May 21st
Chapter Eighteen of the Imitation of Mary, by Thomas a Kempis
How to Suffer After the Example of Mary

If you truly love your mother Mary, and if you truly desire her patronage in the midst of your own tribulations, remain with her standing near the cross.  Share with a full heart in her mother's sorrows and in the sorrows of Christ, he beloved Son: she will then be near you at the hour of death.  He who often and lovingly meditates on the sorrows borne by Jesus, and on the tears shed by His mother, can have full confidence in the mercy and pity of God, and likewise in His affection and in that of His divine mother!  Oh! how happy at the hour of death will be that soul which on every day of its life loved deeply both Jesus and Mary, and each day found its place near the cross, in union with Jesus and Mary!

Happy the one who, scorning all earthly consolation, chose in this life Mary for his consolation and his mother.  There is no doubt that at the hour of his death, this mother will say to her Son the blessed and gentle word that consoles the poor and helps the orphan.

If you love Jesus, come, take up His cross; walk with the cross; remain near the cross; embrace this cross and do not forsake it until you have arrived near the One who gives the glory to the cross.  If you wish in your trials, in spite of the sorrow, to find some consolation, go to Mary at once both virgin and mother, to the mother who watches near the cross, to the virgin who weeps at the foot of the cross.

I come again to ask you Mary, Mother of God and my mother, to be willing to look upon me favorably, and to consider me with a compassionate heart, now, in the future, and at the hour of death.  Receive me as a son under your protection; enfold me maternally in your arms at all times, but especially at my last hour.  Remember me, and come to my aid, you who are my sovereign and my mother.  Console my soul affrighted at itself, O you, my sole hope in my tribulations.  Defend it against the assaults of the demon, so that he will never dare to approach it, in the presence of you who deign to visit it.  Obtain for me, Mary, I plead with you, through your pious intercession pardon and indulgence from your Son, whom I have so often and so greatly, alas! offended by my faults and my sins.