St Thomas Aquinas writes that if all the sufferings of mankind were to be joined together , they could not be equal to the Sufferings of the Mother of Sorrows. In a similar way it has been written that all the virtues and all the glory of all the Saints and Martyrs and Angels in Heaven could not be compared to the virtues and Glory of The Queen of Heaven. If you ever want to guess how holy someone was or is, ask one simple question. Ask how much they suffer. The two holiest women I ever knew in my life were my Godmother, Chris and my own mother. Chris was an orphan and from what I hear had a very hard childhood and upbringing. When a young woman she went to work in the Post Office and contracted a rare African form of gangrene which meant that rest of her life she endured amputation after amputation. She lived in a remote rural house but my mother told me farm folk in surrounding houses used to be roused by the sounds of her screams. My own mother went through a series of I suppose what you would call catastrophic losses and sufferings. My young brother Cormac was hit by a bus when he was eight outside our house . He had to have his leg amputated. My mother saw it all. My father and elder brother (then 18) were imprisoned without trial. my brother saw Ciaran after he had been tortured on a prison ship. My father had been a successful buisnessman but my mother was left to mind ten children on her own and somehow went every week to visit her husband and son each week in the Internment Camps while we went from being comfortable to totally broke. There were constant Raids on our house by soldiers who often wrecked the place. Several murder attempts by anti Catholic murder gangs and I don't know my mother survived the stress of watching us go out at nights not knowing if we would come home. In her early 40's my mother contracted a serious cardiac condition which severely effected her. But still she pressed on as always like a workhorse. My brother Colm died suddenly at 26 A few short years later my brother Cormac (26), his wife Teresa (26) and their daughter Shona (2) all dies in a car accident. I recall my mother at the funeral. In her face I saw the face of the Mother of Sorrows. Anyway I was thinking of the Mother of Sorrows while saying a decade of the rosary (Christ dies on the Cross) in Church this morning. While doing so my mind slipped back to memories of these other tow suffering Holy Women. Great suffering is such a mystery. It renders us silent and in awe. The only real key to another's suffering is to endure a little ourselves and I have seen so little. But two women stood beside me at the Cross this morning. Two other Mothers whose own stand at the foot of their own crosses had taught them to see a little, the depth of the sorrows of which I, poor man, ....could only guess.
The sufferings of your mother and grandmother make me realise how soft we are now. We are definitely in the snowflake class. Today in church I asked the Lord to not test me beyond my strength.
Thank you for sharing this story, Padraig. Only great graces could carry your mother and godmother through such sorrow, and suffering, they were silent saints. Their souls lovingly tested by Our Lord. Clearly Jesus selects certain individuals to share in His Cross, while others drift through life unscathed. He truly does give us what we can handle.
