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Marian Devotion (Day 10)

May 10, 2024

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Day 10

A reading from the Song of Songs (2:8-14)

Hark! my lover—here he comes

springing across the mountains,

leaping across the hills.

My lover is like a gazelle

or a young stag.

Here he stands behind our wall,

gazing through the windows,

peering through the lattices.

My lover speaks; he says to me,

“Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,

and come!

“For see, the winter is past,

the rains are over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth,

the time of pruning the vines has come,

and the song of the dove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,

and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.

Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,

and come!

O my dove in the clefts of the rock,

in the secret recesses of the cliff,

let me see you,

let me hear your voice,

for your voice is sweet,

and you are lovely.”

From her Heaven in Faith by St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

“If you knew the gift of God,” Christ said one evening to the Samaritan woman.

There is one who knew this gift of God, one who did not lose one particle of it, one who was so pure, so luminous that she seemed to be the Light itself: Speculum justitiae. One whose life was so simple, so lost in God that there is hardly anything we can say about it: Virgo fidelis, that is, “Faithful virgin, “who kept all these things in her heart.”

She remained so little, so recollected in God’s presence, in the seclusion of the temple, that she drew down upon herself the delight of the Holy Trinity: “Because He has looked upon the lowliness of His servant, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed!”

The Father bending down to this beautiful creature, who was so unaware of her own beauty, willed that she be the Mother in time of Him whose Father he is in eternity. Then the Spirit of love who presides over all of God’s works came upon her: the Virgin said her fiat: “behold the servant of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word,” and the greatest of mystery was accomplished. By the descent of the Word in her, Mary became forever God’s prey.

It seems to me that the attitude of the Virgin during the months that elapsed between the Annunciation and the Nativity is the model for interior souls, those whom God has chosen to live within, in the depths of the bottomless abyss. In what peace, in what recollection Mary lent herself to everything she did! How even the most trivial things were divinized by her! For through it all the Virgin remained the adorer of the gifts of God!

This did not prevent her from spending herself outwardly when it was a matter of charity; the Gospel tells us that Mary went in haste to the mountains of Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Never did the ineffable vision that she contemplated within herself in any way diminish her outward charity. For, a pious author says, if contemplation “continues towards praise and towards the eternity of its Lord, it possesses unity and will not lose it.

“If an order from heaven arrives, contemplation turns towards men, sympathizes with their needs, is inclined towards all their miseries; it must cry and be fruitful. It illuminates like fire, and like it, it burns, it absorbs and devours, lifting up to heaven what it has devoured. And when it has finished its work here below, it rises, burning with its fire, and takes up again the road on high.

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