Ave Maria Meditations
The Fourth Sorrow: Jesus meets His Afflicted Mother on the Way to Calvary: And there followed him a great multitude of people, and of women, who bewailed and lamented him. (Lk 23:27
I pity you, my afflicted mother, on account of the fourth sword that pierced your heart, in seeing your Jesus condemned to death, bound with ropes and chains, covered with blood and wounds, crowned with thorns, and falling under the weight of the heavy cross which he bore on his bleeding back when going like an innocent lamb to die for love of us. Your eye then met his eye, and your glances were so many cruel arrows with which each wounded the loving heart of the other. By this great grief, then, I pray you to obtain for me the grace to live wholly resigned to the will of my God, joyfully bearing my cross with Jesus to the last moment of my life.
PRAYER
My sorrowful Mother, by the merit of that grief which Thou didst feel at seeing Thy beloved Jesus led to death, obtain for me the grace also to bear with patience those crosses which God sends me. Happy me, if I also shall know how to accompany Thee with my cross until death. Thou and Jesus, both innocent, have borne a heavy cross; and shall I a sinner, who have merited Hell, refuse mine? Ah, Immaculate Virgin, I hope that Thou will help me to bear my crosses with patience. Amen.
