Question:
Answer:
Our Lady teaches us patience better than anyone! If you consider how much she suffered, you will find that she suffered more than anyone ever, except her divine Son; and this “except” is a qualified one, since her suffering was completely through her identification with him in his earthly life and passion.
You see, the sufferings of sinners are borne on account of their own sins, and so in all justice there is a limit. No mere sinner bears the sins of the world; he bears only his own and only a small portion even of those, or a part of the suffering due the sins of someone he is close to in justice and charity. Our Lady, however, was, by God’s grace, not a sinner, and so all her suffering was not for herself but entirely for others, and she did this in union with Jesus, who principally suffered for sinners.
Of course, Our Lady’s suffering was less than that of her Son, since she knew that her holiness was bought by his sufferings first, but after Jesus, she suffered the most. If we speak of purely human creatures, she had the most patience of all. The word patience comes from the Latin patientia, which means at root simply “suffering” or the endurance of suffering, so Our Lady in her sorrows had the most patience of anyone ever. Well can we go to her for the graces we need to endure our sufferings in patience!