The Memorial of the Sorrowful Mother follows hard upon the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. We continue in our consideration of the event that reconciled us with the Father, a reconciliation that was brought about by the obedience of God’s Son, the “fiat” of the Blessed Mother and her Spouse St. Joseph. The two of them stood in amazement at the words of Simeon, words which would have been startling for all of us. Mary and Joseph both knew that their lives would be changed by the events surrounding the birth of their Son, and they both had accepted the consequences of their willingness to listen to the words of an angel sent by God.
Today’s memorial has its origins in some monasteries in the 12th and 13th centuries, but it was Pope Pius VII, a Benedictine, who in 1814 extended the commemoration to the whole church. He did it as an act of thanksgiving after being released from imprisonment by Napoleon. So like Mary and every other human being, Pius had his share of suffering and sorrow. Over the years seven sorrows of Mary have been listed, seven, of course, being the biblical way of saying that Mary had her fill of sorrow. Mary’s sorrows are Simeon’s prophecy about a sword piercing her heart: the flight into Egypt, the loss of Jesus in the Temple, meeting Jesus on the way to Calvary, the crucifixion, the taking down of his body from the cross, and the entombment.
Enumerating one’s sorrows is certainly not something in which Mary would have indulged. We too are better off not enumerating our sorrows for ourselves or for others; that too easily becomes self-pity rather than a sharing in the cross. Mary’s sorrows remind us that sharing the cross of Christ is the ordinary accompaniment of work well done and of a life well lived as a disciple. We have Mary as a fellow sufferer, literally one who is compassionate. As we celebrate this Eucharist for such a remarkable model.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator