History’s Greatest Mother

FROM Fr. Frederick William Faber’s At the Foot of the Cross:
NOWHERE in the Old Testament do we seem to come so near to God as in the book of Job. Nowhere is He more awfully enshrouded in mystery, or more terrible in His counsels regarding the children of men; and yet nowhere is He more plainly or more tenderly our Father. It is because the mystery of suffering is depicted therein. Because it is all so human, it seems to lead us so far into the Divine. Because it is the uttermost trial of the creature, he lies the more completely in the Creator’s arms. The calamities of Job are to the Old Testament what the Passion of our Lord is to the New, and the one was an intentional foreshadowing of the other. When we come to speak of our Lady’s dolors, we remember the touching picture of Job’s friends, when they heard of his afflictions and came to visit him. “When they had lifted up their eyes afar off, they knew him not, and crying out they wept, and rending their garments, they sprinkled dust upon their heads toward Heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no man spoke to him a word; for they saw that his grief was very great.” They knew that silence was the best consolation. (more…)




