From Mary, the Beloved by Keith Berube, MA (copyright 2017 Enroute Books and Media)
Mary,
my life and my sweetness, I give myself totally to you, I give my heart to you
and take your Heart as my own. I want to console you in your sorrows, remove
thorns from your Heart, love your Heart as dearer than my own, and in so doing
place the balm of requited love upon your Heart.
Jesus,
give me this grace: to truly requite Mary’s love for me, and to console her in
her sorrows. On my own, Jesus, I cannot; but if you and I are one, then I can,
because then it is not I that live, but you that live in me and as one with me,
and then she can lean upon me. “Who is this that cometh up from the desert,
flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?” (Canticles, 8:5).
Not
that Mary, the Strong Woman of Proverbs 31, needs to lean upon me—I need to
lean upon her! (“She will feed him with the bread of understanding, and give
him the water of wisdom to drink. He will lean on her and will not fall, and he
will rely on her and will not be put to shame,” Sirach 15:3-4). But let me
console her, as her beloved, to whom she can look to and rely on for comfort in
her sorrow.
So
lean on me, my most precious Mary, who loves me with the purest love of every
womanly love, with all the loves of mother, sister and spouse, you who were
entrusted to me at the Cross by Jesus in his holy Passion as I was entrusted to
you. Lean on my prayers, sufferings, mortifications and Holy Communions offered
to you in penance for sins and to save souls with you.
Be
comforted, my sorrowful Mary, because I love you with all my heart and mind and
will, as Jesus loves you. Your love in me is requited! I am all yours, I love
you as my Mother, sister and spouse, as you love me with all these loves (“She
will come to meet him like a mother, and like the wife of his youth she will
welcome him,” Sirach 15:2), and I take you for all mine with praise and
thanksgiving to Our Father.
May
we and all those souls we save from Hell rejoice with him in his house forever
more. Amen.
