That  tenderness  was  wounded  in  all  the  most  op-
posite ways,  yet,  by  reason  of  the  perfection  of  His
knowledge,  in  all  those  ways  at  once.     He  never
lost  sight  of  one.     Consider  we — apart,  the  good
and  the  evil.     Now  was  the  hour,  prophesied  of  by
Symeon,  when  the  sword  was  to  pierce  His  Mother's
soul,  and  what  a  soul  this  must  have  been,  which
was  created  to  be  His  Mother's  soul,  which  had  been
prepared  to  be  the  soul  of  that  Tabernacle  wherein
God  was  to  dwell,  sanctified  by  His  Presence  for
those  nine  months  in  her  womb,  who  nursed  His
Divine  Infancy  with  a  mother's  love,  upon  whom  the
Eyes  of  the  Divine  Infant  must  have  shone  conti-
nually with  Divine  but  also  Human  love,  she,  the  in-
separable companion  of  those  thirty  hidden  years,
nearly  His  whole  life ;  and  yet  her  soul  was  to  be
pierced !     He  spared  not,  could  not  spare,  His  Mo-
ther's grief;  yet  how  must  such  grief  pierce  the  Divine
Son!     What  a  parting  !    And  that,  to  be  the  begin-
ning of  those  long  years  of  severance,  in  which  the
disciple  and  the  creature,  though  the  beloved  disciple,
was  to  be  her  son,  instead  of  her  Creator  !     All  sor-
row would  to  us  be  swallowed  up  in  such  a  sorrow.
