The Great Sacrifice Mary Offered to God on This Day, Presenting to Him the Life of Her Son
The ancient law contained two precepts concerning the birth of first-born sons. The first was that the mother should remain at home as one unclean for forty days, after which she was to go and purify herself in the temple. The second was that the parents of the first-born should carry him to the temple and there offer him to God. On this day the most holy Virgin desired to obey both precepts. Although Mary was not bound by the law of purification, since she was always a virgin and always pure, yet, out of her love of humility and obedience, she wished to go and be purified like other mothers. At the same time she obeyed the second precept, presenting and offering her Son to the eternal Father: “And after the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord” (Luke 2:22). But the Virgin offered him in a manner altogether different from that of other mothers. The others offered their sons, but they knew that this was a simple ceremony of the law, by which, redeeming them, they made them their own, with no fear of ever having to offer them again, and to death. Mary really offered her Son to death, knowing with certainty that the sacrifice of the life of Jesus which she then made would one day be actually accomplished upon the altar of the cross. And so Mary, by offering the life of her Son through the love she bore this Son, truly sacrificed her whole self to God. Setting aside, then, all the other considerations we might make upon the many mysteries of this festival, let us dwell only upon how great was this sacrifice that Mary made of herself to God, offering to him on this day the life of her Son. And this will be the sole subject of the following discourse.
The eternal Father had already determined to save man, who was lost through sin, and to free him from eternal death. But because he willed that at the same time his divine justice should not be defrauded of its full and rightful satisfaction, he did not spare the life of his own Son, already made man in order to redeem man, but required that he should pay, to its most rigorous extent, the penalty merited by men: “He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all,” says the Apostle (Rom. 8:32). He sent him, therefore, upon the earth to become man; he appointed him a mother, and chose for this the Virgin Mary. But as he did not wish his divine Word to become her Son before she accepted him by her express consent, so he did not wish that Jesus should sacrifice his life for the salvation of men without the concurrence of Mary’s consent, so that, together with the sacrifice of the life of the Son, the heart of the Mother might be sacrificed also. St. Thomas teaches that the relation of mother gives a special right over her children; and so, since Jesus was in himself innocent and deserved no punishment for any sin of his own, it seemed fitting that he should not be destined to the cross as the victim for the sins of the world without the consent of his Mother, by which she should voluntarily offer him to death.
But although Mary, from the moment she was made the Mother of Jesus, gave her consent to his death, the Lord nevertheless willed that on this day she should make in the temple a solemn sacrifice of herself, solemnly offering her Son and sacrificing his precious life to the divine justice. And so St. Epiphanius called her a priest: Virginem appello velut sacerdotem—“I call the Virgin a priest.” Now we begin to see how much this sacrifice cost her, and what heroic virtue she had to exercise when she herself had to sign the sentence condemning her dear Jesus to death.
Now behold Mary actually on her way to Jerusalem to offer her Son. She hastens her steps toward the place of sacrifice, and she herself carries her beloved victim in her arms. She enters the temple, approaches the altar, and there, filled with modesty, humility, and devotion, she presents her Son to the Most High. At this moment St. Simeon, who had received from God the promise that he should not die before seeing the expected Messiah, takes the divine Child from the hands of the Virgin, and, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, announces to her how much sorrow this sacrifice must cost her—this sacrifice of her Son, with whom her own blessed soul must also be sacrificed. Here St. Thomas of Villanova contemplates the holy old man, who, when he had come to announce the fatal prophecy to this poor Mother, is agitated and falls silent. Then the saint considers Mary, who asks: Why, O Simeon, in a time of such great consolation, are you thus disturbed? Unde tanta turbatio?—“Whence so great a trouble?” To whom he answers: O noble and holy Virgin, I would not have wished to be the bearer of such bitter tidings; but since the Lord wills it thus, for your greater merit, hear what I say to you. This infant who now causes you, and rightly, so much joy will one day—O God!—bring you the most cruel suffering any creature ever experienced in this world. And this will be when you shall see him persecuted by men of every sort, and set up on earth as the mark of their scorn and derision, even until he is put to death before your eyes. Know that after his death there will be many martyrs who, for love of this your Son, will be tormented and slain; but if their martyrdom will be of the body, your martyrdom, O divine Mother, will be of the heart.
Yes, of the heart; for nothing but compassion for the sufferings of this Son so dear could be meant by the sword of sorrow that St. Simeon foretold would pierce the heart of the Mother: “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce” (Luke 2:35). Already the most holy Virgin, as St. Jerome says, had been enlightened through the divine Scriptures to know the sufferings the Redeemer was to endure in his life, and still more at the time of his death. She well understood from the prophets that he was to be betrayed by one of his friends, as David foretold: “He who ate my bread hath greatly supplanted me” (Ps. 40:10); that he was to be abandoned by his disciples: “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered” (Zach. 13:7). Well did she know the insults, the spitting, the blows, and the mockery he was to suffer from the people: “I have given my body to the strikers, and my cheeks to them that plucked them; I have not turned away my face from them that rebuked me and spit upon me” (Isa. 50:6). She knew that he was to become the reproach of men and the outcast of the lowest of the people: “But I am a worm and no man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people” (Ps. 21:7), even to be laden with insults and outrages: “He shall be filled with reproaches” (Lam. 3:30). She knew that at the end of his life his sacred flesh would be torn and broken by scourges: “He was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins” (Isa. 53:5), so that his body would be wholly disfigured by them, become as a leper, all sores: “There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness… and we have thought him, as it were, a leper” (Isa. 53:2, 4), even until the bones lay uncovered: “They have numbered all my bones” (Ps. 21:18). She knew that he was to be pierced with nails: “They have dug my hands and feet” (Ps. 21:17); that he was to be reckoned with the wicked: “And he was reputed with the wicked” (Isa. 53:12); and that finally he was to die, hanging upon the cross, slain for the salvation of men: “And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced” (Zach. 12:10).
Mary, I repeat, already knew all the sufferings that her Son was to endure; but in those words of St. Simeon, “And thy own soul a sword shall pierce,” all the minute circumstances of the external and internal sufferings which her Lord Jesus was to endure in his passion were made known to her, as the Lord revealed to St. Teresa. She consented to all with a firmness that made the angels wonder, and pronounced the sentence that her Son should die, and die by a death so ignominious and painful, in these words: Eternal Father, since you will it, not my will, but thine be done. I unite mine to your holy will, and I sacrifice to you this my Son; I am content that he should lose his life for your glory and for the salvation of the world. And I sacrifice to you my heart as well: let grief pierce it as much as you please; it is enough for me that you, O my God, are glorified and satisfied; not my will, but yours be done. Oh, charity without measure! Oh, constancy without example! Oh, victory that merits the eternal admiration of heaven and earth!
And so it was that Mary, in the passion of Jesus, was silent when he was unjustly accused. She said nothing to Pilate, who was inclined to release him, for he had already recognized his innocence; she appeared in public only to be present at the great sacrifice that was to be offered on Calvary. She accompanied him to the place of punishment; she was with him from the first moment he was placed upon the cross—“There stood by the cross of Jesus his mother” (John 19:25)—until she saw him expire and the sacrifice was consummated. And all this to complete the offering she had already made of him to God in the temple.
To understand what violence Mary had to do to herself in making this sacrifice, we would need to comprehend the love this Mother bore to Jesus. Generally speaking, the love of mothers for their children is so tender that, when these are at the point of death and they fear to lose them, they forget all their faults, their defects, and even the injuries they have received from them, and they suffer an inexpressible grief. And yet the love of those mothers is a love divided among other children, or among other creatures. Mary has one only Son, and he is the most beautiful of all the children of Adam; he is most lovable, for he has every quality that draws love; he is obedient, virtuous, innocent, holy—in a word, he is God. The love of this Mother, moreover, is not divided among other objects; she has centered all her love upon this only Son, nor does she fear to love him to excess, for this Son is God, who merits an infinite love. And this Son is the victim whom she had voluntarily to offer to death.
Let everyone consider, then, how much it must have cost Mary to sacrifice on the cross the life of a Son so lovable, and what strength of mind she had to exercise in this act. Behold the most fortunate of mothers, because she is the Mother of a God, but at the same time a Mother most worthy of compassion, because the most afflicted—being the Mother of a Son whom she saw destined to the cross from the very day he was given to her for a Son. What mother would accept a son, knowing that she should afterward lose him by so painful and infamous a death, and that she should be present to see him die? Mary willingly accepted this Son on so hard a condition; and not only accepted him, but herself offers him on this day, with her own hands, to death, sacrificing him to the divine justice. St. Bonaventure says that the Blessed Virgin would far more willingly have taken upon herself the sufferings and death of her Son; but to obey God she made the great offering of the divine life of her beloved Jesus, conquering—though with the deepest grief—all the tenderness of the love she bore him. And so it is that in this offering Mary had to do greater violence to herself, and was more generous, than if she had offered herself to suffer all that her Son was to suffer. She therefore surpassed all the martyrs in generosity; for the martyrs offered their own lives, but the Virgin offered the life of her Son, whom she loved and esteemed infinitely more than her own life.
Nor did the pain of this sorrowful offering end here; rather, it began here. For from that time forward, through the whole life of her Son, Mary had ever before her eyes his death, and all the pains he was to suffer in his death. And so, the more this Son revealed to her how beautiful, how graceful, how lovable he was, the more did the anguish of her heart continually increase. Ah, afflicted Mother! If you had loved your Son less, or if your Son had been less lovely and had loved you less, your suffering would certainly have been less in offering him to death. But there never has been, and there never will be, a mother more loving than you, because there never has been and never will be a son more lovable and more loving toward his mother than your Jesus. O God! If we had seen the beauty, the majesty of countenance of that divine Child, could we have had the courage to sacrifice his life for our salvation? And you, O Mary, who are his Mother—and a Mother so loving—could you offer your innocent Son, for the salvation of men, to a death more painful and more cruel than any criminal ever endured upon this earth?
Alas! What a fearful scene, from that day forward, did love continually set before the eyes of Mary, representing to her all the injuries and mockeries that were to be offered to her poor Son! Behold love already showing him to her in his agony in the garden, then torn by scourges and crowned with thorns in the hall of Pilate, and at last hanging from the infamous wood on Calvary! Behold, O Mother, said love, what a lovely and innocent Son you have offered to such sufferings, and to so dreadful a death! And what will it profit you to rescue him from the hands of Herod, only to reserve him for so piteous an end?
Thus Mary not only offered her Son to death in the temple, but went on offering him at every moment of her life; for she revealed to St. Bridget that the grief which St. Simeon announced to her never left her heart until she was assumed into heaven. And so St. Anselm says: O Lady, I cannot believe that with such a sorrow you could have lived a single moment, had not God himself, who gives life, sustained you by his divine power. And St. Bernard, speaking of the great sorrow Mary endured on this day, affirms that from then on she suffered a living death, bearing a grief more cruel than death itself: Moriebatur vivens, dolorem ferens morte crudeliorem—“She lived dying, bearing a grief more cruel than death.” She lived, dying at every moment, because at every moment the grief for the death of her beloved Jesus, more cruel than any death, was assailing her.
The divine Mother, then, on account of the great merit she acquired in this great sacrifice which she made to God for the salvation of the world, was justly called by St. Augustine the restorer of the human race: Reparatrix generis humani. By St. Ephrem, the redeemer of captives: Redemptrix captivorum. By St. Ildephonsus, the restorer of the ruined world: Reparatrix perditi orbis. By St. Germanus, the consolation of our miseries: Restauratio calamitatum nostrarum. By St. Ambrose, the Mother of all believers: Mater omnium credentium. By St. Augustine, the Mother of the living: Mater viventium. And by St. Andrew of Crete, the Mother of life: Mater vitae. For, as Arnold of Chartres says, in the death of Jesus Mary so united her will to that of her Son that both offered the same sacrifice; and therefore, says the holy abbot, the Son and the Mother together effected the redemption of man, obtaining salvation for the human race—Jesus by satisfying for our sins, Mary by obtaining that this satisfaction should be applied to us. And so blessed Denis the Carthusian likewise affirms that the divine Mother may be called the salvation of the world, since by the pain she endured in suffering with her Son—whom she voluntarily sacrificed to the divine justice—she merited that the merits of the Redeemer should be communicated to men.
Mary, then, having been made the Mother of all the redeemed by the merit of her sufferings and of the offering of her Son, it is just to believe that only by her hand is given to them the milk of those divine graces which are the fruits of the merits of Jesus Christ and the means of obtaining life eternal. To this St. Bernard alludes when he says that God has placed in the hands of Mary the whole price of our redemption. By these words the saint gives us to understand that, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, the merits of the Redeemer are applied to souls, since by her hand are dispensed those graces which are precisely the price of the merits of Jesus Christ.
And if the sacrifice of Abraham, in offering up to God his son Isaac, so pleased the Lord that he promised, as a reward, to multiply Abraham’s descendants as the stars of heaven—“Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy only-begotten son for my sake, I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven” (Gen. 22:16–17)—we must surely believe that the far more remarkable sacrifice which this great Mother made of her Jesus was much more pleasing to the Lord. And therefore it has been granted to her that by her prayers the number of the elect should be multiplied—that is, the favored succession of her children; for she holds and protects as such her devoted servants.
St. Simeon received from God the promise that he should not die until he had seen the Messiah born: “And he had received an answer from the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord” (Luke 2:26). But he did not receive this grace except through Mary, for he did not behold the Savior until he saw him in the arms of Mary. And so whoever wishes to find Jesus will not find him except through Mary. Let us, then, go to this divine Mother if we would find Jesus; and let us go with great confidence. Mary told her servant Pudentiana Zagnoni that every year, on this day of the Purification, a great mercy would be shown to some sinner. Who knows but that one of us may today be that favored sinner? If our sins are great, greater still is the power of Mary. The Son can deny nothing to this Mother, says St. Bernard: Exaudiet utique matrem filius—“The Son will surely hear his Mother.” If Jesus is offended with us, Mary at once appeases him. Plutarch relates that Antipater wrote to Alexander the Great a long letter of accusations against Olympias, Alexander’s mother. Having read the letter, Alexander answered: “Does not Antipater know that one tear of my mother is enough to blot out countless letters of accusation?” Just so, we may imagine, would Jesus answer the accusations the devil brings against us when Mary is praying for us: Does not Lucifer know that one prayer of my Mother, in favor of a sinner, is enough to make me forget all the accusations of the offenses committed against me? The following example is a proof of this.
Example
This example is not recorded in any book, but a priest, a companion of mine, related it to me as having happened to himself. While this priest was hearing confessions in a certain church (for good reasons he did not name the place, although the penitent gave him leave to publish the fact), a young man stood before him who seemed at once to wish and not to wish to come to confession. The Father, after looking at him several times, at length called him and asked him whether he wished to confess. He answered yes; but since the confession would be a long one, the confessor took him into a private room. There the penitent began by telling him that he was a foreigner and of noble birth, but that he could not believe it possible for God to pardon him after the life he had led. Besides countless other sins he had committed—of impurity, of homicide, and more—he said that, having utterly despaired of his salvation, he had set himself to commit sins, not so much for his own gratification as to defy God and to show the hatred he bore him. He said that, among other things, he carried a crucifix with him, and that he had thrown it down out of contempt. He said that only a little while before, that very morning, he had made a sacrilegious communion—and for what purpose? That he might trample the consecrated host underfoot. And in fact he had actually received it, and was about to carry out this horrible intention, but was prevented by the people who observed him. He then handed the confessor the consecrated host, wrapped in a paper.
He related, further, that as he was passing by that church he had felt a strong impulse to enter, which he could not resist; and that once inside he had been seized with a great remorse of conscience, together with a certain confused and irresolute desire to make his confession. For this reason he had placed himself before the confessional; but while standing there he was so overcome with confusion and distrust that he wished to leave, and yet it seemed as if someone held him back by force—“until,” he said, “you, Father, called me; and now I find myself here, I find myself making my confession, but I do not know how to do it.” The Father then asked him whether he had practiced any act of devotion during that time—meaning toward the most holy Mary, for such sudden conversions come only through the powerful hands of the Virgin. “None, Father; what devotion could I offer,” answered the youth, “when I believed myself lost?” “But try to remember more carefully,” replied the Father. “Father, nothing.” But, happening to put his hand to his breast, he recalled that he wore the scapular of Our Lady of Sorrows. “Ah, my son,” said the confessor, “do you not see that our blessed Lady has obtained this grace for you? And know,” he added, “that this very church is a church of our blessed Lady.” Hearing this, the youth was moved to contrition and began to weep. He confessed his sins, and his compunction increased to such a degree that, bursting into tears, he fell, fainting with grief, as it seemed, at the feet of the Father. The priest, having revived him with a cordial, finished hearing his confession and absolved him with the greatest consolation, for he was entirely contrite and resolved to amend his life. The Father sent him back to his own country, after obtaining from him full leave to preach and publish everywhere the great mercy Mary had shown him.
Prayer
O holy Mother of God, my Mother Mary! Did you then feel so great a care for my salvation that you consented to offer up to death the object dearest to your heart, your beloved Jesus? If, then, you so greatly desired to see me saved, it is just that, next to God, I should place all my hopes in you. O blessed Virgin, I do indeed confide entirely in you. Oh, by the merit of this great sacrifice of the life of your Son, which you offered to God this day, pray him to have pity on my soul, for which this immaculate Lamb did not refuse to die upon the cross.
Today, O my Queen, I too, in imitation of you, wish to offer my poor heart to God; but I fear that he will refuse it, seeing it so filthy and loathsome. Yet if you will offer it to him, he will not refuse it. All the offerings made to him by your most pure hands he accepts and receives. To you, then, O Mary, I present myself today, miserable as I am, and to you I give myself entirely. Offer me as your own to the eternal Father and to Jesus, and pray him that, through the merits of his Son and by your favor, he may accept me and take me for his own. Ah, my sweetest Mother, for the love you bear this Son whom you have sacrificed, help me always and do not forsake me. Do not permit that one day, through my sins, I should lose this my most loving Redeemer, offered by you this day with so much anguish to die upon the cross. Tell him that I am your servant; tell him that in you I have placed all my hope; tell him, in a word, that you desire my salvation, and he will certainly hear you. Amen.
Points for Reflection
1. “She therefore surpassed all the martyrs in generosity; for the martyrs offered their own lives, but the Virgin offered the life of her Son, whom she loved and esteemed infinitely more than her own life.”
2. “She lived, dying at every moment, because at every moment the grief for the death of her beloved Jesus, more cruel than any death, was assailing her.”
3. “Whoever wishes to find Jesus will not find him except through Mary.”