| IX. Choir | 18 August |
|---|---|
| “With the Tears of the Mother” | Helen |
To clarify the task of this angel, standing today as intercessor before God’s Throne, God causes a smooth, hard rock face to rise up. This angel, who is not very large, kneels before it. He holds a bowl of tears in his hand. He dips his fingers into it and knocks with his wet hands, that is, with his tears, on the hard rock wall.
This angel, who carries the Tears of the Mother, is
Saint Merari.
He is an angel of the IX choir, assigned to the Angel of Transformation, Saint Hajim. As such, he is an Angel of the Church and of the Tabernacle.
The rock face that God shows you is your soul, O man! You have surrounded it with a smooth, hard layer of sterility, with lukewarmness and indifference, alienation from God and self-idolatry. Who can bring down such a smooth rock? The Tears of the Mother can.
All the tears that Mary shed in intercession throughout her life, but especially following the Passion of Her Son, remain for all eternity and have the greatest power before God. They conquer the Heart of God even in seemingly hopeless cases of human obstinacy, so that God does not raise His hand to punish deluded man. If anything can win grace a place in a darkened human heart, it is the tears of a mother.
So too are all the tears of mothers, shed in intercession and repentance for their children, sanctified and made precious by the Tears of Mary. What did Saint Monica achieve for her wayward son Augustine? Not only conversion, but even great holiness. How many tears of mothers have brought peace, mended unhappy marriages, brought lost people back home, often at the last hour, and loosened the chains of their sins!
But a mother’s tears are not only a help; they can also be the bitterest accusation. God does not leave sins against the fourth commandment unpunished and usually avenges them in the same or the next generation. A mother should never stand before God in accusation, lamenting the injustices she has suffered, but rather, like Saint Merari, her task is to bring down the hard rock of her children’s coldness and ingratitude, of their indifference and selfishness, through tears of intercession and willingness to make amends.
Prayer: Lord and God, how often have we built not just one rock wall, but several in a row before our souls, so that grace would not awaken us and make us see, but rather our own will would remain the absolute ruler within us. Let us, O Lord, be freed by your angels from this greatest blindness and folly of our lives and be restored to eternal life through the Tears of the Heavenly Mother. Amen.