Reader, read again these words! and understand that, far from granting all the petitions of Mary, Jesus has always, except when a child, said “No!” to her requests. He has always rebuked her, when she asked him anything in public! Here she comes to ask Him a favor before the whole people. It is the easiest, the most natural favor that a mother ever asked of her son. It is a favor that a son has never refused to a mother. He answers by a rebuke, a public and solemn rebuke! Is it through want of love and respect for Mary that He gave her that rebuke? No! Never a son loved and respected a mother as He did. But it was a solemn protest against the blasphemous worship of Mary, as practiced in the Church of Rome.
I felt, at once, so bewildered and confounded, by the voice, which was shaking my very bones, that I thought it was the devil’s voice; and, for a moment, I feared less I was possessed of a demon.
“My God,” I cried, “have mercy on me! Come to my help! Save me from my enemy’s hands!”
As quick as lightning, the answer came: “It is not Satan’s voice you hear. It is I, thy Saviour and thy God, who speaks to thee. Read what Mark, Luke, and John tell you about the way I received her petitions, from the very day I began to work, and speak publicly as the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world.”
These cries of my awakening intelligence were sounding in my ears for more than one hour, before I consented to obey them. At last, with a trembling hand, and a distressed mind, I took my Bible and read in St. Mark, chapter iii: verses 31, 32, 33, 34 and 35: “There came then his brethren and his mother, and standing without, sent unto him, and calling him. And the multitude sat about him and they said unto him: Behold thy mother and thy brethren without, sending for thee. And he answered them, saying: who is my mother and my brethren?
“And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said: Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, my sister, and my mother.”
The reading of these words acted upon me as the shock of a sword going through and through the body of one who had already been mortally wounded. I felt absolutely confounded. The voice continued to sound in my ears: “Do you not see you have presented a blasphemous lie, every time you said that Jesus always granted the petitions of his mother?”
I remained again, a considerable time, bewildered, not knowing how to fight down thoughts which were so mercilessly shaking my faith, and demolishing the respect I had kept, till then, for my church. After more than half an hour of vain struggle to silence these thoughts, it came to my mind that St. Luke had narrated this interview of Mary and Jesus in a very different way. I opened the holy book again to read the eighth chapter. But how shall I find words to express my distress when I saw that the rebuke of Jesus Christ was expressed in a still sterner way by St. Luke than by the two other evangelists!
“Then came to him his mother and brethren, and could not come at him for the press.
“And it was told him: Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee.