In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence. I ask you for pardon of my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My mother immaculate, Saint Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Let us in this time of prayer the first part of our three-part audio retreat,

go hand in hand with Mary and allow her to accompany us through this season of Lent,

and in particular to prepare us for the events of Holy Week, the passion, the death and resurrection of her son Jesus Christ.

We can have no better guide than Mary. We see how St. John says that she stood by the cross. In the Latin, he, the verb that is used is stab it.

So stabit matter, yukest the cruchum, the mother stood by the cross. Now that stabbit is very deliberate

because St. John wants to emphasize the fact

that Mary stood by Jesus' cross very firmly with great determination.

It wasn't just that she was there,

but she was standing, determined by the cross of Jesus during his

terrible torment. And this is what our lady teaches us. She taught St. John. We always have the

impression that St. John, the youngest of the apostles and perhaps the one that you would have thought would be the first to disappear, was in fact the one that stood by the cross. But we always have the impression that St. John stood by the cross of Jesus because our lady brought him. Our lady, and somehow is able to encourage him in a special way. So that he's almost like an extension of our ladies standing by the cross.

And so what we want to do in this time of prayer, but also in this lent, in the upcoming hoody week, and in truth throughout our whole lives, we also want to be like St. John, standing by the

cross of Jesus, brought there by our lady. The executioners abandon Jesus. Everybody

abandons Jesus at the cross, but our lady does not abandon him. Rather the opposite,

we see that she draws nearer to the cross to be very close by him during his last hours

on the cross. Our lady said to St. Bridget in those revelations that St. Bridget received, she said, I did not leave him and stood nearer to his cross.

In one sense, we could say that perhaps this was easy for Mary, given her great love. We couldn't imagine her doing anything else. We certainly couldn't

imagine our lady not being there or fleeing from the cross. But at the same time, of course,

...