O Mary! by these hours of joy, which repaid thee for those long bitter ones of thy Jesus’ Passion, pray to Him for us, that He permit us to feel and relish His presence in our hearts during this our exile, wherein ‘we are absent from him.’
This being Saturday, let us once more think of Mary, and of the joy she feels at the resurrection of her Son. She had been his companion in His sufferings; there was not one that she had not endured and suffered as far as a mere creature could suffer: so too, there is not a single glory or gladness of the resurrection in which she is not now made to participate.
It was meet that she, to whom God had granted the grace and merit of sharing in the work of the redemption, should take her part in the prerogatives which belong to her Jesus, now that He is risen. Her soul is raised to a higher state of perfection; grace loads her with new favors; her actions and sentiments become more than ever heavenly.
She was the first to receive a visit from Jesus after His resurrection – the first, consequently, to receive from Him His own new life. Can we be astonished at her receiving it, when we remember that every Christian who, being purified by his having compassionated with Jesus in His Passion, unites himself, afterwards, with holy Church in the sublime mystery of the Pasch – becomes a sharer in the life of his risen Lord?