Then, as soon as the darkness permitted her to draw near without observation, she allowed John to take her to the Foot of the Cross, and there took up her stand. Her sacrifice was very near to its completion now. This is what she meant when she said her _Fiat_ to the Angel Gabriel thirty-three years ago. This is what she meant when she presented Him to the Lord when He was forty days old. The three days' loss, and the separation when He left His home at Nazareth, had been a foreshadowing of this. Now the consummation of her sacrifice had arrived: "And there stood by the Cross of JESUS His Mother"! She had never flinched, had never looked back. It had been _Fiat_ all along the line. She was a "valiant woman" to the end, bravely doing her part, and offering her Son to GOD. This was Mary's sacrifice--but what is her part in the Sacrifice that her Son is offering to His Father for the world's redemption? Just this, that she provided the Victim. She did not withhold her Son--her only Son. (Gen. xxii. 16.) JESUS on Calvary offered Himself to the Father; and Mary assisted--not only by the perfect union of her will and intention with His, but _actually_, by providing Him with the Body which He was offering to His Father. Her position was that of the Deacon at High Mass. His part is not the offering of the Sacrifice--the Priest alone can do that--but He provides the Priest with the bread and wine which he is going to use for the Sacrifice, and without which there could be no Sacrifice. "A _Body_ hast thou prepared Me"; and that Body came from Mary--it was with Blood drawn from her veins that He redeemed the world. But the Sacrificial Act was His, and His alone: "I have trodden the wine-press alone." (Isaias lxiii. 3.) _Point III._--MARY'S LEGACY