Visions of St. Bridget IX

Jesus is Laid in the Arms of His Mother

(Source: Revelations of St. Bridget by TAN Books, available for purchase here.)

After the death of Our Lord and after His side was opened by a lance, Jesus was taken down from the cross - the cross He used to save us from our own sin, and laid in the arms of His Holy Mother. Imagine if you will what it must have been to receive back what had been so harshly torn away, for Mary who held the infant Jesus so tenderly in her arms, now again recieves her son, holds him close, pressing Him to her chest. Crouch before your Heavenly Mother and join in her sorrow, sorry for your transgressions which have caused her Son's death - by reading her very words, spoken to St. Bridget of Sweden some 900 years ago:

The Blessed Virgin Mary speaks: "..think how He was taken down from the cross. The two men who took Him down from the cross set up three ladders-one reaching His feet, another to His armpits and arms, the third to the middle of the body. The first ascended and held Him by the body; the second, mounting another ladder, drew out first one of the nails from one hand, then, changing the ladder, he took out the nail from the other...then, he who bore the weight of the body descending gradually and moderately as he could, the other got up the ladder reaching to the feet, and drew the nails from the feet. And when he approached the ground, one of them held the body by the head, and the other by the feet, but I being His Mother, held Him by the middle. And so we three bore Him to a rock which I had covered with a clean linen sheet, in which we wrapped the body, but I did not sew the winding-sheet. For I knew for certain that He would not decay in the tomb."

St. Bridget speaks of this scene witnessed in vision: "...when the crowd departed, His friends took down Our Lord, whom His pious Mother received in her holy arms, and inclined Him, sitting on her knee, all wounded, torn and livid; and then His dolorous Mother wiped His whole body and wounds with her veil, and closed His eyes, kissing them, and wrapped Him in a clean winding-sheet, and thus they bore Him, with great wailing and grief, and laid Him in the sepulcher."

We all must often approach Our Mother in prayer to honor her great sorrow. She will repay our veneration with nothing less than our very salvation - which is the very Will of God. Go to your Sorrowful Mother with your own wounds and troubles, ask her to press you close and clean you with her veil as she did Our Lord. Mary is the quickest, surest and safest route to Jesus!

Prayer

Ah, true Mother, most loving Mother, Whom not even the fear of death could separate from Thy beloved Son. But, O God, what a spectacle of sorrow must have confronted those who could see Jesus hanging in agony on the cross, and His Mother there at the foot of the cross suffering all His torments with Him. All these sufferings of Jesus were also Mary's sufferings. Amen+

~ Saint Jerome