This to S. Mary was the piercing of the sword through the very heart. These were the days when the meaning of close association with Incarnate God, with God Who was pursuing a mission of rescue, came out. The mission of the Son for the Redemption of man meant submitting to the extremity of insult and torture, and it meant that those who were closest associated with Him should be caught into the circle of His pain. As our Lord was displaying the best of which humanity is capable, so was He calling out the worst of which it is capable. These last days of the life of Jesus show where man can be led when he surrenders himself to the dominion of the Power of Evil and becomes the servant of sin. The triumph of demoniac malice through its instruments, the Roman governor, the Jewish authorities, of necessity swept over all who were related to our Lord. The storm scattered the Apostolic group and left the Christ to face His trial alone. Yet not alone: He himself tells us the truth. "Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." It was what the Prophet had foreseen: "All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." We do not know where S. Mary was during these days, but we are sure that she was as near our Lord as it was possible for her to be. We know that her own thought would be of the possibility of ministering to Him. We know that she would not have fled with the Apostles in their momentary panic. She was at the Cross, and she was at the grave, and she would have been as near Him in the agony and the trial as it was possible for her to be. And she too was in agony. Every pang of our Lord found echo in her. Every blow that fell upon His bleeding back, she too felt. Every insult that the soldiers inflicted, hurt her. Our Lord in the consciousness of His mission is constantly sustained by the thought that His Passion and Death is an offering to the will of the Father,--an offering even for these miserable men who are brutally treating a man whom they know to be innocent. Her sorrow is the utter desolation of seeing the One Whom she loves above all else suffer, while she can bear Him no alleviation in His suffering, cannot so much as wipe the blood from off His wounded brow, cannot even touch His hand, and look her love into His eyes. She follows from place to place while our Lord is being hustled from Caiaphas to Pilate and from Pilate to Herod and back again; from time to time hearing from some one who has succeeded in getting nearer, how the trial is going on, what the accusation is, how Jesus is bearing Himself, what answers He has made, what the authorities have said. Once and again, it may be, catching a distant glimpse of Him as He is led about by the guards, seeing Him always more worn and weary, always nearer the point of collapse.