Mary, though she cannot see Him, is sharing intimately all His humiliations. She knows as no one else can all He is going through; and because she is His Mother she feels more intensely than anyone could what His humiliations are, she can never forget them. She shares all with Him and He lets her; her sympathy is His consolation. Of all the virtues of the interior life, humility is the one which is the most strongly marked in Mary, and perhaps more strongly during these nine months than at any other time. It was her humility which attracted the Eternal Word from Heaven to take up His dwelling in His earthly Tabernacle. It was her humility which made her visit her cousin Elizabeth. It was her humility which made her sing in her _Magnificat_ of the great things God had done for her and how He had regarded the low estate of His handmaid. It was her humility which made her ready to suffer any humiliation rather than disclose God's secret to St. Joseph. It was her humility which made her incapable of resenting all the humiliations she had to bear at Bethlehem on Christmas Eve--and all this humility, all this power to bear humiliations, came from the fact that she was living an interior life, living a hidden life with her Son, looking at everything from His point of view and not from her own. POINT III. "LEARN OF ME." Now let me turn from the interior life of JESUS and Mary to my own. JESUS lived His interior life for me. If He allowed Mary to share it, He will allow me, for He said once that He counted as His Mother all those who do His Will. His Will is quite clear: "Learn of me for I am _humble_." Dare I go to the "Gate of Heaven" and say that I want to learn to be humble, that is, that I want to copy JESUS and Mary in their humiliations? It takes a great deal of courage to ask for humiliations, and perhaps it is almost impossible to do so without some pride lurking in the request; but what I can do is to be so anxious to learn to be humble as He bids me, that I ask for strength to bear the humiliations that He sends. How _do_ I bear them? Do I say: Oh well, it is a humiliation, I must bear it! or, Oh well, I shall never learn humility without humiliations! or: I am always getting humiliations, some people are, but I gladly accept them! All such speeches have their source, not in humility but in pride. Can we imagine Mary talking like this? Humiliations will never do their blessed work of making me humble if I thus use them to attract attention to my supposed virtue. A humiliation is spoiled the moment it sees the light; it has no strength left in it wherewith to produce humility. Do I want to be humble? Then let me go to that quiet retreat where JESUS is humiliating Himself for me, let me take all my humiliations there. When I am left out, forgotten, despised, when my help is unasked, my opinion disregarded, when things are said of me that are hard to bear, when reflections are made on my actions, let