Rev. Fr. Frederick William Faber - The Foot of the Cross

The Foot of the Cross

The Sorrows of Mary

Frederick William Faber, D. D.

Nihil Obstat

JOSEPH A. M. QUIGLEY

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur

J. F. O'HARA, C.S.C.

Archiepiscopus Philadelphiensis

Feast of the Assumption, 1956

Originally published by the John Murphy Co., Baltimore, Maryland. This edition originally published in 1956 by The Peter Reilly Co., Philadelphia.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-66303

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
www.TANBooks.com

TO

THE LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON

THIS VOLUME

IS INSCRIBED IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE OF A

SEASON OF DARKNESS

WHICH GOD CONSECRATED FOR HIMSELF

BY A MORE THAN COMMON SORROW

CONTENTS

PREFACE

This Treatise was sketched for the first time at St. Wilfrid's in the summer of 1847, more than ten years ago. It has, however, been several times revised, and more than once entirely recast. It was not, however, finally settled in its present shape until the spring of 1855; for not till then was the Author satisfied with the consistency of our Lady's position throughout, nor with its adaptation to the requirements of scholastic theology. The Author has had the completed Treatise by him for some time, as the stage of preparation in which his materials were for a work on the Passion rendered it necessary for him to ascertain how much of that ground would be occupied by the Dolors, and in what manner; and it appeared better to compose the present Treatise, and even finish it for the press, before advancing his book on the Passion into another stage of its preparations, in order that the ultimate harmony between the two might be the more complete. But, as the time was not come for the publication of the Dolors in its predetermined place in the series of books which the Author has planned, it was laid by until its turn should arrive.

It is now twelve years since the Author became a tertiary of the ancient Order of the Servites, and so bound to advance, as much as he might be able to do so, the Devotion to the Seven Dolors; and he has always confessed to himself the obligation. When the London Oratory was founded in 1849, the Rosary of the Seven Dolors was adopted as one of its public characteristic practices, and other measures were taken with success to propagate the devotion. There seems some warrant for believing that graces and blessings have accompanied this humble apostolate of that practice so dear to our Blessed Mother.

The Treatise is now submitted with much diffidence to those who love our Lady's honor, and the spread of all devotion to her, with a hope that they may feel less disappointment in reading it than the Author has done in writing it, and may not be haunted, as he has been throughout, with an ideal which he could not reach, and a vexation that, when he had said all he could in the best way he could, it should always seem so little to be said of Mary, that it almost appeared as if it had better not have been said at all. The thought of the love that prompted the endeavor is, however, some compensation for the imperfection of its success.

THE LONDON ORATORY,
Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury, 1857.

CHAPTER I

THE MARTYRDOM OF MARY

THE beauty of Jesus is inexhaustible. Like the Vision of God in heaven, it is ever diversified, yet always the same, always cherished as an old and familiar joy, yet ever surprising and refreshing the spirit as being, in truth, perpetually new. He is beautiful always, beautiful everywhere, in the disfigurement of the Passion as well as in the splendor of the Resurrection, amid the horrors of the Scourging as well as amid the indescribable attractions of Bethlehem. But above all things our Blessed Lord is beautiful in His Mother. If we love Him we must love her. We must know her in order to know Him. As there is no true devotion to His Sacred Humanity, which is not mindful of His Divinity, so there is no adequate love of the Son, which disjoins Him from His Mother, and lays her aside as a mere instrument, whom God chose as He might choose an inanimate thing, without regard to its sanctity or moral fitness. Now it is our daily task to love Jesus more and more. Year follows year; the old course of feasts comes round; the well-known divisions of the Christian year overtake us, make their impression upon us, and go their way. How we have multiplied Christmases, and Holy Weeks, and Whitsuntides, and there has been something or other in each of them which makes them lie like dates in our mind! We have spent some of them in one place, and some in another, some under one set of circumstances, and some under another. Some of them, all thanks to God! have been distinguished by remarkable openings of heart in our interior life, such as to change or to intensify our devotion, and materially influence our secret relations with God. The foundations of many buildings, which did not rise above ground till long afterward, have been laid almost unconsciously in those times. Yet whatever may have been the changes which these feasts have brought or seen, they have always found us busy at one and the same work, trying to love Jesus more and more: and through all these changes, and in all this perseverance at our one work, unerring experience has told us that we never advance more rapidly in love of the Son than when we travel by the Mother, and that what we have built most solidly in Jesus has been built with Mary. There is no time lost in seeking Him, if we go at once to Mary; for He is always there, always at home. The darkness in His mysteries becomes light when we hold it to her light, which is His light as well. She is the short road to Him. She has the "grand entry" to Him. She is His Esther, and speedy and full are the answers to the petitions which her hand presents.

But Mary is a world, which we cannot take in all at one glance. We must devote ourselves to particular mysteries. We must set aside certain regions of this world of grace, and concentrate ourselves upon them. We must survey them and map them accurately, before we pass on to other regions, and then we shall learn much, which a general view would have omitted to notice, and store our souls with spiritual riches, riches both of knowledge and of love, which will draw us evermore into communion with our dearest Lord. As God's blessed will still persists in keeping us alive, and for His own gracious purposes detaining us amid all this cold weariness and these dejecting possibilities of sin, let us at least determine to occupy ourselves with nothing but God; for we have long since learned that there is truly no other occupation which is worth our while. He has a thousand Edens still, even in the bleak expanse of this salt steppe of a world, where we may work, to the sound of running waters, not without colloquies with Him in the cool time of the day; and we may wander from Eden to Eden, either as the weakness or the strength of our love impels us. For the present let us shut ourselves up in the garden of Mary's sorrows. It is one of God's choicest Edens, and we cannot work there otherwise than under the shadow of His presence, nor without the love of Jesus taking a marvellous possession of our souls. For love of Jesus is in the very viewless air of the place, in the smell of the upturned soil, in the fragrance of the flowers, in the rustling of the leaves, in the songs of the birds, in the shining of the sun, in the quiet tunes of the waterfalls as they dash down its rocky places. There for a while, for our Lord's love, we will enclose ourselves as in a cloistered place, and let the world, in which we are of no great importance, and which is even of less importance to us than we are to it, miss us for a season from our post.