By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Of fair-weather friends we always have plenty: those who are with us when the road is wide and the going profitable or pleasant. Friends are hard to find when the times are bad. When the going gets rough, the weather inclement, and the climb demanding or dangerous, it is then that we can find ourselves feeling very much “alone.” This is what the world would have us believe.
As for our Lord, so for us, when the shattering of the cross implodes our lives, we can discover more convincingly the freeing truth in the midst of our pain: God our Father is our truest friend and most faithful ally. Mary never believed herself alone as she watched the lifeblood ebb from her Son’s broken and violated Body, the fruit of her virgin womb. No, for her the grace of faith was the source of constant loving contact with the Father whose holy will it was her greatest desire to accomplish.
Our Lord spoke the unvarnished truth when He told us that unless we take up our cross and follow Him, we cannot be His disciples. He spoke these words in authentic friendship and sincere love, the greatest friendship and love this world has ever witnessed. He defined friendship by modeling it first perfectly Himself: “No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
During May each year as we celebrate the queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary with May crownings and processions, we also call to mind her singular discipleship. The greatest test of her love was her faithfulness to the mission of her divine Son to redeem mankind. Her greatest witness and gift to us is her participation in the cross of the Lord.
Our Lady helps us to carry our cross because she carried the most perfect cross of her Son together with Him at each moment and all the way to the end.
The beauty of the prayer of holy Mass, our most perfect prayer because it is the prayer of Christ, is that what we do in the Mass teaches us. The Gospel and its lessons come alive in the very simple gestures and actions of the sacred liturgy.
There is a reason why the priest mounts the steps up to the altar each time he celebrates the Mass; it is because he must carry his cross together with that of Christ, whose representative he is as he celebrates the reenactment of Calvary. The altars of our churches become, each time they are used, another Calvary because on them is offered once again the true and only Lamb of Sacrifice, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Mary is present, too, with her priest sons at the Mass because she climbs Calvary with the priest at every holy Mass, just as she courageously and lovingly did with her Son Jesus so many years ago. Mary untiringly accompanies all of us on the way of our cross through this world.
A mother’s love is never without an embrace of all of her children. Our Immaculate Mother carries the cross with Christ as we must, uniting our sufferings with His, confident as she is that such an intention and such an offering are never without effect.
Mary had to stand by and witness firsthand the dying agonies of her Son, powerless from a worldly perspective to do anything to assist Him. But assist Him she in fact did, most wonderfully, by dying to her own will and living in union with her Son as He carried out the perfect will of our heavenly Father.
The Passion and death of Christ were for Mary sorrows as real and threatening as our crosses daily are to each of us. She invites us to discover the supernatural effectiveness of the life of grace which enables us to die to self and discover real life in Christ. His life is most real because it is eternal.
This is how she assists each of us now; although our Lady seems to stand at a distance from us in her share of the glory of Heaven where she is seated as queen at the right hand of her Son, she does for us as she did for Jesus. As we get up once again each day and shoulder our cross daily, she walks with us, prays for us, and mediates divine grace so that we can remain as she did, faithful and obedient in union with Christ.
Mary accompanies us with a compassion that was fitting for no less than God Himself. What a tremendous gift is this Mother willed for us by our heavenly Father who spoke in union with His Son when He taught, “Behold your Mother”!
“Do whatever He tells you,” Mary instructs us as we turn with her help to the Gospels and to the sacramental life in the one true Church. The real fruit of Sacrifice, the Body and Blood of her Son, is our divine assistance physically present for the giving of grace. As we go in spirit with the priest up the steps of Calvary’s mount at each holy Mass, let us with Mary’s help offer ourselves with Him through the priest. Let us take up with us all of our joys and sorrows, uniting all of our suffering with His.
And when the priest comes back down from the altar to us who kneel at the altar rail in adoring love, bearing the Body and Blood of Christ in Communion for us, let us give thanks with Mary that her Son’s divine assistance is with us always, really and truly present in the Eucharist.
“O Mary, conceived without Sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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(Follow me on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick and on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism. I blog occasionally at mcitl.blogspot.com and APriestLife.blogspot.com. You can email me at mcitl.blogspot.com@gmail.com.)
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