Ave Maria Meditations
After having fulfilled our obligations toward the Son of God, we have three duties to his holy Mother.
The first is to prostrate ourselves in heart and in spirit at her feet asking her pardon for the cruel death of her Son, and for the most bitter sufferings of her pure heart which we have caused. In reparation, we must offer her all the honor, glory, and praise which have been, are, and will be forever rendered to her in heaven as well as on earth by the Most Holy Trinity, by the sacred humanity of her Son, by all the angels, and all the saints. We must also give ourselves to our Lady as her slaves, promising that we wish to serve and honor her all our lives in every way possible to us.
The second thing we must do for the Blessed Virgin is to remember that Our Lord Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, gave her to us as our Mother…
and gave us to her as her children, when, addressing her, he said: “Behold your son”; and speaking to each of us in the person of Saint John: “Behold your mother.” We ought to thank Our Lord with out whole heart for having given us his Mother to be our Mother; we ought to give thanks to the most holy Virgin for having received us as her children, and to beg our Savior that inasmuch as he has associated us with him as the Beloved Son of Mary, he also makes us share his perfect filial devotion to his admirable Mother.
Our third debt to the Mother of Jesus is to acknowledge and salute her as our Mother, declaring that we desire to serve, love, and honor her as our Mother, obey her as a Mother and study to make ourselves like unto her as children should resemble their mother; and, consequently, to imitate her humility, her patience, her obedience, her purity, her mildness and docility, her charity, and all her other virtues. We must beseech our Lady to look upon us, her unworthy children, to protect and to guide us in all things and to be a mother to us both in life and in death.
Saint John Eudes
