5) May 21
Mary is the "Consolatrix Afflictorum," the Consoler of the Afflicted
ST. PAUL says that his Lord comforted him in all his
tribulations, that he also might be able to comfort them who are in distress,
by the encouragement which he received from God. This is the secret of true
consolation: those are able to comfort others who, in their own case, have been
much tried, and have felt the need of consolation, and have received it. So of
our Lord Himself it is said: "In that He Himself hath suffered and been
tempted, He is able to succour those also that are tempted."
And this too is why the Blessed Virgin is the comforter of
the afflicted. We all know how special a mother's consolation is, and we are
allowed to call Mary our Mother from the time that our Lord from the Cross
established the relation of mother and son between her and St. John. And she
especially can console us because she suffered more than mothers in general.
Women, at least delicate women, are commonly shielded from rude experience of
the highways of the world; but she, after our Lord's Ascension, was sent out
into foreign lands almost as the Apostles were, a sheep among wolves. In spite
of all St. John's care of her, which was as great as was St. Joseph's in her
younger days, she, more than all the saints of God, was a stranger and a pilgrim
upon earth, in proportion to her greater love of Him who had been on earth, and
had gone away. As, when our Lord was an Infant, she had to flee across the
desert to the heathen Egypt, so, when He had ascended on high, she had to go on
shipboard to the heathen Ephesus, where she lived and died.
