that the mother of the Maccabees experienced in witnessing the tortures her sons endured, says: “She suffered in them all, because she loved them all, and endured with her eyes what they all endured in the flesh.” Thus also was it with Mary; all those scourgings, torments, thorns, nails, and the cross, which tortured the innocent flesh of Jesus, entered at the same time into the heart of Mary to complete her martyrdom. “He in the flesh, she in the heart, suffered,” writes Blessed Amadeus: ille carne, illa corde passa est. So that, as St. Lawrence Justinian says, the heart of Mary became, as it were, a mirror of the sufferings of her Son, in which were seen the spitting, the scourging, the wounds, and all that Jesus suffered. And St. Bonaventure remarks that those wounds, which were scattered all over the body of Jesus, were all united in the one heart of Mary.
The Virgin, then, through compassion for her Son, was scourged, crowned with thorns, insulted, and nailed to the cross. And so the same saint, contemplating Mary on Mount Calvary as she stood by her dying Son, asks her: O Lady, tell me, where did you then stand? Only at the foot of the cross, perhaps? Might I not rather say that you stood upon the cross itself, crucified with your Son? And Richard, commenting on the words the Redeemer spoke through the mouth of Isaias—“I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the Gentiles there is not a man with me” (Isa. 63:3)—adds: O Lord, you rightly say that in the work of human redemption you suffered alone, and there was no man who could pity you sufficiently; but there was a woman with you, your own Mother, who suffered in her heart whatever you suffered in your body.
But all this is to say only too little of the sorrows of Mary; for, as I have said before, she suffered more in seeing her beloved Jesus suffer than if she had endured in her own person all the tortures and the death of her Son. Erasmus has written, speaking of parents in general, that they feel the sufferings of their children more than their own. But this is not always true. It was no doubt true of Mary, for she certainly loved her Son and his life far more than herself, and more than a thousand lives of her own. Therefore Blessed Amadeus well declares that the afflicted Mother, at the sorrowful sight of the agony of her beloved Jesus, suffered much more than if she herself had endured his whole passion. The reason is plain, since, as St. Bernard says: The soul is more where it loves than where it lives—anima magis est ubi amat quam ubi animat. And the Savior himself had already said that our heart is where our treasure is (Luke 12:34). If Mary, then, through love lived more in her Son than in herself, much greater was the grief she suffered at his death than if the most cruel death in the world had been inflicted upon her.
And here we must consider the other circumstance that made the martyrdom of Mary far greater than the sufferings of all the martyrs: for in the passion of Jesus she suffered much, and she suffered without relief. The martyrs suffered under the torments their tyrants inflicted on them, but love for Jesus made their pains sweet and welcome. St. Vincent suffered in his martyrdom; he was tortured on the rack, torn with hooks, burned with red-hot iron plates; yet St. Augustine says: “One seemed to suffer, and another to speak”—alius videbatur pati, alius loqui. He addressed the tyrant with such power, and with such contempt for his torments, that it seemed as if one Vincent suffered and another Vincent spoke—so greatly did his God, with the sweetness of his love, comfort him in the midst of his sufferings. St. Boniface suffered; his body was torn with irons, sharp reeds were thrust between his nails and flesh, and molten lead was poured into his mouth; yet at the same time he could not repeat often enough: “I give thanks to thee, O Lord Jesus Christ”—Gratias tibi ago, Domine Jesu Christe. St. Mark and St. Marcellian suffered; they were bound to a stake, their feet pierced with nails, and the tyrant appealed to them, saying: “Wretched men, look at your condition, and save yourselves from these torments.” And they answered: “What torments, what pain do you speak of? We have never feasted with more joy than now, when we are suffering with pleasure for the love of Jesus Christ.” St. Lawrence suffered; but while he was burning on the gridiron, the interior flames of love, as St. Leo says, were more powerful to cheer his soul than the flames without were to torture his body. Hence love made him so strong that he even braved the tyrant, saying to him: “Tyrant, if you wish to feed on my flesh, one side is already roasted; turn it, and eat”—Assatum est jam, versa et manduca. But in such torture, and in so lingering a death, how could the saint thus exult? Ah, answers St. Augustine, it was because, intoxicated with the wine of divine love, he felt neither torments nor death.
For the holy martyrs, the more they loved Jesus, the less they felt their torments and death, and the sight alone of the sufferings of a crucified God was enough to console them. But was not our afflicted Mother also thus consoled by her love for her Son and by the sight of his sufferings? No; for this very Son who suffered was the whole cause of her grief, and the love she bore him was her only, and too cruel, executioner. For the whole martyrdom of Mary consisted in seeing and pitying her innocent and beloved Son, who suffered so much. Therefore, the more she loved him, the more bitter and inconsolable was her sorrow. “Great as the sea is thy destruction; who shall heal thee?” Ah, Queen of heaven, love alleviated the sufferings of the other martyrs and healed their wounds; but who ever soothed your great sorrow? Who ever healed the cruel wounds of your heart? Quis medebitur tui?—if that same Son who could have given you consolation was, by his sufferings, the sole cause of your sorrows, and the love you bore him made up your whole martyrdom? And so, while the other martyrs are each represented with the instrument of their passion, as Diez remarks—St. Paul with the sword, St. Andrew with the cross, St. Lawrence with the gridiron—Mary is represented with her dead Son in her arms; for Jesus himself was the sole instrument of her martyrdom, by reason of the love she bore him. In a few words St. Bernard confirms all that I have said: In the other martyrs the greatness of their love soothed the anguish of their martyrdom; but the more the Blessed Virgin loved, so much the more she suffered, and so much the more cruel was her martyrdom.
It is certain that the greater our love for a thing, the greater the pain we feel in losing it. The loss of a brother certainly afflicts us more than the loss of a beast of burden; and the death of a son, more than that of a friend. Now Cornelius a Lapide says that to understand how great was the grief of Mary at the death of her Son, we should first understand how great was the love she bore him. But who can measure that love? Blessed Amadeus says that in the heart of Mary two kinds of love for her Jesus were united: the supernatural love with which she loved him as her God, and the natural love with which she loved him as her son. Of these two loves only one was formed—but a love so immense that William of Paris went so far as to say that the Blessed Virgin loved Jesus to such a degree that a pure creature could not love him more. And Richard of St. Laurence says: as there was no love like her love, so there was no grief like her grief. If, therefore, the love of Mary for her Son was immense, immense also must have been her grief in losing him by death. Where love is greatest, says Blessed Albert the Great, there grief is greatest: Ubi summus amor, ibi summus dolor.
Let us imagine, then, that the divine Mother, standing near her Son as he died upon the cross, and justly applying to herself the words of Jeremias, says to us: “O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow” (Lam. 1:12). O you who are passing your lives upon this earth, and have no pity for me, stop a while to look upon me, now that I behold that beloved Son dying before my eyes; and then see if among all who are afflicted and tormented there be any sorrow like to my sorrow. No, answers St. Bonaventure, there can be found no sorrow, O afflicted Mother, more bitter than yours, for no son can be found more dear than yours. Ah, there has never been in the world, adds St. Lawrence Justinian, a son more worthy of love than Jesus, nor a mother who loved her son more than Mary. If, then, there has never been in the world a love like the love of Mary, how can there be a grief like the grief of Mary?
Therefore St. Ildephonsus did not hesitate to affirm that it was too little to say that the sufferings of the Virgin exceeded all the torments of the martyrs, even were they united together. And St. Anselm adds that the most cruel tortures inflicted upon the holy martyrs were light, or rather nothing, in comparison with the martyrdom of Mary. St. Basil likewise writes that, as the sun surpasses in splendor all the other planets, so Mary in her sufferings exceeded the sufferings of all the other martyrs. A certain learned author concludes with an admirable thought, saying that so great was the sorrow this tender Mother suffered in the passion of Jesus that she alone could worthily mourn the death of a God made man.
But St. Bonaventure, addressing the Blessed Virgin, says: O Lady, why did you wish to go and sacrifice yourself also on Calvary? Was not a crucified God enough to redeem us, that you, his Mother, would also be crucified? Indeed, the death of Jesus was more than enough to save the world, and even an infinity of worlds; but this good Mother, for the love she bears us, wished also to help the cause of our salvation by the merits of the sorrows she offered for us on Calvary. And therefore, says Blessed Albert the Great, as we are indebted to Jesus for what he suffered for love of us, so we are indebted to Mary for the martyrdom which she, in the death of her Son, voluntarily suffered for our salvation. I have said voluntarily, since, as the angel revealed to St. Bridget, this our so merciful and kind Mother was willing to suffer any pain rather than to see souls unredeemed and left in their former perdition. It may be said that this was the only consolation of Mary in the midst of her great sorrow at the passion of her Son: to see the lost world redeemed by his death, and men, who were his enemies, reconciled with God. Grieving, she rejoiced, says Simon of Cassia, because the sacrifice was offered for the redemption of all, by which the divine wrath was appeased.
Such love as that of Mary deserves our gratitude; and let us show our gratitude by meditating upon her sorrows and grieving with her. But of this she complained to St. Bridget: that very few pitied her, and that most lived forgetful of her sorrows. “I look around upon all who are in the world,” she said, “to see if perchance there be any to pity me and to meditate upon my sorrows; and truly I find very few. Therefore, my daughter, though I am forgotten by many, at least do not you forget me; behold my anguish, and imitate, as far as you can, my grief.” To understand how much the Virgin is pleased by our remembrance of her dolors, it is enough to relate that in the year 1239 she appeared to seven of her servants—who then became the founders of the Order of the Servants of Mary—with a black garment in her hand, and told them that if they wished to please her, they should often meditate upon her dolors; and therefore she wished that, in memory of them, they should henceforth wear that garment of mourning. And Jesus Christ himself revealed to Blessed Veronica of Binasco that he takes, as it were, more pleasure in seeing compassion shown to his Mother than to himself; for thus he addressed her: “My daughter, the tears shed for my passion are dear to me; but, loving with so great a love my Mother Mary, the meditation of the dolors she suffered at my death is dearer to me still.”
And so the graces are very great which Jesus promises to those who are devoted to the dolors of Mary. Pelbart relates that it was revealed to St. Elizabeth that St. John the Evangelist, after the Blessed Virgin was assumed into heaven, desired to see her again. This favor was granted him: his dear Mother appeared to him, and Jesus Christ with her; and he then heard Mary asking of her Son some special grace for those who were devoted to her dolors. And Jesus promised her, for them, the following four special graces: first, that those who invoke the divine Mother by her sorrows will, before death, merit to obtain true repentance of all their sins; second, that he will protect such servants in their tribulations, especially at the hour of death; third, that he will impress upon them the memory of his passion, and that they shall have their reward for it in heaven; and fourth, that he will commit such devout servants to the hands of Mary, that she may do with them as she pleases and obtain for them all the graces she desires. In proof of this, let us see in the following example how devotion to the dolors of Mary may aid our eternal salvation.
Example
We read in the revelations of St. Bridget that there once lived a lord, as noble by birth as he was base and wicked in his habits. By an express compact he had given himself as a slave to the devil, and had served him for sixty years, leading such a life as may easily be imagined, never approaching the sacraments. Now this prince was about to die; and Jesus Christ, in his compassion, commanded St. Bridget to tell his confessor to visit him and exhort him to make his confession. The confessor went, and the sick man told him that he had no need of a confessor, for he had often made his confession. The confessor visited him a second time, and that poor slave of hell persevered in his obstinate refusal to confess. Jesus again directed the saint to send the confessor to him. He obeyed, and this third time related to him the revelation made to the saint, and how he had returned so many times because the Lord, who desired to show him mercy, had directed him to do so.
On hearing this, the dying man was moved, and began to weep. “But how,” he exclaimed, “can I be pardoned, when for sixty years I have served the devil, made myself his slave, and laden my soul with innumerable sins?” “Son,” answered the father, encouraging him, “do not doubt: if you repent of them, in the name of God I promise you pardon.” Then, beginning to gain confidence, he said to the confessor: “Father, I believed myself lost, and despaired of salvation; but now I feel a sorrow for my sins that encourages me to trust; and since God has not yet abandoned me, I wish to make my confession.” And in fact, on that day he made his confession four times, with great sorrow; the next day he received Communion; and on the sixth day he died, contrite and entirely resigned.
After his death, Jesus Christ further revealed to St. Bridget that this sinner was saved, and was in purgatory, and that he had been saved by the intercession of the Virgin, his Mother. For the deceased, although he had led so wicked a life, had yet always preserved devotion to her dolors; and whenever he remembered them, he pitied her.
Prayer
O my afflicted Mother, Queen of martyrs and of sorrows! You shed so many tears for your Son, who died for my salvation; yet what will your tears avail me, if I am lost? By the merits, then, of your dolors, obtain for me a true sorrow for my sins and a true amendment of life, with a perpetual and tender compassion for the passion of Jesus and for your own sufferings. And if Jesus and you, being so innocent, have suffered so much for me, obtain for me that I, who am deserving of hell, may also suffer something for love of you.
O Lady, I will say to you with St. Bonaventure: if I have offended you, wound my heart in punishment; if I have served you, now I beg to be wounded as a reward. It is a shameful thing to see our Lord Jesus wounded, and you wounded with him, and I alone unharmed. Finally, O my Mother, by the grief you felt on seeing your Son before your eyes bow his head and expire upon the cross, I beg you to obtain for me a good death. Ah, do not cease, O advocate of sinners, to assist my afflicted and struggling soul in that great passage it must make into eternity. And because at that time it may easily happen that I shall have lost the use of speech with which to invoke your name and that of Jesus, who are all my hope, therefore I now invoke your Son and you to help me at that last moment, and I say: Jesus and Mary, to you I commend my soul. Amen.
Points for Reflection
1. “Mary was a martyr not by the sword of the executioner, but by the bitter sorrow of her heart.”
2. “The soul is more where it loves than where it lives.”
3. “Where love is greatest, there grief is greatest.”