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One can hardly well doubt that the great S. Joseph
died before the passion and death of our Saviour, who
otherwise would not have commended his mother to S.
John. And how can one then imagine that the dear
child of his heart, his beloved fosterchild, did not
assist him at the hour of his departure?
Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain
mercy. Ah! how much sweetness, charity and mercy, did
this good foster-father use towards our Saviour, when
he was born a little child in the world! And who can
then believe but that, at his departure out of it,
this divine child rendered him the like a
hundred-fold, filling him with heavenly delights?
Storks are the true representation of the mutual
piety of children towards their parents and of
parents towards their children: for, being birds of
passage, they bear their old parents with them in
their journey, as their parents had borne them while
they were yet young, on the like occasions.
While our Saviour was yet a little child, the
great S. Joseph his foster-father, and the most
glorious Virgin his mother, had many times carried
him, but especially in their journey from Judea to
Egypt, and from Egypt to Judea. Ah! who then can
doubt that this holy father being come to the end of
his days, was reciprocally carried by his divine
foster-child, in the passage from this to another
life, into Abraham's bosom, to be translated thence
into his own, into glory, on the day of his
Ascension?
A saint who had loved so much in his life, could
not die but of love; for his heart not being able to
love his dear Jesus as much as he desired while he
continued amongst the distractions of this life, and
having already performed the duty which was required
in the childhood of Jesus, what remained but that he
should say to the eternal Father: O Father, I have
finished the work which thou gavest me to do:(1) and
then to the Son, O my child! as thy heavenly Father
put thy tender body into my hands the day of thy
coming into this world, so do I render up my soul
into thine, this day of my departure out of the
world.
Such, as I conceive, was the death of this great
patriarch, a man elected to perform the most tender
and loving offices that ever were or shall be
performed to the Son of God, save those that were
done by his sacred spouse, the true natural mother of
the said Son.
Now of her it is not possible to imagine that she
died of any other kind of death than of love, the
noblest of deaths, and consequently due to the
noblest life that ever was amongst creatures: a death
of which the very angels would desire to die, if die
they could. If the primitive Christians were said to
have but one heart and one soul, by reason of their
perfect mutual love, if S. Paul lived not in himself,
but Jesus Christ lived in him, by reason of the close
union of his heart to his Master's, whereby his soul
was as it were dead in his heart which it animated,
to live in the heart of the Saviour which it loved, -
O true God! how much more really had the sacred
virgin and her son but one soul, one heart and one
life, so that this heavenly mother, living, lived
not, but her son lived in her!
'Twas a mother the most loving and the most
beloved that ever could be, yea loving and beloved
with a love incomparably more eminent than that of
all the orders of angels and men, as the names of
mother-only and only-son, are names passing all other
names in matter of love. And I say mother-only and
only-son, because all the other sons of men divide
the acknowledgment of their production between their
father and mother; but in this son, as all his human
birth depended on his mother alone, who alone
contributed that which was requisite to the virtue of
the Holy Ghost for the conception of this heavenly
child, so to her alone all the love which sprang from
that production was due and rendered: wherefore this
son and this mother were united in a union by so much
more excellent, as her name is excellent in love
above all other names.
For which of all the seraphim can say to our
Saviour: Thou art my true son, and I love thee as my
true son? And to which of all his creatures did our
Saviour ever say: Thou art my true mother, and as my
true mother I love thee: thou art my true mother,
entirely mine, and I am thy true son wholly thine? If
then a loving servant durst say, and did say, that he
had no other life than his master's - Ah! how
confidently and fervently might this mother exclaim;
I have no life but the life of my son, my life is
wholly in his, and his wholly in mine; for it was no
longer union but unity of hearts between this mother
and this son.
And if this mother lived her son's life, she also
died her son's death. The phoenix, as report goes,
grown very aged, gathers together on the top of a
mountain a quantity of aromatical wood, upon which,
as upon its bed of honour, it goes to end its days:
for when the sun, being at its highest, pours out its
hottest beams, this sole bird, to contribute an
increase of activity to the ardour of the sun, ceases
not to beat with its wings upon its bed, till it has
made it take fire, and burning with it is consumed,
and dies in those odoriferous flames.
In like manner, Theotimus, the virgin-mother,
having collected in her spirit all the most beloved
mysteries of the life and death of her son by a most
lively and continual memory of them, and withal, ever
receiving directly the most ardent inspirations which
her child, the sun of justice, has cast upon human
beings in the highest noon of his charity; and
besides, making on her part also, a perpetual
movement of contemplation, at length the sacred fire
of this divine love consumed her entirely as a
holocaust of sweetness, so that she died thereof, the
soul being wholly ravished and transported into the
arms of the dilection of her son. O, death, amorously
life-giving! O, love, vitally death-giving!
Several sacred lovers were present at the death of
the Saviour, amongst whom those who had the most love
had the most sorrow; for love was then all steeped in
sorrow, and sorrow in love; and all they who for
their Saviour were impassioned with love were in love
with his passion and sorrow. But the sweet Mother,
who loved more than all, was more than all transfixed
with the sword of sorrow.
The sorrow of the Son at that time was a piercing
sword, which passed through the heart of the Mother,
because that Mother's heart was glued, joined and
united to her Son, with so perfect a union that
nothing could wound the one without inflicting a
lively torture upon the other. Now this maternal
bosom, being thus wounded with love, not only did not
seek a cure for its wound, but loved her wound more
than all cure, dearly keeping the shafts of sorrow
she had received, on account of the love which had
shot them into her heart, and continually desiring to
die of them, since her Son died of them, who, as say
all the Holy Scriptures and all Doctors, died amidst
the flames of his charity, a perfect holocaust for
all the sins of the world.
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