In the context of her Passion narrative, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich describes how Mary, Mother of God, was following her Son during His bitter Suffering every step of the way, venerating and weeping over the places where He had fallen, where particular outrage had been inflicted upon Him, the very stones and dust He had been cruelly dragged over. Thus, Mary established the oldest devotion known as the Holy Way (or Stations) of the Cross. Then Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich proceeds to reflect on Mary’s heart, Cor Immaculatum:
“Even then, when Jesus was traversing that most painful way of suffering, did his pure and immaculate mother, in her undying, holy love, seek to share the inward and outward pains of her Son and her God, venerate and weep over his footsteps as he went to die for us, and offer all to the heavenly Father for the salvation of the world.
Thus, at every step of the blessed Redeemer, did she gather the infinite merits that he acquired for us, and lay them up in her most holy and compassionate heart, that unique and venerable treasury of all the gifts of salvation, out of which and through which, according to the eternal decree of the triune God, every fruit and effect of the mystery of Redemption perfected in the fullness of time should be bestowed upon fallen man.
From the most pure blood of this most holy heart was formed by the Holy Spirit that body which today was, from a thousand wounds, pouring forth Its precious blood as the price of our Redemption. For nine months had Jesus dwelt under that heart full of grace. As a virgin inviolate had Mary brought him forth, cared for him, watched over him, and nourished him at her breast, in order to give him over today for us to the most cruel death on the tree of the cross.
Just as the Eternal Father spared not his Only-Begotten Son, but delivered him up for us, so the blessed Mother, the Mother of God, spared not the blessed Fruit of her womb, but consented that he, as the true Pascal Lamb, should be sacrificed for us upon the cross. And so Mary is, in her Son, and next to him, the concurrent cause of our salvation, our redemption, our mediatrix and powerful advocate with God, the mother of grace and of mercy.”
From The Visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, recounting what happened on April 3rd, AD 33
