With your own hands, you laid Him in the tomb

Suffering mother, here you are preparing yourself for the ultimate sacrifice, of having to bury your son Jesus. Completely resigned to the Divine Will of Heaven, you are close to him. With your own hands, you lay him in the sepulcher. And while you are arranging his body and about to give him your last goodbye and your last kiss, you feel your heart tear away from your chest! Love nails you to his body, and, by the force of Love and Pain, you feel yourself dying with your lifeless Son!

... But, oh prodigy, while you seem lifeless with Jesus, I hear your voice, trembling and broken with sobs, saying:

"Son, O Beloved Son, this is the last relief I have left to soften my pain: to pour out my love infinitely on the wounds of your humanity, to adore them, to kiss them. And now, that too is being taken away from me. The Divine Will wants it so. And I resign myself. But know, O Son, that even if that is what I want, I cannot do it. At the thought of doing it, my strength is dissolved, and my life flees from me. Give me this grace, O Son, that I may have the strength to make the bitter separation. Allow me to let myself be completely buried in you and to take your Life in me, your sorrows, your reparations, and all that you are. Only an exchange of Lives between you and me can give me the strength to make the sacrifice to separate me from you!"

Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), an Italian mystic who received many messages from Heaven. Her cause for canonization has been introduced.

Excerpt from The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ--The Last 24 Hours.