Maundy Thursday

My Jesus, I LOVE You!

My Mother Mary, I LOVE You!

a post, dedicated to Our Mother of Sorrows

Before Jesus's Agony in the Garden, Before Jesus enters the Prison:

Taken from the book: Twenty Holy Hours by Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey, Chapter X: For the FIrst Friday of September and for Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday is nearing its end. Already, the first shadows are darkening the sky. The anguish of an inexpressible sorrow invades the Heart of Jesus. Why this inward shuddering?

Jesus, the Saviour, the adorable Nazarene, is the Son of Man. As such He has a Mother, unique in her tenderness, incomparably lovely, divinely holy and beautiful. A single glance from Mary, and above all a throb of her maternal heart meant more to Jesus than all the angelic concerts, far more than the perfumed breezes of earth and the splendours of skies. Mary was for Jesus a smile of complacency of the Eternal Father. And Jesus had to leave this Mother for love of us ungrateful ones!

Holy Thursday, a day never to be forgotten because of the Master's last farewells. Who will tell us of this wonderful and mysterious scene over which the Evangelists have thrown a veil of silence? With loving reverence for the Son and Mother, let us with hearts deeply moved represent to ourselves the farewell scene which must have taken place at Bethany.

His hour has come. It seems probable that Jesus, the Son of God and also the Son of Man, asked His Mother's consent to die, as He had already asked her consent to become incarnate, her child. His voice broken by sobs and His royal, divine Head leaning on His Mother's heart, Jesus entrusts to her the sheep that will be brought back to the fold by His death. Remembering the crib at Bethlehem, Mary holds Him in Her arms, while her eye, miraculously enlightened, look on tomorrow's Calvary where the Queen of Love will become the Queen of Sorrows. She weeps and with her precious tears she anoints the adorable Head of her Redeemer. Yes, she weeps as a mother, but more than that, she weeps as Co-Redemptrix! She offered to the Eternal Father the Divine Victim, the Lamb without spot. She weeps, and with her tears, she blesses the world, whose salvation, begun with her sublime Fiat, - "Let it be done" - pronounced in the happy little house of Nazareth, must be consummated tomorrow on a cross of ignominy and of blood.

Then in the clearness of that ominous light she sees not only the drama of Calvary but also the adorable design of the Most High. She then embraces her Son with an inexpressible love, and before the cruel thorns pierce His forehead she imprints thereon a kiss in the name of all those in heaven who adore Jesus, because He is their God. She kisses Him again in the name of those on earth, for the Son of Mary is also its divine King. And kissing the forehead of her Jesus, she places there, as on the holiest of altars, the holiest of oblations - her Fiat, a Fiat crushing for the Mother, but sovereign in its redemptive power.

Night has come. Jesus confides His desolate Mother to His faithful friends of Bethany and to His Angels. Then He leaves, His soul bathed in an agony a thousand times more piercing and more bitter than death itself...

Jesus in Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane:

Jesus Confined in the Subterranean Prison:

pictures taken from the move: The Passion of the Christ where the director tried to show that Mother Mary greatly desired to be with Jesus.

Snippets taken from the book: The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as told by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich to Clemens Brentano (a translation), Chapter XI: Mary in the House of Caiphas & Chapter XII: Jesus confined in the Subterranean Prison

The Blessed Virgin was every united to her Divine Son by interior spiritual communications; she was, therefore, fully aware of all that happened to him - she suffered with him, and joined in his continual prayer for his murderers. But her maternal feelings prompted her to supplicate Almighty God most ardently not to suffer the crime to be completed, and to save her Son from such dreadful torments. She eagerly desired to return to him; and when John, who had left the tribunal at the moment the frightful cry, "He is guilty of death," was raised, came to the house of Lazarus (Bethany) to see after her, and to relate the particulars of the dreadful scene he had just witnessed, she, as also Magdalen and some of the other holy women, begged to be taken to the place where Jesus was suffering. John, who had only left our Saviour in order to console her whom he loved best next to his Divine Master, instantly acceded to their request, and conducted them through the streets, which were lighted up by the moon alone, and crowded with persons hastening to their homes... The Blessed Virgin, who ever beheld in spirit the opprobrious treatment which her dear Son was receiving, continued 'to lay all these things in her heart;'...

It is quite impossible to describe all that the Holy of Hollies suffered from these heartless beings; for the sight affect me (Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich) so excessively that I became really ill, and felt as if I could not survive it.

Jesus continued to pray for his enemies, and they being at last tired out left him in peace for a short time, when he leaned against the pillar to rest, and a bright light shone around him. The day was beginning to dawn - the day of his Passion, of our Redemption - and a faint ray penetrating the narrow vent hole of the prison, fell upon the holy and immaculate Lamb, who had taken upon himself the sins of the world. Jesus turned towards the ray of light, raised his fettered hands, and, in the most touching manner, returned thanks to his Heavenly Father for the dawn of that day, which had been so long desired by the prophets, and for which He Himself had so ardently sighed from the moment of his birth on earth, and concerning which he had said to his disciples, "I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptised, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?" 

Point to note for this meditation: Jesus thanked (!!!) the Father for the terrible sufferings which He had already endured and for the still greater which He was about to endure.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Anne, Therese, I love You; Save Souls!

Jesu mitis et humilis corde, Fac cor nostrum secundum Cor Tuum. (ter)

Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori.

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