EMPIRE SELF-RAISING FLOUR The West AUSTRALIAN
Rises Above all Other..
RECORD
PERTH, SATURDAY, MARCH 8,
1913
Sorrows of Mary " GREAT AS THE SEA " The Seven feast of the Seven Dolours will be celebrated next Friday, and forth on that day an invitation goes from the martyred heart of the Queen of Sorrows, to the children who were given to her at the foot of the Cross, to "attend and see if there be sorrow" like to her sorrow. If we would know the sorrows of Mary we may read them written in the broken body of Jesus -" What pierced His body pierced her heart." The
"kept all these things in her heart pondering them." The Presentation of Our Lord is called a joywas a bitterful mystery, but it sweet mystery to Mary, for the re velation made to her, was the beginning of the long road of sorrow that was to stretch through the years of the life of Christ, :13 and know no turning until the risen lord "returned in glory from the tomb," hut not until His mother's who
long the exile must last, and how long it would be until she again heard the praises of the true God sung "in the land of the living." At length the exile was ended, and the Holy Family, warned from heaven, returned to their own country, but the very temple of Jerusalem was to he the means of driving the sword of the third sorrow into the heart of the Queen of Martyrs. The three days loss of Christ in the tern -
to became like so many arrows wound those hearts which loved each other so tenderly." The fifth dolour established the right of Our Lady to be called the " Queen of Martyrs" and the "Great Mother of God." The Evangelist tells it all in a few words "Now, there stood 1:y the Cross of Jesus His Mother." The :
thought of the martyrdom "if tee heart of Mary in this dolour was the means of inspiring the foundation of a Religious Order called the Servites, and if we will but consider it, we, too, must become pervites in the Court of the Queen Sorrows :"Great Queen of Sorrows, in t train, Let me a mourner's place obtain With tears to (+mfr.a all eoei..,!,
stain." The sixth sorrow was that ID which the faithful little group that had borne Mary company in the
horrors of the Passion, obtaining legal right, took down the Sacred Body from the Cross and placed it in Mary's arms. This was our gift to the Mother of Christ, they had "taken away the Lord," and we gave Him back to her-"the Babe of Bethlehem was in His Mother's arms.' The horror of a priest who finds a tabernacle opened and the Blessed ' Sacrament desecrated, was intensified a hundred-fold in Mary's heart when she saw the "wounds and bruises and swelling sores," in the brc-ken body of God's Own Son. But He was her Son too, and Holy Simeon in himbus knew that the pr) phecy of thirty-three years had come true-"Deep and keen the steel ha gone." "Who bath woe?" was wri: ten in the Scripture. Seers and scribes might come to Calvary and see the answer, for what mind could imagine or what lips could express. "the length and the breadth and the height and the depth," of the sor'
row and woe that ' descended wit?: more than the density of Egyptia: darkness into the soul of Mary a: the seventh dolour-the burial Jesus, which brought back the of loss, while it left the shudderin_ memories of all He had gone through while His Mother stood by helpless. What wonder that Jere milts should ask, " Who shall heal thee?" after he had declared that her sorrow was too great to be likened to anythine, and that her des truction was "great as the sea." I! Jeremias could find no consolation. John the we like to believe that Evangelist did the work of a priest as well as the duty of a son, and reminded Our Lady of what she knew so well, that in three (lays Jesus should rise again. With true filial
instinct we turn to the thought of the Resurrection even as the Church anticipates it in the Offices of Holz Saturday, and unwilling that Mist?
THE MOTHER OP SORROWS
are represented with the instruments of torFai(line the dead body of Her Divine Sou, other martyrs as above because the natural love she is pictured Martyrs, :xe in their hands. Mary the Queen of for Him as God were the chief 1:im as her Son, and the supernatural love she entertained by Simeon. foretold causes of the "sword" of sorrow
But not all the sorrows of the Mother are found in the actual sacrifice of the Son, for there was first of all the long-drawn-out tragedy of anticipation, made known to Our Lady to harrow her heart, in the prophecy of Simeon, which showed Jesus as a sign to be contradicted, as set for the fall of many, and her own heart riven with the spiritual sword, which he declared should Pierce her. "anti thy own soul a sword shall pierce." Revelation an meditation made the Way of the Cross open and plain to Mary,
heart had been riven with sorrows that nothing but such a mystery as the Resurrection could heal.
The second sorrow saw Our 1.aaly hastening in anxiety and anguish to exile among pagans. "In .Judea God is known," but what of Egypt! The Prophet Jonas in the whale's belly consoled himself through his faith in God, drawing on that faith to assure himself that he would again see Jerusalem and its temple. The thoughts of Mary must have turned to the temple also, hut the future was dark, and she did not know how
ple through no fault of Mary, or Joseph wrung from her agonised heart
only words recorded as hers She which sound like a complaint. said she had "sought Him sorrowing," and it was only by meditating on those words and on the loss somewhat allied to the pain of loss which is bell's greatest torment, that we can in some degree realise how Of grievous was the third dolour. Alphonsus the fourth dolour St.
the
says : "Consider the meeting of the Son and the Mother which took place in this journey. Their looks
should hear her sad widowhood a moment longer we exclaim : "Rejoice and be glad, 0 Mary, for the Lord is
truly risen." C. BREEZE.
Barnett
Bros.
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