September Month of the Sorrows of Mary

There is a new sharpness in the air—the first sharpness of Winter returning. There is a sharpness which is only just not the sharpness of frost on the dew that lies so late and thick upon the morning grass. The winds sleep, and the air is bound. But this sharpness and stillness are not as in frozen January, for they are no longer sterile—they are rich, fruitful, golden. Up into the still air ascends the straight blue smoke-column of the bonfires that consume the dross of summer, and in that burning there is a sweetness, a richness that makes the heart beat quickly and almost chokes the breath. There is no perfume like that of a September garden fire, burning away the summer in an agony of sweetness. The smoke of it goes up like incense through the gold and blue of the afternoon. The breath of the earth is like incense as she turns slowly to her sleep. The earth is emptied of her harvests, but not of their perfume—it hangs still about her, perfume of the crops she has brought forth, corn and hops and hay, merged into one rich sweetness in the September sunshine. She is stripped but she still is sweet, indeed sweeter in this autumn spoliation than ever in her sun-baked fertilities of Summer, just as the trees are lovelier in their golden dying than in the pale austerity of their budding or in the green monotony of their July crown. The trees are still bearing fruit. The crimson of the apples hides among the golden green of the leaves. September is the month of the fruitful trees, of the harvest of the golden bough. The field has given up the last of her harvests, but the orchard is still heavy, and in the wild trees of the woods the acorns, the nuts, the sloes are ripe among the yellowing leaves.

Two women stand at the foot of two trees. The women are weeping, the trees are heavy with fruit. Eve stands at the foot of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—Mary stands at the foot of the Cross. Both are Matres Dolorosæ—sorrowful mothers—Eve the mother of all living, Mary the mother of life. Eve has betrayed her children, through the perverse choice of her will, but weeps for herself rather than for them—Mary has been redeemed by her child through the offering of her will, and she weeps for him alone.

The sorrows of Mary are fertile sorrows—the ground watered by her tears is rich for all mankind, whereas the tears of Eve water only thorns and thistles, cockle and darnel. The sorrows of Mary are sweet as the perfume of the September fires, they go up as incense to heaven. The sorrows of Eve are bitter as the smoke of green wood, and the gusts of her self-love blow them along the ground.

It is not the first time that Eve and Mary have stood over against each other in the scheme of the ages. They are both the medium of creation, vessels of life, the material of the active, creative principle of the universe. But in Eve this material has failed, it thwarts the life that works in it, so that its energies are not only cramped but perverted. Eve fights against the power that uses her—hence her own suffering, and the apparent failure of the power, due to the defects of its instrument. For Eve has discovered herself, and uses her will for her own purposes, with the result that both her own purposes and the purposes of God as far as she is concerned are lost. She knows both good and evil, but can use neither. The serpent deceived her by biting his own tail and calling himself eternity, hence she is caught in the round of things and cannot escape.

Mary stands at the foot of the Cross as the second Eve. Once more the creative principle has sought a medium, and this time the medium has responded perfectly, so that the work of the new creation of the new heavens and the new earth has not been foiled by its instrument. Mary used her freedom, her will, not for herself but to further the purposes of God. She became as it were the collaborator of God by yielding herself as his handmaiden. As a reward he has made her a sharer of his joys and sorrows. The sorrows of Mary are fertile because they are the sorrows of the Cross. Every one of them, from the flight into Egypt till the moment when she holds the slain body of her son upon her knees, every one of them draws life from the fountain of the Precious Blood. The mother standing there weeps no vain tears of selfish grief nor vain regret—her sorrows are already united with the sacrifice of her Son, she offers them to God with his, for the purposes of redemption. Her sorrows are fruitful for the assistance of the world on its new ways, in company with all human sorrow which is offered at the foot of the Cross. They are part of the new processes of life—the sublimation of the old laws whereby nature groaned and travailed towards higher things; they are part of the supernatural evolution, in which sorrow is eucharistic, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

The sorrows of Mary go up to heaven in perfume, like the fires of September. Her motherhood burns in an agony of sweetness. She is the rich earth, scented and fertile, at the foot of the golden bough, now ripe for harvest.