St. John Henry Newman says that Mary was more courageous than all the other disciples. “
She did not grovel in the dust," he writes, "but stood upright to receive the blows, the stabs, which the long Passion of her Son inflicted upon her every moment.” He also says, “she is called the Tower of Ivory, to suggest to us, by the brightness, purity, and exquisiteness of that material, how transcendent is the loveliness and the gentleness of the Mother of God.”