Behold Thy Mother: Meditating with the Stabat Mater

This poem set to music by Gregorian chant, Josquin, Charpentier, and Haydn

In his Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales meditated on the perfect union of holy love and sorrow at the foot of the Cross. Enraptured with the greatness of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, he wrote:

The sweet Mother, who loved more than all, was more than all transfixed with the sword of sorrow…. Now this maternal bosom, being thus wounded wit…