She is here, standing at the foot of the Cross, strong and courageous, and my Master says to me: “behold, your Mother.” He gives her to me as a Mother… And now, when He has returned to the Father and laid me at His place on the cross, so that I may “fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church,” the Virgin is still here to teach me to suffer like Him and to let me hear the final songs of His soul, which no one else except her, His Mother, could capture.
When I too utter my “it is finished,” it will again be she, “the Gate of Heaven,” who will lead me into the divine courts and whisper to me the mysterious words: “I rejoiced when they said to me: Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
(Elizabeth of the Trinity, Last Retreat 41)
