Make My Heart Like Yours

No one will know what the suffering of the Mother of God was before the Passion of her Son. This would require being an eyewitness to the punishments inflicted on the Savior. Following the events of the Passion hour by hour, minute by minute, being on the lookout for the smallest information on the unfolding of the events.

Discreetly present before Pilate’s praetorium, one would follow with anguish the unfolding of this caricature of the trial, allowing oneself to be pierced by the implacable hatred of the enemies of Jesus and having ones hopes turned into disappointments by Pilate’s prevarication.

To suffer the insane joy of the assassin Barabbas, preferred to the miracle worker of Nazareth who was never but “who went about doing good” (Acts 10:38), to see the swollen face of Jesus scourged and outraged, to follow Him at last on the way to Golgotha ​​and helplessly witness His execution.

It would also be necessary to be bound by a bond of affection to Jesus that is as close as that of a mother, in order to feel what Jesus is enduring from the inside, so that each blow, each insult, each betrayal resonates in us as the replica of the shaking of the soul of Jesus.

Finally, one would have a heart with a sensitivity comparable to His own, and this is the privilege of Jesus alone, who gets His own Heart from Mary.

Is it impossible? Will we never be able to enter into the intimacy of these two Bruised Hearts which beat and suffer in unison? On the contrary, we are exhorted to allow ourselves to be refined by these two loves in order to “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” (Phil 2:5).

Jesus took care to correct the affection of the daughters of Jerusalem, who did not bear in mind that His Blood might well be shed in vain on many souls. He corrects that of Mary Magdalene, whose exuberant demonstrations are still too human.

He teaches Peter to beware of his fleeting ardor, to the sons of thunder, James and John, to curb their spirit of vindictiveness (Lk 9:54-56). And as He will soon no longer be visibly present, He entrusts His Church, in the person of the Apostle St. John, to His own Mother, who will know how to continue the education of this virgin heart.

That is why the Blessed Virgin asks for us to “keep company” with her by meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary on the first Saturday of the month.

In the measure that we visit the Mother of God by thinking of Jesus in His Passion, something of her own affection will permeate our hearts and will teach us to give back to the Heart of Jesus something other than “contempt, sacrilege and indifference.”

Let us not pass through Holy Week without asking her to form in us the Heart of her divine Son.