Mary, though she cannot see Him, is sharing intimately all His
humiliations. She knows as no one else can all He is going through; and
because she is His Mother she feels more intensely than anyone could
what His humiliations are, she can never forget them. She shares all
with Him and He lets her; her sympathy is His consolation. Of all the
virtues of the interior life, humility is the one which is the most
strongly marked in Mary, and perhaps more strongly during these nine
months than at any other time. It was her humility which attracted the
Eternal Word from Heaven to take up His dwelling in His earthly
Tabernacle. It was her humility which made her visit her cousin
Elizabeth. It was her humility which made her sing in her _Magnificat_
of the great things God had done for her and how He had regarded the low
estate of His handmaid. It was her humility which made her ready to
suffer any humiliation rather than disclose God's secret to St. Joseph.
It was her humility which made her incapable of resenting all the
humiliations she had to bear at Bethlehem on Christmas Eve--and all this
humility, all this power to bear humiliations, came from the fact that
she was living an interior life, living a hidden life with her Son,
looking at everything from His point of view and not from her own.