Our Lady of Sorrows
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Monday, September 15, 2008 2:00 PM
Today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, when the Church invites us to contemplate the seven sorrows of Mary.
I’m certain Mary had many more than seven causes for sorrow in her life (I can think of seven complaints just about the trip to Bethlehem!), but seven has the symbolic meaning of plenitude or fullness: Mary bore it all. Nevertheless, the seven traditional sorrows of Mary afford us some new titles by which to invoke her.
1. Our Lady, Immune To Tactless Comments. Been on the receiving end of too many prophesies about your family size, how much it costs to educate a child, how life is over now that you have kids, how hellish the teen years will be? (Or, childless, have you been told you’ll understand when you have children, or get married?) Mary knows.
She endured the Prophecy of Simeon. Imagine presenting your child in Church for the first time and having a holy priest announce heartbreak! (Just smile and say the baby’s beautiful, Dude!)
2. Our Lady, Smiling at the Unexpected. For every family fleeing persecution; every mom of a military family subject to frequent transfer; every wife whose husband suddenly lost his job; every one who’s ever lost a home; every unanticipated dinner guest; every sudden flood, car failure or appliance breakdown: Mary endured the Flight into Egypt. She knows.
3. Our Lady Of That Sinking Feeling.. That pit in your stomach when you lose track of your kid in a public place? Mary lost The Child Jesus in the Temple. She knows what it’s like to feel your life is not in your control.
4. Our Lady of Letting Them Go. The mixed pain and pride of seeing a child embrace his vocation and rise to be all he can be—knowing that you can’t spare him any of the blows his path in life will bring him? Mary experienced that when she met Christ on the way of the Cross.
5. Our Lady Unable to Trade Places. Watching a loved one suffer without being able to ameliorate the suffering? Longing with all your heart to switch places, to take your child’s suffering on yourself—but being helpless to offer anything but your solidarity and love? Knowing personally the disfigurement of sin? She does; she stood right by Jesus through the entire crucifixion.
6 & 7. In the deposition and burial of Jesus, we can invoke Mary more traditionally as Comforter of the Afflicted. I like to meditate as well on the purity of her love. What would it be like to face the untimely and unjust death of a loved one without an iota of self-pity or remonstrance against God? With complete confidence in his wisdom and justice, and perfect hope in the promise of the Resurrection?
Remembering the suffering of Our Lady isn’t meant to be a mournful wallowing in the tragedies of life, either. Rather, it is the companion contemplation with yesterday’s Exaltation of the Cross. Mary’s affliction surpasses that of any other woman, yes—but only because of the intensity of her union with Jesus, whom she exalted at every moment of her life. In contemplating her sorrow, we enter into her love and learn how to lift up Christ in everything we do. “And if I be lifted up,” Christ tells us, “I will draw all people unto me.”
Mother of Sorrows, pray for us.
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