We Would Love
to Keep in Touch!
To love one means also to give that person the power to cause you to suffer. What a wound it is to the heart when love receives in return only indifference, rejection or contempt! This is true of us who love so v, little and so poorly, but it is infinitely more true of God whom St. John tells us is love personified (1 John 4:8).
A Sign of Tenderness
Mary's tears at La Salette are a sign of God's tenderness, unappreciated and scoffed at. It is a sign within our understanding: for God has always spoken to humans through humans and by means of signs and languages used by God’s people. What sign could tell us better about God's sufferings than the tears of his Mother, of her who remained standing at the foot of the Cross? What tears could best convince us of our unfaithfulness than those of the Virgin most faithful? But since we refuse to allow God into our lives and our world, She who is charged with praying unceasingly for us can do nothing more in our behalf. There remain only - as the saying goes -her eyes with which to weep. These tears of hers bring home to us the intensity of her love, but at the same time her powerlessness in the face of our refusals. That precisely is the reality we are called upon to discover.
Why is She Crying?
I see again in memory, in the ravine of the Apparition, on a summer's morning, a married couple with their seven or eight year old son. “Why is she crying?”, the little boy asks. "Because we have been bad and do not love Jesus as we should”, his mother replies. Under different forms, this same scene recurs constantly. Already Maximin thus explained his own reaction: “One would have said that she was a mother whose children had beaten her and who had escaped to the mountain to cry.” All we need to add is that this woman is the Mother of Christ, and that we are her heartless children.We speak of her tears in the present tense because they are a reality of today! The words accompanying them likewise pertain to the present: “If my people will not submit, I shall be forced to let fall the arm of my Son.... For how long a time do I suffer for you!” Yet, close to Jesus “ever living to make intercession for us”, Mary never ceases watching over “the (children) of her Son whose pilgrimage is not yet finished and who are still subject to perils and dangers” (Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris mater, #40, and Hebrews 7:25). This constant presence of Mary before the throne of God guarantees her constant presence in our lives.
Mary’s Constant Intercession
The Fathers of Vatican II state clearly that:
“This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, and lasts until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this salvific duty, but by her constant intercession continued to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation.“By her maternal charity, she cares for the (people) of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties, until they are led into the happiness of their true home. Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked by the Church under the titles of Advocate, Auxiliatrix, Adjutrix, and Mediatrix. This, however, is to be so understood that it neither takes away from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficaciousness of Christ the one Mediator” (Lumen gentium, 62, emphasis added).
Hence, to draw us to the following of Christ, God chose Mary, and Mary chose tears—tears which tell us that “(we) will never be able to recompense the pains she has taken for (us)," tears of light which tell us that, even in her glory, her maternal concern for each one of us is as vigilant today as ever.
God Awaits Nothing From Us Except Our Hearts
Twice the Virgin unveils for us the reason for her tears. The first time, it is the powerlessness of her Son, faced as he is with our indifference: “If I would not have my Son abandon you, I am compelled to pray to him without ceasing, and as for you, you take no heed of it!"The second time, it is our lack of attention to events, our attachment to the passing things of this world and our refusal to acknowledge our responsibilities, as if God, not we, were the guilty one: “I gave you warning last year with the potatoes, but you did not heed it! On the contrary, when you found the potatoes spoilt, you swore, you took the name of my Son in vain. ...”
And in truth, insensible to what is essential, we fret and worry about passing things, and let ourselves be monopolized by what is merely transitory, instead of simply using them to gather a treasure there “where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19b). And, in all honesty, where is our treasure, and what is it that we are really seeking out of life?
The Virgin—who lived only for Christ—knows that “where our treasure is, there also is our heart.” She knows that God awaits nothing from us, except our hearts, for nothing can replace a heart which disdains to return love for love.
