Mary’s Tears (II)

Tears are a legacy of the Mother of Sorrows, such an awesome legacy that it cannot be frittered away in the vain affections of the world without committing some kind of sacrilege. Saint Rose of Lima said that our tears belong to God, and that whoever sheds them without thinking of Him, steals them from Him. They belong to God and to she who gave God the flesh and blood of His human form. If Saint Ambrose, recalling Monica, refers to Augustine as "the son of so many tears", how much more so are we sons of the tears of that special creature who, as the Mother of God, received the matchless privilege of offering to the Eternal Father a sufficient atonement for the nameless, boundless crime through which Jesus obtained the redemption of the world? When Saint Monica wept for the misdemeanors of the future doctor of grace, her tears ran like a river of glory bearing her incredulous son in her tirelessly outstretched arms to the Author of Grace. Yet tears were all she had to offer and the conversion of her only son was all she had in mind.