Let us linger for a while with Mary—before we follow the steps of her Son, our Lord. . . . O Mary, we are devout to thy seven woes—but was not this, though not one of those seven, one of the greatest, and included those that followed, from thy knowledge of them beforehand? How didst thou bear that first separation from Him? How did the first days pass when thou wast desolate? where didst thou hide thyself? where didst thou pass the long three years and more, while He was on His ministry? Once—at the beginning of it—thou didst attempt to get near Him [Matt. 12:48-50], and then we hear nothing of thee, till we find thee standing at His cross. And then, after that great joy of seeing Him again, and the permanent consolation, never to be lost, that with Him all suffering and humiliation was over, and that never had she to weep for Him again, still she was separated from him for many years, while she lived in the flesh, surrounded by the wicked world, and in the misery of His absence.
Newman alludes to the warning Jesus gave Joseph and Mary when they found Him in the Temple in Jerusalem when he was 12 years old [Luke 2:41-52]: "And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father's business?". But He had gone back to Nazareth with them and stayed 18 more years until beginning His Father's business and she would not see Jesus again until she was at the foot of the Cross:
The blessed Mary, among her other sorrows, suffered the loss of her Son, after He had lived under the same roof with her for thirty years. . . . [At last] and she reached him in time, to see Him hanging on the cross and dying. He was only forty days on earth after His resurrection, and then He left her in old age to finish her life without Him. Compare her thirty happy years, and her time of desolation.In the next paragraphs, Newman describes his own "composition of place", imagining Mary at home without Jesus for the three years between Cana and Calvary, as she yearned to hear about Jesus and to see her Son. Newman has used Saint Ignatius of Loyola's method, to see "the persons in my imagination, contemplating and meditating in detail on the circumstances surrounding them, and I will then draw some spiritual fruit from what has been seen":
I see her in her forlorn home, while her Son and Lord was going up and down the land without a place to lay His head, suffering both because she was so desolate and He was so exposed. How dreary passed the day; and then came reports that He was in some peril or distress. She heard, perhaps, He had been led into the wilderness to be tempted. She would have shared all His sufferings, but was not permitted. Once there was a profane report which was believed by many, that He was beside Himself, and His friends and kindred went out to get possession of Him. She went out too to see Him, and tried to reach Him. She could not for the crowd. A message came to Him to that effect, but He made no effort to receive her, nor said a kind word. She went back to her home disappointed, without the sight of Him. And so she remained, perhaps in company with those who did not believe in Him. [Mark 3:20-21; John 7:3-5]
Then he imagines her life after the Resurrection and Ascension:
I see her too after His ascension. This, too, is a time of bereavement, but still of consolation. It was still a twilight time, but not a time of grief. The Lord was absent, but He was not on earth, He was not in suffering. Death had no power over Him.
Then Newman finds and offers "the spiritual fruit" from what he has imagined as he thinks of Mary receiving Holy Communion:
And He came to her day by day in the Blessed Sacrifice. I see the Blessed Mary at Mass, and St. John celebrating. She is waiting for the moment of her Son's Presence: now she converses with Him in the sacred rite; and what shall I say now? She receives Him, to whom once she gave birth.
O Holy Mother, stand by me now at Mass time, when Christ comes to me, as thou didst minister to Thy infant Lord—as Thou didst hang upon His words when He grew up, as Thou wast found under His cross. Stand by me, Holy Mother, that I may gain somewhat of thy purity, thy innocence, thy faith, and He may be the one object of my love and my adoration, as He was of thine.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!
Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!
Image source (Public Domain) at the top: Mater Dolorosa with Clasped Hands by Titian and his studio c. 1550-1555
Image source (Public Domain) at the bottom: The Virgin of the Host by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1854
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