mother might truly feel that a sword was piercing her soul, as the old
man Simeon[15] had once prophesied of her, many years before.

[Footnote 15: Luke, chapter ii. verse 35.]

"Wearied was her heart with grieving,
Worn her breast with sorrow heaving,
Through her soul the sword had passed.

"Ah! how sad and broken-hearted
Was that blessed mother, parted
From the God-begotten One!

"How her loving heart did languish
When she saw the mortal anguish
Which o'erwhelmed her peerless Son."[16]

[Footnote 16: From _Stabat Mater_.]

Time passed, and Jesus now being dead, his friends were permitted by
the governor to remove him from the cross. Joseph of Arimathea took
the lead, as he was to lay the body in a new sepulchre recently made
in his garden. Nicodemus was also there, bringing linen and spices for
the burial, and the loving women lingered to see these preparations.

We can imagine how they might all stand aside to make room for the
mother Mary. Perhaps, indeed, they would withdraw a little way to
leave her for a moment alone with her son. The years seem to melt
away, and again she gathers him in her lap as when he was a babe. All
the motherly tenderness which she has had long pent up in her heart