Mary,
the Mother of God spoke to the bride of Christ and said: “My
daughter, consider the suffering of my Son, for his limbs were like
my own limbs and his heart like my own heart. For just as other
children use to be carried in the womb of their mother, so was he in
me. But he was conceived through the burning charity of God’s love.
Others, however are conceived through the lust of the flesh. Thus,
John the evangelist, his cousin, rightly says: ‘The Word was made
flesh.’ He came through love and was in me. The Word and love
created him in me. He was truly for me like my own heart. For when I
gave birth to him, I felt as though half my heart was born and went
out of me. And when he endured suffering, it felt like my own heart
was suffering. Just as when something is half inside and half outside
- the half outside feels pain and suffering, but the inside also
feels a similar pain - so it was for me when my Son was scourged and
wounded; it was as if my own heart was scourged and wounded.
I
was also the one closest to him at his suffering and I was never
separated from him. I stood very near his cross, and just like that
which is closest to the heart stings the worst, so his pain was
heavier and worse for me than for others. When he looked at me from
the cross and I saw him, then tears flowed from my eyes like blood
from veins. And when he saw me so stricken with pain and overwhelming
sorrow, he felt such a sorrow over my pain that all the pain of his
own wounds became as subsided and dead for the sake of the pain he
saw in me. I can therefore boldly say that his pain was my pain since
his heart was my heart. For
just as Adam and Eve sold the world for an apple, so my Son and I
bought back the world as with one heart. Consider
therefore, my daughter, how I was at the death of my Son, and it will
not be hard for you to give up the world and her cares.”