The Queen Speaks: The Holy Slave Listens

This article graced the Queen of All Hearts Magazine and is presented here. The author, who also made his Act of Total Consecration, is a well know figure who published numerous books. This article is to be read, however, with the understanding the author took literary licenses. It is not to be read and assumed all information is factual. It is to be read for the enjoyment it brings to read about Our Lady, as well for meditation.

With that understanding, The Queen reprints the article.

I knew what else was waiting on my answer. God would not ask a girl to bear His Son, and keep her ignorant of the sorrow she would know through Him. Ah no. Divine Love could not help showing me the swords that waited with the waiting angel.

Joy came to me with my Fiat. And glory incomprehensible. And immeasurable sorrow.

The Angel Gabriel spoke to me of Elizabeth, my cousin, and bent still lower at my feet; for he saw the Triune God descending on me.

The Word had been made flesh, and dwelt within me! I had encompassed God, Whom not even the sun and moon and stars and all the universe could even begin to encompass! Him Whom the heavens could not contain I held as a seed within my virgin womb!

The mysteries of my Rosary had begun, the joyful and the sorrowful and the glorious decades my Fiat had conceived.

It is a great feast, the feast of the Annunciation, the day God sent His angel to propose to me. How Godlike to remember a woman must be asked in marriage! He knew indeed I loved Him. He knew how much I loved Him. He knew my heart was His, forever, to do with as it pleased Him; and yet He knew a woman must be asked, even by the One Who made her; Who made her long before He made the morning star that is her symbol.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt within me. Truly was I full of Grace. I was the chalice, the tabernacle, the fountain and the flume of Grace. I was the mother and the daughter and the chosen bride of Grace. I was, and am, the mediatrix of all graces.

I was a girl like other girls in Nazareth. I cooked. I sewed. I mended. I cleaned the house. I carried water from the fountain. I prayed, for I had always loved God much; and everything I did I did for love of Him. I was a girl like other girls, yet I held Infinity in my womb. And in my small young heart I held a sea of sorrow.

Seven roily rivers flowed into that sea before I died, each adding its own volume of bitterness and pain. But the sea was there before the rivers ran to swell it; and only the Triune God could tell the depth of it, or its extent, or say how salty were its waters.

I knew my Son would be rejected by the priests to whom He came. I knew that He would have no place thereon to lay His head. I knew He would be exiled, hunted, persecuted, vilified, and tortured. I knew He would be nailed upon a tree.

What use to remember each river when you contemplate the sea? Shall I recall the words of Simeon to you? They were only the punctuation marks in a sentence I already knew by heart. They were only the viva voce confirmation of the tidings that came to me with Gabriel’s arrival. The flight to Egypt?

Need I tell you I knew all that this foreboded ? And the time we lost and found Him in Jerusalem – I knew it should prepare me for the time when I would lose Him for much longer than three days.

He asked if I did not know that He must be about His Father’s business. He did not need to ask me. He knew I knew. He was reminding me that I too must be about His Father’s business, since I was to be the Co-Redemptrix of mankind. He was reminding me that the sea of sorrow in my heart would be enlarged by other, and much greater, streams of pain and anguish than any I had known. He was reminding me that these days of agony and seeking in Jerusalem were but an indication of storms my sea would know in days to come.

He walked upon the waters of that sea, and calmed them; but they were still filled with brine, despite the sweetness and serenity His feet left on their surface.

One was my sorrow, though seven torrents fed it. One was my joy. One my glory. And all my glory and joy and sorrow, and all my thoughts, and all my strivings, centered in the Word made flesh.

Was there not joy and glory in your Annunciation too, child, who call yourself my slave? You did not see the angel whom I sent you, as the messenger of my solicitude and love. You did not see him tremble as he proposed to you for me. Yet he did tremble, lest you throw away the kingdom I can give you. And was there not great sorrow too, in that Annunciation, and pain and anguish for your lack of love?

I am the queen of all the laity. I was numbered among the laity all my life. I am the queen of nuns too, for I am the Virgin Queen of Virgins. And I am the queen of priests.

I was fourteen years and some months old. I was a woman, yet I was a child. I was alone. I went alone, upon my Visitation, riding a small burro, walking when the animal was tired. The way was long, and rough, and dangerous. There were evil men along the route who lay in wait for travelers such as I was. There were serpents hidden in the paths. There were passages in the hills and valley that were filled with perils. Yet I was not dismayed, not fearful. I was too much in love with Love to harbor fear or caution, or the timidity that men mistake for prudence. I was too filled with Grace.

I did not know it then, but angels travelled with me through the hills, the barren wastes of sand, the acres of wild fragrant flowers, the bogs and quagmires and the treacherous pits.

The red sun lingered a long time in the west, to strew my path with red and yellow roses. And the moon threw lilies everywhere about me when the sun bade me adieu. Ah, and the bright stars danced for me – as little John the Baptist danced in the womb when I drew near his mother. They danced for very joy of me, and for the One I carried.

Do you think it odd my Love should set the stars dancing in that mad glad divinely inebriated way? Do you not remember that He made the sun itself dance for me at Fatima, one rainy October noon in 1917?

There was great joy in my visitation. And much glory. My soul did magnify the Lord. And I kept many things in my heart even then. The pregnancy of a virgin, for instance, and the pregnancy of a barren woman! Somehow they were connected. Both came from God. Both were impossible, yet not impossible at all. What is impossible to Love?

Priests would do well to meditate upon the mysteries of this visitation.

They too are midwives, in a sense; midwives to the souls of men. They must brave daggers, even death itself, to bring Christ where He wants to go. They do not carry Him as I did. True. Yet they are Christ, each one of them, themselves. His wounds are in their hands and feet, and in their hearts, whether visible or not. They have great powers of healing souls and bodies, though some of them seem unaware of this. And I would kneel before even the most unworthy of them, to receive his blessing – the blessing of my Son. I am the queen of priests. I love them with a love more tender than they know.

I still make visitations, as my priests should do, asking the children of men, the children of my heart, for prayer and penance. Where are the prayers, I ask you? Where is the penance? Must I become, someday, ”Our Lady of the Underground?” Must I become ”Our Lady of Compassion,” looking down upon the dead face of the earth, as once I looked down at the dead face of my Son? Give me your prayers. Give me your penance. I still may use these precious gifts to allay the anger of Omnipotence offended and ignored.

Let my Son once more change water into wine. Let Him change the insipid, tasteless, tepid, sun-staled water of your worldliness into the powerful, inebriating, warming wine of Love. Where is the steward who has charge of furnishing this wine? My Son thirst for the good wine fermented from your suffering, your travail, your pain, your expiation, your penance and your prayers. Must His parched lips stay parched?

The feast of the Nativity is a great feast too. The joy of it will never die. Nor will the glory, nor the pain.

He was not born as other children are. One moment He lay sweet and heavy in my womb. The next He lay before me on the stable floor. I was the first of all His creatures His human eyes beheld. He smiled at me; and I saw more happiness in Him than I had noticed in the angel. Almost I forgot the sea of sorrow in my heart. Yet it was, even then, at high flood tide; for the coarse straws had put marks upon His tiny feet and hands, and one had touched His side! And bits of straw had fallen from the rafters to place a crown upon His royal head. Even then I knew it was a crown of thorns that men would fashion for Him.

The sea of sorrow ebbed and flowed within me all the years my Son remained on earth. I watched Him in the mornings when He rose to say His prayers – standing with His arms out-stretched to greet His Father. How frequently His shadow made a cross! I watched Him play with nails in Joseph’s little shop, and knew the feel of nail wounds in my body. I was the first stigmatic on this earth.

Infinite suffering went to buy you, child, who call yourself my slave. Mine was the lesser share. Mine was but the semblance of a share, for all my agony. Mine was but a human part in His divine redemption. What was my sea of sorrow in comparison with His tears?

You remember that He wept for Lazarus, His friend. You remember that He shed tears for the doom of His Jerusalem, His much loved city. Yet these were human tears such as might well up in any eyes that felt a strong man’s pity. It was the tears of God my Jesus cried for me – and hence for all my other children. He wept because He knew that I must share His passion. He wept because He loved me, and because He knew how much I had already suffered, and how much more there was for me to suffer – for you, my slave, and all my other children.

What was my sea of sorrow compared to one small tear of God Almighty?

I paid a great price for you, Child of Mary. From the moment of my Fiat to the moment of my entrance into heaven I kept paying for you. It was an infinitely greater sum my Son expended for you.

And shall we be repaid with sips of stagnant water?