'Mary suffered hers in her soul, as Saint Simeon
foretold: "And my own soul a sword shall pierce." As if the holy old man
had said: "O most sacred Virgin, the bodies of other martyrs will be
torn with iron, but thou wilt be transfixed, and martyred in thy soul by
the Passion of thine own Son." Now, as the soul is more noble than the
body, so much greater were Mary's sufferings than those of all the
martyrs, as Jesus Christ Himself said to Saint Catherine of Siena:
"Between the sufferings of the soul and those of the body there is no
comparisons." Whence the holy Abbot Arnold of Chartres says, "that
whoever had been present on Mount Calvary, to witness the great
sacrifice of the Immaculate Lamb, would there have beheld two great
altars, the one in the body of Jesus, the other in the heart of Mary;
for, on that mount, at the same time that the Son sacrificed His body by
death, Mary sacrificed her soul by compassion."'
