Chapter 60
THE FOURTEENTH SHOWING
ing. He is our true first mother in grace by His taking of our created nature. All the fair working and all the sweet natural offices of the most precious Motherhood are appropriated to the Second Person, for in Him we have this godly will, whole and safe without end, both in nature and in grace from His own proper goodness.
I understand three ways to look at Motherhood in God.
The first is that He is the ground of our natural making. The second is His taking of our nature, where the Motherhood of grace begins. The third is His Motherhood in working. In these three, there is a spreading forth, long and broad, high and deep, by the same grace without end. And all is one love — His own.
Chapter 60 How we are bought again, and spread forth by mercy and grace, by our sweet, natural and ever-loving Mother, Jesus; of the properties of motherhood; but Jesus is our true Mother, not feeding us with milk but with Himself, opening His side to us and challenging all our love.
But now it is necessary for me to say a little more about this "spreading forth," as I understood it in our Lord's meaning — how we are brought again, by the motherhood of mercy and grace, into our natural home, for which we were created by the motherhood of natural love. This natural love never leaves us.
Our natural mother, our Mother in grace, because He willed to become our Mother entirely in everything, took the ground for His work most humbly and most mildly in the maiden's womb. That He showed in the first showing, where
He brought that meek maiden before the eye of my understanding in the simple stature she had when she conceived.
That is to say, our high God, the sovereign Wisdom of all, arrayed Himself in this low place and made Himself entirely ready in our poor flesh in order to do the service and the office of Motherhood Himself in all things.
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
A mother's service is nearest, readiest and surest. It is nearest because it is most natural. It is readiest because it is most loving. And it is surest because it is most true. This office no one but Him alone might or could ever have performed to the full.
We realize that all our mothers bear us for pain and for dying, and what is that? But our true mother, Jesus — Alllove — alone bears us for joy and for endless living, blessed may He be! Thus He sustains us within Himself in love and hard labor, until the fulness of time. Then He willed to suffer the sharpest thorns and the most grievous pains there ever were or ever will be, and to die at the last.
When He had done this and so borne us to bliss, all this still could not satisfy His marvellous love. That He showed in these noble, surpassing words of love: "If I could suffer more, I would suffer more." He could not die any more, but He would not stop working.
Therefore, it was necessary for Him to feed us, for the most precious love of motherhood had made Him a debtor to us. A mother can give her child her milk to suck, but our precious
Mother, Jesus, can feed us with Himself. He does so most courteously and most tenderly, with the Blessed Sacrament, which is the precious food of true life. With all the sweet sacraments He sustains us most mercifully and graciously.
That is what He meant in these blessed words, where He said, "I am that which holy Church preaches and teaches you," that is to say, "All the health and the life of the sacraments, all the virtue and the grace of My word, all the goodness that is ordained for you in holy Church, that I am."
The mother can hold her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother, Jesus, can lead us in friendly fashion into His blessed breast by means of His sweet open side and there show us something of the godhead and the joys of heaven with a spiritual assurance of endless bliss. This He showed in the ninth revelation, giving the same understanding in the sweet word where He said, "See how I loved you!" while He looked into His blessed side, rejoicing.
This fair, lovely word "mother" is so sweet and so natural