Salesian Literature

Chapter 13  :  The blessed Virgin, God’s Mother, died of love for her Son

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Frankly, the assumption that St. Joseph died before our Lord’s passion and death can hardly be called into question.  If it were not so, would the Saviour have commended his Mother to St. John’s care?  And if it is so, should we not picture that foster-Son, the Child of his heart, there to help him at his passing?

 

A saint, whose life had been spent in such deep love, could not but die of love.  Unable to love his dear Jesus as he would have wished amid the distractions of this life, and having done the duty demanded by our Lord’s tender years, it only remained for him to say to the Father: I have achieved the task which thou gavest me to do (Jn. 17:4); and to the Son: “My Child, your heavenly Father entrusted your body into my hands on the day you came into this world; now, on the day appointed for me to leave the world, it is into your hands that I commend my spirit” (cf. Ps. 30:6; Lk. 23:46).

 

So – as I picture it – he died, this great patriarch, a man chosen to perform for the Son of God the tenderest, most loving offices possible, after those which his heaven-sent Spouse fulfilled – she who was the true Mother of that same Son.

 

In her case, it is impossible to imagine her dying of anything but love.  That is the noblest of deaths; consequently, it is a death befitting the noblest of human lives – a death the angels themselves would long for, were they capable of dying.

 

If the early Christians were described as having one heart and soul (Acts. 4:32), on account of their perfect mutual love; if St. Paul was alive to self no longer, but Christ lived in him (cf. Gal. 2:20), by reason of the close union of heart between him and his Master, so that his soul’s real life was no longer in the human heart it animated, but in the Saviour’s heart it loved – how much truer it is to say, God knows, that the blessed Virgin and her Son had only one heart, one soul, one life; that this holy Mother was living, though not with her own life … Christ was alive in her!

 

Now, if this Mother lived with her Son’s life, then she also died of her Son’s death: as a person lives, so do they die.  The Virgin Mother gathered in her heart – through her ever-vivid memory of them – all the lovable incidents of her Son’s life and death. She was always in direct contact with the most ardent inspirations that her Son, in his sunrise of restoration (Mal. 4:2), casts upon the hearts of men from the noonday blaze of charity.  In addition she was constantly engaged in active contemplation, until the fire of God’s love consumed her utterly – a holocaust of sweetness.

 

In other words, she died of love, her soul enraptured, transported into the embrace of her Son’s love.  How lovingly her death led to life, how inevitably her love led to death!

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