Holy Week with Our Lady

"Mary on the Way of the Cross: Prayer to the Father"

from With God and With Men by Adrienne von Speyr

My God, my Son's heaviest hour is upon him.

I cannot help him.

And you will not help him,

because he is asking you to let him suffer.

And I ask you for help.

I ask you, accept his suffering.

Accept all of it.

I pray you, take my fear, take my affliction,

not away from me, but to yourself,

so that my fear and my affliction

may be used according to the wishes of your Son.

I want no control over it.

My God, I am trying to give it to you,

and I know that all of us who climb this hill

and see your Son suffer

would like to try to bear

what you give us to bear.

And we would like to bear it,

which is just what your Son,

who by your grace became my son,

wishes for all whom he loves.

For all those who do not have the faintest idea of his existence.

We know that our help is meager.

We women are here but have no strength.

You can give us the strength to bear.

Father, you entrusted your Son to me by your Spirit.

And as I have given him back to you daily and hourly,

I give him back to you now once more,

knowing that his suffering is nothing other than the expression of your grace,

the expression of your love.

It is hard to understand.

I do not understand it at all.

And yet I know that I must give precisely this,

that you require it in this way.

And I ask you:

Take your Son out of my hands

– for he is my Son –

and take at one and the same time everything

I myself have given him

and which in this farewell hour

bears only the name of pain and grief.

Take it, dispose of it,

let my suffering become as heavy as you will,

I know (your Son has taught me this)

that this is how I must pray in this hour. 

Amen.