Mary is a true friend and helper at the hour of our death
1 min • Digitized on February 21, 2022
From The Glories of Mary, page 101
By St. Alphonsus Liguori
SECTION III.
Dulcedo:—Sweetness.
MARY RENDERS DEATH SWEET TO HER SERVANTS.
“He that is a friend loveth at all times; and a brother is proved in distress.” [Prov. xvii. 17.] True friends and relatives are not known in times of prosperity, but in the season of adversity and misery.
Worldly friends do not desert their friend when he is in prosperity; but if any misfortune overtakes him, particularly in the hour of death, immediately his friends abandon him.
Not so does Mary desert her devoted servants. In their distresses, and especially at the trying hour of death, when our sufferings are the greatest that can be endured on earth, she our good Lady and mother cannot abandon her faithful servants; and as she is our life in the time of our exile, so is she also our sweetness in the hour of death, by obtaining for us that it may be sweet and blessed.
For since that great day in which it was the lot and the grief of Mary to be present at the death of Jesus, her Son, who was the head of the elect, she obtained the grace of aiding at death all the elect.
Hence the holy Church requires us to pray the blessed Virgin, that she would especially aid us in the hour of our death: “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”*