In my meditations of her at the Scourging at the Pillar, .Jesus Christ, bound to the pillar, before He is scourged, always tells me to go to His Mother. As I run to her, I discover that I am am no more than a toddler and I end up grabbing onto her skirt and legs, and burying my face there.
Looking up at her, I say, “I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry about your Son. I’m so sorry. But I’m glad He is dying for me. Without Him, I’d go straight to hell.” She looks down at me with sorrow in her eyes and hugs my little body.
But some other rarer times, I see her standing in the crowd, and I am not a toddler but a young woman. This one time I went to her as a woman, she turned to me with a face beaded with sweat and etched with the most extreme anguish and distress, the kind you can’t begin to describe.
I said, “What can I do for you, Mother? Is there anything I can do for you?”
She began to faint, and I caught her and was holding her in my arms on the dirty stone ground. I said what words of comfort I could. Something like, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for your pain. I stumbled around with other useless words. Tears were welling up in her eyes and there was a growing weakness of her body. The scourging was so violent that a drop of Christ’s blood fell upon her face even though she was situated several feet away. She acknowledged it, wincing.
I said to her: What can I do?
She said to me,” Hold me,” And then she buried her face in my chest. It was the only time in my years of meditating upon The Scourging at the Pillar that she ever let me comfort her. In retrospect, perhaps it was just more that she wanted to place that drop of Christ’s Precious Blood in my heart so that I could be saved.
To hold Mary was like holding everything good, all at once: every star, every planet, every gorgeous child, every love there ever was.
Dearest Mother, my heartfelt thanks for this one moment and all my love for your excruciating agony on this day.