What Women Do for Him
The mothers of the 40 Hours want to be like the Marys described by Saint Manuel González, a Spanish bishop: women who keep Jesus company in the tabernacle and who continue to pray with great fidelity for an increase in vocations and for perseverance in them.
How well the Marys of the Gospel behaved toward Me! How faithful they were in following Me always, always! The same when the crowds acclaimed Me as their King as when they demanded My crucifixion; the same amid the delights of the Cenacle as amid the horrors of Calvary!
What sorrow and what shame it must stir in the hearts and on the faces of My sons—the men—to behold in My Gospel Loyalty represented in the figure of a woman and not of a man…!
But however interesting and attractive those living images of loyalty may appear in the drama of My earthly life, they grow in interest and beauty when they are contemplated around My dead body.
The Marys of the Tomb!
Tendernesses of love, generosities of piety, heroisms of fidelity, courages born of weakness—there you have your Work and your image! This is how one loves! This is how one loves to the very end!
If the story of My men in My Passion can be written with the Evangelist’s words, ‘leaving Him, they all fled’ (Mt 26,56), then the story of My Marys must be written with this: ‘Mary Magdalene came in the morning, before dawn, to the tomb’ (Mt 28,1)…
They go away; the women remain. They abandon Me in haste while I am still alive; the women seek Me quickly even when I am dead. They deny Me; the women confess Me with their tears. They sell Me for money; the women spend their own to buy spices and balms to anoint Me. Both are slow to believe My resurrection, announced so many times; but while they go to Emmaus on the third day to their affairs, the women go to the tomb.
And why, My men of then and of all times—why such conduct so opposed to that of My daughters?
Why is it still the women who seek Me in My tabernacles, and the men who do not come?
Why does loyalty to Me still take the form of a woman, and disloyalty and ingratitude and contempt and disregard the form of a man?
Why?…
If you do not dare, men, to answer those whys, then at least do not hinder your women from continuing to seek Me where they keep Me as though dead; and if at last, one day, you decide to seek what is good for you, believe the Marys… pay heed to what they tell you on behalf of the Jesus of their abandoned tabernacles…
In many places, and for many souls, I have no other apostles to preach and proclaim Me than My Marys!Men, do not trouble these women… Marys! Marys! How much I owe you—and… how much you owe Me!…